Effective communication skills
How to tell people stuff so that they listen, understand and never forget it.
Richard Hall
Objective
Communicating effectively gives you a thrilling feeling, but to achieve this state of considerable bliss needs hard work and practice. It’s an essential business skill but hopefully you haven’t learned any bad habits yet.
My aim here is to teach you some good ones.
Communicating well seems a little like walking well or being a kind person, something intrinsic to our nature as a human being and something we don’t need to be taught. But, in fact, good communication is increasingly uncommon.
We communicate more of course, by text, by social media and by email but those elements of eloquence which enable us to sell an idea or change someone’s mind are rare.
Cicero, who is rated as one of the greatest orators who ever lived, said this:
‘If the truth were self-evident, eloquence would be unnecessary.’
But it isn’t, so it is, if you see what I mean.
In a short space of time this ebook is designed to help you become a good communicator and if you already good then an excellent communicator.
I’m going to describe the different kinds of communication: internal communication; external communication; 121 communication; written communication (and the role of the email and social media); oral communication (meetings, presentations) and to describe why ‘communications’ has become so important a business tool and so promising a career path to choose.
Rupert Maitland-Titterton, who is the Communications Director of Kellogg’s Europe, said
‘A career in comms is fantastic, varied and faster-moving than any other function.’
His enthusiasm is fed by the reality of the world in which we live. The biggest single issue is co-ordinating, motivating and empowering people.
We have to be great at communication to do that. Sometimes we have to give people bad news or describe a difficult situation in which the power of our words (if they are well chosen) can make all the difference in persuading them to be helpful as opposed to obstructive.
Most of all I want to express my own belief that how we communicate and the meaning we impart to what we say is a hugely influential, exciting and difficult skill. When I suggested it was rare today I was thinking of those who most need it, politicians, marketers, diplomats and business leaders.
If you are fresh to business you will draw your own conclusions about business jargon and about corporate manifestos. So much of it is patronising, didactic and dull.
We can all do so much better.
You can learn how to help change things right now before you learn bad habits. And to help inspire you here’s what Rita Mae Brown, the American writer said:
‘Language exerts hidden powers like the moon on the tides.’
My task is to coax those hidden powers out into the open. So shine on harvest moon and open your mind, relax and read on.
Overview
Expectations of you will be high. You’ll be expected to be a good writer and a confident presenter. Yet while most of us can write a good essay, working in the collaborative world of business is in contrast quite tricky. There are lots of diverse, interested parties to reach and to persuade. And increasingly the phrase being used to describe the process of effective communication is ‘authentic connection’. So you have to learn not just to tell the truth but be perceived as telling it truthfully.
When you are at school or at university communication is critical. Teachers communicate. They tell us things, they draw things out of us, they focus on our understanding and they assess us and in so doing communicate how we are progressing.
All great teachers have one thing in common.
They engage us. They illuminate our ignorance, inspire us to improve and they are never boring.
POTENTIAL PITFALL
Just because we spend our lives communicating don’t assume it’s easy. Doing it clearly, memorably and simply is a rare talent that requires practice which few people give enough time to.
We ourselves are constant communicators too. We write essays, we do assignments, we prepare dissertations and we do examinations.
Examinations in their own way are sophisticated tools of communication in which most of us are trying, with varying degrees of success, to conceal our ignorance.
At a social level we all communicate with each other the whole time, mostly quite informally and sometimes quite obliquely, (sometimes a glance or a nod is enough). Quite often body language tells us more than the spoken word. Increasingly the written word seems less important and less well used.
Yet its importance has not diminished. Think about the huge numbers of Shakespeare plays that are put on in which the brightest talent of our time – Benedict Cumberbatch, Eddie Redmayne, Emma Watson and Chiwetel Ejiofor – communicate their genius. Great words still dominate the stage.
As business gets more complex, complex because there are so many ‘stakeholders’ – that is people whose contributions to a given project are critical – how well we get our intentions and thoughts across to them matters. The essence of business is, regardless of technological advances, to do with people, with their simple needs and quirks. Digital media changes very little of their whims, tantrums and laughter. Communicating with people was hard in 1816 (Jane Austen would agree with that) and now two centuries later it’s still hard, some would say harder especially as obedience has gone out of fashion.
When you are in business you’ll be expected to be a good communicator who can write documents and papers that are well-argued and well-ordered. You’ll also be expected to speak convincingly and clearly. You’ll be expected to think on your feet. You’ll be expected to ‘read’ situations. You’ll be expected to persuade people to adopt your ideas not just tell them what to do and sit back. The old command and control business model is long dead and you’ll be expected to be a good storyteller not just an essay writer.
We live in a world where if people aren’t engaged they switch off. And leaders are understanding this (at least, and it’s a start, they say they are getting it). Here’s what Jeff Immelt the CEO of GE says in proof of that:
‘As a leader, you have to be authentic and constantly connecting with employees.’
That’s what communication is today – authentic connection. Be boring or be phoney at your peril.
