They often say that “communication is key”, but what we don’t realize is how key communication truly is for a leader.

In fact, according to this article, effective team communication, and the steps that lead to it, help businesses retain their top talent. This employee retention increases 4.5 times, compared to businesses that lack effective communication in the workplace.

Whether you want to get better at communicating within your organization and to your employees, or maybe even with vendors or partners, there are many things that you as a leader can do to improve your communication. As always, it’s very important that you use strategies that have proven to be successful on a global scale, no matter how big or small the company or the group of people that you are leading.

In this blog post, I am going to go over 5 important communication strategies for leaders (also known as the 5S of communication) that you as a leader can implement into your own leadership practice. If this is something that is of interest to you, then keep on reading!

The 5S of Communication for Leadership

Style: Understand The Different Communication Styles That Exist (Yours + Your Employee’s)

The first “S” of this particular communication strategy that you can implement in your life as a leader is Style. Understanding which style of communication that we fall under can help us more effectively communicate to not only employees but our peers as well. Whether you are introverted or extroverted, detail-oriented or results-oriented, there are different styles in which your personality interprets communication. Not one style over another is better or worse, but understanding where your strengths and weaknesses lay can drastically improve the effectiveness of your communication as a leader. If you want to learn more about the style of your personality traits, click here to take a free assessment. To take it a step further, it is also recommended that you learn the communication styles of your employees and others that you lead. If you’d like to take a deep dive into your communication style and that of your employees, reach out, we are glad to help.

State: Understand What State You’re In + The State of Others

The second “S” of this communication strategy that you need to understand is State. This refers not only to understanding what state we are in as leaders but understanding the state others are in as well. Our communication can be negatively impacted based on how well our current state is and often is described as physical, emotional, and mental. Some examples of states that can alter our communication include:

If we are currently extremely stressed
If we are not eating nutritiously or are not on a healthy diet
If we are not getting enough sleep
If we are carrying a heavy emotional burden

All of the scenarios above can result in negatively impacting our mental, emotional and physical state, which ultimately hurts our communication. This is why I recommended using meditation or mindfulness techniques to help better understand and manage our internal state.

Situation: Understand The Situation You’re In + The Situation of Others

Understanding the Situation is my third communication strategy for leaders. In essence, this idea revolves around preparing beforehand on who is the person (or people) in front of us and what are some questions we would like to ask about the situation. You can learn more about how to prepare before conversations from a book I recommend called Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High. Doing your research before a conversation can go a really long way in making sure that the conversations you have are effective, thorough and well thought out. This is especially important for us as leaders since oftentimes we use communication to help establish business relationships that are beneficial to the quadruple bottom-line of our business.

Scope: Understand The Scope of What Is + What Isn’t In Your Leadership Control

The fourth strategy that we are going to go over in order to help us better understand communication within leadership, is Scope. By scope, we are referring to what is and what isn’t in our control. In other words, in some situations, we know what we can do and in other situations, we understand that some things may be outside of our scope. When we not only understand but accept what we can do or what we can control, it helps our stress, anxiety, and mental health. This also directly ties into the second S, State. This is due to the fact we now understand that one cannot control or do everything. Therefore, stress and anxiety around this thought may no longer be as frequent or severe.

Stance: Understand Your Stance as a Leader on Certain Topics

Last but certainly not least, we have Stance. Everybody, not only leaders, has opinions on topics. The critical part of stance as a leader is going into a conversation with clarity around what your opinion or objective of the conversation is going to be. Having a stance can help a conversation in two areas. Firstly, your stance helps direct a conversation or meeting in a direction that works best for everybody. Secondly, your stance can help improve the brevity of the conversation. This can be helpful to find the objective in a busy environment. Setting up a concise plan or agenda can help you as the leader and your peers or employees get on the same page.

If you would like a more in-depth guide about these 5 communication strategies for leaders, you can watch my video on the topic here.

You can also learn about strategies you can implement to create long-term professional and personal change from my book CHANGES. Grab the FREE Changes Playbook here.

As usual, schedule a time to connect if you have any questions.

Be well,

Michael