Joshua L., a Global Youth Comment & Win competitor, has this to say about leadership: “Good leaders aren’t perfect. Obviously, a lot of leadership skills are nurtured from mistakes…The best way to nurture great leaders is by teaching, followed by experience and learning from errors.”
While high students like Joshua are a few years away from corporate Andrew Carton, an associate professor of research — about how to recognize the limitations of leader communication and best communicate about an organization’s long-term tactics and strategies:
Specificity rules. People tend to think abstractly as they ponder the distant future, noted Carton. That tendency can be reflected, for example, in how they write a
The jargon trap. Jargon, which is language used by a particular profession or group, has a definite place in the workplace, suggested Carton. “Organizations need to have jargon — some vernacular and vocabulary that you share in common with people who have similar training. That allows you to speak efficiently.” But while we all want to sound like we know what we’re talking about, it should not be at the expense of losing product sales, confusing customers and eroding employee Attention overload. While, unlike other species, humans are great at working together to coordinate efforts and accomplish goals, we also quickly get weighed down by distractions. “Humans have an incredibly limited attentional field,” said Carton, adding that research suggests that we are daydreaming nearly 50% of our waking hours. This is an important consideration for leaders as they communicate milestones and craft messages. “When you try to communicate with other people, you need to think about their attentional field — that limited attentional space that is a shield in many ways. You have to break through that shield,” said Carton. “If you overwhelm people with information, especially boring information, they’re not going to pay attention. Don’t overwhelm, simplify.” For example, rather than specifying 10 subgoals for your team to achieve, specify only three (See box on NASA at end of story).
Persuasive communication is fundamental to effective leadership, stressed Carton. And while you may want to think broadly in the planning phases of your Conversation Starters What is an organization? What is jargon and how is it useful in the context of business? How does it become a problem in communications? Dr. Drew Carton’s advice is to not overwhelm people with information, but instead to simplify. How did NASA embrace this approach?