Context
Warren Buffett said we’re living in uncertain times. Yes, times of great change. These are times when interpreting just what on earth’s going on is a precious skill. For younger people it’s easier to accept this is the new normal. They just get on with it with enthusiasm and a zest for life.
Here are three skills anyone new to business has to learn:
- How the company works – what its expectations of people are.
- How the hierarchy operates (yes I know this sounds old-fashioned and it’ll be ‘droit de seigneur’ next) but just pay attention and...
- Listen – actively, fully and with focus; you can only change what you listen to, when you hear and when you understand.
Business is not the stable and often sleepy place it used to be. In the past, big companies were protecting their position. Tedium was an often effective strategy. Benton and Bowles, the advertising agency, defended its advertising in the 1960s, which was renowned for being dull, for household brands that were ‘big, bland and boring.’
TIP
Do not dare to be boring. Be brief. Use real life examples. Smile. Involve your audience. Look as though you’re enjoying yourself. But never be boring.
Business today is a new and different place for most people. It moves fast. It’s very competitive externally and internally. It’s rarely stable or immune from things called ‘initiatives’ which are designed to drive ‘change programmes’.
So remember, the bottom line in business today is change, innovation and disruption. This is the common currency of business.
And guess what? Communication is right at the centre of this. Here’s what James Burke – science historian and broadcaster said:
‘The easier it is to communicate, the faster change happens.’
In most business organisations there are ways of working, the acronym for which is WOW, ways of handling issues and of communicating that we need to understand. In the fullness of time and as we become more experienced we may think they are barmy and help change them for something better, but in the meantime we’re better advised to listen and learn.
In communication there are often quite different needs in dealing with:
- people who are very senior to us
- our bosses
- our peers
- people junior to us
Different companies also have different cultures.
Some are besotted with acronyms. (WOW!)
Many have people from diverse nationalities and cultures.
Some have very clear agendas related to the time in the business cycle or the proximity of critical annual business planning and budget presentations.
Every piece of business communication needs to acknowledge the mindset of the people to whom the specific communication is addressed.
Margaret Wheatley the American management consultant and expert in organisational behaviour got the importance of mindset spot on when she said:
‘One of the easiest human acts is also the most healing. Listening to someone. Simply listening. Not advising or coaching, but silently and fully listening.’
TIP
Listen and look as though you are listening and without interrupting. That way people will open up and you’ll hear things that you need to know.
What I like about this remark is that Margaret makes ‘listening’ a key part of communication. In our early days in any job the skill with which we are perceived as ‘fully listening’ will be very important.
At school they just used to call it ‘paying attention’. Now it’s a vital business tool.
Challenge
The single biggest challenge is to know who your audience is: what they know, what they think, how they feel, what they know about you and what they expect of you. Communication is not about what you say – it’s about what the audience thinks you say. It also helps if you are ruthlessly clear about what you personally hope to get across and what you want people to do as a result of your communication.
The biggest challenges are to create communication that is clear, consistent and carefully crafted. How you communicate with an 8-year-old, an 18-year-old, a 48-year-old and an 80-year-old will be different. How you communicate with a marketer or an engineer or an accountant will also be different.
ASSESS YOURSELF
Are you really thinking about your audience – who they are, what they are feeling, what they want to know and why they are listening to you?
Remember it’s the audience that matters, not you. How they judge what you say is the acid test.
In business situations communicating casually and ineffectively can be expensive and damaging (especially to your career).
It helps to understand the following:
- Left brain and right brain (rational and emotional communication) are different. Increasingly we’re recognising the need to achieve an emotional as well as a logical connection with people, even in business.
- The attention spans of people vary hugely but they are getting shorter and shorter … and no one wants to sit through anyone taking a long time to get to the point. There’s so much communication going on out there and in here, so much communication everywhere … so how will you stand out and be noticed?
- What do you want to achieve? Be clear about your aim in communicating. If you don’t know ‘why’ you are communicating something you won’t know ‘what’ to communicate let alone ‘how’ to do so. Take nothing for granted of you yourself or of your audience. Remember what Martin Luther King said: ‘There is nothing in the world more dangerous than sincere ignorance’.
- What does your audience expect? Will surprising them be a good or bad thing? Do not be beguiled by the urge to entertain or shock them unless it helps get an important point across and you can’t see a better way of doing it.
TIP
We tell people what they know to prove we’ve done our homework. Cut to the chase. Tell them how you are going to address and solve their problems.
- What is known and what is new? Do not spend time telling people what they already know.
- So many people spend ages saying ‘here’s your problem’ to an audience seething with frustration and dying to shout ‘Yea! Yeah! I know about all that – just tell me WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT – PLEASE!’
- Do you need to inform, inspire, persuade, energise, align or warn? Communicating brilliantly involves being clear as to precisely which is needed.
Bad communication usually happens because we don’t know who we are talking to or why we are talking to them, or if we do know we communicate to them in a crass way. Mass emails, for instance, are almost always a terrible idea.
Lesson: in a busy, busy world people consistently misread emails because they read too fast. So keep everything brief and tell people – don’t write in a strange language called ‘emailese’. This leads to that wonderful quote in the Paul Newman film Cool Hand Luke by Strother Martin playing the captain of the prison guard:
‘What we have here is a failure to communicate.’
