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.”
3 Responses to The importance of communication in leadership – Part 2
Karin D. Roots February 28, 2013
Integrity, now that is a word I have not heard of, in a long time. However If I act with integrity…does that mean that I am saying it is okay to act in ways that arent the norm. Meaning to act in such a manner that has placed the individual person who assumed to lead ..not leading due to the sheer fact that ..they the modus operandi has been so hazardly placed together that it has not only placed countless others lives in jeapordy as well. If some were to assumed to act out in revenge..acting in integrity I already have and still doing. Acting with integrity doenst give anyone the rights to assume…..that only leads to confusion especially if and when they are in teh wrong in the first place…kinda like stealing anothers goods!!! …hopefully I am making sense!! however I enjoyed the article..i will apply it… regardless of the negatives that are associated to the issue at hand!!!!
admin February 28, 2013
Karin, thank you for sharing your perspective. For me integrity simply means doing the right thing, and again for me the right thing is always to help others succeed in reaching their full potential.