I was asked this recently after a talk I gave in Texas: “What’s the difference between a leader and a manager?” My answer was simple: The ability to communicate.
The difference between a leader and a manager is in communication. Don’t believe me? Do a quick image search for managers. I’ll tell you what you’ll find. You’ll find pictures of happy smiley stock-image people shaking hands or high-fiving each other.

Now search for leaders, and you will find a very different group. In those search results, you will find a group of people that changed the world. Those people have one common denominator – their ability to stand up in front of the other humans, fist in the air and sell them a new story about the world that we inhabit. Leadership is communication, and communication matters.

“This is a call to action for you. An invitation to real leadership. This is the signal you’ve been waiting for to find your voice and to share it with your people.”

Don’t take my word for it. A study published in the International Journal of Business and Management found that effective communication is a critical component of leadership. It showed that leaders who communicate effectively are more likely to inspire and motivate their teams, build strong relationships and achieve their goals.

There is overwhelming scientific evidence that shows the impact of good, consistent dialogue regardless of the channel or form it takes. Time and time again, “effective communication has a positive effect on organisational performance,” the research shows. 

Leadership is communication, and communication is management.

Strategic leadership expert, lawyer and author Toye Sobande writes: “Effective communication is a cornerstone of successful leadership. Leaders with strong communication skills can better guide, motivate, inspire their teams, build relationships with stakeholders, make informed decisions and achieve organisational goals.”

Think about it: Look at your company. You have managers who are not leaders and leaders who are not managers. Being a manager or boss, well, that’s a title you can step into. Being a leader, though, that’s an attribute you own based purely on the fact that you have other people who follow you. So what attribute do we need to get other people to follow us?

A quick Google search for “attributes of leadership” tells me that the most important skill great leaders need is the ability to listen.

This is the lie.

As a leader, you do need to listen. You only need to listen to curate your ideas and draw your conclusions. But in a context of an abundance of fake news and misleading information, everyone else should be listening.

What makes you a leader is not that you have listened so much as that you have synthesised the ideas that you have heard and made meaning of them by sharing them with everyone else in the business. This is what I’d call inspired leadership.

In March 2020, my wee persuasive communication company, which traded largely in the realm of large events, went to revenue zero overnight. What do you think my team wanted me to do then? 

Do you think they wanted me to sit back and listen to them, or do you think they wanted me to stand up and lead? They wanted the latter, and if you were in a leadership position back then, you know this because your team wanted the same from you.

I was chatting to my son a few years ago about his career choices and asked him if he still wanted to join the business when he was older and maybe become a speaker like his old man. “No,” he said. “I want to be an astrophysicist.” I replied, saying cool, and asked him why the change of heart. To which he replied, “I watched a talk by this guy Neil de Grasse Tyson.” 

My son later joined the business.

I told him then what I have told countless people since. In any field, an expert that can speak effectively will have an unfair advantage over one who cannot.

I have had the privilege of working with many top executives from around the world, and while they may not all love public speaking, they all embrace it because they understand that it’s the difference maker. I feel strongly that you should, too.

If there were a single skill I would advise school leavers to embrace today, it would be just this: Learn to communicate effectively. To date, the command of rhetoric is the only real skill still as relevant and undisrupted today as it was 3,000 years ago.

I’d go as far as to say it is even more relevant in our new AI-augmented world.

This is a call to action for you – an invitation to real leadership. This is the signal you’ve been waiting for to find your voice and share it with your people. Become a better communicator and be the leader you were destined to be.

Rich Mulholland has spoken in over 40 countries on six continents. The founder of persuasion powerhouse Missing Link, Mulholland is the author of Legacide, Boredom Slayer and Here Be Dragons.

Inc