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GREAT COMMUNICATION SECRETS OF GREAT LEADERS
THE VISIONARY
The second type of leadership communicator is what we call the visionary.
Visionaries are those leaders whose ardent belief in their cause outweighs
their words. Their speaking style comes from deep within, from their inner
core values. Their mission is to persuade, to change points of view. And their
leadership does not stop when the words do. Rather, it continues in the con-
duct of their daily lives.
One of the most impassioned leadership speakers of our times is Steve
Jobs. A pioneer in the development of the personal computer, Jobs is a highly
vocal advocate for the integration of technology into one’s lifestyle. An
accomplished speaker, Jobs knows how to involve the audience, how to tell a
story, how to use language to draw mental pictures, and, most convincingly,
how to use his passion to persuade others of the inevitability of his cause.
Jobs mixes the language of technology with a gee-whiz fascination with
the possibilities of what digitally based personalized technologies can deliver.
His experience in Hollywood as a founder of Pixar, an animation house, cou-
pled with his iconic stature as the co-founder of Apple Computer, lends Jobs
a stature that few in his industry can match. Another secret to Jobs’s ability to
sell his message is his willingness to intertwine his personal destiny with that
of Apple. Thus, his message becomes larger than life and has more of an
opportunity of being heard, not simply by dedicated users of Apple computers,
but also by the mainstream media.
In our context, the visionary has a passion that supercedes spoken words.
The message itself is always in what the speaker says—as it is with the
expert—but what gives it power is the leader’s conviction concerning the
cause. The visionary as a leader-presenter is consumed with passion. He or
she believes in the cause and wants others to embrace it.

THE COACH
The third type of leadership communicator is a combination of the previous
two—part visionary and part expert. We call this type of leader the coach. The
coach is a collaborator, the one who is called upon by virtue of her or his
expertise in a particular subject. Coaches are those who change organizations
one person at a time. They look for the unique way to communicate to an indi-
vidual by discovering what motivates that person, e.g., more money, advance-
ment, or prestige. Once the coach learns the motivational point, he or she can
leverage it to help the person succeed.
More and more management, and by extension leadership, involves
coaching. Why? Leaders are evaluated on the results of their people. It is up to
the leader to enable the team to succeed. Success depends upon communica-