Page 32 - Great Communication Secrets of Great Leaders

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GREAT COMMUNICATION SECRETS OF GREAT LEADERS
3.
Are your values and those of your organization in harmony?
4.
If so, how? If not, why not?
How can you use your communications to strengthen your
5.
leadership role?
6. What are your core values?
Pick one thing you can do in the next week to improve your
communications.
7. How would you like people to remember you as a leader?
WINSTON CHURCHILL—THE LION WHO ROARED
FOR HIS PEOPLE
Winston Churchill wrote this about becoming prime minister in May 1940
during what some have called Britain’s darkest hour:
As I went to bed at about 3 a.m., I was conscious of a profound sense of
relief. At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene. I
felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but
a preparation of this hour and for this trial. . . . I thought I knew a good
deal about it all, and I was sure I should not fail. 2

Soon enough, Churchill would refer to this period, in which Britain, her
skies defended by men in their twenties and her people bloodied, battered, and
bruised by nightly bombardments, stood alone against Nazi Germany, as her
“finest hour.” It was a phrase that historians would later use to describe his
performance as leader.
How did he do it? His own words just cited give a good indication. He
knew a “good deal”: His two stints as First Lord of the Admiralty, plus his time
as minister, had given him insight into how the military and government must
coordinate their efforts. He had the “authority to give directions”: He had led
men in battle, in government service, and in Parliament. He was one with
“destiny”: As a historian and an avid reader, he measured himself against the
legacies of great leaders in wartime. He was confident: “I was sure I should
not fail.” As historian Geoffrey Best amply illustrates in his one-volume
meta-biography, Churchill had been preparing for this challenge for his entire
life: as soldier, parliamentarian, minister, historian, and journalist.

A NATURAL COMMUNICATOR
What Churchill’s words do not say, but imply, is this: He was a born commu-
nicator. He knew how to describe a scene, present a point of view, and tell a