Communication in Leadership

As a leader, I think there are three steps to effective communication as a leader. The three steps are 1. Speaking 2. Listening and 3. Learning. You have to have or develop all of these communication skills to have an effective communication with people in your life.
The first step is speaking. This is you talking about what you think, let others know what is going on. Nothing can get started if someone doesn't start talking. You let people know your opinion. But don't let this become controlling, because then people won't listen to you.
The second step is listening, This is where you would let others do the speaking. You have to listen to their thoughts and opinions, they listened to yours. The more input you have, the better. You can't always let yourself make all decisions, because sometimes your own decision might not be the best decision.
The third step is learning. You are talking with others, but why? You aren't just talking to talk. You are taking each others opinions and ideas and learning from them. You might learn about others or even yourself by what they communicate. I think the learning step of communicating is most important because you have to actually analyze what has been talked about. It isn't worth the time talking about it if you don't take something from it!

Dianna Elrod