5 Techniques to Become an Effective Communicator

Speaker A: Welcome to youo Belong in the C Suite podcast. You are ambitious in life and in your career, but something is missing. You want to bring more of your passion to what you do because, let's be honest, you pour a ton into your work and it needs to mean more. I'm your host, Laura Igel. I'm a mom, wife, PhD coach, advocate, introvert, and indoor rowing fanatic. I'm passionate about living a life that's in line with my values. We'll give you the actionable tips and tools you need to lead with your values, make a difference, and have career success. The world needs more diversity and authenticity in the top jobs at organizations. Your leadership belongs there. You belong in the C Suite. My second book, Values First Teams how to Build a Culture that's Synchronized for Success, launches on May 20. Miscommunication, misalignment, missed deadlines Every leader knows the frustration of a team that feels more like a tug of war than a unified force. And in today's whirlwind of deadlines and demands, it's easy to lose sight of the why behind the work, leaving your team feeling disconnected and disengaged. In Values First Teams, I'm sharing my proven framework for building an engaging team culture where shared values create stronger results and individual efforts harmonize to achieve a powerful collective momentum. It's more than just a leadership book. Values First Teams is a guide for building a workplace where everyone is aligned, engaged, and rowing in the Same Direction. Values First Teams launches on May 20, 2025. Learn more at theketchgroup.com valuesfirstteams. Today, I'm sharing my five essential techniques for becoming an effective communicator. Number one know who you are as a leader and what you care about. Generally, most leaders have an idea how to describe their leadership style or what's important to them. However, if I asked you right now, what would you be able to succinctly tell me about your leadership style? Don't feel bad if you can't do it, because most people can't. That is, unless they've done the work to clarify who they are and what they care about. In my book Values First Teams, I show leaders how to build a value statement. A value statement is a concise statement on how you lead and what's important to you. It's basically a leadership elevator speech. You describe your leadership style based on your values. Being able to describe how you lead and what's important to you is a skill, and it's a skill that you can improve on with practice this simple exercise is a game changer to be able to utilize in a variety of forums. Number two, own your narrative. You get to tell people who you are as a leader, what you care about, and what you're good at. You don't have to wait for people to see you do it. Tell them first, then follow up with action. As an introvert, I do my best thinking. When I have time to think, I need time to process information. I remember one time early in my career, I was in a boardroom meeting with the CEO, my manager, and a few other senior leaders. A consulting firm had just given a big presentation and the CEO went around the room to ask us our thoughts. In my mind, I thought, please don't start with me. Please don't start with me. And of course, he asked for my thoughts first. My lack of preparation and my introverted tendencies took over and I said, can I not go first? That was not the right answer. He said, well, if you don't have a point of view, I'm not sure why you're here. The narrative on me in that moment was, she does not have a point of view. I did in fact have a point of view. I just wasn't confident in my response because I hadn't had time to think it through fully. Instead, I could have stated, you know, I'm loving this topic, and it's energizing me around my value of growth. I'm still processing the presentation and all of the information, but what I'm thinking right now is xyz. And in that simple sentence, I'm telling the audience that I care about growth and that I process information differently and that I also have a point of view. No matter what I know what I care about, those are my core values. And I can almost always tie something back to my core values. That's something I can always rely on, even if I'm still processing other information and forming my opinion. By sharing my core values, I'm owning my narrative. I'm telling them who I am and what I care about. Number three, don't just talk. Listen. You can't be an effective communicator if everything is only one way. You need input, you need data. How do you do that? By asking questions and then actively listening. Seek feedback, and don't always be the first to communicate. Often, leaders seek to fix and spring into action because they have the experience and know what needs to be done, even if you know the answer. Instead, ask a question. As a coach, one of my favorite acronyms to remind me to stay Present and listen is on a post it note on my computer screen. As a reminder, the acronym spells out the word wait and it stands for why am I talking? Usually it's because I'm sharing something and not actively listening. And it's a great reminder to stop talking and listen. Instead, be intentional and consistent. Think about all the ways you communicate with people as a leader. You have one on one meetings, team meetings, coffee chats, project kickoffs, department meetings, town hall meetings, emails, newsletters, LinkedIn posts, internal and external presentations. Do not underestimate the importance of intentionality in your messaging and the power of consistency in messaging. I distinctly remember one conversation I had with a peer at the beginning of the pandemic when I was sharing my availability for our next meeting and I was reminding him of my working hours. At the end of our team's call, he said, hey, I love that you're talking about your work life balance so much right now. It's important. I replied, oh no, I do not have work life balance. We are barely making it over here. I do have new working hours that I put in place because of virtual school for the kids while we are all at home together. So I openly talk about, uh, what's going on so that others knew what I was going through, as many others were going through similar things. But at the time, I was only one of my peers that had small kids during the pandemic. So I consistently shared my working hours, which is a boundary I put in place to meet my value of family. I wasn't balanced in anything except maybe the guilt I felt for not meeting the needs of all my roles. But what I did was consistently message my team, my peers and others in the organization about why my schedule was shifting and why that was important. It was a very intentional practice to share that with others and it benefited my team M too. By sharing what I was doing, I was giving them permission to do the same thing. And at times of uncertainty, consistency in messaging is even more powerful. I eventually shared how I was managing all of those priorities in a town hall for for a broader internal audience as well. And I received feedback from M team members about how impactful it was to see my transparency around how I was struggling and also how I was trying to manage through it. By being consistent in your messaging throughout your work and life, you'll start seeing your team repeating or using the same language that you use. You'll see them anticipate what's important to you time after time, and you'll start building a consistency that that they didn't even know that they craved in this ever changing world of work. Last but not least, number five, communicate again and again. You may feel like you've said something 1 million times, but someone will still not have heard that message. You need to communicate more than you think. Build on that consistency and repeat and continue to communicate. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see leaders make. They don't communicate often enough. If you think about when you hear a message as a leader, it is usually pretty early on in the process. You may be talking about it with senior leaders for a while before others find out about it. By the time it's ready to be communicated broadly, often you have been talking about it for a long time. You might be sick about it, sick of talking about it, endless meetings. But that's just really the beginning of the messaging for many audiences. So as a leader, you get to lead people through that change. You can be an anchoring point that helps ground them through your communication, or you can leave your people with little communication and they may feel like they're lost at sea. I know which one I'd prefer if I were them. So over communicate messages, give people context and be intentional, consistent and generous with your communication. To recap, I have shared my five essential techniques for becoming an effective communicator. Number one, know who you are as a leader and what you care about. Number two own your narrative. Number three don't just talk, listen. Number four be intentional and consistent. And number five, Communicate again and again. I want to thank you so much for listening to the youe Belong in the C Suite podcast. If you are enjoying this content, please remember to rate and review on Apple Podcasts. By leaving a review, you are helping others find this content. We will be featuring five star reviews on air in upcoming episodes. Editing and support for the podcast is done by S and E Podcast Management. To get more tips and tools to help you live a life guided by your values, go to TheCatchGroup.com keep your boundaries and take care of Sam.