Top Executives Often Torpedo Their Own Communication Programs

Why Do Bosses Think So Highly of Their Comms Skills?

Let’s be honest, very few upper and senior executives are actually good communicators.

A question I always ask our colleagues when I am teaching or speaking is, “Does anyone in the room work for a boss who thinks they are a bad communicator?” Always gets a huge laugh. Where do these boss beliefs come from?

It’s because executives, even supervisors, believe:

They got where they are because of their communication skills.
Their communication skills and intentions improve over time. The reverse is often more the case.
The higher they are, the less they actually feel they need to communicate. (Others do that.)
The higher they rise, the more powerful they believe their words become. So, they say less, avoid repetition.
The higher they rise, the more they assume the words they say one time have enormous power penetrating throughout their organization. Balderdash.

New ideas fail because the boss only talks about it once or twice. It’s generally to give the order to succeed . . . or else.
Or worse the orders seem to mean, “Do whatever it takes to win.” This is a toxic instruction. Someone will actually try. Trouble is the result.

What a Successful Executive Communication Strategy Looks Like

The senior executive communication day needs to look like this:

Decision making	5%
Articulating decisions	30%
Coaching, teaching, inspiring, and motivating others to carry out decisions	30%
Forecasting (guessing) the next decision	5%
Admiration \ Loyalty building	6%
Reputation Repair	4%
Repairing yesterday’s minor communication glitches*	20%

* Fixing a bigger mistake costs a lot more.

As you can tell by this distribution of time, the CEO, senior leadership, as well as line managers and supervisors need to spend significantly more time explaining, coaching, interpreting, reiterating, and monitoring the progress of strategies, plans, decisions, outcomes, and instructions.

The communication success lessons are:

Management and leadership that is about teaching, reminding, re-emphasizing, inspiring, repeating, and re-explaining to get it right will likely succeed. Starting big new shiny decisions or initiatives without the above will likely fail.
Mindless change, new ideas, looking backward, or picking apart old problems are disruptive, distracting, interruptive, time wasting, and costly with little, if any, return.
In a word, “It’s repetition, repetition, repetition, stupid.”
For the strategic adviser, resist the urge to suggest big new ideas. See number two above. The bigger the idea, the more disruption it causes. Delays, errors, and failures follow. Experience shows that most communication solutions lie among known, successful, existing programs.