Six Leadership Communication Styles To Master in 2024
Experts tips on leadership communication styles for leading in 2024, and beyond.
Communication can be a place where our unexamined stuff surfaces and plays out in our organizations and relationship dynamics. By raising the level of consciousness around this, we can begin to see what’s really going on and how it’s affecting our organizations.
All too often, “non-versations” exist in important places in the company. Communication is at the heart of good offsites, resolving co-founder conflicts, effective 1–1s, giving and receiving feedback, having hard conversations, hiring, and firing. It’s how we work together cross-functionally to bring alive the vision of the company and its objectives.
Heartfelt conversations and deep listening provide support at crucial moments, such as a loss on the team to suicide, other heartbreaking moments that affect teams, and everyday moments of genuine connectedness.
In many ways, the fundamental unit of work is a conversation. At its root, the challenge of managing teams is really a challenge of communications: we all benefit from learning to speak in a way that we can be heard, and listen so that we can understand.
Below, we’re sharing six communication skills that, when added to your toolkit and put into practice, can help take your leadership to the next level.
1. Start With Open and Honest Questions
For leaders looking to foster resiliency and strength in their organizations and the folks they lead, turning to inquiry — open and honest questions — is a great place to start.
An open, honest question is one you can ask without possibly being able to say to yourself, “I know the right answer to this question, and I sure hope you give it to me.”
It’s important to remember that a question is NOT open and honest if you:
- Know the answer to the question
- Have a preferred answer
- Are trying to steer the focus person in a particular direction
Learning to ask open, honest questions is challenging. We may slip occasionally into old “fixing” habits and need forgiveness, from others and from ourselves. It helps to continually remind ourselves that our purpose is not to show what a good problem-solver we are, but simply to support another person in listening to his or her own inner teacher.
“When leaning into those open and honest inquiries…notice how your question is going to either expand or contract the possibilities for the person. Some of the words that we might track that will let us know whether we’re in open and honest mode is what, how, where, and when,” notes Reboot Coach Chris VandenBrink.
The next time you turn to inquiry as a leadership tool, we recommend these tips for keeping questions open and honest:
- Try not to get ahead of the focus person’s language with your questions. “What ideas do you have about getting all this work done?” is an open, honest question. “Don’t you think it’s a good idea to involve more people in the project?” is not.
- Ask questions aimed at helping the focus person explore their concern.
- Keep questions brief and to the point.
- Watch your tone and body language. Even an appropriately phrased question, if not asked from an open and honest spirit, can cause a person to shut down and/or retreat.
2. Implement Active Listening To Connect in Meaningful Ways
If the fundamental unit of work is a conversation, listening is the quieter, more powerful component of communication. We’ve found listening skills to be core to our work with clients and teams, as well as core to our work with clients 1–1. A culture of listening sets up the container for deeper conversations to happen through deeper inquiry.
Masterful listening is at the heart of being a good manager and leader.
“Communication involves active listening. If you are actively listening you will hear things that are going verbally unsaid, and paying attention to that is essential to managing human beings well,” says Jerry Colonna in his conversation with Moe Abdou on the 33 Voices podcast.
Attentive, conscious listening not only connects us in meaningful ways with the other human beings in our lives, supporting strong, healthy relational bonds, but it can also profoundly impact practical results in our organizations.
For example, when we listen consciously we promote a freer flow of crucial information across positional and functional boundaries, we give ourselves and others more space to examine our mental models, and we’re more likely to be engaging in our work from a learning mindset. Listening supports better decision-making, smarter problem solving, and more innovative solution creation.
In our free email course on listening you’ll explore ways you can improve your listening practices and better put to use this powerful, yet undervalued, tool.
How’s your listening? Try this exercise:
Set aside five minutes with someone. One of you will be the listener, one of you will be the talker in round one (You’ll switch in round two).
