What if you could inspire and enable transformative change by communicating through your whole self and with your deeper dream for a brighter world? Today’s leadership communications are confronted with a series of challenges that contribute to a sense of disconnection and disengagement with leaders. The current lack of authenticity, vulnerability, and imaginative capacity has direct impacts on the quality of the flow of information in the organization, its innovation capacity, and perception by customers and other stakeholders. Regenerative leadership communications open to a life-affirming, potential-embracing, and reconciliatory story of transformation.

Leadership communications are often marked by an excessive focus on communicating outwards, ignoring the root causes of issues and perceived short-term interests. To “fix” communication problems, the toolbox for leaders therefore often includes: motivational speech, better communicating expectations, breaking resistance, and aligning to a declaredly shared vision and mission.This approach omits both the communication dimensions “within” (emotional, intuitive, aspirational) and “beyond” (greater narratives, wisdom, and macro-trends).

As a consequence, communications are often incoherent up to contradictory. Under the illusion of corporate efficiency, only little space is given to deeper exchanges and introspection. This leads to a plethora of issues that have to be resolved later – wasting a lot of energy and time. Leaders that want to make a difference furthermore have to develop a deep understanding of the underlying communication patterns in the organization. A well-intended openness and willingness to bring about change is however dependent on deep listening to the spoken and unspoken realities in the organization.

A regenerative approach will therefore look at the whole communication ecology the leader is an integrative part of. Where are points of conflicts or misunderstanding and what do they tell us? Which example is being communicated and embodied? And what would it need to fully embrace a sustainable and regenerative narrative and organizational story? The following six dimensions of communication leadership can help leaders find orientation in their communications, while identifying in which area more energy is needed. It is about moving from communicating about leadership to leading through conscious, caring and creative communications.

‍Cultivating communication leadership‍

Conscious perception of self

Leaders’ perception of themselves have great influence on the way they lead their organization and see challenges and opportunities. Becoming conscious of biases improves leaders’ capacity for decision-making, making use of diversity, and perceiving opportunities for their organization. Enhancing the self-perceptive qualities by “communicating within” (e.g. through self-reflection, vision quests, journaling etc.) is decisive for how we communicate with the outside world.  

Embodied presence

Great leaders don’t have to convince others about their role through incentives or punishments. They naturally embody leadership and attract a followership that helps them on their mission. The embodiment through voice, body language, and mere attentive presence, often speaks more than words. To come to a point of embodiment between who we are (story) and the role we play (leadership) requires practice. Storytelling, theatrical exercises and coaching can help on that journey.  

Authentic leadership story

Leading through story makes magic possible. It meaningfully weaves together team members, ideas, nature, community, stakeholders, and the vision for the future. A leader that dares to share her/his personal story sets a vulnerable example that can convey wisdoms and inspire others. Clarifying the own story is also a way to connect to what is essential in regenerative leadership: bringing together the inner realities, the outer work in the organisations, and the dynamics of the larger ecosystem.

Sharing the dream

Based on an understanding of our own story, we can invite the imagination to let our deep-felt dream speak. Our dream for the future will often have concrete implications for the transformative work we do in our organisations and the world as a whole. Communicating our dream (consider Martin Luther King or Steve Jobs) is what will resonate in others and create a followership. Real leadership emerges when we are able to transform the individual dream into a collective, up to inter-species one that regenerates the web of life we are part of.

Playing unique role in ecosystem

Clarifying the needs of your ecosystem and the stakeholders that compose it can give important cues on the leadership role needed. Brining personal competence, what the world needs, and what the ecosystem requires, and what is fulfilling together is what has been called the IKIGAI-zone. It is there where impact is greatest, and where action can work wonders. Through ecosystem-oriented storytelling, the role of leadership in bridging the gap between ambition and action can be crystalised.

Creating synergies through transformation narratives

Neither leaders nor organisations work in a vaccum. They are embedded intonature, communities, and business ecosystems. What makes meaningful communications among them possible are narratives that guide how we make sense in the world and see our role it in. Synchronising the leadership story and brand story with greater narratives can help to create alliances, reach audiences, and make the personal action relevant to politics and media.

Leadership communication practices

To cultivate these dimensions of communication leadership leaders can embrace following practices:

Communicating through potential

Rather than remaining stuck in a narrow problem-solution mindset with little space for innovation, leaders can focus on points of potential. By challenging the question and understanding of a problem, new pathways become possible. Leading through questioning invites creativity, collaboration, and a culture of learning. To embrace potential, leaders can work on creating fertile communication spaces in which radical creativity is possible.

Communicating through humility

The leadership posture often sets the tone for how people in an organization communicate with each other, how ideas are dealt with, and how much sense of belonging there is to an organization. A posture of humility reflects a certain groundedness, gratitude for the work of others, and does not pretend to know all the answers. Such a posture can be risk-reducing, wisdom-inviting, and collaboration-incentivising.

Communicating through connection

Since potential is often unlocked in the realm of the in-betweens, leaders can make sure to invite diverse and divergence ways of expressing, while also creating space for convergent moments of bringing back together. It is at the crossroads of diversity that new pathways emerge: between ideas, diverse groups, between nature and culture etc. Asking which perspectives are not present in a meeting, seeking to listen to edges of society, or daring to invite more-than-human wisdom into the conversation can be perspective-shifting and potential-inviting.