How to Communicate Like a Leader
Before joining HubSpot over five years ago, I was an entrepreneur for 13-plus years and leader of multiple small companies with no more than 40 employees. While I fancied myself a leader at the time, I can now look back and see how limited my leadership skills were and how much HubSpot has pushed me to grow. Many of the lessons I learned were about how to communicate effectively as a leader. If you’re a new manager, especially if you’re also joining a new company that may have a different culture than you're used to, this post will be especially helpful for you.
To keep it simple, I turned the word ‘tact’ into an acronym to help remember the core lessons when it comes to communicating well (pretty clever if you ask me!).
Being mindful of your communications can be challenging, especially as you become a leader. If you’re an extrovert, communicating feels like second nature and is likely done without much thought. For introverts, communicating can feel difficult because of a tendency to over-analyze, anxiety around saying the wrong thing, or just a natural preference for listening and absorbing rather than talking in a group setting. For me, the most common pattern was, “Think of something, communicate something.” But as I’ve taken on more leadership responsibilities here at HubSpot, I’ve come to recognize that my words matter and everything I say has an impact. If you can learn to recognize your “leader voice” early on, you can be thoughtful in what you communicate and intentional in the impact you’re trying to make.
JD Sherman, HubSpot’s former COO, was fond of saying that our job as leaders is to “absorb confusion and pass down clarity.” For me, this has meant seeking alignment with my own leaders as well as my peers so I can share the alignment with my teams in a way that brings confidence and a clear mission. Leadership voice stems from leadership thinking.
