By Professor M.S. Rao, Ph.D.
Purpose – The purpose of the research paper is to highlight the significance of communication from the perspective of soft leadership. It outlines the constituents of communication and justifies that paralanguage is a parallel language. It effectively links the role of paralanguage with soft skills. It reveals that semantics and inner noise are the culprits of communication. The paper adds value by emphasizing that communication is the sister of leadership. It provides the tools and techniques while communicating with various kinds of audiences wherein the sender has to put extra efforts to build momentum and synergy among the receivers by channeling their emotions, egos and feelings effectively.
Introduction
“The art of communication is the language of leadership.” —James Humes
The success of soft leadership depends more on communication than anything else. It is through communication the soft leaders learn the pulse of their people and mould their leadership style accordingly to meet the needs, expectations and aspirations of others. It is through communication leaders express their ideas, ideals and insights and persuade others to follow to accomplish the desired goals and objectives. Hence there is strong connection between soft leadership and communication. Let us learn what is all about communication and how does it help soft leaders.
What is Communication?
Communication is the exchange of information, ideas and knowledge with others. It has various elements such as sender, encoder, transmission, understanding, decoder, receiver and finally feedback. Communication is incomplete without feedback. However, there is also eight element that is noise, which is the culprit of communication. We all communicate from womb to tomb. Man cannot live without communication as man is basically a social animal. Everybody craves for communication as it is through this media man is able to convey and express his basic needs and requirements.
Constituents of Communication
Research reveals that out of seven messages sent only one gets across to others effectively and the rest fall flat. Besides, people remember only 10 per cent of what they hear. Therefore, leaders have to be more careful in communicating with others. They must emphasize on various ways and means to get the message across to others effectively. In any communication, body language plays a major role as it contains 55 percent while the voice modulation has 38 percent and the rest 7 per cent goes towards oral language. Hence, usage of body language plays a predominant role in communication. The leaders must make use of this portion for effective leading.
Is Paralanguage a Parallel Language?
When one of the participants in my recent training programs asked, “Sir, what is the meaning of paralanguage?” I felt glad that someone shot such a good question after a long time. Although I often talk of paralanguage in my communication training programs, nobody asked such question until recently. I smiled and replied, “Thank you for asking a good question!” and I explained as follows:
Paralanguage is a non-verbal communication. It contains pitch, volume, intonation, emphasis, word, syllable stress and even silence. It includes vocalizations such as hissing, shushing, and whistling, as well as speech modifications such as quality of voice (sepulchral, whiny, giggly) or hesitations and speed in talking.
It emphasizes more on how an individual says rather than what an individual says. In other words, paralanguage includes vocal animation, body animation and facial animation. It is linked with kinesics and proxemics. Kinesics deals with body language and proxemics deal with the distance, space and touch that one maintains during communication. In addition, it includes both intentional and unintentional nonverbal communication.
In other words, communication is bifurcated into verbal and non-verbal communication. Verbal communication involves in what we are saying while the non-verbal communication involves in how we are saying and moving during communication. How one says is known as paralanguage and how one moves is known as kinesics. It can be called 7-38-55 principle where 7% of communication goes to oral, 38% goes to voice modulation and paralanguage and the rest 55% goes to body language. Paralanguage is culture specific. The way paralanguage is used in one culture might not be appreciated in other cultures as it is interpreted differently across cultures.
Paralanguage has several advantages. It helps in improving as an effective communicator and speaker. It helps in enhancing soft skills. It plays a crucial role in gelling well with others. It helps in expressing the hidden data of communication such as egos, emotions and feelings effectively.
Paralanguage contains inflection, intensity, tone, pitch, pang, pace, pauses and silence. Inflection is about rising, falling or steadiness in voice. Intensity is about the strength in the voice. Pitch is about changes in the voice from low to high and versa. Pace is the rate at which communication takes. Pause is about giving break to speech and it allows the listeners to understand and appreciate the content and it also allows the speaker to think through and retrieve the information from mind.
