Leader Learns - Lessons From the Floor

This is the second part in my Communication series. In my earlier post, I talked about how communication is not just talking. I also mentioned that the key to communication is making people see and understand your point of view. For a leader to succeed, he / she needs his team to understand his goals and vision. For this, the leader needs to communicate and ensure that his team understands what he / she is trying to say. I had a problem of talking a lot, and also, by default accepting that people understood what I said. It took me a few years, to admit to myself that the default is not so. In the initial days, I felt the problem was with my team, that they did not understand what I said. I had to repeat certain messages several times, work with smaller groups to drive home the point, sometimes even questioning people in meetings to see if they are on the same page. After working with my team for a few months , I was able to get them onto my wavelength. I felt happy and satis

Communication is very important aspect in our professional lives. More so for a leader. As a leader, you will need to communicate your plans, goals, vision etc to your teams. I always used to think highly of myself when it came to communication, the reason being that I was educated in English all along, reasonably well read, had interacted with clients who were non-indians both native english speakers and others, pretty early in my career with success. So when I became a lead, I thought it was but natural for me to be a good communicator with my team. As they say pride goes before a fall, I did fall but thankfully the fall was not from a good height to get hurt badly nor was visible to many people. As a lead, during my early days, I always thought that being a good communicator means that I need to talk well, fluently, convey my idea. That's it. During these days, I would talk a lot in my team meetings, talk about small and big things, talk about my ideas etc. I always