It’s another edition of “The Editorial” – a communication reality check aimed squarely at the business world and the people in it.  This month we examine why the most important tool of leadership (stop looking confused – it’s communication) is consistently overlooked, underutilised and generally made a complete hash of by the gods that rule corporate life.

Time to once again destroy the myths, skewer the assumptions and help you develop the most important skill set you can bring to the business environment – your own communication skills!

The Leadership Communication Gap

In 2002 management guru Tom Peters’ company conducted a survey of 1104 business professionals and found that 86% of their executives felt that they were great communicators. Interestingly, only 17% of their direct reports felt that those same executives were effective communicators. This is not exactly a new finding. Even as far back as 1986, 246 senior executives from the USA’s largest companies were asked by Lou Harris & Associates to evaluate how effective they thought they were in communicating the vision to the organisation. 93% considered themselves either very effective or somewhat effective.

The research continued by interviewing frontline supervisors and managers from the same companies asking, “How effective are your senior executives at communicating the company’s vision?” Only 29% of respondents considered them either very effective or somewhat effective and the vast majority of those were in the ‘somewhat’ category.

There are numerous studies that back up the same finding – there is a massive leadership communication gap between how our leaders see their communication and how everyone else does.  The vast majority of business leaders couldn’t communicate effectively if their life depended on it!  In short, their confidence in their superior skills is as misplaced as their lack of desire to invest in any improvement.

It’s probably because they confuse communication with talking – a skill they have some experience with and tend to judge by decibels and the length of the sentences.  However, an up to 60% communication gap is a frightening statistic.  It means that 60% of everything you say is completely ineffective.  But lets assume that you are much better than that.  Let’s assume you are 100% better than average and you only have a 30% communication gap – heck I’ll even spot you another 5 percentage points because I am a nice bloke.  A quarter of everything you say is completely ineffective – how big is your problem?  As I am fond of saying to a lot of business leaders…

“Let’s be honest.  If you spoke to your friends and family the way you talk to half the people at work they would think you are a tosser wouldn’t they?  So why do you think the people at work think any different?”

Relationships versus Response

There is a lot of talk about the importance of building relationships in the business world but it is worth examining exactly what a ‘business relationship’ really is.  A ‘business relationship’ is a connection or association between two parties, one of whom is often a customer of the other.  The propagation of that relationship relies on one of those parties (usually the one who is not the customer) maintaining constant contact with the other party either by phone, correspondence or in person.  Whether the other party wants that contact or not is irrelevant because it must be maintained on a regular basis for the relationship to have any chance of survival.  In the real world we call this kind of relationship ‘stalking’!!!!

Now for those of you who are automatically defending yourselves by saying “my customer relationships aren’t like that – my customers love me and wouldn’t even want to try and do business without me” – stop it!  That is a classic stalker defense!  Hyperbole aside, the point I am making is that business relationships are manufactured, fragile and ultimately not as important as you think because they are not what you are judged on.  You are judged on response – regardless of how strong you think your relationships are.

Let me explain.  You don’t contact your customers for fun.  You always have a business agenda underpinning any contact you make.  Likewise, no customer will ever contact you for fun.  They have a very specific reason for getting in touch and your ability to respond to that reason appropriately will determine whether or not you hang on to their business.  Failure to respond is the number one reason for customers leaving and yet we continue to underestimate its importance.

I guess we think we don’t need to worry about our response given the fantastic ‘business relationships’ we have been able to build up.  Don’t make the mistake of thinking your ‘business relationship’ built on all of that continuous contact you have made will cut you some slack next time your customer gets in touch.  The reality is that the contact from the customer is the only one that matters and your response means absolutely everything!  The age-old complaints of ‘didn’t get back to me’; ‘didn’t take me seriously’ and ‘didn’t seem to care’ are the catchphrases of poor response and the harbingers of falling profits.