Responsible Communication

“As a leader you need to take responsibility for not only what you say, but what other people hear”.

This statement in my Conversations That Count workshop on effective communication always gets a response. And it’s not usually applause.

I acknowledge that we can never guarantee that people will receive what we intend. There are lots of factors that are ultimately beyond our control. So my statement above needs some clarification.

But effective leaders do take more than their fair share of responsibility for ensuring the message they want to deliver is properly grasped by their audience. They do this for several reasons:

-the message is meaningful and they genuinely want people to get it

-they know that failing to communicate it effectively will lead to problems later

-they take some level of pride in their ability to express themselves well

-they care about their audience and believe this information can help them

What healthy leaders don’t do is assume that just because they’ve sent a message, (verbally, in writing, or otherwise), that people have properly received it. We’ve all had way too much experience with real life “broken telephone” scenarios where things got somehow scrambled along the way.

So how do we do better?

First, make the conscious decision to be intentional about your communication. Develop your skills and don’t assume that what has worked well in one time and place will be just as effective here and now.

Second, deliver important messages with repetition and in multiple ways (email, verbal, internal messaging app, printed paper, …). If you’re not feeling like you’ve said it too much you probably haven’t said it enough.

Third, use at least two of the 5 S’s (Story, Statistic, Symbol, Slogan, Strategy) to access different ways of thinking and engaging. People don’t all respond to the same approaches; mixing it up is a way to make it as accessible as possible.

The bottom line here is that healthy leaders serve people by taking responsibility for communicating in the ways that make it most likely that people will be able to understand.

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