My Review of the book “The Language of Leadership”

Language is the essential skill of a leader. Using the power of language, leaders share their vision, address problems, and mobilize people. Effective communicators are exalted; ineffective communicators are excused.

There are two essential elements of effective communication: Purpose and Power. The purpose is the vision communicated in your message. The power is to grab and keep the attention of those who listen to you.

People naturally get attracted to confident, authoritative, credible, and competent communicators. None of these attributes rely on aggressive behaviors. Strong leaders can simultaneously appear kind, accountable, empathetic, and assertive.

Some of my key takeaways:

  1. Focus on people rather than things or numbers. A product essentially helps people, which are your customers. When I am looking at myself, I rely on the hard work of many people out there while using their products to accomplish my daily work. Like how I would feel frustrated when the products I need every single day didn’t work, our customers would feel the same. Empathy for our customers is essential, and it is to focus on people rather than your product. You focus on numbers and your product only to better serve your customers. It is similar to your teams too. Focus on them more than their numbers, while using the numbers to better understand them.
  2. Understand the needs and wants of the people you talk to. The simplest way of doing it is to listen to them and ask sincere questions that reveal their concerns and desires. Talking for hours is not important; in fact, it is a waste of time in many cases. What’s reasonable is not to say everything in hoping to address the audience’s needs and wants but listen to them so that you can say fewer but more memorable and to-the-point words that do solve people’s problems.
  3. Pause when you speak. Don’t say words after words. Intermitted pauses in your speech let people process what’s being told while allowing you to think before talking.
  4. Don’t apologize by default. When necessary, confidently correct yourself.

There will be different circumstances for a leader to use other communication tactics. Sometimes they will share bad news with the team, handle a crisis, celebrate organizational milestones, or honor an employee. Each of these moments will require different approaches, but the common denominator of all these is the need for effective communication.