Harvard Business Publishing recently reported on “The 10 Most Common Leadership Shortcomings.” Below are 5 of the 10 shortcomings you can instantly avoid by improving your communication skills. Your leadership skills (and your job) could depend on how effective you are at motivating and communicating with your team.
- Lack of energy and enthusiasm. If you’re not excited about what you’re saying, how can you expect your listeners to be? Energy and enthusiasm cannot be brought about by a brooding leader. When he has difficulty getting excited about a topic, he must trick his mind and use emotional transference. Before you speak, he uses anything that can trigger (or anchor) a positive emotion. Listen to the Rocky theme song. Put pictures of your children next to your notes. Watch your favorite episode of Family Guy on Hulu. Wear anything that makes you feel energized. Then work on transferring your emotional state when you speak. Therefore, what you are saying comes from the words of your presentation, and how you say it comes from your emotional transference.
- Lack of clear vision and direction. In Field of Dreams we hear: “If you build it, they will come.” When it comes to leading a group, “if they see you, they will follow you.” Almost 90 percent of the sensory input to our brain comes from visual stimuli. If you can clearly paint a picture of the goals you want to achieve, your team will instantly see the future they’re working towards. How will their day-to-day be different (better) if they achieve the goal? How will the company change and improve? What feelings will they feel after the achievement? Be as clear and detailed as necessary.
- Don’t collaborate. Part of motivating a team is empowering them to take on more responsibility. Successful collaboration requires good communication. Improve your collaboration skills by clearly defining the desired end result, developing and agreeing on processes and responsibilities, asking for feedback, and communicating with all parties throughout the process.
- Resist new ideas. Sometimes communication is silence. Leading and motivating is not about dictating. As amazing, wonderful and smart as you are, you don’t have all the answers, but your team just might. You may never learn the great solutions your team has to offer if you keep talking. Understandably, you don’t want every meeting to be one long brainstorming session. Therefore, you must remember to be structured in the way you solicit ideas. Pose a problem, let everyone write down their ideas, and then let each person suggest one of their best ideas. You can even go through a similar process via email. This way, you are not organizing unnecessary meetings. Your team will feel motivated and empowered knowing that their ideas are heard. And when one of your ideas is used, it instantly increases your employees’ engagement and productivity.
- Lack of interpersonal skills. Although this is a very general statement, no one can deny that interpersonal skills play an important role in leadership skills. Perception is key. If you are perceived as grumpy, your team will keep their distance and avoid conversations with you. If you’re perceived as welcoming and interested, then you’re likely to get more collaborative success from your team members. To be perceived as relatable, practice keeping your body language open and engaged. Your team will feel isolated from you if you tend to lean back in your chair, cross your arms, and sit stone-faced in silence. Instead, lean forward slightly with your hands on the desk. Smile slightly as you listen and occasionally nod your head in acknowledgment. Your team will feel that you care and you will give them 100% of your attention, which is much better than the alternative.
You might be thinking, this is all pretty obvious information. Everyone knows how to avoid these problems. Before you ignore this information, take a look at what the pollsters also found: “…the ineffective leaders we studied were often unaware that they exhibited these behaviors. In fact, those who were rated most negatively rated themselves substantially more positively.” To improve your leadership skills, you need to check your ego at the door and routinely solicit honest feedback. Otherwise, you could be making damaging mistakes and not even know it.
