ABSTRACT
At the heart of effective leadership is good, clear communication. We are all able to communicate – it’s one of the first skills we develop, using visual signals like smiling or crying to show how we feel, even before we learn to speak. Just as we are hard wired to be social animals, we are also hard wired to be able to use language; Noam Chomsky argues that communication is a feature of most living entities, certainly sentient ones, but only humans have the fundamental ability to use language containing syntax (that is, a structure that enables complex forms to be created from a core set of elements – words and grammar). Songbirds can produce complex sounds but these have no fundamental meaning; apes can be trained to use sign language but only to create messages that they have been taught to produce. The amazing thing about humans is that a child works out the grammatical structure of its native language intuitively and forms sentences by applying these rules.
