In 2024, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development published research showing that communication skills topped the list of leadership competencies most cited as lacking across UK organisations. Not technical expertise. Not strategic thinking. Not financial acumen. Communication.
This was not a surprise to those of us who spend time inside boardrooms, training rooms, and leadership development programmes. It confirmed what many organisations quietly know but rarely act on: you can hire brilliant people and still watch them underperform because they cannot articulate their thinking under pressure, engage a room when it matters, or hold their authority when the nerves arrive uninvited.
The question is not whether communication matters. The question is why so few organisations treat it with the same rigour they apply to every other strategic capability.
The confidence gap nobody budgets for
In 2018, I was already a trainer, a facilitator, and a speaker. I had stood in front of rooms across multiple platforms. I was, by most measures, a communicator.
And then a colleague watched me work and said, quietly, “Have you ever looked at Toastmasters?”
I had not. And if I am honest, I did not think I needed to. I spent about three weeks not acting on it.
When I finally showed up reluctantly, to my first meeting, something happened that I did not expect. It was not the speeches that caught me. It was the impromptu speaking. It was the structured evaluation. It was the realisation, sitting in that room, that there is a meaningful difference between being able to communicate and being equipped to communicate under any condition, at any moment, in any room.
I signed up that same evening.
What I have learned since and what I now see in hundreds of members across District 71 — is something that no CV captures and no appraisal framework quite names. It is the capacity to be imperfect in a high-stakes moment and still hold the room. To feel the nerves arrive, acknowledge them, and keep going without losing your thread, your credibility, or your impact.
That is not a personality trait. It is a skill. And like every skill, it is built through practice, feedback, and the right environment.
What the data and the experience agree on
A study of 651 organisations across industries found that companies with highly effective internal communication are 3.5 times more likely to outperform their competitors. McKinsey’s work on leadership effectiveness consistently identifies communication, specifically the ability to influence, inspire, and align as the differentiating capability of high-performing leaders. Joint research by CIPD, KPMG, and the Edge Foundation estimates that the soft skills gap of which communication is the most cited deficit, costs the UK economy £22 billion annually.
None of this is theoretical for the about 200 clubs operating across UK and Ireland under District 71. Every week, in meeting rooms, comm unity halls, and virtual spaces, professionals from every industry sector are doing something most leadership development programmes do not provide: they are practising. Not presenting to colleagues who are too polite to challenge them. Not sitting through a one-day workshop and returning to their desks unchanged. They are standing up, speaking impromptu, receiving structured feedback, and returning the following week to try again.
The results compound. A member who joins as someone who struggles to string three sentences together in a meeting becomes, over twelve to eighteen months, someone who chairs committees, leads difficult conversations, and presents with authority to senior stakeholders. Not because they were transformed overnight. Because they were given a structured, low-stakes environment in which to build a high-stakes skill.
The implication for organisations
If you lead a team, a department, or an organisation, the most underinvested line in your development budget is probably not technical training. It is the capability that determines whether every other investment lands — the ability of your people to communicate their ideas with clarity, confidence, and influence.
The organisations getting this right are not waiting for their people to develop these skills naturally. They are creating the conditions in which those skills are built deliberately. Some are partnering with community-based development programmes. Some are building internal speaking clubs. Some are simply encouraging their people to get into rooms where they are challenged, evaluated, and supported to grow.
The tools exist. The evidence is clear. The gap is not in knowing what to do, it is in deciding that communication capability is a strategic priority, not a soft skill to be addressed whenever time permits.
It rarely does.
What Should You Do Next?
If this article has resonated with you, here is one practical step worth taking this week.
Find out whether there is a Toastmasters club near your workplace, your team, or your community. There are more than 200 clubs across the UK and Ireland, many of them meeting in business parks, city centres, and online. Most welcome guests with no obligation.
Visit www.toastmasters.org, enter your location, and attend one meeting as a guest. You will see in sixty minutes what six months of reading about communication development cannot show you.
If you lead an organisation and you want to explore what a workplace club could look like for your people or how Toastmasters might partner with your L&D programme , contact District 71 directly at d71toastmasters.org. The conversation costs nothing. The cost of the communication gap in your leadership pipeline already does.
Stallone-Obaraemi Samuel
Public Relations Manager for District 71, Toastmasters International.
