There are four steps that leaders take in successful communication of expectations:

Write them out – Clearly define your expectations

Hand them out – Overtly explain your expectations

Point them out – Verbally reinforce your expectations

Live them out – Openly demonstrate your expectations

In part one of the importance of communication in leadership, we talked about the first three steps – how to broadcast your expectations.  Now let’s examine the top step, the one where the best leaders spend most of their time – how to demonstrate your expectations.

Ralph Waldo Emerson described the top step like this, “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”

Leaders must realize that their most important form of communication is their actions.  Their team will do what the leader says until the leader doesn’t do what the leader says. Successful leaders act with integrity.

I heard Ken Whitten once define integrity as “when the tongue in your shoes goes in the same direction as the tongue in your mouth.”

It’s really as simple as this quote from Dwight Eisenhower:

“In order to be a leader a man must have followers. And to have followers, a man must have their confidence.

Hence the supreme quality for a leader is unquestionably integrity.

Without it, no real success is possible.”