Key development approach
The key things to address for starters are the need for clarity, brevity and engaging your audience. We can take it as read that these three things are dear to every communicating heart.
Yet extraordinarily, many people focus on how they feel, not how they can make their audience feel. There’s a big difference. And remember this:
It always helps your prospects in a company if you are known as a good ‘communicator’.
How to communicate
The best big company summary of what they thought good communication entailed comes from Netflix. Try this:
‘You listen well, instead of reacting fast, so you can better understand. You are concise and articulate in speech and writing. You treat people with respect independent of their status or disagreement with you. You maintain calm poise in stressful situations.’
The real art of good communication
Whether you are addressing a large gathering or talking face to face, certain things never change. We are in the post-boredom era. If someone is over-communicatioin, while it may be bad manners, people just switch off. If they are young, they start looking at their mobile phones. So:
- RULE ONE: Engage people’s attention and keep it.
- RULE TWO: Understand what they need.
- RULE THREE: Tell them what you are going to say; say it, then summarise.
TIP
We hope people hear and understand what we say the first time.
They don’t. Repeat your key point at least three times. Don’t be shy.
The tools of the communicator
Confidence
This is the elephant in the room we all avoid talking about. Everyone suffers from nerves – everyone. Actors have techniques to deal with this – deep breathing, telling stage fright to ‘push off’ or getting into the part of a strong, self-confident person, bounding on and saying ‘YES!!!!’ Someone I knew in advertising used to say under his breath before starting ‘I am completely and utterly shameless.’
Then smile and eyeball your audience, really look at them before uttering a word and then smile.
ASSESS YOURSELF
Face down those demons. Confidence isn’t how you feel, it’s how you are perceived by the audience. Look confident and you’ll start to feel confident too.
Even the coolest and most together-people have a swarm of butterflies inside. Listen to the gorgeous Lauren Bacall:
‘I used to tremble from nerves so badly that the only way I could hold my head steady was to lower my chin practically to my chest and look up at Bogie. That was the beginning of The Look.’
Remember it’s not how you actually feel but how you seem to feel that matters.
Content
A lot is written about the triumph of style over substance. Don’t believe it. In the end if our thinking and your communication lacks factual substance and isn’t tightly thought through we’ll be eventually revealed as being shallow and lazy. Nothing improves one’s nerves more than knowing one has a strong case to present.
It also helps if one has a clear recollection of the structure and shape of it without having to fumble around looking at your notes.
POTENTIAL PITFALL
Spending all your effort on the style of your communication, especially on those slides, can lead to you being seen as fluffy. What is your story?
A classic structure of any argument is as follows:
- Introduction. You need introductory remarks, meant to gain your audience’s attention – it should be brief and to the point.
- Facts and context. There follows a brief outline of the facts. You can establish here a skeletal structure in which your argument is placed, or sets a time frame, and should include the pertinent known facts that your argument will be based upon.
- The proposal. This is the most important part of your argument. It lays out a statement of your theme and a perspective of events. It is the conclusion that you want your audience to draw from your argument.
- Consequences. This is in two parts. First, your viewpoint and reasoning; second, a refutation of your opponent’s perspective and the arguments they’ve made or are likely to make.
- Summary. This sums up your arguments, and can repeat remarks on possible consequences if your proposal is accepted (or rejected) and your appeal to the audience to see things your way.
Don’t be trapped into following a format that you find boring, but the framework here is proven to work and covers the basic thrust of any decent argument.
Gaining attention
TIP
Having a prop or something to pass around can make a big difference. It opens up the debate.
- a few great slides, but only if the audience is big enough and if they add to what you are going to say;
- an external or critical internal document to which you can refer that has particular relevance to what you are talking about;
- a product – maybe a defective product if you’re talking about quality – which you can pass round;
- photographs proving points that you are making to pass around.
The real issue here is to break up your presentation and to create some drama so it becomes more interesting.
It also makes it more fun to present.
Just standing or sitting there and talking can be enough, but what you also need is some drama – what I call some ‘visual toys’. These could be:
Verbal splashes of colour
Verbal branding has become a new way of describing what good advertising used to do. This was to find a specific tone of voice and style for a brand or company. Chis West, the founder of a company called Verbal Identity, a leading operator in this space, says that:
‘Visuals attract but verbal engages.’
I believe we should avoid unnecessary stylistic tricks or clichés. When politicians incessantly talk about ‘hard-working families’ most of us turn off (the term was created for Gordon Brown, by the way, in the mid-1990s).
What we know works, whether in the spoken or the written word are:
- short sentences;
- rhythmical sentences rather than ugly blocks of words;
- simple rhyming (‘there’s a need for speed’ is more memorable than ‘we need to go faster’);
- creating word pictures can be very effective (example: ‘Imagine a world without rubber...’ or ‘Imagine the temperature went up 5◦C...’) Imagine is a close-your-eyes-and-think-about-it word.
TIP
You are a magician creating a world not encountered before, like what the future might be or an unfamiliar scenario. Create as many ‘imagine’ examples to give it substance.
