DAR ES SALAAM: THERE is something I have noticed during my recent engagements with leaders. We can spend considerable time discussing communication, public speaking and executive presence while everybody comfortably agrees with the principles.
The real conversation usually begins when I introduce pressure, disagreement or a situation in which a leader’s authority is publicly challenged.
That is when communication stops being theoretical and becomes leadership. During a recent session with women leaders at Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School, I presented a situation that many senior people will recognise.
Imagine that you are making an important point during a management meeting when a colleague interrupts you and says, in front of everyone, “This is exactly why this department is not moving.”
The room becomes quiet and everybody looks at you. What you do next may tell the people in that room more about your leadership than the presentation you have been making. The instinct may be to defend yourself immediately, remind the colleague who is in charge or respond with equal force.
Another leader may choose to ignore the comment completely. Yet there is a third possibility: acknowledge the concern while refusing to allow the conversation to become personal.
A response such as, “I hear the concern; let us deal with the issue itself,” allows the discussion to continue without surrendering authority. If the manner of engagement has become disrespectful, the leader can still say calmly, “I am happy to discuss the disagreement, but let us do so respectfully.”
The point is not to memorise clever sentences for difficult meetings. Real leadership rarely follows a prepared script. The larger lesson is that authority does not always need volume, and firmness does not require hostility.
A leader can protect the dignity of the office while also protecting the dignity of the person with whom he or she disagrees. This matters as we think about DIRA 2050 because transformation will require institutions in which people can question existing ways of doing things.
Innovation does not grow easily in rooms where disagreement is interpreted as disloyalty or where employees quickly learn that the safest contribution to a meeting is silence.
Boards and management teams therefore have a responsibility to create environments in which ideas can be challenged without people being humiliated.
That brings me to an aspect of executive communication that is frequently overshadowed by public speaking: Listening Skills.
We often associate strong communicators with people who speak confidently and persuasively, yet some of the most important communication a leader does happens while he or she is silent. Listening to understand rather than merely waiting for an opportunity to reply can change the quality of a decision. Consider what happens in many meetings.
A junior officer begins explaining a problem, but halfway through, a senior person concludes that he already understands what happened and starts providing the solution.
Another employee raises an uncomfortable concern and receives an immediate defence of the existing position. After a few experiences like these, people learn something about the institution: bringing bad news upwards is risky.
That can become dangerous for leadership because executives begin receiving increasingly polished versions of reality. The organisation may appear calm at the top precisely because people lower down have stopped saying what leadership needs to hear.
A leader who asks, “What am I missing?” or “Help me understand why you see it differently,” is not surrendering authority. That leader is improving the quality of information on which authority will eventually be exercised.
This ability will become increasingly important as our institutions change. DIRA 2050 will require innovation, new technologies, different skills and more productive ways of working. None of these changes will happen without difficult conversations.
Some jobs will change. Old processes will be questioned. Departments may have to work differently, and people who have been comfortable with familiar systems may understandably feel uncertain. The leadership challenge is therefore not to eliminate disagreement. It is to communicate through it.
The same applies to difficult performance conversations. Most organisations have experienced situations in which a technically excellent manager treats colleagues poorly, a high-performing employee consistently undermines teamwork, or two departments have quietly stopped cooperating. Everybody may know there is a problem, but nobody wants to have the uncomfortable conversation.
ALSO READ: Envoy Yakubu meets IAA leadership as it seeks to expand its global partnerships
For a while, avoidance feels like peace, yet the organisation is actually accumulating a larger problem. A useful difficult conversation begins with the issue rather than an attack on the individual.
Saying, “We need to discuss what happened in yesterday’s meeting because it is affecting the way the team is working,” creates a very different conversation from saying, “You are always difficult.”
The first identifies behaviour and its consequences; the second defines the person. One leaves room for dialogue while the other almost guarantees defence. Language matters because leadership communication is not only about what we intend to say.
It is also about what the other person is likely to hear. Today’s leaders must also recognise that the boundary between internal and external communication has almost disappeared.
An email intended for three executives can be forwarded widely. A WhatsApp message can become a screenshot and travel far beyond the group for which it was intended.
An internal memo can become public before management has finished discussing it. For that reason, I have encouraged leaders to apply a simple test before pressing SEND: If this message appeared publicly tomorrow, would I still be comfortable with its accuracy, tone and professionalism?
This is not about becoming afraid to communicate. It is about recognising that digital communication has made leadership behaviour more visible, portable and permanent than it was in the past. Ultimately, executive communication is tested most seriously under pressure.
When everyone else becomes emotional, can the leader create clarity? When information is incomplete, can leadership resist the temptation to speculate? When challenged publicly, can a leader respond firmly without turning the disagreement into a contest of personalities?
When the organisation makes a mistake, can leadership acknowledge what went wrong while explaining what will happen next? These behaviours matter because people look to leadership for signals. If the leader panics, uncertainty spreads. If leadership becomes defensive, people may conclude something is being hidden.
But when a leader calmly explains what is known, acknowledges what is not yet known and makes the next step clear, uncertainty becomes easier to manage.
As Boards and management teams align institutions towards DIRA 2050, perhaps leadership communication under pressure deserves to be treated as a strategic capability rather than simply a personal skill. Transformation will inevitably bring disagreements, difficult decisions and uncomfortable conversations.
The organisations that progress will not necessarily be those that avoid such moments, but those whose leaders know how to navigate them without destroying trust. Leadership communication is relatively easy when everybody agrees with us.
The more revealing question is what happens when they do not. It is in those moments, when we are challenged, interrupted, criticised or presented with information we would rather not hear, that people often discover what kind of leaders we really are.
And the institutions capable of carrying Tanzania towards 2050 will need leaders who can handle precisely those moments well. And this is why Executive Leadership Communication training is important to Board members, CEO’s and the Management Team.
The post When crisis looms: The real test of leadership communication appeared first on Daily News.