Inside the Director's Circle: The myths of highly effective communication

In this episode of Inside the Director's Circle, my guests and I bust some myths about effective communication. In the last episode, we focused on AQ (Answer Intelligence) the missing link, as we see it, of highly effective communication. Listen back to the last episode, those that missed it, as you might find it useful before you listen to this episode.

Last time we tried to bust the first myth of "if you ask great questions and listen intently, then highly effective communication happens". It was all the notion that answers naturally occurred from asking great questions. However, as Dr Brian Glibkowski explained in the last episode, that isn't the case. Answers are as important to consider and prepare for as questions for an effective and balanced conversation.

I was once again joined by two of our members from The Director's Circle community; Gemma Steadman, Business Unit Director at Hadley Group, and Jacqueline Watson, Director of Marketing and Business Development at Henderson Loggie.

Gemma took on board a point I made about how as leaders there can be a perceived difference in what we consider our level of communication has been with our teams and what the reality is. What I said that resonated with Gemma was that:

"I think as leaders, we've got everything running through our head all the time; our strategy, our plans, our challenges. And then, for example, once a quarter, we stand up and talk to our team and say, let me tell you where we're going. Let me tell you our vision. And then we go back and run it through our head for three months."
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What I always try to say to leaders is to think about over-communicating because the communication to yourself versus the outward communication is massively different.
Jacqueline suggested that understanding your audience, whomever that might be; a single person, a large audience of people, or people to who you are marketing, is the most important thing to have meaningful and effective communication. Deeply understanding your audience allows your questions to be more targeted and your answers to be more relevant, enabling your conversation to resonate more.