Good business is all about communication and how well you do it. Ineffective communication is at the heart of most business problems and research has shown that businesses with leaders who have highly effective communication generate up to 50% better returns than those that don’t. Leaders who communicate well are able to motivate their teams to increase productivity, which in turn will increase profit.
Good communication starts at the top. It creates the culture in your organisation and how you, as the leader, communicate with others sets the standard for everyone in your business. Your team will follow your example and if they don’t, you can pick them up from a perspective of “that’s not how we do it here – this is the way we do it”.
So here are 5 tips for you to communicate as a highly effective leader to motivate your team.
- Be authentically you. The only way you can be perfect is to be you perfectly. So believe in and trust yourself and your intuition and say what is true for you. Your team will love you more if they get to see the real you. Just look at Richard Branson. We all connect in a more fulfilling way when we are authentic to our self and we enjoy the relating more too.
- Remember all business relationships are personal. Every business relationship is just two or more people interacting and therefore comes down to inter-personal communication and the relationship between those people. Focus on the inter-personal communication of what is being said and how it is being interpreted with empathy as well as the business objectives.
- Don’t let your ego control you. We all have an ego and whilst we need it to define our sense of self, we don’t need it to control how we think and the way we communicate. Our ego tells us we are perfect, which we are not and so will try to prove to everyone that we really are. So if you feel the need to prove how good you are to others, pull back on your ego to get it in check and let go of your need to prove anything about yourself.
- Give up your need to be right. It doesn’t matter who is right and who is wrong. They are just labels you give. This relates to the last point of not being controlled by your ego. If we accept what is, then we do not need to make someone wrong and we do not need to make ourselves right. It all just is. When we let go of our ego’s need to make ourselves right, there will be far less arguments and many more valuable discussions with open sharing.
- Always show empathy and respect. The most successful leaders feel empathy for others and show respect to all others. They are then respected in the same way in return. This means they genuinely care about the people in their teams and they show it in the way they treat them. Empathy involves understanding and showing respect for the other person and communicating with them accordingly. When you do this your teams will follow you with loyalty and support for you too.
So think of these things tips every day and check that you are doing these things in your communication and you will develop loyal and motivated teams that are highly productive.
Janeen Sonsie
Janeen is the founder of Get Real Communication and an international speaker, coach and facilitator who is passionate about how people communicate and relate to each other in all relationships – both business and personal.
For the last 20 years Janeen has been facilitating hands-on workshops with some of the world’s leading companies (such as Cisco, HP, Oracle and Microsoft) in over 10 countries around Asia-Pacific, the UK and the USA helping them improve their communication, relationships and profits.
Janeen is available for business and relationship coaching.
Check out Get Your Life Back ebook by Kasia Gospos, founder of Leaders in Heels, on how you can streamline and automate your business and life so that you have more time for what you really love.
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