Being a leader isn’t just about making decisions or fixing problems. Great leaders create shared vision, improve conversations, and help people reach their potential. And at the heart of great leadership is great communication. When leaders communicate well, they build trust and clarity that moves teams and businesses forward. When communication breaks down, so does trust, productivity, and progress.
Good communication sounds simple, but it’s a skill most of us were never taught. For many leaders, it’s a weak spot that can hurt relationships, make goals harder to reach, and slow down business success. Research shows that only 20% of U.S. employees trust their organization’s leadership.¹
Poor communication in leadership creates deep problems that keep hurting trust, creating confusion, and stopping progress. Without fixing these issues, teams get weaker, morale drops, and business results suffer.
The hidden costs when leaders can’t communicate well
Poor leadership communication creates a chain reaction of business problems that companies often don’t see coming. When leaders can’t explain strategy clearly, their teams get stuck in endless meetings trying to figure out what they’re supposed to do. Companies often hold meeting after meeting just to get one presentation ready for executives—basically taking twice as long to make important decisions.
But the real cost goes far beyond wasted meeting time. When smart leaders can’t explain why their ideas matter, great innovations get unrecognized in boardrooms. Projects that should drive the business forward look like money pits because no one can tell a compelling story about why they’re worth the investment.
The biggest problem? Leaders who can’t communicate change well end up fighting resistance every step of the way. Instead of getting people excited about what’s possible, they have to force people to comply. And forced compliance never works as well as genuine buy-in.
Why most leadership training misses the point
Here’s a striking fact: Research shows that senior leaders spend the majority of their time communicating—with studies indicating executives spend up to 85% of their time in meetings, on calls, or at events where communication is the primary activity.2
Communication is literally how leadership work gets done.
Yet most leadership training focuses heavily on what are usually called “hard skills,” while treating communication as a nice-to-have skill. This creates a big mismatch. Leaders spend most of their time on something they may never have been trained to do well.
The result? Smart leaders who know their stuff but can’t turn their expertise into real impact. They know what needs to be done but can’t explain the why, the how, or why it’s urgent.
The four biggest communication challenges leaders face
Leadership requires mastering four different types of communication, each with its own challenges and requirements.
Making complex things simple
Technical leaders often know their area inside and out but struggle when talking to mixed audiences. They create “data dumps” instead of clear stories, overwhelming people with information instead of insights. This leads to slow decision-making and missed chances to influence important projects.
When technical experts can’t explain their ideas to non-technical audiences, they get left out of important planning meetings. Their knowledge gets lost because they can’t show leaders why it matters.
Getting different departments to work together
As companies become more complex, leaders must coordinate across departments that often have competing goals and different ways of communicating. Without a common way to communicate, these cross-department projects become translation exercises, with each department speaking its own language.
When everyone communicates differently, it confuses people and makes it harder for the company to work together on shared goals. Teams spend more time clarifying what they mean than actually getting work done.
Leading change through influence
Leaders must guide teams towards a sometimes murky and ambiguous future. They are tasked with bringing the anxiety level down and boosting the level of clarity up to get people interested in moving from a comfortable place to an uncomfortable place.
Storytelling and conviction are all part of that change journey. Leaders who are good at explaining change don’t try to fight people who resist it. Instead, they show people how the change will make their jobs better.
Building authentic executive presence
Moving from individual contributor to leader requires a big shift in how you communicate. New leaders must stop being the person with all the answers and become the person who asks the right questions and creates space for others to contribute their best thinking.
Leaders who struggle with authentic presence find themselves cut off from the insights they need to make good decisions. Their teams stop bringing forward challenging ideas or honest feedback, leaving leaders to operate with incomplete information.
Why trust breaks down when communication fails
When communication fails, trust is one of the first things to break. Over 40% of workers say that poor communication makes them trust their leaders and teammates less.³
Without clear ways to communicate at work, misunderstandings grow and create problems and confusion. Employees start to question what their leaders really want, find it hard to work with their coworkers, and lose confidence in where the company is going.
This breakdown in trust doesn’t just affect deadlines or make work harder—it hurts relationships, which are what really make a workplace healthy. Organizations end up creating expensive fixes: senior executives step in to redo presentations, subject matter experts take over meetings that should have been led by other leaders, and promising projects stall while teams wait for clarity that never comes.
The career effects are just as bad. Leaders who can’t communicate well get excluded from important decisions, passed over for promotions, or constantly need support from more senior executives. What started as a skills gap becomes a leadership crisis that gets harder and harder to fix.
Building trust requires smart communication that makes people confident in their leaders and helps everyone work together better.
How to fix the communication problem
Most companies try to solve communication issues with quick fixes or generic training. But these band-aid solutions don’t address the real problem.
The answer isn’t more presentation classes or public speaking workshops. Companies need organized ways to make communication a key business skill, not something they think about later.
The most effective approach addresses communication holistically: developing a clear story strategy that resonates with your audience, selecting visuals that reinforce rather than distract from your message, and presenting data in ways that compel action instead of confusion. When leaders master these interconnected skills, they can adapt their communication to any situation—from high-stakes emails to board presentations.
Companies that use this organized approach see real results. Teams report faster decision-making, better stakeholder buy-in, and improved cross-department collaboration. More importantly, they develop leaders who can confidently handle the 85% of their role that involves communication.
Creating lasting change
When leaders communicate with clarity and purpose, the benefits spread throughout the organization. Their teams show up differently, conversations improve, and strategic projects gain the momentum they need to succeed.
The change starts with recognizing that communication isn’t a soft skill—it’s a business-critical ability that directly affects every organizational outcome. Leaders who master this skill don’t just improve their own effectiveness; they unlock the potential of everyone around them.
Organizations that understand this reality and invest accordingly don’t just solve immediate communication problems. They build competitive advantages through leaders who can turn complexity into clarity, resistance into buy-in, and strategy into action.
References
¹ Gallup, Indicator of Leadership and Management
² Bailey-Hughes, B. CEOs Spend 85% of Their Time on One Skill
³ Forbes, The Impact of Digital Communication in the Workplace
