You can’t be a great leader without being a great communicator. It’s as simple as that.

You will never excel at leadership without this most important of soft skills, no matter how intellectually intelligent, educated, or technically brilliant you are.

Leadership is about people. To be a leader in the true sense, people must want to follow you – even when times are tough. Especially when times are tough.

To want to follow, people must feel a human connection with their leader.

And to feel a human connection, there must be strong communication that motivates, encourages, inspires and empowers.

You must also be able to regulate your emotions, have difficult conversations when required, and work with the emotions of others.

Good communication and leadership go hand-in-hand and a leader in name isn’t necessarily a leader in practice.

A person who knows their job or industry backwards is not always a good leader of people. Nor is the person who can manage, coordinate, plan and organise well.

Sure, this person may have people work for them who do what they are asked because of the leader’s job title. But if people don’t choose to follow a leader, they’re not a true leader.

As British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill is quoted as saying, “The difference between mere management and leadership is communication.”

This is an excerpt from Leah Mether’s book, ‘Soft is the New Hard: How to Communicate Effectively Under Pressure’, due for release March 2019.