- action-oriented words – (‘do, get, achieve, conquer, win, subdue, assert, create’ and so on.
Power delivery
The level of performance depends on where you are performing, on the size of the audience, the topic and on the expectations people have. But whether in a small group or in a larger forum we are ‘performing’, not just being our ordinary selves:
- In a larger presentational arena we need to be a bigger version of ourselves.
- In smaller meetings we need to take a point of view about how we want to be perceived. I was told by a participant at a meeting of top retailers that the various players had their say whilst one kept quiet. At the end everyone turned to him and Tim Leahy had his brief say and it was the one that everyone really wanted to hear.
- Study other people – start at home by looking at news presenters or commentators of news or sport. Watch for their pacing, for their intensity of delivery, their use of pauses, their appearing to think on their feet and how a mannerism can become a trademark.
- Practise. Practise. Practise. The more you do, the better you get. Mark Twain said this: 'It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.’
Things that make a difference
Much of what I’ve described seems to be designed for the full-on presentation. However the principles I’m talking about here relate to all forms of communication. In all of them we are trying to get our point across more powerfully and memorably. So the more carefully we frame and manage our communication environment the better.
Greetings and manners
Meetings and communication always start before they formally start. The more you can break down the formality and the distance between you and your audience the easier you’ll find it to perform.
POTENTIAL PITFALL
So many people set off on the wrong foot. They’re so keen to get on with it that they fail to observe basic courtesies and good manners.
Proper ‘hellos’ are helpful … moving down from the stage and mingling always helps … be accessible … be friendly … be relaxed. Your task is to prime positive, friendly and energetic vibrations between those you are about to address and you. You’d probably call this ‘breaking the ice’. Skilled communicators will do this brilliantly. All of us can try. The difference it makes is amazing.
Venue
Why do most conference organisers insist on classroom seating layouts? Creating seating in the semi-round is so much better. Similarly why are meeting rooms so sterile – do you really need tables? Do you really need blank walls? Wouldn’t a bit of dressing with posters, products, blow-ups of action points on big charts from a previous meeting be more energising? Anything you can do to disrupt any lethargy is to be applauded.
Energy is the ingredient so often lacking, and why so many people say they hate meetings.
Up that buzz of energy and you’ll start to win.
Acoustics
Sound systems and heating systems are both erratic. You are either brain-numbingly cold or sleep-inducingly hot. Fix it before you start. And make sure the sound system (if you have one) works. If you are having a small meeting check that you’re not so spaced out you have to raise your voices.
Agendas
We need agendas, but they don’t have to be dull and leaden. Why do they always start ‘Apologies for absence’? By the time we’ve done that most of our enthusiasm has absented itself. Patrick Lencioni in his book The Advantage has a great idea.
‘Instead of putting together an agenda ahead of time, team members need to come together and spend their first ten minutes of a meeting creating a real-time agenda.’
This will comprise:
- a review of two or three key activities;
- agreement on what the top priorities for discussion.
Lencioni uses better words – he’s a good communicator is Patrick – he demands this as a key agenda point:
‘What is most important right now?’
Take-aways
I hate the word ‘minutes’. All too often a junior or a secretary is roped in to do a shorthand of what the meeting said and these are circulated a week or so later. If it’s energy you’re looking for this isn’t how to do it.
ASSESS YOURSELF
Are you brilliant at the immediate follow-up to a meeting? The quicker you clearly record who does what, by when the greater the chance of success. Check your response time.
The leader of the group should send out a one page note within 24 hours which says the following:
‘This is WHAT we agreed to do...... This is WHO’s to do what..... This is HOW we’ll proceed.... This is WHEN we’ll next meet....This is the real active progress we WANT’
In other words it should focus on what’s important right now.
Different types of meeting in which communication takes place
In advising on how to communicate more effectively, we must be precise about the demands and opportunities that exist in each kind of encounter. There are information sharing, status update, decision making, problem solving, innovation and team building meetings. I suspect we could think up many more. But in all of these, the better the quality of communication the better these meetings will be.
Internal communication
Face to Face
Increasingly in this age of technology we’re finding the need for ‘face time’. Certainly Mark Wahlberg, the actor and businessman, does although he is refreshingly self-deprecating about it:
‘I don’t text that much or email. I like to sit down face to face and have a conversation with you. I’m old-fashioned.’
One to one meetings work if both parties are relaxed and have clearly understood motives. As Mark says these are conversations and in conversations there are two skills – to listen hard and to go with the flow.
TIP
Great face to face meetings depend on being well prepared but being relaxed enough to change direction if something important comes up.
Regular meetings
These are the sorts of meeting we all hate. I remember early in my career discovering to dismay the company of which I’d become a director – hurray – had monthly management meetings that lasted nine hours. The seeping away of energy was demoralising and quick. Hurray no more.
Rather than waste (well that’s how it felt) five per cent of the working year on an increasingly pointless meeting (not a meeting of minds at all) we might have been better occupied staying in bed.
Patrick Lencioni again:
‘There is no better way to have a fundamental impact on an organisation than by changing the way it does meetings.’