Paralanguage and Soft Skills
Soft skills are the skills about communication skills with an emphasis on politeness and firmness. These are the skills, abilities and traits related to personality, attitude and behavior. Soft skills are also known as people skills, interpersonal skills and non-domain skills. Domain skills are also known as hard skills which are about specialization in one’s area of expertise and technical competency. Hard skills are the ability to do the job. Soft skills are the ability to execute hard skills effectively. While hard skills can be easily measured the soft skills are tough to measure and the psychometric instruments that are available may not be fully accurate. Soft skills stress on how an individual says, while hard skills stress on what an individual says. Since paralanguage also stresses on how an individual communicates through non-verbal communication, there is close connection between soft skills and paralanguage.
Paralanguage Examples
For example, ‘don’t smoke’ sounds harder than saying ‘thanks for not smoking’. We can call ‘don’t smoke’ as hard skill and ‘thanks for not smoking’ as soft skills. When we say, ‘thanks for not smoking’ paralanguage comes into the picture. For instance, the same thing can be said with an emphasis as follows:
- THANKS for not smoking!
- Thanks FOR not smoking!
- Thanks for NOT smoking!
- Thanks for not SMOKING!
When you emphasize on bold letters in each sentence, you express from the perspective of paralanguage.
Currently corporates emphasize more on soft skills rather than hard skills as soft skills help people survive and succeed at the workplace thus enhancing their career growth and opportunities. Few Information Technology (IT) companies firmly believe that when people are smart at soft skills they can easily learn software skills. It is widely said that hard skills get you employment while soft skills retain you in job for a longer time.
Paralanguage ensures effective interpersonal relations at the workplace thus enhancing productivity and performance by promoting right intentions, thoughts, attitudes and behavior. It paves the way for organizational effectiveness and excellence. Paralanguage plays a crucial role in soft skills as it conveys message through politeness and firmness. Since paralanguage accompanies oral language parallel, we can justify that paralanguage as a parallel language.
Significance of Communication
“Good communication does not mean that you have to speak in perfectly formed sentences and paragraphs. It isn’t about slickness. Simple and clear go a long way.” —John Kotter
Communication clicks quickly only when it is tailored and tuned as per the level of audience. Leaders know the knack of communication and suit their styles as per the maturity, interest and the areas of expertise of their audiences. They match their communication skills as per the level of their employees to ensure effective interpersonal skills and productivity at the workplace.
Effective communication makes a good leader a great leader. When leaders are equipped with effective communication skills they will be able to deliver goods effectively as chances of losing the important information are remote. It makes things clear to both the leaders and group members. James Thurber rightly remarked, “Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of hair trigger balances, when a false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.” It minimizes confusion and chaos. It keeps all channels open by adjusting as per the needs of the people and their profile. It eliminates any misunderstanding in acknowledging the information paving the way for smooth execution of tasks. It avoids the delay of the tasks and builds synergy among the group members.
Inner Noise and Semantics
“If you just communicate you can get by. But if you skillfully communicate, you can work miracles.” —Jim Rohn
People often take communication for granted. George Bernard Shaw rightly said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” In fact, most of the communication takes place within the mind rather outside. There is an inner noise that prevents proper communication among all. It prevents from effective listening and jumps into conclusion or to compete with others to speak rather to listen. Hence, inner noise is the culprit of communication most of the times.
Besides, semantics disturb the communication. One word will have multiple meanings as per the context. Usages of idioms and phrases also play crucial role in communication. For instance, when people are asked to pull up socks, some might think as getting active while some might think as physically pulling their socks. In fact, the real message to pull up your socks means to get active and energetic. Similarly, when a boss asks secretary to inform the minutes of the meeting and if she comes back after the meeting and informs that the boss spoke for 38 minutes, it means she did not interpret the message properly. In fact, the message from boss to secretary is to outline and inform the key points out of the meeting. Therefore, semantics play a crucial role in effective communication. The senders must communicate effectively with the senders by understanding their knowledge, maturity and intelligence level.
