Effective Team Leader and Interpersonal Communication Skills

Effective interpersonal communication and its impact on the company’s performance has been receiving increasing attention by scholars and practitioners involved in corporate management for quite a long time now. Influential leaders, i.e. those who are unique in their own right, provide examples of excellent interpersonal communication skills that have hugely contributed to reviving declining companies and restoring them to excellence. The research literature produced by those great leaders and scholars helps significantly to better understand the role of interpersonal communication skills in effective leadership. Yet, at the same time, there are reports of frequent cases in which communication between leaders and staff has failed. This paper focuses on three crucial skills that deserve a particular attention of leaders who are interested in improving their interpersonal communication competence: (i) effective listening; (ii) getting across a message clearly and vividly; and (iii) providing performance feedback in a supportive manner. A concise overview of these selected communication skills is aimed at clarifying their complex nature and reflecting on the principles that have been proposed on the basis of our research findings.