Talk Right

Communication

Effective leaders need to master the six basic functions of management: leading, planning, organizing, staffing, controlling, and communicating. But what’s the one golden thread tying all of those functions together – and the most important key to great leadership? Clear communication. Leaders need to be able to communicate well. In order to be effective, a leader needs to focus on three elements: mission, people, and teamwork.  Communication impacts all of these areas.

 The first element, mission, sounds like a very military word, but a unit mission is no different than accomplishing the tasks required for your business to succeed. I don’t know how many times in my military and business careers that I have heard phrases such as “what we have here is a failure to communicate” or “I have no idea what the boss wants” or “what are we trying to accomplish here”. Prioritization is key, because the number of tasks that need to be performed far outnumber all the tasks that any of us can get done in a given day. So a leader has to prioritize those tasks. What’s your vision, your objectives, i.e., what are you trying to accomplish? Ensure that the entire team understands them. One of the ways is to ask your subordinates questions about your guidance, what they think about the vision, mission or priorities. We say something, think it is understood, and then walk away, only to find out later that someone is headed in the wrong direction. It may not be because they are obstinate or have their own agenda; it just may be because they didn’t understand what you said. So a good leader has a responsibility to make sure that his or her subordinates know and understand what he or she told them and what his or her priorities are. The priorities may change frequently, so you have to give people the authority and power to come back to you for clarification. That sounds very basic, but I think it applies from the very senior level all the way down to the junior-level personnel. An effective tool used in the military to manage any ambiguity or misunderstanding is called the “brief back.” A brief back -- sometimes called a back brief -- is exactly what it sounds like. The person or people receiving the instructions, guidance, etc. give a synopsis of the information that they just received. The person originally giving the instructions can then determine whether the message was received properly and clarify as required.

The second element is people. This is where leader development comes in, not only from a strategic sense, but also from the perspective of what’s coming next. A good leader has the responsibility for preparing people for what may come next and giving them the tools to deal with uncertain situations. That’s true whether you’re going to change the organization or are about to cross the line of departure and go into combat. We need to prepare junior people to take over and lead our organization, or others like it, and take over positions of increasing responsibility. In the military, people (or human intelligence) are a leader’s best source of information. The same holds true in the corporate world and most other organizations.  Technology has drastically altered the environment in which we operate. This technology has increased the information available to the leader and decreased the time available to him or her for decision making. As a rule, leaders have not learned to limit the information fed to them and how to separate the information critical to mission accomplishment from the volumes of information available. In the military, the commander expresses his or her information needs using the terminology “Commander’s Critical Information Requirements” or CCIR. CCIR communicate information that the commander needs to clarify the situation and considers critical to determining a course of action. CCIR is a tool to ensure that information transmitted to the commander is meaningful and readily recognized as critical to his mental vision of the situation.  This technique is equally applicable to the business world.

Teamwork is the third element.  Teamwork is vital – a lesson I learned from playing lots of team sports and also from a lifetime of service and leadership. If you build and sustain a great team, you can accomplish just about anything, even when it’s extremely risky and difficult. If you concentrate on an overarching philosophy theme of mission, people, and teamwork; illustrate the importance of it; and exemplify how to apply it, then your subordinates will look at it the same way. If they start to realize they are cut off from you in some military (or business) operation, can’t talk to you, and are facing a dilemma, by referring back to the priority tasks of taking care of their people and maintaining a very good team, they can’t go wrong.

Transparency is equally important, but there is a caveat. It is not always possible to be fully transparent, especially when classified and sensitive information must be protected and can’t be shared with everyone. Corporate merger and acquisition data is an example of information that needs to be close hold. There are also times when a decision made right now with the best information available is infinitely better than a refined decision made after a lengthy process of gathering all relevant information. There is a balance that applies in most situations, and one size does not fit all in terms of transparency. The test of your actions, decisions, and behavior is whether they ultimately lead to success and whether they are validated in after action reports.

Bottom line, clear communication is the most important key to a leader’s success. So to grow as a leader and manager, you must learn to be an effective, compelling communicator. Regardless of whether you are talking about business, politics, sports, or the military, the best leaders are first-rate communicators. Their values are clear and solid and what they say promotes those values. Their teams admire them and follow their lead. The best leaders motivate and inspire their people through clear communication. The best organizations promote discipline, accountability, and strategic alignment with clear communication. And market leaders sell their products and services with compelling ads and marketing campaigns – in sum, by clear communication. No matter how powerful your message may be or how competent you are, if you can’t clearly communicate to your team, customers, and audience you will never reach your maximum level of leadership success.