3 Communication Traits of Leaders

According to the Towers Watson 2010 Global Workforce Study, leadership is the top driver of employee engagement.

In turn, high employee engagement translates to better financial performance.  In Towers Watson’s Global Normative Database, companies with high employee engagement generate operating margins nearly 1.5 times higher than companies with low engagement.

The best leaders create a clear path forward for their people.  Highly engaged employees at high-performance companies rate leaders as having these characteristics:

1. Principled — driving the company from a shared set of principles by clarifying values, operating with integrity in everything they do and showing unrelenting commitment to the customer.
2. Agile — managing the challenges of ongoing change effectively, and support the organization to evolve in new and innovative ways.
3. Trustworthy — stressing fairness in decision-making and empowering people in their roles.

Leaders seen as demonstrating these characteristics use communication to produce:

1. Clarity — conveying the direction of the business along with the ways they can contribute to the enterprise.
2. Confidence — following a disciplined process for changing and communicating to create greater certainty, confidence and engagement among employees.
3. Community — building a sense that employees and leaders are in it together and share both the challenges and rewards of working.

Organizations that are highly effective at both communication and change management are more than twice as likely to outperform those that are not effective at either.

Creating a clear direction requires communicating a consistent story about the business; creating greater certainty, confidence and engagement among employees; and building a shared experience across diverse audiences.

What are you doing to improve communications and empower your employees?

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