Better Leadership Through Courageous Communication | Stepshift

Better Leadership Through Courageous Communication

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

Leaders can grow themselves and their leadership teams by engaging in open and honest communication.

When managers and leaders withhold the truth from one another, when they are unwilling to engage in challenging communication with staff, peers or seniors, they are compromising the foundation of openness and trust that underpins leadership and team performance. Developing your willingness and ability to have courageous communication can be a catalyst for improved relationships and performance.

In our leadership development work with organisations we often begin by identifying what is working at a leadership level and what enablers could be impacted to achieve a step shift in performance and results. One such enabler that we have found to be quite common in New Zealand organisations, is a willingness by managers and leaders to effectively engage in challenging communication where open and honest feedback is required.

As these skills are developed and the environment is created where people feel comfortable having this sort of communication, they often feel quite liberated because their relationships are based on the honest foundation that will allow them to work more effectively together. It’s all very well for leadership teams to take hours out to look at their vision, your strategy or your Big Hairy Audacious Goal, but what underpins your commercial achievement is ultimately based on humanistic needs such as openness and trust. Impacting these needs at an individual and team level will invariably lead to improved commercial success.

When you are ready to experience the improved communication resulting from a leadership coaching programme go to our executive coaching page or return to the blog categories page.

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