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5 Questions If Leadership Communication Skills Training Is for You

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The Point: “Training is a waste of time!” a leader stated proudly in a recent executive coaching conversation. “I already know it all!” is what they should have said! In this post, we challenge you to ask yourself five (5) questions to see if communication skills training for leaders is right for you. After all, the best thing you can do for yourself is invest in communication skills training for leaders… Enjoy!

5 Questions If Leadership Communication Skills Training Is for You

There are seminars, books, and courses dedicated to teaching leaders communications skills. This is because even leaders need communication training. So, if you are a senior executive or even a CEO, communication training for INC 5000 organizations can prove to be invaluable.

However, in order for such training to be fruitful, you must be mentally prepared. The following are 5 essential questions that will help determine if leadership communications skills training is right for you or not:

Do People Really Listen To Me?

Since you are already in a position of leadership, you will find that people do respond to what you are saying. However, ask yourself, are they really listening, or just complying to your authority as subordinates? You never really know if you are an effective communicator unless you come in contact with people who are not obligated to listen to you, such as media personalities. So, if you think you may experience conveying your message to the latter, you definitely need training.

To What Extent Is Leadership Communication Skills Training Relevant?

But what if you don’t talk to media personnel that much? What then is the use of communication skills training? The fact is that learning to make a great first impression with your communication skills is relevant to all areas of your life, both personal and professional. This will help you network effectively, and thereby add more members to your group of contacts.

What Skills Specifically Will I Learn In Leadership Communications Skills Training?

In its essence, communication skills training for leaders teaches you to choose the right things to say in the most effective manner. In the context of communication, it means being persuasive, assertive, and not letting the audience take control. This is achieved via:

  • One-to-one and group sessions
  • Recorded sessions to evaluate delivery skills
  • Mock interviews, meetings, and social settings (i.e., cocktail parties)

What Major Benefits Do Leadership Communication Skills Training Offer?

Perhaps the most amazing benefit of communications skills training for leaders is that you learn to execute your message with clarity. No matter which industry you operate in, the ability to explain what you do in layman term’s goes a long in building credibility and positioning yourself an expert in your community.

What Can I Do to Follow-Up Leadership Communication Skills Training?

Since communication skills training for leaders is an ongoing educational initiative, you should look to elicit follow-up from your trainers. Specifically, you should look to reinforce your training, analyze results and offer further coaching for improving communication results. That way, your skills remain as sharp as ever instead of waning down a few months after you complete training.

SUMMARY

So, to sum it up, communication skills training for leaders is right for you if you don’t feel confident in front of new/old audiences, you want to be an effective speaker 24/7, and you want to build instant credibility.

What Causes Communication Skills Training for Leaders to Fail (And What to Do About It to Succeed!)

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The Point: It is no secret that leaders are smart and capable. During the course of their careers, they have perused best-selling books on leadership, taken leadership training (including associated assessments), and attended multiple communication skills training lessons. But with all of those training opportunities under their belts, they still fail to effectively lead. Think of the fruitless and unconstructive discussions at meetings and business divisions that somehow never seem to make a profit (or scratch the surface of their potential profit). If you’re a leader facing similar circumstances, but are unable to determine the root cause, you have come to the right place. In this post, you will learn why communications skills training for leaders often fails and what can be done to counter this… Enjoy!

What Causes Communications Skills Training for Leaders to Fail

Less Emphasis on the Practical Aspects of Leadership

The fundamental flaw in most books and courses on leadership is that there a greater emphasis on the theoretical aspects of leadership instead of practical ones. Sometimes, there can be an information overload. The need of the hour is for communication skills trainers to teach leaders about what has to be done in their position and the courage to take some flair for it.

On-the-Job Training

While communication skills training for leaders involves simulated events where trainees are required to take charge of the situation, followed by critique of how well they were able to do. The limitations of such a model will be discussed at the end, but here the emphasis is on on-the-job leadership communication training.

This means the mentor or coach accompanies the executive at the workplace as the latter leads a session, conducts training, or oversees a meeting. This is where the actual leadership skills will be tested, instead of a safe, simulated environment. The coach has to make sure that s/he doesn’t interrupt or correct the trainee during any task, but only to offer insight during breaks in private.

Having Superficial Notions about Communication

Another reason communications skills training for leaders often fails may have nothing to do with the “tool” and everything with the “technique’ involved. Most leaders only have a surface level understanding of what communication is. For them, it is only about emails and memos. However, communication is a diverse topic that has to be approached from various angles in order to be effective (and every angle therein!)

The fundamental principle is the clarity and consistency of messages you send to your workforce. Bad leaders send mixed messages and keep their employees in the dark. This creates friction, and is a primary cause of low job satisfaction and retention. Good communication skills training should address this issue if they are to make leaders better.

Focusing on the Training Aspect

Finally and most importantly, is the mere fact that such leadership development programs place emphasis on “training” instead of “development” of leaders. These two words are not interchangeable, contrary to popular opinion. Training, in its essence, is rote learning and one-way reception of fixed norms and principles, while development is dynamic. It focuses on unique personalities of each person and the end goal is helping trainees achieve their true potential as leaders.

