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Your leadership and communication style has an enormous effect on your employees’ attitudes to working for you. Employees who are engaged and committed to you and to their work will be more productive and innovative.
Leadership and communication involves understanding your dominant leadership style and what style and behaviour is appropriate for different situations. Monitoring your own emotions and feelings, as well as those of others, will help you to be a better leader.
 Checklist |
This checklist summarises key information about leadership and communication. You can adjust this document to suit your own needs. |
Successful managers combine their management skills with strong leadership abilities. Leaders create a vision for the business and must be seen as trustworthy by their employees so that they are motivated to achieve this vision.
Essentially, leadership is the ability to influence and direct employees so they choose to do the things you require of them.
Competent leaders are effective at:
managing relationships
motivating employees
resolving problems and making decisions
dealing with conflict
teaching, mentoring/coaching and supporting others by acting as a role model
modifying one’s own behaviour when necessary
seeing a new or different path and encouraging others to follow.
When your employees see you as a good leader it’s easier to:
connect with and retain employees
motivate employees to achieve results they’re proud of
understand your employees more sensitively and positively influence and mentor them.
Leaders need to be able to modify their behaviour according to the situation. All styles are relative and no single style, approach or theory fits all situations.
The way you choose to lead will be influenced by:
the situation at hand
the skills, knowledge and motivation of the people being led
environmental factors.
For more information on leadership, and the opportunity to hear from and speak with a cross-section of today’s leaders see:
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Economic Development and Tourism's Tasmanian Leaders Program |
Emotional Intelligence (EI) is an attribute that allows a leader to monitor his or her own emotions and feelings, as well as those of others, in an attempt to guide thoughts and actions.
Essentially, EI is about:
getting on with others, by managing your behaviour and its impact on the feelings and behaviour of other people
understanding that it is the boss’s job to create an environment where people can be satisfied in their work, in their workplace and with their relationships with workmates
accepting that people don’t check their emotions at the door when they come to work
recognising that having a handle on the rational and irrational nature of humans is part and parcel of being able to lead effectively.
If you know that Emotional Intelligence isn’t one of your strong points, try to engage someone within the business who has these skills.
Workplaces who engage people with high EI will be better at:
conflict avoidance and conflict resolution
managing social interactions in the workplace
dealing with customers and their complaints or demands
finding innovative responses to opportunities or problems
developing a supportive and productive workplace.
The essential actions taken by managers and staff happen almost entirely through verbal communication. The way we speak to one another sets the emotional tone and builds relationships that ultimately determine the performance culture of the workplace.
If verbal communication is not effective, coordination breaks down, relationships suffer, mistakes multiply and productivity plummets.
Here are some tips for effective communication:
Observe. What is the tone of the conversation and body language being used? Ensure that your body language doesn’t conflict with the words you are using.
Be self aware. Be aware of the impact your thoughts, feelings and behaviour have on others, and whether they achieve good results.
Be clear on intent. Know what you want from each conversation.
Be committed. The degree to which you are committed to a conversation will indicate the level of concern, credibility and authenticity you have.
Advocate don’t debate. By all means, be firm and back up what you advocate with clear benefits, but listen to others’ views too.
Listen. To persuade someone to support you frequently requires finding out more about what they want.
Provide opportunities. Provide opportunities for others to speak.
Establish rapport. See if you can build bridges for people with opposing views to come over to your way of thinking and address the concerns you’ve picked up through careful listening.
Clarify assumptions. Take a little extra time to let people know what you’re thinking and find out about other people's assumptions.
Structure your discussion. Many groups forget to agree to a plan for their conversation before they start.
No-one is born with all the skills required to be a supervisor, manager and leader. Many people learn through experience, some learn by working with others and most just do the best they can each day. Identify the leadership and communication skills you’d like to develop and schedule some time to work on these; good leadership abilities will have positive flow-on effects on your employees and your business.
 Template |
This template assists in improving your leadership and communication skills. |
* (Stringer, RA 2002, Leadership and Organisational Climate, Prentice Hall, Jersey.)
