Communications is a critical component of leadership. Communications is basic to all leadership principles. It is through communications that you keep your soldiers informed and ensure that the task is understood, supervised, and accomplished. Communications is a complex process including the verbal, nonverbal, and symbolic modes. Words themselves do not have meaning.
People have meaning, and words are simply tools to convey that meaning.
What may be familiar to one person may not be to another. One of the difficulties with words is that we attach different meanings based on our experiences and emotions. It is not uncommon to observe people struggling to find the right words to say what they mean. One s nonverbal communications, or body language reflects one s culture, develops over time and with practice and is usually unconscious behavior. For that reason, nonverbal signals are often viewed as a more valid source of information than are the verbal communications.