Ignite: Real Leadership, Real Talk, Real Results

Chapter 4 Communicating the real you

The way we tend to communicate and engage our employees is not working and needs to change. The mindset and approach to communication continually evolves and we can't afford to stop this process now. The trend towards such change is driven by the rise and ubiquity of social media, the disruption of conventional ‘top–down’ approaches to communication and the realisation that we need to engage people in the ‘why’ and not just the ‘what’ in our communication. In other words, we need to engage all three brains (refer to chapter 1) and we need to inspire people.

However, too many organisations and leaders still have a cascade mindset to communication, with a focus on the ‘what’. This top–down, one-way approach to communication often results in leaders communicating through obligation, with an attitude of just passing information on. This happens because they have not connected to the messages themselves, so it's little wonder they pass on the information in a similar vein.

This approach just adds to the information overload that your employees are already dealing with, and means they either ignore the message, don't understand the message, don't care about the message or feel completely overwhelmed by it.

What organisations and leaders need to do is move to a focus on the ‘why’ instead of the ‘what’. Organisations need to have a clear compelling ‘why’, and sell the ‘why’ as opposed to just the ‘what’ and ‘how’. Simon Sinek, author of Start with ...