Effective Communication Skills for Leadership - Essay Example

Effective Leaders Effective communication skills are essential in leadership. The professional and business world today requires participants who are have proper personal and interpersonal communication skills. This paper looks deep into business and professional communication, Effective Personal Skills in Business and Professional Communication, Business and Professional Communication in Work Groups and Teams and effective presentations. All these concepts enable leaders and team members to effectively transmits and receive technical and business concepts, opinions ideas, feelings, and conclusions either in writing or orally. Effective leaders Proper communication among leaders is of vital importance as it allows effectiveness in leadership. Leaders who are effective communicators are also effective in presentation, which is used for training persuading and explaining, interpersonal relationship like negotiating, solving problems and attentive listening and group work which aids in problem solving ,managing meetings and basically in being leaders. Further, effective leaders have effective communication skills which assist them in interviewing for employment, appraisal and counseling. The close look into business and professional communication, Effective Personal Skills in Business and Professional Communication, Business and Professional Communication in Work Groups and Teams and effective presentations helps us understand the art of effective leadership. An effective leader communicates concisely, clearly and regularly to the point. Communication among effective leaders is more than just passing a message in writing orally, it also communicating with character and behaviour to corroborate the message being sent. Leaders who tend to speak one thing and develop a character and behaviour that does not marry the message being sent looses his audience the audience in question (Benjamin and McKerrow 1994). The validity of a message of the message depends on the character and behaviour of the leaders. The effectiveness of communication in leadership enables effective leaders to exercise leadership. Leaders running groups and teams should be able to give clear and easy to follow directions to the tea players. They, leaders, lay out plans on how projects and targets are to be achieved, presents to the team in a well structured manner and a logical structure that the employees, team work or partners can easily interpret and use to get valid results. Effective leaders should also be able to constructively reprimand the team players. He sometimes berates a group player publicly if the circumstances dictate so or privately if that the most appropriate way a given situation should be handled. Upholding communication for results is one of the qualities highly held by effective leaders. They easily carry this out by clearly hence effectively transmitting technical, professional and business concepts, opinions, ideas, innovations and conclusions in writing and orally. Also, effective leaders attentively listen to comprehend and reinforce a communication by employing body language hat is empathetic and tone. This way they are able to effectively have a conversation with, and also be able to write to, peers about ways that support transactional and administrative endeavors (Quintanilla and Wahl 2011). Effective leaders are on a larger degree able to carry out discussions and write messages mad memos to all levels of the staff and peers in such a way that it supports and aids problem solving planning and trouble shooting. Proper usage of communication skills by leaders is essential in being able to tackle problems that arise in projects or business (Quintanilla and Wahl 2011).Under presentation, effective leaders take up the task in order to explain, convince, educate or convey information of any kind. They are effective in this by being aware of themselves, their audience, the tools and the message being conveyed and its purpose. This applies in business where for a leader to be qualified as effective he one has to communicate orally or write documents ,create and delivers presentations to external and internal participants of a group or project( Benjamin and McKerrow 1994). Effective leaders are able to conduct and lead discussions internal and external partners and senior staff in ways that ensure that strategic planning and decision making is ensured. Further, effective leaders are able to carry out research, solicit authoritative perspectives and probe questions and advice in order to give a pass, fail or recommendations to a plan. The basis of all successful interaction is entirely tied to effective communication. It is through use off effective communication skills that effective leaders learn to seek, interpret, disperse and share information, judgments and opinions or generally seek a consensus with the staff or business partners (Goodall, Goodall and Schiefelbein 2010) Effective leaders have a high level of interpersonal communication skills which are behind their remarkable confidence, proper and high listening and understanding ability, personal analysis and stress management, decision making and problem solving ability. The ability of effective leaders to be empathic, to negotiate, pause, reflect and improve and being assertive, largely depends on the degree of their use and understanding of usage of interpersonal skills. Confidence among leaders ensures that a business or a company is strong. Effective leadership qualities are usually backed up by self assurance, self confidence and self awareness which ensure that effective leaders are confident about their ideas, decisions and their recommendations on various aspects of the business. This in turn provides security, transparent and accountability within the business. The portrayal of such qualities by effective leaders ensures security, accountability and empowers members (Goodall et al 2010) Business and professional communication principles are made up interviewing, workplace relationships, group and team work and giving presentations. Effective leaders are personalities that are aware of their communication, to use verbal and nonverbal messages and listen effectively and then, to adapt their communication to others’ needs and styles. To ensure this, leaders have to listen carefully and speak less to be a constructive part of a group. Effective leadership in business and professionalism translates to appropriate attitudes, character and behaviour which characterize and relate to humanity for quality results (DiSanza and Legge 2012). Leadership is entirely viewed to be about people and that it involves decision making, recommendations, problem solving and being responsible in laying out a plan with directions in order to achieve certain goals. This translates that effective leaders should be able to be responsible. In group work, the effective leader is the overall leader because he engineers and provides direction for the rest of the group. For one to carry out this task one must be able to be able to manage risks and fear that are likely to or arise in business and this is achieved through extra ordinary emotional intelligence. Also, one must be able to match business priorities to the vision of the business, have an enormous will power to make decisions, should have motivational skills to be able to motivate the rest of the group to work harder towards achieving their vision (DiSanza and Legge 2012). Team management skills are of essential nature for every effective leader too. This is because, this gives them the ability to study every group member individually and design a method of communication that everyone in the group is able to understand by marrying team style and leadership style of communication and understanding and enabling team processes. Effective leaders should be wide read and rich in information. This can be acquired from research or contact the group members. This information is essential enough because all the decisions and course of work or organization are usually based on the information that leaders have. A leader that has inaccurate, inadequate or inappropriate information is highly likely able to misguide the group by sending out the wrong message. This would be termed as noise in communication (Beebe and Mottet 2010) A lot of shortcomings in communication and decision making are due to improper soliciting of wrong or less that enough information on a given issue. This in turn makes the group get mixed massages and term the message as inappropriate news, commonly known as group think (Beebe and Mottet 2010) Proper communication is of vital importance to effective leadership and human interaction since time immemorial. This should be driven and guide by an effective leader with an understanding of business and professional communication. Reference Beebe, S. A., & Mottet, T. P. (2010). Business and professional communication: Principles and skills for leadership. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Benjamin, J. B., & McKerrow, R. E. (1994). Business and professional communication: Concepts and practices. New York, N.Y: HarperCollins College Publishers. DiSanza, J. R., & Legge, N. J. (2012). Business and professional communication: Plans, processes, and performance. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Goodall, H. L., Goodall, S., & Schiefelbein, J. (2010). Business and professional communication in the global workplace. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Pub. Quintanilla, K. M., & Wahl, S. T. (2011). Business and professional communication: Keys for workplace excellence. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE. Read More