poseycorp helps innovators become great communicators. (Sometimes by sending out helpful stuff in a newsletter.)
ISSUE 161
Sharpen your skills!
"Communication is the core of skillful cooperation."
-- Rick Rubin
Do you want to hire and lead the best team? Get funded? Forge strong bonds with customers? Outplay your competition? Lead your market with a powerful point of view? You will do none of these things alone, which means you must communicate. You cannot scale without being an effective leader/communicator.
My Six Things Every Great Communicator Does methodology is a fantastic approach to help you prepare for any kind of talk - internal, external, large, or small. But an effective leader/communicator isn’t just thinking about stages. She brings the right mindset and behaviors to every interaction, every day. A leader is always a leader/communicator.
Today let’s talk about the first two Essentials for Every Leader/Communicator:
You respect the power of communication
You accept that being a leader/communicator IS your job. You invest energy in mastering this essential skill because . . .
You know that the words you say and the things you do are the tools to drive the outcomes you must achieve
I have worked with more than one reluctant leader who has said things like: “Everyone knows what they are doing, they don’t need to hear from me.”
Nope. They DO need to hear from you. Because we each interpret things differently. We can get off track. We get distracted. Your job as a leader is to focus and refocus your team by communicating with them.
“I don’t want to be an egotistical corporate type, that’s not me.”
That’s fine. There are as many ways to show up as a leader as there are humans. BUT you still have to communicate, because everyone needs to be rowing their oars in the same
direction. Decide how you want to show up as a leader and then show up that way as a leader.
“I’m too busy to rehearse/talk at the all-hands/do the keynote.”
No you’re not. This IS your job. Do it.
You are the ‘Chief Repeating Officer’
You embrace repeating yourself. You know that not everyone will get it the first time you deliver your message. Or even the sixth.
I really do wish that everyone heard and understood everything the first time, but they don’t. We have to work with reality. You will always be repeating yourself.
You know that consistency reassures your team, customers and investors, while a constantly-changing story does not.
You want your core message to be so familiar that your team can recite it while sleeping. You want your customers to be super clear about who you are. You don’t want confused investors!
You see that repetition may be super boring, but repairing misperceptions is worse.
It IS boring to repeat yourself. So is commuting. But we do what we have to do. Repetition builds clarity. Clarity leads to teams working productively. It may be boring to keep saying the same thing over and over again, but it’s much less painful than cleaning up after an engineering team that built four disparate things when you weren't looking.
In times of change, being a strong communicator is non-optional! Start with these two skills and build. You can do it!
“As with every post, Lisa delivers an idea worthy of a bronze engraving,” said a poseycorp newsletter subscriber.
If you’d like great results, schedule a conversation with me! It’s easy! Reach me at inquiries@poseycorp.com.
Not sure how to crush your next presentation? Persuade that difficult customer or team member? Navigate tough questions from regulators, press, your boss? How about some pragmatic, actionable communications advice?
If you are a startup founder, an intrapreneur at a company, or a leader looking to grow, consider Office Hours with Lisa, a great way to get bite-sized, personalized communications coaching. Because your business must scale and you must scale with it. Because it’s the great communicators who create change!
