Humans are born leaders. Whether or not you think of yourself as a leader, and regardless of where you stand on the “leaders are born, not made” debate, it’s a fact of life that members of the species Homo Sapiens evolved in a manner that made us all natural leaders. And the proof is that you’re reading this.
Humans are different from other animals. A large part of this difference comes from one thing that we tend to take for granted – our ability to communicate. Sure, there are lots of animals that communicate. But only humans communicate with the efficiency and effectiveness that allows for the transmission and interpretation of highly complex messages. This ability underpinned the ability of our ancestors to survive in an environment when every other animal was faster, fiercer, stronger or deadlier than they were.
Our ability to communicate gave us an advantage that no other animal could overcome, despite teeth, claws and muscles that make ours look puny by comparison. Our weapons were the ability to coordinate our actions and bring the collective strength and wisdom of a group together to solve our problems. Whether it was the tight-knit hunting party acting as a team or the passing of knowledge from one generation to the next, our ability to transmit messages to each other was the tool we used to find food, warn of danger, care for each other and defend ourselves from threats.
Together, humans are far more capable that they are separately – and it is our communication that brings us together.
Humans still communicate. Despite the monumental shift in human society since we lived in hunter-gatherer tribes on the African savannah, there are many aspects of our lives that remain anchored to our ancestry. We might not think we use our communication skills for quite the same reasons now, but this is analogous to the fish who forgets that they are surrounded by water; it’s so ubiquitous that we tend to look straight past it. Try to get dinner ready tonight without communicating!
Everybody communicates, and we do it all the time. We do it to influence others and to get what we want. There are many occasions where this influence is subtle and transactional. Think of a typical interaction at a shop; you ask for what you want, the vendor provides it, and you exchange items of value to conclude the transaction. Not necessarily the inspiring stuff we associate with the idea of leadership, but influence nonetheless. Both parties in this case were primed to influence in a certain manner, but it took communication to make this happen; without communicating, neither party could have attained their goal, whether it be dinner or dollars.
In order to influence, we need to communicate. It is at the heart of every interaction we have, and it is the means by which we gain the willing consent of others. So, if you want to be an effective leader, you need to be an effective communicator.
Communication is far more than just talking. In fact, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that spoken communication accounts for only a fraction of the messages that pass between us. In 2019, that’s probably an understatement; most of us seem to get far more emails than we do phone calls. But it’s more than that too. So many of the messages we send, we do so without really thinking about it. Take your appearance. You might not think of your appearance as sending a message, but chances are that if you’re reading this, you have short hair, a largish watch, no beard, and a relatively fit physique. Why? Because those things say something. They communicate to others who you are before you say a word. Your clothes are most likely neat and well-kept. You are a medium for a message just by standing up. And the message is clear to those who can interpret it.
And there’s far more to communication than sending messages. Humans tend to think of communication as a series of messages they send, and pauses where they think about the next thing to send. But – and stay with me here – research has conclusively proven that real communication involves reception and interpretation of the sent messages. And that means you need to listen. As you can see above, it’s not just about listening with your ears; most of the message you’re receiving probably isn’t in the content of the spoken words. Don’t get me wrong, active listening is a key component of communication; it shows you’re engaged and provides feedback to the speaker that they are being understood. But you also need to receive with your eyes the non-verbal communication, and go beyond the spoken words you hear to the tone, rhythm, volume and speed of those words. The words might be “I’m fine”, but everyone knows that with the wrong tone, the message is the opposite of the words used.
Leadership is about communication. And that means going beyond a token effort to listen, or delivering the occasional piece of rhetoric. If you want to really understand how to influence, you need to understand how humans communicate, and how you can do it better than you do now. What messages are you really sending with your speech about work-life balance that everyone knows you wrote at 8 pm on a Friday while still at work? What message are you actually receiving if a conversation is really just you waiting for a break so you can tell your own story? You simply cannot influence others without communicating effectively; and despite what you think, if you haven’t spent time and effort learning how to communicate, you’re not doing it as effectively as you should be.
Take this as a challenge. Go and learn how to be a better communicator in order to be a better influencer. Read widely. Study how famous orators give speeches. Sit and watch people in a café try and get their point across to each other. Practice. Take notes. Look for the message that is sent simply through people trying to encode messages. And analyse how you might better create the shared mental model that is effective communication, a tool more important to the human race than fire, flint, steel or sword. Your ancestors gave you the legacy of language – it’s time to get beyond the savannah, and really shape the world.
Our ancestors were born leaders. They influenced each other to find food, shelter, partners and take care of those that needed it. They developed communication because they had to; it gave them the tools they needed to outwit, outlast and outthink the competition. It made them leaders. Their legacy is our advantage; it would be a shame to waste it.
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