I’m fortunate to know many exceptional leaders. When I consider what makes them exceptional, I see how they practice effective communication. I also see they have a fully engaged organization.

Effective communication leads to engaged employees, which leads to many good things for any organization. Here’s how it works:

Having engaged employees leads to trust, excellent morale, functional teamwork, high levels of productivity, mutual respect, extra effort, satisfied customers, creativity and innovation, a bias for action, profitable growth, an enjoyable work environment, and other benefits.

With so many positive outcomes stemming from having engaged employees, why wouldn’t you want to be the best communicator you can be?

Leadership Tip

Identify three aspects of your communication that, if improved, would engage your team more and make you an even better leader.

Here is a short list to get you thinking:

Clarity and consistency – Are your messages clear and consistent? How do you know? Leaders who are clear with their messages and consistent with the direction and decision-making they provide have greater credibility than those who don’t. This leads to favorable employee engagement.

Feedback – Is the feedback you provide constructive? Your feedback should be timely and helpful. If it isn’t, employee disengagement can set in.

Open to feedback – Are you open to receiving feedback yourself so you know what you can do to improve? Asking for feedback and then responding to it positively is what good leaders do. Trust, confidence, and engagement all result from your interest in receiving feedback, then acting on it.

Follow up – Do you do what you say you’ll do? Are you timely with follow up? Or are your promises shallow? When you consistently follow up on your promises, your credibility rises, and employee engagement follows.

As you conduct your communication self-analysis, consider its many other aspects, too. Then make better communication a continuous self-improvement goal versus a one-and-done project.