Chapter eight. Building and Leading High-Performing Teams.

Summary:

Leaders need to know how to build and manage teams to achieve high performance. Obviously, many are seeking “the way” to build and maintain a high-performing team.
While no one way is likely to guarantee good results for all organizations, most of the skills as a leader need to build and manage a high-performing team tie directly to leadership communication ability. So, this chapter is guiding through the communication challenges involved in leading a team. And how to build an effective team, establish necessary work processes, manage the people side of teams, and handle team conflict. Also some guidance on leading geographically dispersed teams (virtual teams), which are prevalent in today’s professional world.
This chapter’s objectives are:

· Building an effective team

· Establishing the necessary team work processes

· Managing the people side of the teams

· Handle team issues and conflict

· Help virtual teams succeed

Chapter seven. Leading Productive Meetings.

Summary:

Meetings are how an organization says, “you are a member.” So if every day go to boring meetings full of the boring people, then that is boring company. To avoid creating a negative atmosphere around meetings in company, have to know that is “The Seven Deadly Sins of Meetings.”

The Seven Deadly Sins of Meetings

1. People don’t take meetings seriously

2. Meetings are too long

3. People wander off the topic

4. Nothing happens once the meeting ends

5. People don’t tell the truth

6. Meetings are always missing around important information, so they postpone critical decisions

7. Meetings never get better

This chapter is going to help to avoid these seven deadly sins and, how make to plan and conduct productive meetings by determining when a meeting is the best forum for achieving required results; establishing objectives, outcomes, and agenda; performing essential planning, clarifying roles and establishing ground rules; using common problems-solving techniques; managing meetings problems; and ensuring follow up occurs.
The chapter has the following objectives:

· Deciding when meetings are the best forum

· Completing essential meeting planning

· Conducting a productive meeting

· Managing meeting problems and conflict

· Ensuring meetings lead to action

Meetings can be small and large, internal or external, frequent or infrequent. This chapter focused primarily on small-group meetings intended to accomplish tasks or move actions forward inside an organization since these are the most prevalent types of professional meetings.

Chapter six. Developing Emotional Intelligence and Cultural Literacy to Strengthen Leadership Communication.

Summary:

Leaders need strong interpersonal skills and an understanding of and appreciation for cultural diversity. Without these skills, leaders cannot communicate with and manage others effectively. Interpersonal skills have gained recent recognition among leaders under the name of “emotional intelligence.” Emotional intelligence is the capacity to understand emotions and those of other people. This understanding provides a foundation for understanding and appreciating cultural differences, called cultural literacy here. It means being literate or knowledgeable about fundamental differences across cultures.
For leadership communication, emotional intelligence and cultural literacy are as important as strategy, writing, and speaking skills included in the core of the leadership communication spiral introduced in the first few chapters of this text.
Emotional intelligence and cultural literacy are necessary skills that allow to interact with and lead others effectively, and the key to interacting with others and managing relationships successfully is communication: “The basis of any relationship is communication. Without communication-be it sign language, body language, e-mail, or face-to-face conversation-there is no connection and hence no relationship. The importance of effective communication skills to Emotional intelligence is crucial, and its value in the workplace is incalculable.”
In this chapter, the following objectives:

· Appreciate the value of emotional intelligence

· Take steps to increase your own self-awareness

· Improve your nonverbal skills

· Improve your listening skills

· Mentor others And provide feedback

· Realize the value of cultural literacy

· Use a cultural framework to understand difference
In the end, this chapter devoted specifically to understanding emotional intelligence and developing the ability uncover which means getting below the surface of the words, in many cases, to the meaning beneath. This ability is essential to emotional intelligence. The first sections of this chapter discussed the value of emotional intelligence and how to achieve it; the later sections on nonverbal communications, listening, people development, and cultural literacy dedicated to increase ability to understand the emotional subtext.

Chapter Five. Using Graphics and PowerPoint for a Leadership Edge.

Summary:

Leaders need to know how and when to use graphics. Graphics improve presentations and documents, particularly if the material is primarily quantitative, structural, pictorial, or so complicated that it can be illustrated more efficiently and more effectively with a visual aid then with words alone. Graphics will contribute to the success of oral and written communications. Most people are more visually oriented today than in the past, and they expect and respond graphics in presentations and printed documents. Even though it is a cliché, the expression “a picture is worth a thousand words” conveys a powerful truth. People respond to visuals. In fact, research has proven that presentations with visual aids are 43 percent more persuasive.
Leaders use visuals that are integral to the communication of their intended meanings and not ones simply added for show. When selected appropriately and designed carefully, graphics embody and carry the meanings that create your message. With the introduction of PowerPoint, the default presentation graphics program for business presenters, and the improving graphic capabilities of MS Word, adding graphics to communications has become increasingly easier. However, the ease of use has also led to gratuitous and poorly designed graphics and presentations with more flash than content.
Used appropriately, graphics and PowerPoint provide a leadership edge. Knowing how to deliver messages effectively with words and pictures is a powerful combination, and delivering even a basic understanding of the principles of graphic design can provide an advantage.
This chapter focused on when and how to use graphics effectively, provide some basic guidelines for designing effective graphics, deliver some guidance and presenting PowerPoint slides.
In this chapter, the following objectives:

Recognizing when to use graphics

Selecting and designing effective data charts

Creating meaningful and effective text layouts

Employing fundamental graphic content and design principles

Making the most of PowerPoint as a design and presentation tool

Chapter Four. Developing and Delivering Leadership Presentations.

Summary:

In this chapter was providing that how plan presentation, including developing a communication strategy, how can prepare a presentation to achieve the greatest impact, and how present effectively and with greater confidence.