He calls the average meeting like the one I describe as a ‘meeting stew’.
He says there only four sorts of meeting
- Daily check-ins (10 minutes)
- Weekly staff (about an hour)
- Ad hoc topical (maybe 3 hours)
- Quarterly off-site (1–2 days)
Special meetings
These typically might be the quarterly off-site. As creative, energetic and ambitious people we must be able to make these all feel a bit different and create a feeling of always being just at the edge of our comfort zone. They need to be engaging and always, please always, memorable.
Serious work needs to be done of course, but the moment invitees respond with gloom and reluctance there is a big problem.
Good meetings with alignment, refreshment of the vision of the business and an energy boost are one of the great reasons to go to work.
If you have good meetings you probably have a good company.
Presentations
There are so many presentations nowadays that we are suffering from PF (presentation fatigue).
ASSESS YOURSELF
Check your presenting skills fearlessly. The more harshly you do so the better you’ll become.
Everyone is pretty reasonable at presenting, so to stand out you have to be exceptional.
No-Nos
- bullet points;
- too many words on slides;
- reading your script (unless you are delivering a paper which means it’s OK);
- standing behind a lectern.
POTENTIAL PITFALL
Beware PowerPoint. Too many presenters put too many words on a slide. It may help them but it distracts the audience.
Probably Nots
- PowerPoint slides – unless they add to meaning;
- being longer than 30 minutes;
- talking without drama and movement;
- monotone.
Yeses
- video clips;
- music;
- getting people up on stage to help you;
- massive interaction.
As a younger ‘haven’t-leant-bad-habits-yet’ presenter you can embrace the idea of trying to stand out by being different.
But never let style precede substance.
First of all decide what it is you want to say, then say it with a sense of drama and distinction. Never let people say of you ‘It was just another presentation.’
Conferences
My best advice on running a successful conference is as follows:
- Make sure it’s somewhere pleasant and interesting. Forget luxury, go for scenery and ambience.
- Networking is what these events are for. Allow plenty of ‘mingle-time’.
- Make sure there’s a lot of opportunity for everyone to get involved in something. Create lots of small workshops to work on ‘what is important now.’
TIP
Conferences where the frisson of being involved and having something important to do is missing makes delegates lazy and bored.
- Make the big keynote speeches big, dramatic events.
- Avoid outside guest speakers. They distract.
- Focus on one big theme and really dissect and milk it.
There’s lot of cynicism about conferences because most of them are badly planned, poorly executed, boring and dispiriting. American comedian Fed Allen gets it about right:
‘A conference is a gathering of people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.’
But it needn’t be like that.
Conceived creatively, well planned and carefully run a conference can be a dramatic game-changer.
I call them ‘shows’ because that’s what they are. And like theatre they can inspire and energise.
If you a junior player make sure you get into the thick of it. Rush around being helpful and kind to people. Talk to the best speakers about how they prepared. Think about what went right and not so right.
Watch, listen and learn.
ASSESS YOURSELF
If you are relatively junior ensure you do whatever it is that needs doing, however menial. Make sure your desire to be an active team member stands out.
External communication
Communications with people outside your organisation requires a rare skill usually found in the best advertising agencies and PR companies and possessed by the best and most experienced copywriters.
David Ogilvy a late and legendary figure in advertising took a sensibly contemporary view of writing:
‘If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language.’
‘Their language’ is certainly not going to be pompous, high sounding or complicated. It’s going to be informal and conversational.
We’re going to have a friendly chat. We are not going to lecture you. We are definitely not going to hard-sell you anything.
Customers
These are usually businesses – retailers, wholesalers, big businesses – anyone but private individual consumers. What makes them different is they are bigger, buy more and are looking for business solutions.
The simple distinction between a customer and a consumer is that the former is a business or a trade customer who purchases (usually in bulk) and the latter literally buys and consumes the product for personal and family use.
The most potent way of communicating with a customer will be ‘face to face’. The relationship here is fundamental and the big issue is about trust … do they trust you, the company supplying them, to do the best by them?
A lot of literature, presentations and scripted words will be created, listened to and disputed during the growth of this relationship.
Communications need to be elegant, modern, conversational, clear and brief. They also need to be tailored to an individual company.
Increasingly big global companies are communicating with each other in English.
Let’s make that great, vivid English.
Consumers
Talking to end users has been best historically by a cadre of great advertising writers like David Abbott, Charles Saatchi, Bill Bernbach, Tony Brignull and David Ogilvy (again) who once said:
‘The consumer is not a moron. She’s your mother.’
The great delight of writing or talking to a prospective consumer is you are talking about a product or brand you presumably like or rate. You want to nudge these consumers into trying it. Think about a person not a moron, possibly your mother or maybe your sister-in-law or someone you like and get on with and pretend you’re talking to them. Have an enthusiastic chat. Bill Bernbach, who was fine writer, used to say:
- put a little of yourself into your copy;
- a small admission gains a large acceptance;
- the truth really is your strongest weapon so use it.
TIP
We are tempted to talk ‘corporate’ and pompously. Don’t. Be natural, be conversational and talk ‘human’.
