Top Leaders Communicate Clearly

Unlock the secret to powerful leadership in 'Clear Talk - Better Leadership Through Effective Communication.' Discover how to transform your team dynamics with strategies that ensure your message is heard and felt. From active listening to impactful messaging, learn the key communication skills that every great leader needs. Perfect for leaders at any level, this episode will equip you with the tools to inspire, motivate, and lead your team more effectively. 

Transcript

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Welcome to today's episode, clear talk, better leadership through effective communication. In the world leadership, the ability to communicate clearly and effectively is more than just a skill. It's actually the bridge that connects leaders to their teams, ensuring that visions and missions are shared, strategies are understood, and that goals are achieved together. Today, we're diving deep into the art and science of leadership communication. I'm gonna explore some practical tips and strategies to enhance your communication skills from active listening to delivering impactful messages that inspire and motivate people while keeping them on task. Whether you're leading a small team or an entire organization, mastering the art of clear talk can transform your leadership approach and create a more engaged, productive, and cohesive team. Let's get started and unlock the secrets to becoming a more effective communicator and, as a result, a more powerful leader. To start with, I thought I'd tell you 2 different example stories of communication and its importance. They're both different, but in each case, it shows why poor communication isn't good for anyone. In the first story, we're at a fire out west. We had no radio or phone communications for the 1st days. The minute we left the main roads and we headed onto the fire ground, we lost communication with anybody above us. We had the ability to talk directly truck to truck, but we couldn't talk to our sector commanders. We couldn't talk to our divisional commanders. We couldn't get any information coming in from outside. And if a truck left our group to go a few kilometers down the road to get water, for example, we lost communication with them. And this led to only a range of problems that I could list that goes through the roof. For example, we lost a water truck. We did not know where the water truck went for an hour or 2, but, eventually, they turned up back. They got called off to do different things, but there was no way to let us know. Meanwhile, we're wondering where they got to. Communication was a significant safety issue from our perspective because if anything went wrong, there was no one to tell. Or if the fire change direction or something like that, we had no real effective way of sharing that information with anyone else. Eventually, by the end of the second day, they brought in a portable telecommunications tower, and suddenly our radios were all working well, and we could talk. And that made a massive difference to how the fireground ran because suddenly all the information was flowing up and down and left and right and more easily among the crews. I suppose the key thing here was that the tower should have been in place a couple of days earlier given that this was a massive fire. In fact, it was one of 2 fires and we were in between them both. So getting good clear communications absolutely essential and was life changing for us on the fireground. The second story was back in 2019, 2020. We were at a fire just a little way out west, and radio communication has actually been really good all afternoon. We're able to clearly talk to each other, talk to sector division wherever we needed to actually get to. The fire was coming up on us pretty fast, so we decided to ask permission to light a burn so that we could protect the corner because given the conditions where we were, there was a house behind us, there was high grass, It was a 100% cured, so it would burn almost instantly, and it was extremely dry and windy. The minute we asked for that backburn, we had silence for the next 30 to 45 minutes. We couldn't talk to anybody except ourselves. We could all hear each other, but no one above us seemed to be able to hear, from us. So we kept asking for permission. We kept saying things are getting a little bit more dangerous. We need to really do this. Got to the point where we realized that no one actually wanted to talk to us, but that's the way we interpreted it, of course. Who knows what the real reason was? Our understanding based on the fact that they didn't like us putting him back turns due to some escaping was that it got caught up above us, but they still could have reported back. Not answering was worse than saying no because we could still talk about it years later. Whenever we talk about this particular fire or we see photos of it, it straightaway comes up, oh, yeah. That's the time we asked permission to light a back burn, and suddenly no one could talk to us. As far as I was concerned, it was extremely poor leadership because there was nothing wrong with the comms. We knew that. Communication in all its forms can affect how things run. In each case of these stories, the communication was really lacking. In case 1, it was a safety issue and slowed down every single response to the fire. In case 2, it made us interpret it as all the people above us were more interested in politics than their people. Now I do understand that might not have been the case, but that's how we saw it and it was never cleared up afterwards. So let's look at the importance of clear messaging. The