What is Leadership Communication?

Communication is an all-encompassing activity in an organization irrespective of its structure be it hierarchical or relatively flat. The most important communication comes from the top, while the feedback to it flows in a Bottom-up approach. Considering this, it becomes important to know what leadership communication is and where its significance lies.

Leaders spend the overwhelming majority of their time each day in some type of interpersonal situation and organizational problems occur as a result of poor communication.

Moreover,  Effective communication is an essential component of professional success whether it is at the interpersonal, inter-group, intra-group, organizational, or external level, the spotlight is always on leaders. Everything they say and do is being scrutinized, for better or for worse.

It is the responsibility of the leader to guide the organizations through ups, downs and various challenges that a business is faced with. Their messages are rooted in the values and culture of the organization. The messages that come from them are of particular interest to key stakeholders such as employees, customers, shareholders, our strategic partners, and the media. Leaders are the liaison between the owners of the company and the rest of the stakeholders.

Considering this, we can see that Leadership Communication carries much higher stakes than day-to-day communication. 

Leadership Communication should:

• Be Significant enough to have a company-wide impact.
• Come Regularly come regularly by way of company-wide Townhalls with the objective of keeping all employees in the loop with what is going on in the company and the way forward.
  Leadership Communication should come with a purpose, it can and should be used to
• Affirm Organisational Vision and Mission: As we have stated previously, all communication should be based on its vision and mission. Remind the employees what they are working towards and instil a sense of belonging towards the organization and a sense of ownership to its long-term goals.
• Drive organisation-wide change and get people prepared to do things differently and explain the rationale behind it. 
• Issue a Call to Action and drive the momentum.
• Reinforce Organisational Capability reminding the stakeholders of organisational strengths and make employees feel good about the organisation that they are working for.
• Create an environment of motivation for employees to work harder, and push themselves, creating a path to success and growth for themselves and the organisation.

We can see that leadership communication is essential to ensure that the company stays on its path to growth and development, and keep the machine well serviced and running and differentiates those who lead and those tasked with following. Those of us with leadership aspirations now or in the future should focus on it.