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Communication
Writing, speaking, and listening as instruments of leadership: the briefing, the difficult conversation, and the case made in public.
Chapter contents
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Difficult Conversations 6 entries The four sentences that do the work, feedback that changes behaviour, saying no, and delivering a decision people will dislike.
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Foundations of Communication 5 entries What communication is for, why clarity and simplicity differ, and why a message must be delivered far more often than feels necessary.
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Institutional Voice 5 entries Speaking for an organization rather than yourself: message consistency, the public statement, open records, and when to say nothing.
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Listening and Inquiry 5 entries Listening as an information system: questions that get real answers, what silence means, and hearing bad news well.
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Persuasion 5 entries Making a case: evidence and its presentation, pre-wiring, building a coalition, and recognising when persuasion has failed.
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Spoken Communication 7 entries The briefing, presenting to a board, speaking without notes, hostile questions, and talking to a reporter.
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Written Communication 7 entries Conclusion first, the one-page discipline, documents that survive the room, and email as a governance instrument.
Entries filed directly to this chapter
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01
The Skip-Level Conversation
Thirty minutes with someone two levels down, run on a fixed rotation, with rules that keep it from undermining the manager in between. Format, questions, and what to do afterward.
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02
Hearing Bad News Well
The person telling you has already decided it was worth the risk. What you do in the following minute sets the price for everyone who hears about it, and everyone will hear about it.
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03
What Silence Means
A quiet room is reporting something, and the four things it might be reporting call for opposite responses. Reading it as agreement is the default and is wrong most of the time.
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04
Questions That Get Real Answers
Any concerns? reliably returns none, because answering it requires the person to volunteer that something is wrong. The fix is to ask questions whose easiest honest answer is informative.
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05
Listening Is an Information System
Treated as a courtesy, listening gets the effort left over after the real work. Treated as the primary means by which a leader learns what is true, it gets designed.
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06
Delivering a Decision People Will Dislike
Explain the reasoning without reopening the vote. The distinction is between telling people why and inviting them to relitigate, and it is carried almost entirely by tense and framing.
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07
Saying No
A soft no is heard as a maybe, and a maybe invites the case to be made again. The kindest version is the one that closes the question in a single conversation.
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08
Receiving Feedback Without Punishing the Giver
Your first two seconds determine whether you ever hear anything again. Nobody will tell you that you reacted badly, which is why the supply of honest feedback dries up without any observable event.
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09
Giving Feedback That Changes Behaviour
Feedback and evaluation are different instruments delivered in the same words. Merged, the person defends their standing instead of hearing the correction, and nothing changes.
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10
The Four Sentences
Observation, effect, question, ask. The preamble everyone reaches for makes the conversation worse, because it tells the other person something difficult is coming and delays their finding out what.