first one is safety. Clear messages keep people safe on the fireground, especially, but in business as well. People don't do things they shouldn't do. They don't go places they shouldn't go, and they know about dangers in what they're doing. Now that communication could be, don't use that machine without safety glasses, or it could be do not enter that property because the homeowner there doesn't like people on their property. Who knows? It just depends on your business. The fact of the matter is clear communication is really important for safety. The other thing is it helps us keep on track when we're working on a shared mission. When we're communicating where we're at, how we're going, what we need to do next, everybody has a clear understanding of what's going on. Businesses like firefighters need a clear flow of information. That flow of information helps everyone develop an understanding of instructions, of changes, and of news within the business. When people don't communicate, mistakes are made. Problems aren't solved and preventable situations aren't avoided. So communication can help clear all these things up. This goes both ways up and down and right out to the smallest customer. Is important across all aspects of a business. It can be scary to share with customers because you can feel like you're letting your competition know what you're up to because other people might be reading this. The The fact is they probably won't do what you're doing because you're already ahead of the curve. So it's better to be open with your customers than it is to worry about your competition. Now I'm sure there's exceptions to that rule, and I'm talking about 95% of the time. Clear messaging ensures that everyone understands what's going on from above you, below you, right out to your customers. We're listening to the radios on the fire ground to keep an overall picture of a fire in our heads. We can hear the conversations going on. We can hear what's happening further down the line. We can hear if things are changing as well as what we see what's going on around us. It's the same in business. When you got clear communications and people are communicating back and forth, everybody has a good idea of what's happening around them. Transparency builds stronger teams, and good leaders are transparent as much as possible. As a leader, you do have to decide how much information you can put out. People don't need to know irrelevant stuff, e g, they might need to know when lunch will arrive, but they don't need to know that you went to 14 suppliers to get that lunch. That's irrelevant information. As a leader, you work as a filter, sending information down to the right people at the right time. If someone come to ask you a question, then feel free to answer it, but filter out what is important for those people at that time. There's always extraneous things going on that do not have to go out. There might be a time for that information to go out, but might not be straight away. You are a filter, but remember you're not a sensor. If just because you don't like the news doesn't mean you should block it. People need to know and understand. A real leader, as I've said in the past, is willing to take the pats on the backs and the kicks up the backside. So don't censor news, but filter what is important in that situation within reason, and you should always aim to be as clear and concise as possible. Use simple language. Do not use big jargony words. Remember, most people don't like them, and all it does is make you look like you're not really thinking about the fact that your message is going to a certain audience. So we've looked at creating a clear message. The second thing we need to do is ensuring that the message gets out effectively. On the fireground, we use SMEACs, which I've mentioned before, for briefings. And this makes sure that we get the right information passed on to everybody. Everybody gets the same briefing if we brief the crew leaders, brief their crews based on the information in the SMEAC, and they're given a copy of the SMEAC as well so that they can read for it. This makes sure everybody's on the same mission and the same communication and the same everything. Everybody knows what they're supposed to be doing. It stops Chinese whispers. K? And that's really important. You do not want information being reinterpreted and passed on in different language because it can completely change the meaning. Personally, I read faster than most people talk, so waiting for someone to ramble on when I could or read it is annoying. So I like having a written brief in handed to me as well. On a fire, we have separate radio channels for command, fireground, and sectors, and this keeps our airways quiet. For example, we have 1 to 1 on command, so the divisional commander might be talking to the IC only, and then we have 5 to 1 on the fire ground so that you've got 5 second commanders talking to 1 divisional commander. And then the sector commander would have roughly 5 trucks underneath them, and the crew leaders from those trucks would be talking to them. So you got this 5 to 1, which is our spanner control continuing on. It means less noise, and you can easily tell where the message was coming from because at most, you have to carry 2 radios, one down to the people below you and one up to the people above you. And if you apply that across the business, it actually works quite well. I always say that businesses have one person in charge of too many people. You need to break your business down into small groups, and you'll find it's much more effective if you do it that way. The chain of command keeps messaging