Post # 948

Amplify Your Leadership Communications.

If we can infuse these 12 practices into every leader's drinking water, we will help satisfy a great deal of what their colleagues are thirsting for.

• Avoid assuming that your communication or behavioral style is the one everyone else has and learn to MODIFY your style to the style of others. Adhere to the principle that “communication is not what is said, but what is received.”

• Show up and play to the heart. Communication that is high-touch, low-tech inspires people to action faster than the one-way data-dump, the presentation, the dry facts. If you want buy-in, find the passionate story, do the road show, and make it INTERACTIVE.

• Be GENUINELY INTERESTED in the needs of others and be interested in the growth of others, even more so than the others are at times.

• Infuse a need to grow by TEACHING . . . rather than simply giving the answers.

• FUSS over others’ events, interests, activities, achievements, families, and friends.

• Find the real meaning, stop hiding in your office, and GET WITH the people.

• Become clear and comfortable with the FACT that leadership does NOT mean “being the smartest or being the most popular one on the playground.”

• Believe that people do what they get paid attention for, and be spontaneous, as well as scheduled in YOUR RECOGNITION efforts; but avoid giving a public person, private recognition as they will see little or no value in it.

• Maintain an awareness of just how much your body communicates and remember that your body CONTINUES talking long after your lips stop moving!!!

• Do before talk, ask before tell. Almost all leaders over-talk and under-do. If you want people to make a change, DEMONSTRATE the change yourself first. Ask a lot of questions and listen well (it's why you have two ears and one mouth, right?). 

• FIX SOMETHING that is driving your colleagues crazy. You want more innovation? Show them an innovative idea you carried out. Want to cut costs? Cut one of your entitlements first. Anything less will be viewed as insincere and arrogant -- even though you are infinitely well-intended.

• Create goals that are both realistic and UNREALISTIC. Commit your goals to writing and ensure that they are measurable, and then celebrate the achievement of each goal.

Exhibit leadership traits as part of who you are, not what your particular title is; and finally . . . 
“Give yourself permission to leave things undone and let go of needing to be perfect, and of needing everyone else to be perfect”