By Uche Aguoru
Successful leaders globally craft ways of communicating directly with the masses, good communication skills are considered to be the most imperative skill a leader must possess.
Former United States President Bill Clinton often creates time out of his official schedule to visit cafes unannounced just to interact directly with ordinary American and take back direct and truthful opinions of his government.
It has been proven that for effective and result-oriented leadership to take place at any level, it is obligatory for a leader to ensure policy commitment, persuasion, responsibility, sound planning, creation and management of value system and to provide support and motivation to the people, and the only means of ensuring citizen involvement and buy-in is through participatory governance using effective and direct communication approach as a tool.
Leadership is an innate skill that is expressed through effective policy communication, as a leader Prof. Eleazar Uche Ikonne, is innovative, inspirational, and accessible, as the Vice Chancellor of Abia State University he introduced participatory governance and set up an effective communication structure that gave every student of the school direct access to him, he gave dedicated phone numbers for students to reach him directly through SMS only, in case they are in need of assistance at any time and that restored the confidence of the students in his administration, it effectively curbed victimization, harassment and abuse of students by some lecturers which unfortunately is a phenomenon in many tertiary institutions in Nigeria today.
Knowing the effectiveness of communication in leadership, He introduced the placement of suggestion boxes at strategic places where public opinions on specifics were collated and discussed in management meetings every Monday which affords the school management the opportunity to
