The ability to communicate is arguably the most important skill of leaders across all industries and at any level. Communicate to inspire. Communicate to gain alignment. Communicate to persuade. Unfortunately, most leaders take a one size fits all to leadership communication. Complicating matters further, most leaders (and people) assume that others like to be communicated with in the same style that they prefer. In reality, people have a diverse set of communication styles and preferences.

If you want to up your game as a leader, try tailoring your communication style to the audience in place of using your preferred method. Before we discuss the “how to” of adapting your communication style, let’s focus on the benefits of adapting your communication style to the audience.

All leaders experience fear. In a previous post, I shared a tip from a Navy SEAL about overcoming fear by finding something familiar. Here, I want to share insight from therapist Dana Upton about how you can overcome fear by greeting fear like an old friend and make it serve you.

Below is an excerpt from The Savage Leader that will help you start to overcome fear.

Conflict is inherent in being human. Conflict over different points of view, personality styles, and even trivial differences like peoples’ favorite sports teams. The ability to manage conflict is critical for all leaders. Rather than let conflict overrun your team and impact interpersonal relationships, successful leaders invest in themselves to learn how to manage conflict. Better yet, they build the necessary foundation to prevent conflict before it rears its head.

Before discussing how to manage and prevent conflict, let’s first discuss the incredibly high cost of conflict within interpersonal relationships, teams, and organizations and WHY managers need to learn to manage conflict.

For so many years, I’ve set goals focused on external success metrics; company revenue, number of clients served, content volume and frequency, and of course the all-consuming vanity social media metrics of views, comments, and shares.

External success metrics and goals are important and guide our efforts. They also allow us to measure meaningful progress toward those goals. In short, these types of goals are a must.

But what about all of the goals and work that support those externally visible and measurable goals? To help turbo-charge your goals this year and beyond, consider trying the following: