Leadership success depends on great communication and genuine caring.
Key points
- Emotional and social intelligence are building blocks of communication and successful leadership.
- The best leaders have a parental relationship with their followers, in the best sense of the term.
- To become a better leader, first focus on becoming a better person.
At the heart of excellent leadership is communication, and communication begins with listening—really listening—to what your followers are saying and, sometimes, not saying. Verbal communication is at the heart of social intelligence, but nonverbal communication is the foundation of emotional intelligence. When people shut down and don’t or won’t talk, it is the listener’s job to intuit what they are feeling and find a path to talking again.
Here are three recommendations for becoming a better leader:
- Make a commitment to put yourself on a developmental path to improving your leadership skills.
- Consider an activity such as Toastmasters or improvisational classes, which can be excellent ways to improve communication skills and get great feedback and suggestions from your peers.
- Finally, if you want to be a better leader, work on becoming a better person: more sensitive, empathic, and aware of the needs, rights, and emotions of people in your life. Leadership involves personality traits that you don’t put on and take off, but is the expression of values and habits that you can nurture within yourself in your everyday relationships.
I Power Seeds
Here are our takeaways and thoughts - pause and reflect, then nourish and grow!
These recommendations are a staple for any effective leaders. I also would add genuine to the mix as people see through you when you are not being genuine and at times such as during significant change management or an uncomfortable one-on-one discussion with an employee, being genuine is critical.