Walk around shops listening to people (real consumers), read research reports and people-watch. The more you know about your end-consumer (who they are, what they think and feel, why they buy – or don’t buy – your product) the better you’ll be able to communicate with them.
Media
In communicating with the media always face the music and the realities of your situation.
Better still try and work with and watch an expert at work.
Journalists want a story, they want quotable stuff, they will fail to keep their job if they are boring or if a story they could have got from your company goes somewhere else because you clammed up or lied to them.
They are not always nice or kind.
They will ask hard questions of the ‘When did you stop beating your wife’ sort.
Make sure you tell the facts, don’t lie (NEVER LIE) and don’t try and be clever.
It always pays to try and create a relationship with a few journalists the same age as you so you get to understand things from their point of view.
Regard this is an investment in the future. When you’re big and famous they may be too.
Regulators
We live in an increasingly highly regulated world. Ask if you can arrange an exchange between various regulatory bodies and your company – nothing too formal but structured enough for both you and them to gain a better understanding of how to communicate with each other. Often the problems in communications relate to an ‘us and them’ mentality based on ignorance.
Neil Gaiman who wrote The Sandman, one of the DC Comics series, talked about what they don’t teach you at school. It was long list including this wise thought:
‘They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind.’
Opinion formers
Many people find the word ‘networking’ alienating. It’s that patronising way that conference organisers tell you to ‘go and network’ when what you want to do is reflect, have coffee and maybe meet some interesting people … just maybe. I was once approached by a Korean at a seminar in the coffee break.
Him. ‘What you do?’
Me. ‘I write, I mentor and I consult on marketing and communication.’
Him. ‘No bloody use to me’
And stomped off...
Having said that, meet as many interesting people as you can and make sure you keep their details. If they aren’t interesting, don’t stomp off, but don’t bother. Life’s too short …
ASSESS YOURSELF
Networking fails if you try too hard or if you hide. See how many contacts you make whom you like, respect and are useful and follow them up. Keep count.
Opinion formers are people whom others listen to not always because they’re right but because they’re interesting. Caitlin Moran, Lucy Kellaway and Jamie Oliver are all opinion formers. Amongst people you know choose those who’ll form and those who’ll follow opinion.
Potential recruits
I hate the word employees. We have teams of people. And the best people get the best out of other people. If you had a free choice, wouldn’t you want to work with stunning colleagues who made you stunning so you could make them more stunning and so on? The biggest difference between Apple, Amazon, Google, Netflix, LinkedIn and Facebook and other companies is that they hire very talented, smart people and take a very long time in an exacting sequence of interviews doing so. They are really hard to get into.
But it’s not just high-tech companies that are this smart. At the height of the UK recession Aldi and Lidl were paying more than any other UK employer to its graduates. The fastest growing businesses hire the smartest.
Communicate just how great it is in your company to people outside it. If this seems a work of fiction ask yourselves – all of you – how could you change this so it isn’t?
POTENTIAL PITFALL
By having too narrow a focus we miss out on communicating with people who are potentially influential in their observations about our company.
Competitors
In communicating your company’s appeal don’t forget to say things that wrong foot your competitors. Remember they are going to be one of your most attentive audiences, so frame some of what you say to make them envious, demoralised or confused.
Communication is a powerful weapon used in the right disruptive kind of way.
Choosing and using different media
There are many places in which one communicates apart from in meetings. Here briefly are some of the most obvious and some simple tips for dealing with each as a communicator.
PR
There’s one simple communication lesson here. The media want to have new stories. The more they can have material from you that they want to print or broadcast the better. Think new, quirky, human interest, controversial, funny, useful.
Advertising
We are inundated with advertising messages wherever we go, whatever we read and whatever we watch. In the 1980s it was reckoned an average person saw ads or brand messages 2000 times a day . Now that number has conservatively increased by 2–3 times.
Be boring at your peril. Being ignored is to waste your money.
If you want your communication to be seen, heard and to have any effect at all then you must be distinctive, impactful and memorable.
Too much advertising tries to say too much, is too safe and inoffensive and is just a piece of brand camouflage.
There is no room for chameleons in communication.
Events
At exhibitions and trade events, being there means you ought to communicate your presence by doing interviews, being noisy in a suitable way – there’s a big distinction between being bold (good) and being brash (bad).
Find ways of saying ‘Come and see what we have to show, tell and discuss with you. And we’d like to listen to you and hear what you need.’
Brochures
In a brilliant book called The Cluetrain Manifesto, published in 1999, way ahead of its time, the thesis that business communication as we know it is dead was set out.
Here was the core message:
‘A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter – and getting smarter faster than most companies.’
The authors were especially scathing about corporate-brochure-speak which they described as patronising, full of jargon and devoid of humour and humanity.
And of course they were right.
Look at any printed literature from your company and reconsider how appropriate it is for the customer or consumer of today.
‘Not’, will be the overwhelming response I fear.
Social Media
David Weldon, who is the Marketing Director of banking group RBS, makes a salutary warning against regarding social media as the be all and end all:
‘Every trend is marketing is of course the next big thing … don’t be the dog that barks at every passing car.’
