The Relationship Between Communication and Leadership

Our expectations of leaders influence our ideas of how communication works. Dr Louise Drake, guest lecturer on the Communicating for Influence and Impact online short course from the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), talks about leadership as a shared purpose and discusses the role that communication plays in creating that purpose. 

Transcript

One of the ways in which we can understand the relationship between communication and leadership, is by looking at leadership theory. 

Now, leadership theory is about the way in which we make sense of leadership. It’s our mental model of leadership. And those mental models are incredibly powerful, and they shape our expectations of leaders, our viewpoint on what good leadership looks like, our thoughts on how leaders and leadership should be developed. And we can see how communication is core to each of those, because theories of leadership are intimately connected with theories of influence. 

If I have a mental model of leadership as the general who commands and controls, we can see that that’s a very different theory of influence than say, for example, a mental model of leadership that is about building a collective enthusiasm for a shared story or shared purpose, or, looking to include different voices, and enabling different people to share their voice. That’s a very different theory of influence. And so, we can see there that those theories of leadership really shape our theories of how communication works.

I think there are three themes or trends that are particularly relevant for understanding leadership in the 21st century. 

The first is around the importance of context. It’s that sense of knowing the times, the times in which you live, and how that shapes leadership. So, what are the times for the 21st century? Well, we might talk about being hyperconnected, but yet also new patterns of fragmentation and isolation. We might talk about the development and growth of emerging economies, but then increasing patterns of inequality and polarisation. We might talk about amazing technological progress, but then we can also recognise these intractable problems like climate change, or the destruction of the natural world. 

And these issues present fundamental challenges for leadership, because they are global in scale, they are complex, the future is uncertain, the pace of change is rapid, and it means that no one individual, no one community or institution, no one nation, has the ability to respond to these on their own; we need to engage with multiple perspectives and multiple actors. 

And that means that our theory of leadership is more about navigating between these different parties, these different groups, and trying to build bridges, trying to connect, trying to get a sort of sense of shared purpose. And so that shapes our communication.

Second is a critique of what we might call the hero model of leadership – a highly individual model of leadership. And it’s worth saying that the mental model of the hero leader is very powerful, it’s very dominant. It’s actually the model that most leadership research is done on, and it’s the model that I suspect most people have.

If I say to this cohort, “Leadership”, I think what pops into peoples’ mind is an individual, whether it’s someone with a position of power, a head of state, or perhaps someone inspirational – Nelson Mandela, Greta Thunburg. So, it’s a very powerful mental model, the hero leader. But, increasingly, we are hearing critiques that, from research, is about the fact that we tend to over-attribute success to an individual. We tend to neglect the role of others in that dynamic. What about followers, for example? 

And that leads us on to the third trend, or theme that I think is helpful. And that’s this emerging research and theory around leadership as a process, rather than a person, a dynamic process of leading and following that together creates leadership. And that shapes our expectations of what leadership looks like, and it shapes our understanding of what communication is. 

Therefore, if there is a leader at all, that leader is not a person, it is a shared purpose, a shared story, around which different people will gather, and lead, and follow. And therefore, communication starts to play an enormously important part in creating and sharing that purpose and that story.