Leadership Communication Skills for Managers
Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Learn how to best support, respond to, persuade, and inspire your team
In this course, you’ll:
- Understand how communication affects workplace culture and productivity
- Identify best practices for communicating in leadership roles
- Learn four strategies for enhancing your leadership effectiveness
Excellent communication skills are imperative for effective leadership. Executives, project managers, creative directors, team leaders, and other professionals in leadership roles must be able to establish a vision, inspire others to believe and act upon that vision, maintain a positive workplace culture, present information persuasively and powerfully, and resolve conflict in meaningful ways. However, most people in leadership positions are not naturally strong communicators. Instead, they must practice effective communication strategies and learn how to implement new ways of approaching workplace environments, policies, and goals.
Join expert Curtis Newbold for an interactive overview of leadership communication best practices. You'll discover the most common errors both new and seasoned leaders make with regard to communication and learn four easy-to-follow approaches that will enhance your ability to communicate, support your company's vision, manage conflict and complaints, persuade people to follow your lead, and inspire them to act.
What you’ll learn and how you can apply it
By the end of this live online course, you’ll understand:
- How communication affects workplace culture and productivity
- What leadership qualities employees respond to the most
- Four key communication strategies that enhance your ability to lead
And you’ll be able to:
- Develop a leadership vision statement
- Identify best practices for communicating in leadership roles
- Apply strategies for supporting organizational goals, responding to conflict and complaints, persuading people to follow new policies, and inspiring others to adopt ambitious goals
This live event is for you because...
- You're a manager or executive who oversees many employees, and you need to improve your ability to persuade them and inspire them to act.
- You're a team leader who works with a diverse group of employees, and you need to increase their ability to meet and exceed expectations.
- You're an employee in any capacity who wants to grow as a leader and improve your communication skills both at work and in your personal life.
Prerequisites
- Experience managing or leading people (useful but not required)
Assignments to be completed prior to the training:
- Evaluate your leadership communication strengths and weaknesses using the provided Leadership Communication Checklist
Recommended preparation:
- Read "What Is Servant Leadership?" (chapter 1 in Servant Leadership in Action)
- Watch How to Speak So People Will Listen(video, 9m 54s )
- Read "How to Tell People Stuff So That They Listen, Understand, and Never Forget It" (chapter 1 in Business Express: Effective Communication Skills)
Schedule
The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.
The effects and challenges of leadership communication (25 minutes)
- Presentation: Leadership communication case studies; the impact of effective communication; how communication affects leadership; challenges leaders face; best practices
- Group discussion: What types of challenging scenarios have you faced in the past week or month? What might make you resistant to following the best practices just outlined?
- Hands-on exercise: Explore communication strengths and weaknesses
Creating a leadership vision statement (15 minutes)
- Presentation: The value of a leadership vision statement; characteristics of a leadership statement—content and delivery
- Q&A
Supporting organizational leadership (10 minutes)
- Presentation: Finding ways to support and uphold company principles and policies; best practices—structuring bad news, language, nonverbal cues
Responding to complaints (10 minutes)
- Presentation: Best practices—listen, ask questions, gather information, encourage self-fix, provide a reasonable, nonnegotiable solution based on new knowledge, stand by decision
Pitching ideas that aren’t debatable (10 minutes)
- Presentation: Best practices—organize your pitch, use nonhedging language, apply confident nonverbal cues, remain firm but positive
Inspiring employees to act (10 minutes)
- Presentation: Why employees need personal motivation, not extrinsic pressure; best practices—communicate a shared vision, incorporate inspiring analogies, use word pictures, be confident, positive, and forward thinking, show charisma and emotion, tell stories, be authentic, stay organized
Wrap-up and Q&A (10 minutes)
Your Instructor
Curtis Newbold
Curtis Newbold is a passionate educator, speaker, and award-winning corporate consultant with a love for all things communication. He has designed and delivered courses, workshops, webinars, and presentations on scores of topics such as information design, data visualization, leadership communication, brand strategy, presentation delivery, business writing, and public relations management. Curtis has led graduate student marketing and communication projects in Peru, South Africa, Cambodia, Hungary, Morocco, and Iceland and he has taught at multiple universities in the United States and China. Curtis is the owner and chief content architect for the popular communications blog, TheVisualCommunicationGuy.com and is co-author of a textbook-in-progress, Business and Professional Communication, with Sage Publications. He currently serves as Clinical Associate Professor of Strategic Communication at the University of Utah and he holds a PhD in Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design from Clemson University.