Communication is one of the top skills leaders need to master if they want to reach their goals. But why is it so important? The way they communicate with their team, the timing of it, and the information they share all impact how people feel about their jobs and the company.

However, a survey conducted by Interact/Harris revealed that 91% of employees believe their managers are bad communicators. Most of them send unclear and vague messages and use inflated terms that might confuse people.

If you're one of those managers who tell your team to focus on key priorities, get better results for this quarter or put the customer first, you may need to be more specific about what you want to achieve and how you would do it.

Using fuzzy declarations and assuming everyone on the team shares the exact definition of concepts such as priorities, customer relationships, culture, or results is a big communication mistake. And this mistake is perpetuated when other senior managers, fearing looking stupid, keep passing vague instructions to their own teams.

Effective communication becomes a management tool that, when used well, creates organizational alignment and improves performance. In its absence, misalignment costs the company precious time, talented people, and productivity.

So what are those key messages leaders should have control over if they want to meet their goals and influence their organization? Keep reading to find out. But first, let's take a look at common issues recognized by employees when communication is not a priority in their workplace.

The survey mentioned above identified the following problems when leaders lack communication skills:

• They don't recognize employee achievements
• They don't give clear directions
• They don't have time to meet with employees
• They don't offer constructive criticism
• They don't ask about employees' lives outside of work
• They refuse to talk to subordinates
• They don’t know people’s names
  

Effective communication must happen across subjects, business units, and the whole organization. John Hamm, the author of the Harvard Business Review article “The Five Messages Leaders Must Manage,” recommends focusing on these particular areas as crucial issues emerge when communication is poor and vague.

Resistance to change is natural, so announcements about organizational changes should be made carefully, especially if the corporate structure is involved. The organizational structure represents influence and power, so people fear losing their status when modifications are announced.

And if a leader fails to share details of such an important plan at the right time, the whole company can fall into chaos. But presenting a reorganization as a way to achieve goals and optimize resources rather than just shifting people’s positions in the org chart can make a huge difference.

It’s the manager’s responsibility to deliver an explicit message in a way that gives people a good understanding of the process, the reasoning, and the expected results. The goal: avoid rumors and fear.

Yes, the goal for any organization is to grow its financials. But telling team members they need to bring results can be risky for the company because they will do whatever it takes to meet the expected results. Along the way, leaders forget the connection between people and results. If employees don’t find value in their job, they lose interest, and their performance will be compromised.

Building a solid plan, communicating it, and focusing on clean execution can bring in the desired results. And if leaders make people part of this process from the beginning, the outcome will exceed the expectations. Why? When employees feel they’re more than simple workers, great ideas come up, and financial results are surpassed.

There's a misconception among some managers that they are in that position to answer all the questions, solve all the problems, and make all the decisions. The truth is that effective leaders understand that their role is to bring out the best in their people and create a collaborative environment where everyone can safely pitch in.

Yes, knowledge is one of the reasons they are in a management position, but leading a team requires another set of skills and abilities. Empowering team members to find solutions to problems and be part of the decision-making process is just the beginning. A collaborative approach encourages smart people to contribute great ideas.

Time is gold, and as a precious element, it’s short in supply. Or at least that’s what most people believe. Between meetings and deadlines, managers struggle to meet the long list of commitments during the limited hours of the day. But when they send the message that time is what rules, quantity over quality takes over the organization.

Getting people to do too much in a block of time gives the wrong idea of productivity and makes the company’s operations ineffective. So when time constraints appear, leaders need to show how to use this limited resource best by signaling to do fewer things but do them very well.

Creating a corporate culture is challenging. It relies on your employees and how they behave in your organization. But it’s on the leader to communicate the company’s values and build processes to guide people to act according to them.

When managers fail to share their vision and expectations, cultures become meaningless. A healthy culture creates the best scenarios for people to achieve their goals and keeps teams in the loop about any important corporate updates or changes and business practices. Communications are clear, and everyone knows their role in the organization.

Taking your communication efforts lightly will impact your business goals. The messages you send (or don’t send) will make people behave accordingly. So being intentional and clear when communicating has the power to align people around the vision, so everyone works towards the same goals.

