Communication Creates Your Reality — How Leaders Accidentally Tank Their Own Reputation

Every email, meeting, and hallway conversation is building or destroying your leadership reputation. Most leaders think communication is about getting their point across. Wrong. It's about creating the perception that opens doors or slams them shut.

Transcript

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Welcome to Lee with Confidence. I'm JP Warren. Every episode we take a theme from our Monday morning leadership call and apply it to real life scenarios. So you can build your confidence, crush your imposter syndrome, and step into the leader you actually want to be. Short, real, straight to the point. Let's get into it. Welcome back to a new Lead with Confidence. I'm your host, JP Warren. In these podcasts, we're providing you five to seven minutes, five under 10 minutes, how about that, of skill sets and frameworks for you to help lead with confidence to strengthen your soft skills. What are soft skills? That's 85% of our job, our career success. And that's how we influence, connect, communicate with people. And today we are talking about how to communicate like a leader. And this is pretty much check your tone. All right. Check your tone and how we communicate in these everyday conversations with our team. And in the meantime, if you got 15 seconds, go ahead, please share, like, comment, tell me a subject that you are challenged with in the comments so we can start addressing that, right? Or if you have someone she or if you have someone challenged in this area, share it with them, see what they think, and maybe you can help them in their leadership journey. So we're all talking about the tone right now, right? A lot of times leadership thinks, hey, listen, I got to be a leader on the earnings call, or I have to be a leader in this presentation, or I have to be a leader if I'm leading a meeting, right? That's when I have to step in my leadership shoes and use my tone proper and all that stuff. However, most of the times, your leadership boils down to every single conversation you have with your team. So are you helping your team? Are you hurting your team? Okay. A lot of times leadership thinks that communication is really just transferring knowledge, right? Hey, this is the direction we're gonna go. This is the knowledge I want to share with you. This is that. As a leader, your communication is so much more than that. It's not just transferring knowledge, it's shaping the culture. It's it's influencing uh the team to move, take a direction that you want to take. It is inspiring your team with a tone. So it's not going in there laying down the law with a hard, steady, strict tone because you're the boss and they're not. So you need to come across this way. It really is coming across and influencing your team. And a lot of times that's not done with that harsh, respect-demanding tone. All right. And a lot of times you might sound rushed in an email, right? So if you get an email from your boss and it sounds rushed, you're not gonna go down the hallway and knock on the door and ask for clarification or continue that conversation or maybe get some frameworks on what you have to do. No, you're gonna avoid that and take the information you have and kind of move forward with that. That's what your, that's what your team's gonna do, right? You may sound defensive in meetings where people don't want to chime up and share things and and they don't feel safe to maybe push back or get a new idea. Okay. Um, and uh what else? What else? What else? Um, and also whenever you are describing these, these directions you want to go, or if you do have a crucial conversation, you're not really being clear with what that direction looks like, right? You're kind of beating around the bush. So you're not being clear in your direction, and that's kind of leading a lot of confusion for your team, okay? So people create opinions about your leaderships, not just from those big moments where you step in your leadership shoes. It's done through every single conversation we have with your team. And I often ask this, you know, I think it creates, I think leadership and how we communicate creates the foundation of the cultures we're trying to build. All right, I'll get into cultures at some point down the road, but think about this. Do you have a safe culture? Well, sure we do, you know, families, everything, our culture's open door policy. But my question for you is this how many times do you have a subordinate walking in your hallway, walking down the hallway, opening the door, and having a conversation with you? If that's not happening on a daily, weekly basis, then chances are you might be disconnected from your team with how they perceive your uh reaction whenever they do approach you. All right. So a couple things here as a leader, what to start thinking about before you start engaging these everyday conversations. Number one, audit your tone. What is the tone of the emails you're sending out? What is the tone uh that you're bringing up in meetings? What is the tone of whenever you are having a one-on-one conversation with someone, right? Is it very harsh? Is it very stoic? Is it very monotone? I often say that the best way to kind of like influence people is using the four C's, the four C's of your tone, the the confused, the concerned, the curious, the confident tone. So are you playing with your tone as a leader? And I think tone, pitch, and cadence, that's 30% how we communicate. You have such an instrument to lead people and influence people just by playing with your tone. All right. The second thing you can do is lead with clarity. Are you being crystal clear with your expectations? Are you being crystal clear with what uh projects you and or the direction that you want your team to execute? Are you being clear? Are you dancing around the bush, right? Are you speaking direct by going every other way but being direct? And we see that a lot because people are so scared of confrontation whenever these having these conversations, right? And another thing as a leader, sometimes we say, you know, like, okay, well, here's the expectation, move forward, let me know when it's done. As a leader, it's our job to ensure that, as a servant leader, it's our job to ensure that our teams are being served with the resources that they need. So closing the loop, and this is just like in crucial conversations, coming back to your team after you provide that direction, after you provide that clarity, seeing, hey, listen, how's it going right now? Where, where, where could we help out? Like what's what's holding us back, what's pushing us forward, any new ideas? So, really kind of coming back and closing the loop, whether it's a week or a month out or three months out, and kind of like reassessing the tone, reassessing the message and find out were you clear in the first place, right? It's not just giving an instruction, walking away, and hopefully it's done. It's staying on top of your team and being involved with them and checking your tone, being clear and making sure that they have the right resources, tools, and direction throughout the project. Okay. So the next time that you send out an important email, do this. Think about this. What would this tell me if I just got this email? What would this tell me about this leader that is sending this to me, right? So put yourself in the shoes of your subordinates. What kind of tone, what kind of leadership are you projecting with your emails? Okay. Um, and also another thing that you can do is put yourself in the shoes of your subordinates. So don't communicate that everyone has the same priorities or someone everyone has the same challenges, or everyone needs to be looking at this, the same focal point and attention that you're looking at this, right? Everybody is different in their own paths, their own walkways. What fills uh what fills their day, what fills their agenda, what fills their pipeline. So maybe let's kind of change and customize how we're talking to our team. That's getting to know them one-on-one. That's that open door policy. That's gonna know them on a personal basis, not just the professional basis, okay? So ask yourself this week, what reputation is your communication style building? All right. And is this the leader that you want to be known as? Okay. And again, just because you might have done this the first, you know, however long you are into your leadership career, leadership changes. You change, we change as people. So start playing with your tone, start being clear, and start kind of getting the trench a little bit more with your team, just finding out, hey, listen, the direction I gave, the project we're going after, what do you need from me, Amai, and to help you achieve this? Is or ask them, also, you can ask them repeat back, hey, what is what what did you take away from this? What is the direction we're going? And that way it aligns like, okay, well, I did mean that or I didn't mean that. Here's some more clarifying uh boundaries or guardrails that we can use to actually move forward. So I ask yourself, every conversation you have, you are building your leadership legacy. Take every conversation as an opportunity to level up your leadership skills. Thanks for tuning in on Lead with Confidence. Again, I'm your host, JP Warren, and get out there, lead with confidence. That's your framework for the day. Go lead with it. I'm JP Warren, lead with confidence.