SUMMARY

To sum up, simply going for communication skills training is not enough as a leader. You need to make sure that the leadership development actually focuses on developing leaders. This involves teaching real-life lessons, clear-cut communication, and paving the way for future development.

 

Leadership Challenge – Is It Possible to Emerge From the Darkest Hell Healed and Restored?

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We recently participated in a leadership roundtable discussion.  The focus was on the many leadership challenge moments that leaders face running their organizations.  Whether the leader is in charge of a startup, with its many ups/downs associated with daily (sometimes hourly) survival or the leadership challenge of running an existing organization (sometimes no easy feat regardless of how long they’ve been in business!)  There were many topics considered for discussion:

  • What’s the best way to develop the strategic plan (and how to get that strategic plan implemented)?
  • Best practices when it comes to dealing with moments of change
  • How to ensure that all (both leaders and team members) have the same organizational vision through communication
  • Implementing recruiting strategies for A+ candidates (A version of the Top Grading methodology)
  • Ensuring that the organization continues to be agile/innovative
  • Creating a “High Potential” program for future organizational leaders

As you can tell, the topics were those most pressing to the leaders gathered.  Questions were asked/answered, and an overall tone of satisfaction permeated the meeting room. That tone though shifted abruptly when one of the leaders in attendance asked the following question:

“Here’s a leadership challenge for you… Is it possible to emerge from the darkest hell healed and restored?”

If you’ve read Malcom Gladwell’s recently released book, David & Goliath, then you know the story presented in Chapter 5 – Emil “Jay” Freireich. The story is of Dr. Freireich and his tumultuous search for a cancer cure for cancer. There is also presented in this chapter a theory regarding direct hits, near misses and overall misses (Think the London bombing that occurred during World War 2 . The theory being that those who received direct hits, as morbid as it sounds, don’t really count for “after bombing” feedback.  Those that achieved overall misses still laid in wait/fear for future bombings (a very small minority).  Finally, those that achieved near misses and lived to tell the tale found that they were not only resilient, but encouraged and grew in their resolve to overcome successfully future bombings!

With this knowledge in mind, we shared the story and similar story that those leaders who have experienced truly dark spaces (The ones they don’t tell you about in MBA school) often times have similar resiliency and resolve to overcome! The pressing leadership challenge therefore doesn’t really appear to present itself of much of a challenge at all (albeit those effected might tell a slightly different tale!)

What’s the Point?  So what’s the point? Can it be as simple as “that which does not kill us only makes us stronger!” Based on the research of Malcom Gladwell adn Dr. Freireich, we think that not only is there a high resiliency that would allow one to overcome obstacles but also succeed.

2013 Learning and Leadership Development Conference from HCI

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The Human Capital Institute (HCI), a global non-profit institution for strategic talent management, recently shared details of its upcoming 2013 Learning and Leadership Development Conference. Held November 18-20, 2013 in Boston, the conference will focus this year on three principles critical to organizational success:

  1. Creating Transformative Leaders
  2. Building a Continuous Culture of Learning, and
  3. Tools and Skills Leadership Needs to Stay Relevant

According to a report from Deloitte, 54 percent of business leaders cite gaps in their leadership pipelines as one of their three most critical obstacles to growth. In addition, executive confidence in middle managers continues to deteriorate each year (from 66 percent in 2010 to 49 percent in 2012). While many think this is due to a weaker selection in current and potential talent, a more likely reason is criteria used for leadership selection and in-house leadership development.

HCIs Learning and Leadership Development Conference is designed to address the challenges of traditional leadership development programs and training to give attendees the insight needed to create a deeper, more transformative experience that produces a new type of leadership. As the business environment continues to evolve rapidly, leaders need to acquire a new set of skills and competencies, including social and mobile expertise, internal process improvement and the ability to embrace new decision-making methodologies such as big data.

Leadership Challenge: Change Management Success Factors

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We see study after study talking about what are those magical three elements that are going to magically make your leadership challenge of change initiatives successful.  What are those top three things that could be considered Change Management Success Factors? In our minds, they are:

  1. Leaders – Leaders sponsor and champion the change effort. Leaders are behind change management publicly.  Leaders are behind the change initiative in their communications, in their actions and in their behaviors. Leaders are out in front championing the change.
  2. Vision – A clear and compelling vision and case for change, and a strong communication plan in place behind that change management vision. People anymore are not like sheep going off to do their job.  People today are interested in knowing that what they do is in service of the greater good of the company. That means that in any change management initiative, a leader is going to have to stand up and have a clear and compelling case for who are we, what are we about, and why are we doing this.
  3. Engagement – So if you have leaders standing up and saying “This is why we’re doing this… This is what we’re doing… This is how you can be a part of this journey” this will invite people to come and be a part of the change.

That engagement becomes the platform, along with leadership alignment and the clear case for change that really becomes the platform for making change stick at the end of the day. When it’s all said and done, change that sticks and achieves desired results is what you should be after (No magic there, right?)