The leader’s skills are most visible to others when speaking, whether informally, with a few people around a conference room table, or formally, standing before a large group delivering a prepared presentation. Much of the 70 to 90 percent of the time that managers spend communicating in spent in conversations or in presenting, either talking to others one-on-one or speaking in groups or to groups. As managers move higher in the organization, their pronouncements become even more public and they spend greater amounts of time engaged in public speaking, whether internally to their employees or externally to the community. Leaders must master public speaking, becoming comfortable and confident in all kinds of presentation situations so that project a positive ethos for themselves and their companies.

In this chapter applied the tools and techniques of previous chapters-determining the strategy, structuring communication coherently, and using language effectively- to the art of public speaking. The chapter took through each of the action steps in the Three “T” process: Planning, Preparing, and Presenting. The process provided an approach to developing presentations that will help to move through each step strategically so that can deliver any type of presentation with confidence.

Chapter Three. Using Language to Achieve a Leadership Purpose.

Summary:

Leaders lead and inspire others to action through their effective use of language. The instruction to this chapter discussed how leaders use language as a tool of influence every day. Their ability to influence their audience positively, overcoming barriers to effective communication, is the essence of leadership communication.

The goal of this chapter was to help to create a positive ethos through the effective use of language-the use of the right words in the right way to achieve the outcome intend.

This chapter began by discussing how can achieve a positive ethos through writing and speaking style, which audience perceives as tone. It was providing ways to make style more concise and, by doing so, ensure that sound more forceful and confident. In then reviews briefly the correct use of language expected in leadership communication concludes by showing techniques to help to edit work.

Chapter Two - Creating Leadership Documents.

Summary:

In this chapter is telling that how we have to create leadership documents effectively. Professional documents fall into one of two broad types: (1) correspondence (text messages, e-mails, memos, and letters) and (2) Reports (including proposals, progress reviews, performance reports, and research documentation). Through their correspondence and reports leaders assert their influence in a wide range of organizational settings. Leaders write correspondence several times daily. They also write different kinds of reports, from complicated studies and white papers with recommendations and pages of analysis to shorter progress reviews. Audiences carry with them certain expectations when they receive and read the various genres of types of professional documents. This chapter focused on helping create leadership documents that accomplish communication purposes. And it began by applying these principles to creating documents.

In addition, this chapter discussed how to take make your documents coherent to your audience. Leaders achieve coherence by using a logical structure and effective organization and by making sure documents conform in content and format to expectations in the typical professional setting.

Chapter One. Developing Leadership Communication Strategy.

Summary:

In this chapter, I learned about how I have to establish a clear communication purpose, Develop Strategic communication plan, Analyze audiences, Organize written and oral communication effectively. Leaders need to consider strategy in communication they do in other areas of their business, profession, or life. Broadly defined, strategy consists of two actions: 1. Determining goals, 2. developing a plan to achieve them.

Leaders recognize that communication has consequences; you need to be sure the results, you produce are those you intend it. To achieve your intend results, you first need to establish a clear purpose. What do you want to your audience to know as a result of your message? What do you want them to do?

You will usually find that you have one of three general purposes:

· To inform-transferring facts, or information to someone.

· To persuade-convincing someone to do something.

· To instruct-instructing someone in process.

To establish you’re a clear purpose you have to do the following :

1. Clarify your purpose /Remember! Create<>Correct /

2. Generate ideas /Find one of four methods-Brainstorm, Idea Mapping, The Journalist’s questions, The Decision tree/

3. Connecting thinking and Communicating

To determine Communication Strategy:

1. Consider the Communication Context

2. Using a Strategy Framework.

3. Create an Action Plan

To Analyze Audiences:

1. By Expertise

2. By Decision Making Style

3. By Organizational Context

To Organize Written and Oral Communication Effectively:

1. Selecting Organizational Devices

2. Using the Pyramid Principle

3. Creating a Storyboard

Introduction: What is Leadership Communication?

Leadership Communication is the controlled, purposeful transfer of meaning by which leaders influence a single person, a group, an organization, or a community. Leadership Communication uses the full range of communication skills and resources to overcome interferences and create and deliver messages that guide, direct, motivate, or inspire others to action.

Leadership Communication consists of layered, expanding skills from core strategy development and effective writing and speaking to the use of these skills in more complex situations. As your perspective and control expand, you will find that you need to improve your core skills.

Leadership Communication starts with the core communication skills represented in the center of the framework. It moves out from these core communication skills to the managerial communication skills, and then expands further to the communication capabilities included at the broader corporate communication ring. This text moves from the inside of the spiral to the outside, expanding outward as you learn to apply the core skills to a wider array of audiences and increasingly complex organization situations.

The model is not meant to suggest a hierarchy, which is why it is depicted as a spiral. All effective communications depend on the core skills at the center of the spiral. These are your more individual skills. To be a leader, you need to master the skills at the core. You also need to expand your skills to include those needed to lead and manage groups and, eventually, those on the outer circle, the corporate communication skills needed to interact successfully with all internal audiences and external stakeholders.

The Leadership Communication book has three different of Sections which is includes all of these subjects and covers important fundamental communication skills needed by all leaders.

Indeed, the heart of Leadership Communication Strategy is:

LCS = Section One/Core communication skills=(speaking+ writing)*teams/ +

Section Two/Managerial communication skills = (emotional

Intelligence + cultural literacy+ listening) * teams, meetings/+

Section Three/Corporate communication skills = effective

communicate all(internal audiences+ external stakeholders)

In summary, I hope and believe that I will learn that leaders use all possible communication tools within reach and use them effectively. And I will learn to communicate more effectively and position myself to be leader in my organization and beyond it.