Most of the great businesses of the world have great services and products – that’s a given. What really makes them stand out though? Their leaders are fantastic communicators. What’s more, these leaders teach others how to communicate well, too, so that connection becomes a cornerstone for the culture of the entire organization. But what exactly is it that makes fearless leaders’ communication stand out?

Fearless Leaders COMMUNICATE with clarity, transparency and authenticity. Developing your communication attributes is vital to instilling confidence in your audience and removing their fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Communication is how you speak, how you write, how you listen, and how you interact.

There are 3 rules to fearless communication. Let’s dive into each.

Know your audience – do they want more or less, spoken word or written word, in person, email, text, or video – or do they want you to listen first. As you get opportunities to communicate as a leader, take time to prepare and think about what the audience wants, or even what they need. Do they need you to bring high energy or calming energy, do they want facts or feelings, are they looking for a long communication or a short communication? The more you invest in knowing your audience, the more they will invest in listening to the message.

Be transparent – sharing with your audience what you know, motivate them in good times and comfort them in challenging times. In almost all situations, it’s far better to share and explain the situation and align everybody through your communication. When you only tell part of the story, your audience will make up the other part, and that can be very dangerous, spreading fear and doubt spread. Sometimes you will have to be perfectly fine to say “I don’t know” as well, sometimes you just don’t.

Be authentic – be yourself, don’t try to be someone you are not, people trust you, that’s why they are listening, trust yourself back. We all have been at some meeting, dinner or event when we witnessed someone trying to be more of something than they were – trying to be funny, or highly energetic or solemn. In those instances, the audience filters the message because they feel it is “off” and that “something is missing”. Fearless Leaders develop a clear, transparent and authentic style that comforts and energizes their audience in the way the leader intended.;

Now that you have the three rules I want to introduce you to a concept called BLUF – Bottom Line UpFront. In a fast-paced business environment, we need to get to the point QUICKLY, or we lose the attention of our readers.

In the BLUF Approach, we start with “Newsworthy Information”. This is the MAIN POINT that we want to share with our readers. As you write, think of it this way—if all your readers consumed was the first line, they would capture the gist of the whole report or email. After the newsworthy information come all the important details. This is anything that may help to clarify or support the main point. The information is helpful, but not crucial.

Finally, finish up with any background information. Again, this should be brief because a long email or report can be a turn-off, but there are times for adding in some general background information about a story or issue.

Next time you are writing an email, designing a presentation, preparing for a meeting, whatever it might be, think of these rules and the BLUF Approach and I can guarantee you will communicate your message successfully.