TL;DR: Many workplace challenges aren’t caused by a lack of talent or effort. They’re caused by misunderstandings, assumptions, unclear expectations or conversations that never happen. Strong leadership communication helps create clarity, build trust and address issues before they become bigger problems.
Communication is something we all do every day, which is probably why it’s easy to assume we’re better at it than we actually are. Leaders spend a significant amount of time in meetings, responding to emails, giving direction, answering questions and talking with their teams. But the amount of communication happening doesn’t necessarily tell us whether people understand one another.
I’ve seen situations where a leader leaves a conversation believing they’ve been perfectly clear, while the other person walks away with a very different understanding of what was decided. Neither person was necessarily a poor communicator. They simply came into the conversation with different assumptions, perspectives or ways of processing information. For leaders, that’s an important distinction. Communication isn’t only about what you said. You also have to pay attention to what the other person understood.
Communication Changes When You Become a Leader
As people move into leadership, the nature of their communication changes. You’re no longer primarily responsible for your own work. You have to set expectations for others, delegate responsibility, provide feedback, address performance concerns, explain decisions and help people understand where the organization is going.
Those conversations don’t always come naturally, particularly for someone who was promoted because they were very good at the technical part of their job. Knowing how to do the work and knowing how to communicate with the people responsible for doing it are different capabilities. This is why communication is part of what we call Leading Others at X5, along with delegation, coaching, conflict management and accountability. They’re closely connected. It’s difficult to delegate well if expectations aren’t clear, and it’s difficult to hold someone accountable if you had different understandings of what they were responsible for.
More Communication Isn’t Necessarily Better Communication
We have more ways to communicate at work than we’ve ever had before. Teams can move between email, messaging platforms, video calls and in-person meetings throughout a single day. That can be incredibly useful, but it can also create a lot of activity without necessarily creating clarity.
Sometimes the problem is simply using the wrong method for the conversation. A quick message might be exactly what you need to confirm a deadline. It probably isn’t the best place to address an ongoing performance concern or work through a disagreement between two people. If there’s room for misunderstanding, emotion or disagreement, people will often benefit from being able to talk it through rather than exchanging increasingly long messages.
We Don’t All Communicate the Same Way
One of the reasons communication gets complicated is that we naturally approach it from our own perspective. If I prefer people to get directly to the point, I may assume everyone else appreciates that too. If I like having lots of context before making a decision, I may provide that same level of detail to someone who would rather have the headline first.
Problems start when we interpret someone else’s communication style based on our own preferences. Directness can be interpreted as impatience. Someone asking questions can be seen as resistant when they’re actually trying to understand. A quieter person in a meeting may be processing the discussion rather than disengaging from it.
This is one of the reasons I find tools such as Everything DiSC® useful. The value isn’t simply discovering your style. It’s recognizing your own preferences and becoming more aware that the person across from you may need something different. That awareness can make it easier to adjust how you communicate without expecting everyone else to adapt to you.
Listening Changes the Conversation
Leadership communication often gets framed around how leaders deliver a message, but listening is at least as important. When someone brings a problem to you, it’s easy to jump into solution mode, especially when you have experience and think you know what should happen next. Asking another question first can change the conversation. You may discover that the employee has already thought through the problem and needs support rather than an answer, or you may learn something about the situation that you didn’t know.
A few habits can help:
- Ask before telling. Find out what the other person is thinking before giving your answer.
- Check for understanding. Particularly after an important conversation, make sure you both heard the same thing.
- Clarify what happens next. Who is doing what, and by when?
- Leave room for different perspectives. Silence or hesitation doesn’t always mean agreement.
- Close the loop. If someone raises an issue or shares an idea, come back to them when you can.
None of these is particularly sophisticated, and that’s partly the point. Good communication often comes down to fairly simple behaviours practised consistently. The challenge is remembering them when we’re busy, frustrated or already convinced we know the answer.
Have the Conversations That Need to Happen
Every leader eventually has conversations they’d rather avoid. Someone isn’t meeting expectations. Two people aren’t working well together. A behaviour needs to change. An employee is unhappy with a decision. Delaying those conversations can feel easier in the moment, but it rarely makes them easier later.
Having a difficult conversation doesn’t mean being confrontational. Often, the starting point is being clear about what you’ve observed, asking the other person for their perspective and listening to the answer. Leaders also need to be prepared for the possibility that they don’t have the full picture. Going into a conversation curious rather than certain can change where it ends up.
These conversations also shape trust. People notice whether they can raise concerns without immediately being shut down, whether leaders follow through on commitments and how disagreement is handled. If challenging an idea consistently leads to defensiveness, people eventually learn to keep their concerns to themselves. That may make meetings quieter, but it doesn’t necessarily make the team stronger.
Trust doesn’t require leaders to share everything or agree with everyone. There will be information that can’t be shared and decisions employees won’t like. Being straightforward about what you know, what you don’t know and why a decision has been made where appropriate helps people understand what they can expect from you.
Stronger Communication Makes Other Parts of Leadership Easier
When communication is working well, people have a clearer understanding of what they’re responsible for and managers spend less time correcting misunderstandings. Problems tend to surface earlier, feedback becomes more useful and teams can work through different perspectives without every disagreement becoming personal.
Communication is also something leaders continue developing throughout their careers. Different people and situations require different approaches, and even experienced leaders encounter conversations they aren’t quite sure how to handle. That’s often where coaching can be useful because the leader isn’t discussing communication in the abstract. They’re working through a real conversation, relationship or challenge that’s happening right now.
X5 Management’s Leadership Development Coaching gives leaders a confidential place to work through those situations while strengthening the broader capabilities they need to lead others effectively. We also use tools such as Everything DiSC® and Productive Conflict with leaders and teams when a deeper understanding of communication styles or conflict behaviours would be useful.
Want to strengthen communication within your leadership team? Let’s talk.
About the Author
Kris Schinke, MBA, is VP Integration and a Leadership Coach with X5 Management. She works with leaders and teams to strengthen leadership capability, improve communication and turn development into practical action. Her coaching focuses on helping leaders build greater self-awareness, strengthen how they lead others and develop the capabilities they need as their responsibilities grow.
