While purging my desk recently, I was struck by how some communications can be conveyed with very few words. I’d come across a file of directions to friends’ homes around the country, written simply enough to follow while driving solo. It harked back to a time before GPS, when a road atlas sat on the passenger seat, just in case. A romantic era of paper maps that has all but disappeared. There was no hidden message being conveyed.
Dealing with people is not as straightforward.
Negotiating the logistics of a client report — supported by a global virtual team — demands much more of my communication skills. Team members rarely report to me. They lack firsthand knowledge of the client’s needs or the full scope of the project. Yet I must enrol their discretionary effort and insight. My instructions must navigate invisible hurdles: cultural norms, personal expectations — often without the benefit of face-to-face conversation.
These are skills I learnt over time: to use language precisely, build trust, and ask better questions — especially those that reveal what I didn’t think to ask because others held insight I couldn’t have imagined. I depended on their generosity to share it. That kind of communication wasn’t just transactional — it was persuasive, and sometimes transformational.
But even that isn’t the whole story.
My experience suggests the deeper challenge lies not in what is said, but in what is inferred. Unspoken emotions, beliefs, and physiological states all shape how a message lands. I might consider the words neutral — but they’re rarely received that way. Maybe I unwittingly reminded him of his mother. Or my question came across as a challenge. Worse still, someone withholds a crucial question for fear I might feel challenged.
Contrary to my early training, communication isn’t just cognitive — it’s emotional and embodied. I recently learned that stripping emotion from my voice or face can be subconsciously threatening. So much for “wearing my professional hat”.
Even when the message is transactional, mastery requires a felt sense of how it’s being received — an embodied attunement to tone, timing, and tension in the space between people.
One of the greatest challenges in any relationship — as leader, lover, parent — is knowing what kind of communication is needed in the moment.
Transactional exchanges transfer information.
Persuasive ones align others to a direction.
Transformational conversations (the most exciting for me) invite transparent sharing, discovery, and co-creation of something new, especially when navigating a fraught conversation or uncharted territory.
Toughest of all is navigating all three levels in one conversation. Yet that’s exactly what leadership often requires: presence, flexibility, and the capacity to shift gears in real time.
Not easy. But a skill worth mastering. Especially now, when we need more leaders who can think clearly, listen generously, and speak in ways that make sense — even when the situation doesn’t.