Teaching attitude is something that a lot of leaders give up on before they even try. They say “Pat just is the way he is. He’s a little cranky, and he’s a little sarcastic, but I can’t do much about that.” But when you look at great leaders, they do teach attitude, and so can you.
Here’s a different kind of communication skills tip: If you give enough presentations, eventually you will have one not go well. You will have one go off the rails. Now, when most people do this, they have this feeling that I just have to power through no matter how bad this is, no matter how much sweat is pouring down my back, and how irritated and annoyed the audience is.
Given the huge amounts of information most of us have to cram into our presentations, getting people to remember everything is a tall order.
Now, we all have different presentation styles and different ways of making our message memorable.
When I go into organizations and I ask the employees “tell me why your team exists?” the most frequent response I hear is “I don’t really know.” This certainly isn’t great news, but it does help clarify one of my recent research findings that only 23% of employees say their leader always communicates their vision clearly. 
Here's a frightening statistic: Only 14% of employees think that performance appraisals are useful! And high performers are especially unhappy with their reviews.
Why? Because most managers don't offer even a simple 'thank you' to their high performers. And if they do say 'thank you' it's usually vague nonsense like 'nice job' or something equally non-specific.
To be a great leader, you can’t fear being seen as the bad guy/gal. And I’m not just talking about obvious ‘bad guy/gal’ situations like telling someone “you’re fired” or “you’re not getting a raise this year and here’s why.” I’m also talking about simple situations like telling someone “I need you to change the way you submit that form.”
Here's a very simple time management tip that can cut 17 minutes from most meetings you sit in: have a Statement of Achievement. What is that? Well, we did a survey recently. We asked people coming out of meetings: "The meeting you were just in, did it accomplish its original objective?" 
Have you ever been in one of those team meetings, virtual or face-to-face, where a few big personalities just dominate the space? They usually talk louder than everyone else, and if the boss or team leader isn’t speaking, all you hear are their thoughts, their ideas, their yeas and their nays. 
When I ask leaders, “What’s the No. 1 thing that wastes your time and hinders your productivity?” the nearly universal answer is “meetings.” Whether it’s wasteful meetings that don’t resolve anything, meetings where everybody talks just to hear themselves speak or meetings where decisions never get made, meetings are often hated and typically wasteful.
Effective communication with an impatient boss is far less challenging if you know their preferred communication style. One simple way to distinguish communication styles is how linear people are. Here's what that means. Some people are very linear. 
