 This series is really going to focus on the communication elements of leadership and where those two intersect. So I want to spend a few minutes talking about communication in general the communication process and how those things impact and influence leadership and are involved in the leadership process. So to start I'd like to take a look at the transactional model of communication. Now we're not going to get into great detail here. There are other videos available where you can learn in more depth about the transactional model of communication. If you're not familiar with it, I'll put a link in the area below here where you can find one of those. Just want to do a quick review of this model though so we're on the same page and then talk about how each of these elements are involved in leadership. So first we start with Communicator A in the transactional model. Communicator A is the person who has something that they wish to communicate the person or persons who have something that they wish to communicate. So we start there. Then we move to Communicator B, which is the person or persons on the other side of this equation, right? We're communicating to someone and so that person is Communicator A. Now note that these people are both senders and receivers of information. It's not one or the other. All the people on all sides are constantly sending and receiving information. So it's not just one or the other. That's why we call them Communicator A and Communicator B as opposed to sender and receiver or something along those lines. So we have Communicator A and Communicator B. Communicator A has a message that they wish to communicate to Communicator B. They have some content that they wish that person to understand. And so they're going to try and encode that in a way that the other person can understand it and decode that effectively. They're going to do that somehow and that how is what we call channel. How are you communicating? Are you texting this person? Are you emailing? Are you speaking to them face to face? Are you talking over the phone? Are you sending smoke signals or using post-it notes? So what is that you're using to communicate to this person? That's the channel. So the message is the what. The what of what's being communicated. The channel is how that message is being communicated. Now again, both people are senders and receivers here. So Communicator B has this impact of feedback. It's this element of feedback that they're communicating in response to the message of Communicator A. And this is all happening simultaneously, right? It's not that Communicator A sends a message and then there's a delay or whatever and the feedback comes. While I'm speaking to somebody, I'm checking their facial expressions. You know, their tone of voice, they may interrupt me or they may be doing something else. They may fall asleep. That's all types of feedback, right? And it's happening right at the same time. So the message and feedback system is going to happen all simultaneously. So Communicator A has a message they want to send and Communicator B is going to be communicating feedback to them. All of that's taking place through one or more channels of communication, which is again the how. We also have this element of noise or interference in all of this, right? Noise is anything that interferes with the sending or receiving of the message, whether that's external noise from the environment, meaning things you're hearing that are keeping you from from listening effectively or whatever. It's too noisy. It's too distracting or it could be that it's too hot or too cold or too or you're hungry or whatever. There are lots of different noise elements that could be in play as well. Then we have context. The last of these elements is context, right? That this communication is taking place somewhere and in some circumstance and in some particular context. Communication does not take place in a vacuum. It happens somewhere and between some people and there's a relationship there and there's so forth. So anyway, that's what we mean by context in general. Again, there's much more depth that we could go into here in the transactional model. This was just a quick review of the seven elements in the communication process here so that we can then break these down as far as how they impact leadership. With that, let's look at the implications of these things for leadership. First of all, communicator A, the person who is let's call this person the leader or this person or persons the leader in leadership. So communicator A, we need to think about in terms of leadership, who are you? Who are you to these people that the people that are theoretically following you? Are you somebody that they know or somebody that they respect or are you in an authoritative position? Maybe you haven't earned their trust for their respect yet, but you have that leadership via sort of management and you're working to emerge as a leader in your own right as a manager. Who are you? Are you somebody who's accomplished something or are you new and unknown? We need to understand and be realistic with ourselves about who we are as leaders in order to effectively communicate with people as the followers. So communicator A involves an understanding of who you are both as a person and as a leader. What are your skills? What are your qualities? What's your experience and so forth. When we think about communicator B, we're really thinking about then who's the audience? Who's the person or persons on the other side of this? Who are we trying to lead and what do they know about us? What's our relationship with them? Is this an authoritative situation where I'm their supervisor or this just totally a volunteer type thing where I'm asking them to just put their faith in me and trust me and trying to emerge through other avenues of leadership through charisma, through inspiration, through solid ideas and leading from the front or being a servant leader and so forth. All types of things. Who are these people? What's going to work best with them? How do I need to communicate with them? And what's that situation between the two of us or between them? Me and the group or the groups and whoever, you know, and whether you have one or more people as communicator A and or communicator B. We also need to think about the message and specifically in leadership. We're going to focus on as leaders, the language that we're using language is incredibly important. Language is is crucial and you know, language is deeply varied. We have all kinds of options in language because we're constantly making up new words and constructing new things. So the language choices that we make are incredibly important. We think about these things when we're talking about communicating up. For example, we're talking to a manager or somebody who's above us in a hierarchical structure or communicating down. We're communicating with people who are underneath us in a hierarchical sense in an organizational structure. So what kind, how are those languages going to be different? How