clear, but you've got to watch for bottlenecks. That means you've got to make sure that all the people in the chain of command are passing the message on effectively as well and not causing it to stop or not bothering to pass it on. One of the things we do is actually we repeat instructions back to ensure clarity. Now I know in business, I don't often see this, but someone will give instructions and then we'll say, just confirming, and we'll read it back to the person. And they'll say affirmative. That's what I want done. There's no reason that company in business. You can give instructions out and then ask someone, so, can you just confirm that you understand what I've said there and get them to read it back? If you want clarity, you've gotta put steps in to get clarity, and systems like read back actually bring that into any business or any situation. Businesses have so many ways of communicating now. We have email, phone, text, video, podcast. There is so many different ways. Because there's so many different ways to communicate, you need to make sure you craft your message properly. If it's important, your message should probably be a little longer. Make sure you use appropriate images with your messages or wear appropriate clothing if you're recording a message, and make sure that you brand all your messages. Remember that anything that you put out could end up in the court or in the media. What you don't say says much about what you do, so be specific about your wording. If you have to repeat yourself, you didn't say it clearly in the first place unless that person wasn't listening. So make sure you take your time and be clear when you're communicating. So how do you craft a message to make sure that it is clear? The first thing you need to do is think before you speak. Clarity of words comes from clarity of mind. Make sure you throw some notes down on what it is that you want everyone to know. Not everyone learns from hearing. Like I mentioned before, some like reading too. Are there any protocols you need to follow? For example, we use call signs on the fire ground, and those call signs are a protocol that allow us to verify that we're talking to the right person and that we're talking back and forth. When we're speaking to someone on radio, there's a couple of things that we've learned that are really important, and the 4 of them are the rhythm, the speed, the volume, and the pitch. Keeping a nice rhythm is really important. Not speaking too fast so that we have a little bit of space between words is also important. Volume is important because radios, you need to speak into them a little bit more clearly, and that applies to using a microphone as well. And pitch, funnily enough, a higher voice travels better over radio waves than a lower voice, so lifting your voice a little bit sometimes helps as well. As my mom used to say, open your mouth and speak clearly. In business, using video is a very effective way to communication. And remember that good is good enough. You could spend forever doing the perfect video, but by that time, it could be too late to get the message out. Get a nice video, plan it, record it using a teleprompter if you've got one. There's plenty of apps that will do this for you, like BigVue, and all you need to do is literally hold your phone up in front of you and read off the screen, and the front camera is sitting behind the screen, so it looks like you're looking at the camera. It's really not that hard. You can just use a tripod to hold the camera and then you can send that video out. So the technology these days actually allows us to communicate so much more easily. Remember to prepare your messages for multiple mediums. This means that you can create one message and it goes out multiple ways. For example, you can write your message down, then record it into a video, then pull the audio off and share all three versions of it. If you decide to go to the media to talk to get your message out, be prepared for difficult questions and get an adviser. Do not go in cold. Don't get yourself in the open mouth change foot situation. It's better to release a written message than a well it's better to release a written message that's well crafted than just blurting something out. I would say that some people should not be in front of the media. If that's you, get some training or get a representative to do it for you. There is people who are media specialists. That said, there will be times when you have to front the camera. Getting some training would not go astray. But bringing it back to simple, plan, communicate, and check that people understand what it is that you're trying to communicate before moving forward. Today, I've talked about why it's super important for leaders to be clear when they talk or send messages. Just like firefighters need to know exactly what to do in emergencies, people in businesses need to understand their jobs and what it is they've been asked to do clearly. I've shared that making sure everyone gets the message the same way keeps everyone safe and on track, And we've looked at why being clear and open helps everyone work better together. Remember that being a good leader means making sure that everyone knows what's happening and what they need to do. Let's keep our messages clear and help our teams to do the best. Thanks for listening, and let's keep learning how to be great leaders together. If you liked what you heard today, don't forget to hit the like button, subscribe to our podcast, and click the bell on YouTube so you won't miss any of our videos. Watch me on YouTube for more tips on how to become an amazing leader. See you there.