Q #118: How to sharpen communication skills?

In this series, Bob Morris poses a key question and then responds to it with material from one or more of the business books he has reviewed for Amazon and Borders.

John Baldoni is a leadership consultant, coach, and speaker. His work centers on how leaders can use their authority, communications and presence to build trust and drive results. He is the author of six books on leadership, including Lead By Example: 50 Ways Great Leaders Inspire Results. In a recent posting at the Harvard Business Publishing blog, he suggests five ways to sharpen communication skills:

1. Know the fundamentals. Express yourself well verbally, as well as on paper or through email. Failure to communicate coherently leaves people unsure of what is expected of them.

2. Think clearly about what you will say. Many are critical of PowerPoint because bullet points without a “subject, a verb and an object” do not convey “complete thoughts.” With PowerPoint itself is not the problem; executives who use it as a short-hand for thinking are. Too many managers use it to sketch out thoughts rather than flesh them out.

3. Prepare for meetings. Documents for meetings should be distributed in advance and made clear and concise. All meetings should start on time. That’s all part of the preparation process. So often meetings go off track before they begin because managers and employees do not take the time to think about what they will say before they say it.

4. Engage in discussion. Encourage debate. You need to hear everybody’s perspective, so you must ask more questions than make statements. All too often, either due to the press of time or perhaps a feeling of over-importance, executives do not make it clear that they want to hear alternate points of view. Such an approach leads to “groupthink” because no one speaks up.

5. Listen to others. Discussions are meaningless if no one is listening. Anderson does not like to see his managers checking their BlackBerrys in meetings. Doing so shows lack of focus and is akin to reading a newspaper during the meeting. As little as we may tend to concentrate on improving oral and written skills, we spend even less time (if any) on improving listening skills. For that reason, too many managers end up ill-informed and, in turn, ill-prepared to deal with issues that subsequently morph into problems. Time spent listening might have headed off such disasters

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Here is a link to the Harvard Business Publishing blog:

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/

Comments, questions, requests, or suggestions? Please share them. They will be most welcome and I thank you for them. Best regards, Bob