To reach Millennials and Generation Z, being omni-channel and digital is the obvious way to go. Speak to them in their language. This is a self-selecting, stylish and opinion-forming medium for those who know how to use it. Do not try to hard-sell on it. Converse, share, be interesting, use it as it’s meant to be used – as a social forum not as a sales forum.
TIP
Social media allows us to reach people fast, comfortably and conversationally. Think a drink in a bar and a chat. Think casual not formal.
Ironically, having said this, used in this way it can act as a sales forum where you invite people to try your product and tell you what they think of it.
The Web
Websites are nearly always too complex and too wordy.
Make them straightforward and easy to navigate.
Have an attitude about your brand and communicate this with style and confidence.
Change what doesn’t work and constantly update your site.
E-mails
Does anyone tell anyone how to write a letter? Isn’t writing an email like walking? Something anyone can do naturally.
Some pieces of advice:
- never send an email if you can have a face to face chat or telephone call instead;
- always keep them short and simple;
- be conversational with short sentences;
- be sure there is nothing confusing in it;
- always re-read an email before sending it – see if it can be shorter and clearer.
Town Hall Meetings
These are popular in the States. A forum for sharing news and getting employee input on issues. Make them open, transparent and full of interplay. They are not meant to be opportunities to be didactic or proprietorial. They are best when they are used to listen to people’s views.
Conference Calls
If you want to see how bad conference calls often are, watch the following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_tiqlBFjbk
For them to succeed keep them short, rigorously chaired and with a very tight and specific agenda. Great communication won’t happen and isn’t necessary. Get the information shared, discussed, agreed and signed off. The best conference calls are the fast ones.
About audiences and what turns them on
Understanding your audience
In communicating, your audience is always right (even when they’re wrong). What they hear, what they feel are what matters, not what you thought you said.
And here’s how the greatest remark about communication ever made goes. Maya Angelou:
‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’
- Who are they?
If you don’t know the sort of people, age, attitude, gender and so on you really must avoid saying anything.
RULE: know who your audience is. - What do they know?
The worst fault in communication is to tell people what they already know. - What do you know that they want to know?
What do they know about you and what do you know that they need to know? - Why do they want to know this?
How important is this piece of communication? Is it a nice-to-know piece of entertainment or is it a critical communication of a real piece of news? - How well do they know you?
The best thing you can do is avoid ‘communicating cold’. Before you communicate try to get to know them and vice versa. The more (hopefully positive) they know about you the better the chance of a smooth ride. For you... (and them).
POTENTIAL PITFALL
Prior to any communication make sure people know who you are, what you do and what you’ve done. Communication from the anonymous lacks clout.
- How do you think they’ll feel about what you are going to talk about?
Put yourself in their position and see what problems there might be, what sensitivities … check with your colleagues to make sure you haven’t overlooked anything. - How would they like to feel?
Read that quote from Maya Angelou again … understand you audience’s emotions as well as their minds.
Know this and the way you communicate will already have been shaped. Do not think about preparing a piece of communication without satisfying this basic step.
Being good at telling stories
Geoff Mead of a company called Narrative Leadership Associates – yes the art of storytelling is now regarded as an important business skill – said:
‘There’s a need to inject the magic of storytelling into marketing so as to tap into people’s emotions.’
In truth having a compelling narrative was always an important bedrock to any effective communication but now it’s acquired hero status.
How to create a story
Andrew Stanton, a master storyteller, who was the writer of Toy Story and Finding Nemo amongst other great stories, said a number of things in a riveting TED talk:
- stories have guidelines but no rules;
- great stories always contain truths that are personal and true;
- stories are like jokes, they always have a punchline; you must decide on the ending before you can tell a story;
- stories have to make the audience care;
- and he quoted William Archer, critic and writer who said: ‘Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty.’
But there’s something else about the magic of a good story. Even though you know exactly what’s going to happen you want to hear it again. That’s why children get so excited about hearing a favourite story again and again – and by the way do not mess with it … they will get very cross if you change anything.
Tell it like it is.
And tell it like you’re enjoying telling it.
TIP
The best advice to any storyteller is to know exactly what the climactic end point is – think punchline (as in joke.)
The comforting thing is in the end all is well.
But as Andrew said ‘there are no rules’ which is why Game of Thrones, The Bridge and House of Cards are so popular.
Sometimes things turning out even worse than you could have ever imagined is also exciting.
How to write effectively
The standard and clarity of most writing today is not good. This is because:
- most writers don’t know what good writing can be like;
- they aren’t quite sure what they are trying to say;
- and they try and say too many things.
Reading good stuff
The first and best way of becoming a better writer is to read more. Read stuff you enjoy but which is well written. Read Caitlin Moran or Henry Winter in the Times. Read the chef Anthony Bourdain, J.K. Rowling, Malcom Gladwell, Guy Hamel … read anything that grabs your attention and that makes you feel ‘I wish I could write like that.’
Documents
Start with the summary. Spend a lot of time trying to get your key points clear. Then write the simple headings that you are going to write your document about.