are we going to use language differently in those situations? How are we going to use language differently if we're in a situation where we have some sort of authoritative power? Not only my leader, but I'm a manager and I have authoritative power over these people. Then that can impact my language choices as opposed to if I'm in a situation where I'm leading volunteers. People aren't required to be there. People who, you know, that's going to affect my language choices. If I know that they have the option to just walk away, right? So language becomes very important as a part of that message. And also, you know, obviously what you're communicating, what is your vision? What is your idea? What is your goal here? You're communicating that clearly through the message and using language in that way as well. So language incredibly important in communicating that message. For the channel, I really want to focus on as a leader for the channel, making sure that we are choosing the right tool for the job, right? Right tool for the job. Hopefully you have a lot of tools in your communication tool belt and in your leadership school tool belt so that you have a lot that you can draw from. If you're trying to build a house and you only have a hammer, that's going to be a challenge. I mean, is it possible? Yeah. And is it possible to golf to golf 18 holes using only your driver or only your putter? Yeah. Yeah, it's possible. But is that going to be the most effective way to do so? And give you the best opportunity for success? No, it's not. So we're thinking about the channel of communication. We need to choose the right tool for the job. There are some situations where an email works really well or text works really well. But there are others where you really have to have that face-to-face conversation. So we need to make that happen. There are other, you know, thinking about things like as a manager, as a leader, I always think about, I'm thinking about holding a meeting for something. My first thought is, okay, does this require a meeting or can I accomplish this in an email or some other format and not have to take people's time with a meeting and, you know, there are lots of things like that. So what's, but there are times when I think a meeting is absolutely necessary here. So we need to choose the right tool for the job and consider the channel. Consider the fact that texting and emailing are more channel lean, right? We don't have access as receivers to as many channels. We can't hear that person's voice. We can't see their facial expressions. So if it's a message that could be interpreted differently or in a way that we don't want or intend, then we might consider not using that channel. That's very channel lean. It may be a face-to-face conversation would be better or at least a phone call where they can hear our voice and tone of voice. But so we need to consider the channel very carefully. It's a very important part of leadership is choosing these channels appropriately and choosing the right tool for the job when it comes to communicating these things. When we think about the feedback, we need to have a couple things in mind. First of all, emotional intelligence, right? And nonverbal communication are important in feedback. When we look at nonverbal communication, we need to be able to pay attention to somebody's facial expressions. Even if we're in charge, even if it's an authoritative situation, we need to be able to read that person's body language and to kind of read the room a little bit if it's a group and understand how that body language and how that nonverbal communication, what that's communicating to us. And then we can make adjustments accordingly. As leaders, we need to be sensitive to those types of things. And as leaders, we also need to demonstrate effective emotional intelligence. We need to not only be in touch with our own emotions, be able to identify and effectively manage and communicate our own emotions, but also recognize and work to sort of manage, in a sense, the emotions of others. So we need to develop skills toward emotional intelligence as well. That's really important. Thinking about noise is an implication for leadership. We need to prepare for distractions. We need to understand that people are distracted, that we're distracted. And depending on the situation, we really need to focus on eliminating those distractions as a leader for others and for ourselves. If we're holding a one-on-one conversation and really it's something sort of important or that requires our full attention, then we need to shut our email down. And we need to put our phone somewhere that it's not going to be a distraction. We need to give our full attention to that. And if we can't, then we need to arrange a time when we can and say, look, I'm not in a position to really focus on this the way that I want to right now. So can we do this at this particular time when we can really have the time to focus on this intently and give it our best listening skills, which is not what I have to offer right now? So we need to prepare for those distractions, really trying to remove those distractions as much as possible as a leader so that everything's getting our full attention. But we need to understand that not everything can get our full attention all the time. So we need to manage those things. And as far as context, understanding that there is a time and a place for everything and that there's a time and a place that that communication takes place. So if it's happening right now, okay, what's the time and place here? What's appropriate for me to discuss and what's the appropriate tone for me to take and so forth? Or if there's, you know, I'm going to have a sensitive conversation with somebody. What's the appropriate time and place for that? And let's arrange that. Let's make sure that we're in a good position again to remove those distractions and that I can best focus on those nonverbals and emphasize my emotional intelligence, really employ that. But we need to think about what's the most appropriate time and place for this conversation and this communication. And if it's not now, then when can we set this up so that it would be the appropriate time and place? And really though, these leadership and communication overlap in so many important ways. You know, it's difficult to be an effective leader. If you do not have good communication skills. So communication really plays an important role in your effectiveness as a leader. So we need to work on developing our communication skills in conjunction with our other leadership skills that we're going to be working on. If you have questions about how all this works and how it impacts everything with communication, please feel free to email me. I would love to chat with you via email and discuss that with you. So in the meantime, I hope you'll really think about where these things intersect and how they influence one another in the overarching work of developing leadership skills in conjunction and influenced by your communication skills.