Communication and effective team leadership

Managers are rarely trained in communication – which can hinder their efforts to convey information efficiently and to guarantee that a strategy filters down in a way that is going to lead to results.

The aim of a communications strategy for a manager is twofold: to be understood and to have support for the action plan.

Communication is an essential skill for any manager.

Very often, employees are baffled by their instructions, while their managers hide behind a safety net of practical tasks and routine responsibilities.

What they should be doing is communicating with their teams and making sure everyone is working in harmony with the overall strategic objective.

Failing to communicate means repeated misunderstandings, loss of motivation and failure to meet deadlines.

There are three key steps towards progress. First, the manager must learn to convey a clear message that will be understood by all audiences. Secondly, the manager must make sure that when he has spoken, has been clearly understood. Thirdly, all meetings should become “key information sessions” in which communicating the message is given the highest priority.

A business coach and a journalist introduce participants to the importance of communication and explore ways in which the right message can be crafted, using journalistic techniques.

Role-play exercises based on real situations in the participants’ working lives are used to develop communications strategies and an understanding of how to craft a message to cover all eventualities.