Consistency in management style across your organization is highly relevant to achieving business goals. And way more than you think. So when high-performing individual contributors are promoted to management positions with no guidance or training whatsoever, all their hard work can easily fall through the cracks. The solution: A management development program.

But let's be clear. Management development programs don’t just help upskill new managers. People with management experience need ongoing training to be successful at their jobs in the long term. Otherwise, you can encounter poor decision-making, bad communication, a lack of business goal alignment, and some other issues.

The good news is that the knowledge and skills required to effectively lead a team can be taught. These two are, in fact, the main categories management development programs should cover. But only by designing training according to your organization's structure, industry, and needs you will close gaps at an organizational level and develop leaders in your team.

Let's take a look at how you can start your own program.

We have mentioned before that managers must have certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) to succeed. While attitudes are innate to people (and can be corrected), organizational training focuses on developing specific knowledge and skills to help them thrive in the company.

Managers across all industries are expected to be skilled in leadership and supervision, communication, general business, and technology; they also need a solid understanding of the industry in which they operate and the organization's structure.

But the list is not close to being over. They need to be familiar and comfortable with finance, marketing, and operations, regardless of their particular area of expertise. They also need to clearly understand the organization's culture, philosophies, policies, and procedures.

It sounds like too much, but that's what management development programs are for: Developing areas for improvement and offering ongoing performance support. Let's go step by step on what you need to create a program that will solve your problems and get you an ROI.

There’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all in management development. Every organization is unique and has specific development needs. So the first thing you need to do is get familiar with the organizational context, meaning, structure, systems, culture, life cycles, and every dimension of it. Once you gather that information, you can identify where gaps are coming from and start assessing current needs and critical competencies for the near future.

After you establish that you need a management development program, goals are the next step. Identify two to four general goals where you can pinpoint the results you want to achieve with the program. Create SMART goals by making sure they’re specific and measurable, use an action verb at the beginning, and ensure they’re observable and relevant to the organization.

Good example: Explain the company’s Cloud strategy, including private cloud, GCP, and AWS.

As opposed to…

Bad example: Understand what our Cloud strategy is.

And then, you can get a little more granular by identifying learning objectives for each goal. And you can update these objectives as you work to achieve each goal. Just remember to use the same SMART goals methodology to create those.

Now is the time to create content for the implementation of the program. There are different instructional design methodologies to organize and streamline the production of your course content, but we prefer the ADDIE model.

It was developed in the 1970s, and it’s commonly used but also very relevant to design management development programs. Why? It’s simple, effective, and easy to remember. Here are the 5 stages of the ADDIE model.

Find out who your audience is, what they need to know, their knowledge gaps, and what they like and what they don’t. How can you do that? It’s as simple as asking questions to understand the current situation and the whole point of the training. This phase should be a full audit of the audience, business goals, and training methodologies. The result: A training plan that responds to Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How.

This is where you take all the info from the previous stage and make practical decisions about delivery methods, structure, duration, assessment, and feedback. Create an outline of the methods and activities you are going to use to achieve the learning objective. Be aware of your audience’s learning styles and adjust the content accordingly to make it engaging. Make sure to include plenty of opportunities for the audience to interact with you and each other, and mix it up – you can overdo breakout rooms, for example.

The content has been decided, and now you need to develop your visuals and other materials for your activities. Selecting graphics, colors, and fonts may seem trivial for some people, but that’s how you make the course appealing to your audience. Testing, or piloting, the course with a small group who will give you honest feedback before going live is a great idea to make sure everything goes as planned.

Once you’re happy with the design and the results from the pilot, it’s time to share the course with learners.

Since ADDIE is a structured method of creating training programs, feedback is essential to improve the way you design your future management development programs. Ask learners to complete surveys at the end of their course and focus on things like goals, methodology, activities, design, and every aspect of your training.

It’s straightforward and easy to remember, right?

Surveying people on how they think the program went is one thing. But tracking people’s improvements in their managerial performance will show you the real impact of your management development program. In their day-to-day work, they’ll discover what’s missing from the program and what can be improved. Check in with participants 90 days after the program and find out what they’re actually doing on the job that they learned from your program. Ask for their reflections on what they suggest for future versions of the program.

An effective management development program transforms high-performing individual contributors into great people managers and supercharges the skills of those with some managerial experience. It’s the best investment you can make for your people and organization