Create the signposts first. The journey comes next.
Remember how short people’s attention span is.
Try and make your document easy to read.
Using your ears, energy and your ability to be brief
How to become a great, ‘active’ listener
Nancy Kline author of Time to Think and other books is focused on being a good listener and never interrupting … let silences form she says and people blurt out amazing stuff. Here’s one other wise thing she said:
‘The quality of your attention determines the quality of other people’s thinking.’
Being a better listener involves you doing three things:
- shut up
- look interested
- wait.
Following through on communications to check the message got through
Amazing isn’t it that we assume our messages get through first time. ‘But I told you’ is not a valid reproach. In a busy world you have to tell people several times.
Patrick Lencioni says leaders should be ‘Chief Reminding Officers’. He advocates ‘over-communication’:
‘Employees won’t believe what leaders are communicating to them until they’ve heard it seven times.’
The role of the executive summary
The most important piece of communication is the one that simply and clearly summarises what the situation is, what needs doing, by whom, and when.
One page and no more than eight key points will do.
Critically it also needs to say what success will look like and feel like.
Of all forms of written communication this will be the most important one to be good at.
TIP
If you can write a clear and persuasive summary that describes what the issue is, key considerations, the solution and what success will look like you’ll have it cracked.
Success
How you judge your success as a communicator will be more intuitive than quantitative. I am not going to advocate awarding marks. Success will be a combination of three things:
- Your own self-confidence.
- Your improved ability to listen and absorb.
- What your audiences think and feel about you.
Did you know who you were trying to reach?
Have you improved in your ability to work out who your key audience is and what they like and what they are like?
Did you reach the audience you wanted to reach?
Simple question … until you know whom you are reaching literally and whom you are reaching emotionally – in other words influencing them by the aptness of your messages – you cannot call yourself a success.
Did they understand you?
One of the most frustrating challenges is pitching the message at the right level. You mustn’t be either patronisingly simplistic, nor over their heads. But always better to be simple than complex.
No. Did they really understand you?
Irritating repetition, sorry. The problem we all face is people being too kind and telling us we were fine when we could with a bit of effort have been better. The big lesson here is for you to be acutely self-critical and see what you did right and what you did less well.
Did they do what was required as a result of listening to you?
Back to Lencioni. Did you tell them enough times for that message to be tattooed into their brain? You should be judged not by the applause you got but by the action that followed your communication.
Will they remember what was said?
Good communication lingers. Have you learned how to ensure what is said, is engaging, impactful and memorable?
Are you getting better as a communicator?
What do you think?
What do others think?
Keep on asking those questions.
Are you making appropriate choices about what to leave out?
Good communicators are champions of the ‘less is more’ cause. Have you become a ruthless editor? Can you simplify, reduce and make your communications briefer, clearer and sharper?
Are you really commanding people’s attention?
Some rules:
- look as though you’re really glad to be there with them;
- use pauses more;
- keep to the point.
Do you realise a failure to understand, agree and act are your fault not theirs?
The audience is right even if you think they’re wrong.
They must be your best friends, not an enemy to be wrestled with and vanquished. You will not become a great communicator overnight. The business environment can be rather brutal on people who are lazy and try and busk things, and even more brutal to those inattentive to its needs.
Time you spend learning new tricks and studying those around you who are rated for their communication skills will be time well spent.
Checklist
The following are some of the key things in the book which can most immediately improve your skills. Communicating well is your single most important business skill. It requires a big effort to become accomplished. It’s really worth making that effort:
- Prepare. Spend plenty of time doing this well. Superstars say it takes an hour of preparation per minute of communication. Click here to review.
- Plan, diagnose and research. Get your facts, the background and all the arguments right. Make sure you can’t be tripped up. Click here to review.
- Understand your audience. Know who they are, what they know and what they want? Click here to review.
- Reflect. Do not rush. Always do the overnight test. Never create a seriously important piece of communication without applying this test and without checking it out with colleagues or your boss. Click here to review.
- Nail the key message up front. Make your sure audience knows exactly what you are communicating. Do not be afraid of repeating the key message. Click here to review.
- What matters most? Less is more. Always. In presenting or writing a document you must make choices about the stuff to leave out. Including everything will just confuse people. (And, anyway, you can always put stuff in the Appendix). Click here to review.
- Try to be engaging and interesting. We live in a post-boredom age. Be tedious at your peril. Presenting a spreadsheet can be engrossing (but not usually). Choose the one or two figures that are the key ones around which you can build a story. Click here to review.
- Layout matters. A document that is well laid out will be so much easier to read. Break it up into short paragraphs. Include sub-headings. Be kind to your reader – especially in your brief and simple executive summary. Click here to review.
- Follow-up and over-communication are essential. The first communication may misfire. Or your audience may get distracted. Never be afraid of over-communicating. Keep on telling them your key message. Click here to review.
- How much better could you really be? By now you’ll know what’s expected. Read this again and work out where you could get better. No one ever stops learning. Everything you write, every time you present and every meeting you go to is another opportunity to learn how to get better at being a great communicator. Click here to review.