This is the third in a series of blog posts I am writing on the subject of leadership.  In my last blog I discussed the subject of listening carefully, and today I will delve into the subject of effective communication.  The usual caveat for this article applies: I'm not the CEO of the company, nor do I hold a leadership position, so this is clearly not the definitive guide on leadership or communication.  I am merely writing these to look at leadership from the computer guy's perspective and perhaps provide a "first steps" guide to getting him from behind the computer screen to running a team.

Ask a typical computer person on how to communicate well to people and he might say "write an email" or "explain things to them carefully", or somesuch.  Effective communication, for a computer programmer, is much less important than it is for most jobs (though much more important than it used to be!)  There are a great many jobs out there where one must learn effective communication, particularly in the services industries where interfacing with clients in a way that ends with them being happy is very important.  To the good leader, the ability to clearly, cleanly (and effortlessly!) communicate is a vital part of his role (another reason why computer programmer are infrequently tapped as leaders).

 The root of communication appears to be "influencing people".  Note that "intent" isn't part of that - one can accidentally communicate (miscommunicate), and influence other in an undesired way.  The key goal of communication is to influence people in the desired manner, whatever that may be.  For businessfolk, the desired manner is typically in ways that increase productivity and profitability, and maximizes the return on investment (that is, get as much product the wages and salaries and other investments that go to the team). 

A lot of discussion of communication out there seems to be about the exchange of ideas, but it seems to me that this is only part of the pie.  The person doing the communicating is doing so for a reason.  Maybe she thinks the other person could do their job better with the idea.  Perhaps she wants to raise morale with encouragement.  Consider two people, both of whom spend 5 minutes expounding an idea.  One is slouched in his chair and speaks quickly in a monotone.  In addition to the idea itself, he is also (probably unintentionally) communcating that the idea is boring, unimportant, and not worthy of careful examination or effort.  A second person is communicating the exact same idea, but he is standing up, leaning forward, gesturing with his hands, and speaking slowly and clearly.  He is communicating the exact same idea, but is also communicating (probably intentionally) that his topic is exciting, urgent, needs attention, and will have great impact.

Studies on this topic suggest that the ideas, content, or words only account for about 10% of the total communication in face-to-face conveyances.  The tone accounts for around 40%, and body language makes up the other 50%.  A similar ratio is found for written communication - the tone of written words has great impact on readers vis-a-vis the content itself.

This explains why bad communication is so easy - we, as humans, tend to spend a great deal of effort on the content of our presentation, but not so much to the presentation itself.  As the good leader seeks to motivate and encourage their team members, they are cognizant of all times about their presentation - of themselves, the ideas and concepts of interest to the team, etc.  Leaders that communicate well are easy to spot, because the followers tend to be stimulated, in good spirits, and with good energy - all signs of a team focused on a goal and excited about the path to achievement.