Leadership Communication
Some old rules work, but there are new ones too.
Recently, I set out to review what “experts” say about leadership communication. Searching for “What makes a leader a good communicator”, honestly, I’m surprised that what I discovered is not very helpful. First, it’s subjective (with no research or even examples of great leadership speeches to back it up). Secondly, these characteristics are relatively common and old hat, even though the media landscape for leadership communication has changed a lot! Here are some common characteristics of exceptional leadership communication from the top search results:
Top Ten Speeches
So I looked for examples of good speeches. Many would agree that this list of the ten top speeches of the 20th century remain significant a quarter of the way into the 21st century.
Patrick Henry. “Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death.” March 1775
Frederick Douglass. “The Hypocrisy Of American Slavery.” In 1852
Abraham Lincoln. “The Gettysburg Address.”1863
William Jennings Bryan. “Cross of Gold Speech.” 1896
JFK’s inaugural address. 1961
Ronald Reagan in Berlin. 1987
Why aren’t there many great speeches more recently?
Trust and Respect. Speakers are less trusted and respected today, but the top 10 America speakers of the 20th century were in their day. Today, the public easily forgets the good leaders contributed and capriciously follow gossip or rumors. Once their trust is betrayed (real or imagined), they are rarely willing to balance the bad with the good.
Today’s media technology isn’t conducive to message resilience. Some of these 20th century speeches weren’t instantly well-received, but grew in importance with age, especially once the consequences were realized. But now, we spend nearly every waking hour consuming news, so a message doesn’t have a chance to gather proof and grow influence with more support over time. And, when media technology shifted from one-way to two-way, allowing anyone to clip a small part of a speech and twist its meaning to meet their own communication needs, a leaders’ message often loses its original context and meaning.
Tailoring a message to a specific audience is virtually impossible. Leaders may think they are only sharing a certain message with a specific audience, but that message can and will spread to everyone - quickly.
The “tail wags the dog” in today’s media landscape. It’s been a long time since a leader reached nearly every household on a few network channels in one night. The audience was fragmented by cable television from the 1980’s until about 2010. Now a message can go “viral”, reaching as many people as the days of prime time network television, but personally shared in as many fragmented and diverse contexts and with opinions as there are cable “lifestyle” channels and identities, gender (he,she,they) racial (w,b,h), generational (x,y,z) or sexual (l,g,b,t,q).
Leaders are strengthened by a bonded community, but many have taken their communities for granted. Many of these speeches were made before the book, Bowling Alone, in which “(Robert) Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and our democratic structures– and how we may reconnect.” Coincidentally, or maybe relatedly, corporations and government have become less community-oriented, with decision-makers putting political legacy or corporate profits ahead of relationships with partners (politicians), employees (staff & agencies), customers (voters). Simultaneously, perhaps unintentionally, leaders have come to fear building business relationships and they are protected from the community by spokespeople, PR, or boards.
Production value makes content more suspicious. Almost anyone with digital skills knows how to alter an image or video. As a result, fake images, edited quotes, and special effects (ironically, once used professionally to make visuals more authentic, edited to be more concise and clear), now make all content look suspicious. AI is leveraging these capabilities at scale. As a result, even genuine, unaltered content can look fake. Now it turns out the fact checkers are biased. No one knows what to believe.
These hurdles are not just for politicians, celebrities, and giant public company leaders to overcome. Their audiences are the same people with whom leaders of any organization must communicate.
Some of the old rules still work, but there are new ones too.
The old rules still work, but building trust and respect in today’s media landscape takes practice, persistence, and patience in the context of new challenges.
clarity: To establish why they should be trusted and respected, Leaders should practice communicating a clear vision in a way that is relevant to all stakeholders. Here’s what a vision should look like:
an objective that doesn’t just inspire stakeholders, it invites action
universally compelling because the benefits to diverse stakeholders are easy for everyone to appreciate.
consistent: For message resilience, Leaders should be persistently consistent in the communication of their vision and benefits for diverse stakeholders.
open: To maintain trust and respect, Leaders should demonstrate patience, with both words and actions, that they are open to hearing from the community how their vision may be executed.
targeted listening: You can’t target in today’s media landscape and you can’t listen to everyone. If a leader listens to everyone, they wouldn’t get anything done. Leaders should practice listening for the “special forces” within the community of customers (voters), partners (politicians), and employees (staff and agencies) who have the courage to express themselves.
collaboration: To disrupt the “tail wagging the dog” in today’s complex media landscape, Leaders should be patient with the collaboration process of “special forces” to develop a plan that engages all stakeholders to participate.
transparent: Build and celebrate community by making it as or more visible than the Leader. Leaders authorize and train the team of “special forces” to convince their constituents to believe in the objectives, the plan, and benefits.
genuine hope: Don’t rely on production value to create hope. Leaders should practice genuinely sharing failure, success, and how the team plans to adapt to create hope for the future.
Leaders, and the experts advising them, should accept that they can’t control the narrative. To earn trust and respect in today’s complex media landscape, leaders should:
practice communicating vision and benefits clearly,
with persistent consistency, and
demonstrate openness to collaborate with the community to execute,
patiently identifying the “special forces” to collaborate on a plan and engage the community to participate.
Sure, the most memorable speeches of the 21st century may not look the same as the top ten of the 20th century. They will be more genuine in creating hope, by admitting failures along with a concrete plan to adapt. This is how to create enduring leadership messages in today’s complex media landscape.