Is Communication Sister of Leadership?
Leadership is about handling people to accomplish goals and objectives. While handling people communication becomes the core component through which leaders connect with others. As leadership styles are different to touch different people with different emotions, needs, egos and feelings, there are different communication styles such as aggressive communication, submissive communication, assertive-aggressive communication and assertive communication. The leaders need to adopt assertive communication style ideally and others styles from time to time to make the leadership effective. Because of key role communication play while leading others, we can say that communication is the sister of leadership.
Effective Communication
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” —Mark Twain
As already discussed that out of seven messages only one sails through smoothly and effectively to the receiver. It is, therefore, very clear that communication is not easy. Sometimes barriers and filters are the culprits of communication. Barriers are physical in nature while filters are psychological in nature. Some people have pre-conceived notions about the senders taking only one side of the picture or rejecting the information by blocking their minds. Sometimes ego is the culprit of the communication. When people feel that the sender is not competent or the listener feels that he/she is superior to the sender in terms of knowledge and information, communication gets disturbed.
While communicating with an audience, it is essential to look at their similarities by lifting their ego levels and sending the messages effectively. The senders must bring entire audience at a certain level and align all forces and factors to send messages to receivers. It is indeed a challenging task for senders and it is easier said than done. The senders must gauge the body language of the receivers and must change their communication styles and strategies from time to time to sustain energy levels of audiences and communicate the key messages. If the senders feel that the receivers are getting restless due to information overload then they must make use of humor to refresh the minds of the receivers and then again keep sending the messages. Hence, there is no quick fix solution or strategy to communicate with many receivers. The senders must change their strategies and styles from time to time depending on the content, situation, the receivers and the timing of the communication to make the communication effective.
While communicating it is equally important to display energy and enthusiasm. Senders need to radiate warmth and demonstrate positive body language with a good eye contact. These serve as good connectors during communication with others.
Summary
“The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.” —Anthony Robbins
Leaders can influence others through communication alone. Nitin Nohria rightly remarked, “Communication is the real work of leadership.” It is through the magic words leaders influence and inspire others to do the impossible things. Soft leaders demonstrate assertive communication so as to connect with others and carry forward them towards their goals. Leaders like Booker T Washington, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Dalai Lama, and Mother Teresa adopted assertive communication to influence and inspire their people. To conclude, assertive communication is an important ingredient of soft leadership.
About the Author
Professor M.S. Rao, Ph.D. is the Father of “Soft Leadership” and the Founder of MSR Leadership Consultants, India. He is an International Leadership Guru with forty-three years of experience and the author of fifty-two books including the award-winning ‘See the Light in You’ URL: https://www.amazon.com/See-Light-You-Spiritual-Mindfulness/dp/1949003132. He has published over 300 papers and articles in prestigious international publications including Leader to Leader, Thunderbird International Business Review, Strategic HR Review, Development and Learning in Organizations, Industrial and Commercial Training, On the Horizon, and Entrepreneur magazine. He is a soldier, entrepreneur, editor, educator, author, enlightener, and philosopher. He is a C-Suite advisor and global keynote speaker. He brings a strategic eye and long-range vision given his multifaceted professional experience including military, teaching, training, research, consultancy, and philosophy. He is passionate about serving and making a difference in the lives of others. He trains a new generation of leaders through leadership education and publications. His vision is to build one million students as global leaders by 2030 URL: http://professormsraovision2030.blogspot.com/2014/12/professor-m-s-raos-vision-2030-one_31.html. He advocates gender equality globally (#HeForShe). He invests his time in authoring books and blogging on executive education, learning, and leadership. Most of his work is available free of charge on his four blogs including http://professormsraovision2030.blogspot.com. He is a prolific author and a dynamic, energetic, and inspirational leadership speaker. He can be reached at msrlctrg@gmail.com.
Reference
