By Scott Magdalein, founder of TrainedUp
If the fuel of leadership is vision then the engine is communication. A compelling vision without great communication is like a bus full of fuel with a busted engine. It’s not going far.
Humor me on this engine metaphor for a moment. If you’ve ever popped the hood of your car, you know that engines are complicated systems with a thousand interoperating parts.
The healthiest engines are the ones that are cranked often and run at consistent speeds. Unhealthy engines are the ones that sit for long periods of time or are run at inconsistent speeds.
Leadership communication is the same. That brings us to the point.
Great Leadership Communication Requires Consistency
I’ve written about some characteristics of a pastor before and while great leadership is 90% intangible traits like humility and humor, there’s no denying that great communication is vital to great leadership.
Great communication looks different all the time. Dr. Billy Graham was a great communicator who preached to millions, but so is Bob Goff. Neither of them are pastors, but both are leaders who exemplify great communication.
When I think about great communicators, some are charismatic and some are quiet, some are polished and planned while some are messy. But all great communicators are consistent.
That doesn’t just mean they have one message, but it does mean that one pervading idea infiltrates every message. It means that they communicate regularly and in a similar fashion.
I think of Gary Vaynerchuk who, while brash and coarse, is the master of consistency. He publishes content multiple times a day and always with an underlying message of “hustle.”
But the idea of consistency isn’t just about the message. It’s also about rhythm.
Setting a Rhythm of Communication in Leadership
It’s easy to point to high-profile communicators like the ones I mentioned above, but what if you don’t have a platform before thousands or millions of people? How can you be a great communicator if you’re a pastor at a small church or a bi-vocational youth pastor?
When your audience is dozens and not thousands, your rhythm matters more than ever. Whenever I coach ministry leaders on communication techniques, we always cover communication rhythm because it’s so important to being a great communicator as a team leader.
Communication rhythm is all about redundancy, repetition, and redundancy. Repeating yourself is the best way to get people to understand what you’re saying.
My preaching professor in college told us on the first day that his simple preaching framework was simple. It was this: “Tell them what you’re going to say. Say it. Then tell them what you said.”
His argument was that most people will only remember one thing from your sermon, whether it’s 20 minutes or 50 minutes. So, if you want that one thing they remember to be the important thing, say it three times. (He also advocated for 20-minute sermons on one topic with plenty of pauses and a slow speaking rate.)
Setting a rhythm applies to all communication. That includes the emails you send to your people, your talks over coffee, your preaching, your team meetings, and your reminder text messages. It applies when you’re training children’s ministry volunteers or giving a welcome talk at the beginning of a worship service.
When you’re communicating in a rhythm, you’re teaching your people what to expect from you, what you care about enough to repeat it, and how they should think about those things. You’re preparing them to receive your messages better, too. If they know what to expect, they’re ready to hear it.
Setting a rhythm means being consistent about when you communicate (weekly emails, monthly vision talk, etc) and what you communicate. A communication rhythm will help you be consistent without feeling boring. You’ll be able to follow your own guide, know when to communicate and what to say.
Scott Magdalein is the founder of TrainedUp and a pastor in Jacksonville, Florida. After Bible college, God called him to bivocational ministry, using his experience as an entrepreneur and programmer to support the local church.
