ABSTRACT

The ability to communicate effectively has long been associated with leadership. As Pondy (1978) noted some time ago, one of the most vital roles of a leader is to make activity meaningful. Through their communications, effective leaders provide an understanding to their followers of why they are doing what they are doing. Through leaders’ choice of words, imagery, and portrayals of future organizational outcomes, they can deploy language to directly influence their followers’ motivations, decisions, and identities. Their communications set standards as to what are appropriate follower attitudes, behaviors, and values. For these reasons, the topic of leadership communications is a critical one for practitioners and scholars alike. In this chapter, I examine one of the least explored dimensions—the use of communications techniques to ensure recall of the leader’s messages. These techniques leverage certain dynamics of human memory that encourage retention and recall of information. In an age of information overload, the ability to communicate in memorable ways is an imperative for leaders.