Set a timer for two minutes. The talker talks for the full two minutes. Even if the talking stops before two minutes, let silence fill the space until the timer runs out. All the while, the listener simply listens (no talking). After the first two minutes, switch roles and set the timer for another two minutes.
After the final two-minute timer is up, share with each other what that experience was like for you as listener and talker.
3. Build Empathy Into Your Organization with Relational Trust
Relational trust, or the interpersonal social exchanges that take place in a group setting, is fundamental for building psychologically safe and healthy organizational cultures.
Building relational trust in your organization means prioritizing the creation of relationships that are trusting so that you have your ears and heart open to hear and see what’s in our blind spots. Companies that have this kind of rapport in place know how essential this is to mission success by what this means for interpersonal communication, productivity, and culture.
As our friend Parker Palmer reminds us, “This isn’t just about personal development. This is about being effective as an organization, effectively improving the bottom line, and meeting all the demands that leaders and their organizations are under.”
How can you create a safe space for the conversations that foster relational trust? While relational trust doesn’t demand friendship as a precursor, it certainly requires being authentically human with other humans. When an employee hits an emotional note, listen and ask open, honest questions. Find out what’s important. The purpose of relational trust is to open the door — and the heart — for empathic presence with whomever in the organization has something to say.
Reflection Questions:
- What work experiences have you had where you felt a sense of trust, safety, or belonging at the company you were at? What contributed to that experience for you?
- Think about a work experience that wasn’t pleasant or a company that wasn’t pleasant to work at. What was happening?
- When have you felt safe to show up as your whole self at work?
4. Navigate Conflict with These Principles of Nonviolent Communication (NVC)
Any group of people attempting to forge a deep community will experience conflict from time to time. In fact, researchers studying small group dynamics identify conflict as a normal part of the group development process, particularly in the early stages.
It’s important we view instances of conflict as a normal part of the community-building process — an opportunity to grow together by telling the truth. And, as we address conflict in healthy and appropriate ways, we hope to model the kind of behavior we can take back to the other groups in which we participate (family, business, etc.).
Implementing the OFNR model for non-violent communication (adapted from the book: Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg) provides a guideline for navigating conflict in appropriate and productive ways. NVC’s O-F-N-R is a map to support us in operating with the intention to connect and collaborate. It helps us suss out what we observed, what we’re feeling, what we might need and what if any requests we have in light of all of that. Ultimately, this is a tool to help us begin to build not only self-awareness but also empathy in communications.
As Jerry describes in his On Being podcast conversation with Krista Tippet, “We, all of us, are too quick to substitute interpretation for observation…because we’re not schooled in the language of being able to discern between observation and feeling, we merge the two. We conflate the two.” says Jerry
The four pillars of nonviolent communication are O-F-N-R:
- Observations: Make an observation about a value-neutral fact, something that is undeniable. Avoid static generalizations. Instead, a focus on observations specific to time and context is recommended.
- Feelings: Talk about how it made you feel. Feelings are said to reflect whether we are experiencing our needs as met or unmet. Identifying feelings is said to allow us to more easily connect with one another, and “Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable by expressing our feelings can help resolve conflicts.”
- Needs: State what you need. Universal human needs, as distinct from particular strategies for meeting needs.
- Requests: Make a concrete request that you would like to be taken (without demanding). Requests are distinguished from demands in that tone is open to hearing a response of “no” without this triggering an attempt to force the matter. If one makes a request and receives a “no” it is recommended not that one give up, but that one empathize with what is preventing the other person from saying “yes,” before deciding how to continue the conversation. It is recommended that requests use clear, positive, concrete action language.
READ MORE: Power Up Your Team with Nonviolent Communication Principles
Questions for Reflection:
- What are the communication challenges you experience in your own leadership?
- What are the communication challenges that you see on your leadership team or team at large?
- What comes up for you around giving feedback?
- How easy is it for you to talk about important issues with your teammates and colleagues?
- What gets in the way for you between knowing your emotions around a situation and knowing your observations?
- How did your family handle conflict?
- How does your organization handle conflict?
- What is the hard conversation you need to have that you’ve been putting off?
5. Enact Boundaries for Exquisite Communication
How do our ways of interacting or being in relationships keep us from real communication? How can we see things as they are instead of reacting to things based on expectations from past experience? How can our interactions feel more like a dance, where we reach out from the center of ourselves, for each other, and move along together with a sensibility of feeling, and with the fullness of who we are intact?
By boundary, we mean clear understanding and communication about individual needs in a relationship. We understand and respect each other’s agency and individuality even while remaining connected. The opposite of clear boundaries is enmeshment — when there is a lack of clarity about personal needs.
“What’s wonderful about a consciously committed, intentional relationship is that it is like gasoline on the fire of the leadership journey.” — Jerry Colonna
Boundary setting can seem counterintuitive to many humans, namely because we perceive boundaries as points of disconnection versus ways in which to find connection. Yet, the best relationships are those with boundaries that are not only intact but operating such that the relationship is maintained through the sanctity of them.
To be self-responsible in a relationship is all about clear boundaries.
When we have established that place for ourselves, we can then be curious about what’s happening in the world of experience for the other person, in hopes that we can meet or connect and possibly converse together on the grounds of reality. We inquire, “Where are you, over there, where you begin at the edges of your meatsuit? I’m curious what’s happening in your worldview.”
When it comes to boundaries, clarity is kindness. Clarity helps us know where we are, what our terms are, what roles we’re taking, how we’d like to be and work together, what works for us, and what doesn’t. Boundaries help determine how much or how little we are available for.
Questions for Reflection:
- Where in your life do you need to set or re-set some boundaries?
- What do you have energy for?
- What is not a fit for you?
- What leaves you depleted?
- What are you needing more of?
- What support do you need to shine?
- What allows you to trust in relationships?
- When, where, and how would you like to show up differently?
- What can you renegotiate?
6. Consider Your Operators Manual
We each have our own bag of “stuff”– the ways we learned to communicate and how we handle our emotions–that shows up in the verbal transactions the days call for at work and home.
Failure to tend to tense moments wrought with emotion said or left unsaid festers. Proceeding to “work-mode” right on past them may not be as wise as it might seem as the tension can linger in many ways only to come up later, possibly more intensified or resentful.
We build bridges with each other when we can provide safety and space for others to show up, to say what they need to say, to voice feelings, and to talk about what’s happening as it’s arising. When they do the same for us, we feel safe. These baseline qualities serve as a general orientation to what is required of others and ourselves.
“Good, functional communication is really rooted in trust, shared experiences, openness, and vulnerability,” Jerry Colonna reminds us.
There are specifics that each of us have–that we came to honestly–that make a difference in our communication styles and what we need in various moments to come back to center (and to feel safe). Uncovering what we need when we are angry, scared, sad, insecure is a great exercise for ourselves, so we can recognize where we are at and perhaps let those around us know what we need and what best serves us in our triggered or upregulated or feely moments.
Questions for Reflection:
- What are the key relationships in my life (both inside and outside work)?
- What do I want for these relationships?
- What would support their thriving?
- What are the organizational dynamics at play around me?
- Where do I fit in the system?
- What support can I ask for?
- What role/stance do I tend to assume in groups?
As one grows in their leadership, mastering communication becomes a crucial skill set. It is what’s behind getting your people behind a vision, gaining alignment with the executive team, managing your board well, growing in your role as “leader as coach” for your direct reports and team at large. Communication becomes part of the cultural experience of the company from giving and receiving feedback, to hiring and firing, to having hard conversations — or discussions on hard topics — together. With practice, guidance, and learning, your leadership experience will develop the conversations that make a difference in your organization.
For more tools to bring into your leadership practice as it relates to virtual teams, check out our list of the 10 skills necessary for managing remote teams successfully.
