Leadership communication 10 ability to communicate.Dr Sammy D.James

Ability to Communicate
When we have all the skills and knowledge a leader
may need we then need to be able to communicate
that knowledge to others.
We have ment ioned the importance of
communicat ion skills before and emphasis them
again here.
I t is obvious who are the good talkers yet have lit t le
to say and those who are st ruggling to get across
their vast experience and knowledge.
There are count ries (and sports) where ‘incompetent ’
leaders ( talkers with lit t le skill and knowledge) move
from job to job and keep failing yet seem to be able
to convince owners or administ rators that in their
environment they will succeed.
Of course they rarely if ever do.
They are failing because of their lack of skills not
because of the environment .
These people cont inue to survive because the
owners/ governance do not know enough about what
makes a good leader and therefore cannot judge who
would be good and who wouldn’t .
Leaders (staff) who have survived on talk alone
eventually get found out by their lack of results and
move on, normally in 3-year cycles.
There should be courses for communicat ions, which
give the person/ leader the ability to get out of their
head their knowledge and then be able to put that
knowledge into a logical and easy to follow
format / presentat ion where all who come into contact
with them will gain maximum benefits.
The knowledge and awareness of the content of the
rest of the Leadership Advice will give you the
background to be able to adapt your knowledge in a
more focused way and will make communicat ing
successfully with all age groups and abilit ies, more likely.
The communicat ion skills of speaking, w r it ing,
demonst rat ing, present ing etc can all be
pract iced and w ill depend on your desire
( w ant ) to be a good leader ( be as good as you
can be) .
For example, a wonderful way of pract icing talking is
to talk into a recorder or dictaphone to no-one in
part icular and then play it back while driving or at
some other convenient t ime.
Every so often you should record a real presentat ion
and play it back at t imes convenient as previously
suggested.
Videotaping is similar as you can not only hear what
you are saying but you can see the whole chemist ry
of your presentat ion, support ing act ions and efforts.
Your whole performance can be gauged and
improvement s can easily be made.
You can also see how you receive quest ions and even
crit icism and whether the content of your answer
would have convinced you if you had asked the
quest ion.
Your dress can also be checked out as to whether it
was t idy, appropriate and you were presented as the
organisat ion expected.
Listening to a tape and writ ing down everything you
heard, playing the same tape again and again can
also aid the pract ice of listening. You will wr ite down
more the second and third t imes you listen.
Like a sportsperson, leaders should pract ice and the
more you pract ice the bet ter you will be at get t ing
your knowledge over to your target groups.
I t is fine going to courses on all sort s of things but if
you do not pract ice the informat ion you receive,
improvement s are unlikely to occur.
There are courses and you should go to them (good
ones) even if you do not think you need theinformat ion, you will be surprised at what you learn
or relearn.
Your ability to communicate w hat you know
w ill determine your success as a leader and like
everything else communicat ions can be
pract ised.
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