6 ‘I’s of Group Leader Communication

I am sure many of us are members of various social organisations, like Rotary, Lions, Giants, Jaycees, Round Table etc.  As we rise up the ladder, someday we would be given the role of a club president or a group leader. In order to discharge our role effectively, we have to be an effective communicator, which would help us to carry out the various projects, we plan to do in the particular period.

In one of the conference of Giants International, I was invited to speak on Communication Skills for 15 minutes. As a trainer, I searched for relevant material and found the normally discussed concepts, but then I thought within a time span of 15 minutes, what is that I can ideally convey to the meet the requirement of my target audience. So, my mind was wondering on how to customize it, so that the participants can relate to it and put it to action.  I spent some time thinking over what typically happens in a service organisation. As I have been a president of few service organisations, I was able to see a pattern of how it operates.

As acronyms are powerful ways of helping people remember things, I chose to use words starting with the same letter and arrived at 6 words starting with ’I’, which I felt would be the ideal 6 steps for effective communication in a group. They are:

1.            Ideation
2.            Intimation
3.            Initiation
4.            Invitation
5.            Implementation
6.            Information

So let us probe each step, in a little detail.

The first one is “Ideation”, which is nothing but idea generation. We often see various organisations having a brainstorming session or discussion meeting to pool in the ideas of all the members. It is these ideas, that eventually gets validated and then decided to be done as projects. So, this is the first step.

Once we have come to some conclusion on what projects to do, the next step is “Intimation”. We need to intimate to the members what has been decided.

Once we have intimated our plan, we need to call for action, which can also be called “Initiation”. For example, let us say we have planned to donate Rs.10, 000/- to a needy person, the leader can say “I would like to initiate the project by making a contribution of Rs.2, 000/-“. So, when we initiate, others will know that the proposed project, has kick started and they would start to add their contributions too.

So, now that we have got commitment from group members, we need to plan an event where this service project will be executed. Once, we decide a date and time, we create and send out an Invitation, for the event. Today, most organisations works on Whatsapp invitation, which I think is a good idea because; it saves on paper and postage.

And then the event happens. This is what we call Implementation, because the project that was planned, is now actually taking place.

Once we implement a project, we will be clicking photos and we might have discussed a few things in the meeting. Unfortunately, not all members would have turned up for the meeting. So, as a group leader it is our duty to make sure, that all the group members, are made aware of what has happened by sharing the photos and sharing the minutes of the meeting. This also serves as a documentation of the project. In most organisations, we are expected to send a monthly report to the higher officials too. This process of informing all members and higher officials,  is what we call “Information”.

By following these 6 steps of communication, I am sure you can be an effective group leader.

   D. Senthil Kannan,

  Managing Trustee, PALMS, Tuticorin.

   Author of "Transformational Thoughts" - A Journey of learning 

  Email: senthilkannand@gmail.com