Lead

10

COMMUNICATE

“BE KIND, for everyone is fighting a great battle.”

PLATO

THE TENTH ABSOLUTE FOR LEADERS:

When I first became CEO, I was oblivious to a pervasive reality of leadership: You are never not communicating. I was so focused on the “message moments” and their content—bold speeches, judiciously worded memos—that I failed to notice that I was still broadcasting the rest of the time, and with the rest of my body.

Everything I said and did not say, the words I chose or avoided, the relative ease of my gait, where my eyes focused, whether I used this story or that one, told it in a voice calm or commanding—there was a message imbued in each of these tiny moments and the skill with which I mastered each mattered. It mattered a lot.

The quality of your communication has a real and profound effect on your company's success. Everything you say or do as a leader makes your people just a little more or a little bit less able to tackle the work before them. You are the message, each tiny gesture speaking decibels louder than all the props, the PowerPoints, the graphs, the pie charts. Humans are intuitive, listening first and foremost to your body: They hear what your heart says and know immediately when it conflicts with the words leaving your mouth. Emanating through your physical ...