Useful Leadership Trait 2: Communication Skills

B&G Leadership Series – Part 5

 

 

 

 

“It’s Good to Talk”

 

 

Many Brits will remember this iconic catchphrase from Bob Hoskins’ long-running TV advertising campaign for BT in the 1990s. A campaign that – for its duration – earned BT an incremental £1bn in annual revenue and helped it lose the unwanted accolade of “Britain’s Most Hated Company”.

 

The campaign, and its four-word lynchpin, was a masterpiece in communication. It identified and spoke persuasively to a key demographic within BT’s consumer base using simple language and a relatable messenger.

__________________________

 

Phil Jackson won 11 (eleven) NBA Championships as a Head Coach – six with the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s and five with the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2000s – making him the most successful head coach in the history of the world’s biggest and best basketball league.

 

 

His detractors like to caveat this achievement by pointing out that, in Michael Jordan (Chicago) and Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant (Los Angeles), Jackson’s teams fielded the best players of their generation. This argument ignores the fact that none of these players won a single championship prior to being coached by Jackson and only one of them (O’Neal) won another championship after leaving his tutelage.

 

Jackson’s reported secret sauce was his mastery of communication. He succeeded in getting Jordan to trust his less-talented teammates and allow their more workmanlike gifts to complement his brilliance. In Los Angeles, Jackson got his two star players to rein their egos in just enough to enable both to share the limelight and create an unstoppable tandem.

 

In my previous article, I wrote: “Decision-making is an inescapable function for any and every leader.”  I also wrote in articles 1 and 3 of this series that: “A leader is someone who tries to bring about positive change and persuades others to go on that journey with them.”

 

A leader’s primary tool in persuading others to follow – to execute their decisions – is Communication.  It should go without saying that the possession of strong communication skills is a useful leadership trait.

 

The late Steve Jobs is regularly referred to as a genius and as someone who changed the world. Yet the other Steve – Apple Co-founder, Wozniak – reported that Jobs was not a skilled computer engineer and made a concerted effort to develop his communication and sales skills “to find other areas to make himself important” in Apple’s early days.

 

The communication skills that Jobs developed would prove crucial to Apple’s rise to becoming the world’s premier technology company. He was very evidently successful at selling the brand and its flagship products externally but was reportedly just as effective with internal communications.

 

Jobs had a reputation for being a perfectionist who was very demanding of his people. Former employee, Guy Kawasaki wrote about Jobs: “It wasn’t easy to work for him; it was sometimes unpleasant and always scary, but it drove many of us to do the finest work of our careers.”

 

The best leaders marry Clarity of Purpose to Sound Judgement. Then they amplify the impact of this combination through Effective Communication.

 

The examples above show that there are multiple ways to communicate effectively.

 

Adrian Hosford, BT’s Director of Communications in 1990, hired a famous cockney “hard man” to convince male customers that talking on the phone was a good thing.

 

The incense-burning, Native American spiritualist “Zen Master” Phil Jackson eschewed the stereotypical tough-talking methods of the professional sports coach to connect to his key personnel on an individual level.

 

Steve Jobs, a great storyteller, mastered the art of communicating in clear and simple language on stage, in emails and in one-to-one or small group discussions.

 

You can use any and all of these approaches – and more – where you find them most helpful. Like Jobs, you too can make a concerted effort to develop your skills as a communicator and amplify your effectiveness as a leader.

 

 

If you’d like to work on becoming a more impactful communicator, get in touch here