3 Things A Leader Needs To Have On His Communication
By: João V Souza
Tags: Team Collaboration, Team Building, Leadership Skills, Teamwork, Leadership

3 Things A Leader Needs To Have On His Communication

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

I genuinely believe that the world would be a better place if we knew how to communicate better.

Communication is something essential in our day-to-day. Unfortunately, schools don’t teach us about this, and we ended up not always talking in the best way possible.

At companies, communication is also very essential. If you want to have work done, you need to communicate in the best way possible. Information needs to be clear for everyone inside a company.

Being a leader doesn’t mean being a boss. Leadership is not a position. Leadership is a choice, and anyone can choose to be a leader (even in companies). That is something I incentivized my employees to be even if they didn’t have any leader title.

The world needs more leaders.

To be a good leader, you need to be able to communicate.

In this text, I will show three things that I believe are very important to make that possible.

#1 Admit when you don’t know something

Being a leader doesn’t mean you have to have all the answers. It’s more about asking the right questions. Usually, in a company, it’s harder to find a problem than solve it. It is necessary to ask the right questions to help determine the problem that needs to be solved.

When someone asks you something related to a subject, but you don’t know anything about it, and you answer that you know, you are losing the opportunity to learn. Not knowing something will not make you a lazy leader; otherwise, it will show that you are a humble person.

However, this doesn’t mean you don’t have to study. You need to update yourself about your business. That doesn’t mean you have to know everything. The main point here is to see that you are giving your best to acquire knowledge and when someone says something that you don’t understand, you admit that you don’t know and learn with this person.

The stoic philosopher Epictetus said:

“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”

I usually go to many entrepreneurship conferences where I have the opportunity to talk to other leaders. Many times something that I don’t quite understand comes up. The exchange of experience with other entrepreneurs makes me leaving those conferences a wiser person. If I don’t admit my ignorance in a determined topic, I will come back home the same way I was before. If I do this, this means I did not enjoy the conference the best way possible.

#2 Admit when you make a mistake

Leaders usually think that they should never make mistakes and that the team can’t find out when that happens. That is a very wrong thought. A leader is a human being like every other person. It is human to make mistakes. When you admit an error to your team, the team identifies with you. You share the message that it is ok to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them.

However, admit mistakes doesn’t mean you have to make them in an imprudent way. You have to keep giving your best. If you start to make silly mistakes frequently, your team will have a negative view of your work.

In many situations, I took decisions that weren’t the best for my company. During meetings with my team, I shared about the mistakes, what I have learned, and what we could do differently from this day on.

I also incentivize the people from my team to share when they make mistakes. We had a ceremony where we reflect on the past two weeks of work. Usually, at this moment, my employees shared their mistakes and successes. I didn’t point fingers when someone made a mistake. I helped them think about how they happened and what we could do differently to minimize their chances of happening again.

Keep something in mind: everybody always will make mistakes (especially you). It is by making mistakes that you learn.

#3 Apologize

Not realizing, maybe you offended someone, or you didn’t say something in a pleasant tone. As I said before, it is human to make mistakes. Admit the error and apologize for that.

I remember when an employee of mine called me to talk and gave me feedback about something I have done. In a meeting, I have spoken in a way that looked like I was making fun of people. I didn’t realize that I did that. I thanked for the feedback, and later on, in another meeting with the whole team, I apologize to everyone for what happened. It was something simple. You don’t need to be fancy to apologize.

If I haven’t done that and kept making mistakes without apologizing, people will not respect me anymore. That also incentivizes other people to apologize when they make mistakes, which led to a more humane company, and with that, employees will feel better about their work.

Summing up:

Admit when you don’t know something Admit when you make a mistake Apologize

It amazes me how people don’t expect to see a ladder doing any of these three things. When someone new started at my company and saw me doing one of these three things, the person got surprised. She was not used to seeing this kind of behavior in other companies.

I’m not saying that I am the best leader in the world. I have a lot to learn yet. I am saying that admitting when I don’t know something, admitting when I make a mistake, and apologizing for something I did, helped me better connect with my team. That inspired them to give their best to the company, which allowed the company to grow even more.

These are three simple things that you can use in your communication and will eventually be natural. Remember how you felt when you learned how to ride a bike or to drive a car. You had to think a lot at the beginning, but eventually, things became natural for you. These three items work the same for you.

As Zig Ziglar said:

“You don’t build a business. You build people, and then people build the business.”

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