Key 1: Communicate with the End in Mind

Isabella was a senior VP at a large consumer goods company, facilitating a working strategy session with the senior leadership team. The goal of the meeting was to engage, inform, and inspire the senior leaders so that they'd take full ownership of the strategy. Then, they'd be equipped to go off and roll the strategy out to their functional teams and execute against it for the next year.

Isabella knew the business inside and out. However, the concepts she introduced during the session were too dense and complex. People clearly weren't following her.

On a break, I asked Isabella how things were going. She beamed and told me, “The meeting's going really well.”

I asked her how she knew.

“We're though the first two priorities,” she said proudly, “and we only have one more to get through and there's still an hour and fifteen minutes left.”

Uh-oh. From Isabella's response, I immediately realized that her mind-set was content-focused, rather than outcome-focused. She saw her role as to “present” the strategy. For Isabella, this meeting was something to get through. All she wanted was to finish up, check off the box on her to-do list, and move on.

Isabella didn't communicate with the end in mind because she never stopped to consider what that end should be. She didn't see the strategy session as an opportunity to align and motivate the leaders. She was just sharing information. In doing so, she abdicated her leadership.

Leaders work in the influence business. Every interaction is an opportunity to create value. Every act of communication should be an act toward persuading, educating, informing, inspiring, or motivating someone else to move in a desired direction.

Effective communication needs to be framed to focus on meeting the needs of those with whom you're speaking and to offer them something of value. You should never communicate for communication's sake. Rather, you should proactively develop a communication strategy. When designing your communication, ask yourself, “What could I say that would make someone choose to listen to me?”

As you prepare, step into the shoes of your audience. Ask yourself these questions:

• What's in it for them to listen to you?
• What challenges do they currently face?
• Are you credible in their eyes? If not, what do you need to do or say?
• How will you build rapport?
• What pain point or challenge will you help them overcome?
• What stories or examples can they relate to? (How will they make the biggest impact?)
• What call to action can you make that they'll respond to?

Unless you know the answers to these questions, you're likely to flop. You'll fall into the trap that many leaders do: communicating to meet your own needs, not the needs of your audience. This is what both Isabella and the CEO in Atlanta did. In Isabella's case, her underlying need was “I need to check my boxes.” For the CEO, his need was “I need to show you how powerful I am.” In both cases, it was all about them, and the audience tuned out.

You'll only be able to communicate with the end in mind if you have a genuine desire to connect. You need to talk with people, not at them. It takes a certain level of maturity to be other-focused. It means giving up insecurities that many leaders in organizations have: fear, control, and power. If you can do this, you'll bring your communication to a whole new level.

Key 2: Have a Central Message

Anne is a client of mine, a senior executive who works in the technology industry. She shared this story with me:

Our company had the opportunity to acquire a smaller player in our market. The very next day, a bunch of us met with a bunch of them. We spent all morning going through their financials, asking them lots of questions, and seeing how this would work.

That afternoon, the group from our own company went off to meet on our own. We were pretty hyped up. We immediately started rehashing every detail of the morning meeting. Over an hour of heated discussion went by, when one member of our team suddenly stood up. He shouted, “Hold on everybody! Can we stop for a minute? We're in the weeds. What is the purpose of this meeting?”

It's easy to get lost in the details. So many clamor for our attention. But in the noise, the point gets lost. For example, two-thirds of senior managers can't name their firm's top priorities.²

Confusion can only be dispelled with clarity. When communicating, you need to have a clear and concise central message. It's the core theme that ties together everything you say.

There's an old three-step formula for effective communication that highlights the importance of having a clear central message:

1. Tell them what you're going to tell them.
2. Tell them.
3. Tell them what you told them.

If you're not crystal clear, how do you expect anyone else to be?

People love being given a clear central message. The clarity provides comfort. Confusion is anxiety producing: both mentally (high-alert brain waves) and physiologically (stress hormones activated). When you know what the point is, you can relax.

A clear central message also gives context. Similar to having a good map, clear context helps you to orient and navigate much more quickly. Instead of wondering where to go, you can spend your time going there.

Given the benefits of having a clear central message, it's amazing how many leaders communicate without having a clear central message. Their meetings, emails, and presentations become guessing games. They spawn meetings after the meetings, when team members try to figure out the key point.

Your central message needs to be concise. It must be about only one thing. As you prepare in advance, you need to take a machete to all of your thoughts and hack out a clear path that can be understood, remembered, and easily followed.

For example, your message can't be “discussion on quality.” That's too vague. Instead it could be “product defects are killing our profits.” Then, use supporting points that reinforce your central message.

There's a reason Winston Churchill encouraged repeating the message again and again. It's the same reason that advertisers say that people need to hear something seven times before they remember it. Forgetting is going to happen. You can't escape that fact. However, the more you repeat your key theme, the more likely it will stick.

When crafting your messaging, get strategic. Design your communication so that people remember the right thing. The central key message is the one thing that you need them to know and remember.

Key 3: Create Checks for Understanding

On December 11, 1998, NASA launched an unmanned spacecraft to Mars. The Climate Orbiter was a 745-pound robotic space probe designed to study the Martian climate and atmosphere. The cost of the Orbiter was $125 million.

On September 23, 1999, the mission went horribly wrong. The Orbiter drifted from its intended course and flew too close to Mars, where it entered the upper atmosphere and disintegrated. The mission was a total loss.

After an extensive review, NASA determined the cause of the accident. It turned out to be a communication breakdown. One of NASA's contractors, Lockheed Martin, had supplied a ground-based piece of navigation software that produced results using standard English (Imperial) measurements. The NASA navigation system used the metric system.

In other words, one group was talking pounds, and the other group was talking kilograms.³ Oops.

If you find yourself frustrated and saying, “But I sent the email!” or “We had a meeting about this!” you've slid backward into the one-way communication trap. Communication isn't a static goal unto itself. Shared Understanding is.

Communication needs to be active and two-way. One of the simplest ways to ensure that your communication translates to the person you're communicating with is to use this technique: Ask for a receipt.

What does it mean to say you understand? It's word that's tossed around quite frequently, as in, “I understand you.” “Got it. Understood.”

Understanding depends on getting others to see reality the way you see it. You see your meaning: you want others to see the meaning in the same way. One-way communication leaves understanding to chance; others might see reality the way you see it, but they might not.

Skilled leaders know that understanding is not the default setting for communication. Rather than just hope for the best, they stack the deck in their favor. Their trick? They intentionally insert checks into their communication to guarantee that understanding takes place. They ask for a receipt.

Receipts provide proof of a complete transaction. In fact, the more important the purchase, the more likely you are to ask for a receipt. You might skip the receipt when you buy a candy bar, but you wouldn't dream of buying a house without one. It's no accident that the most important human events (birth, marriage, death, etc.) involve certified official certificates—receipts of understanding. Why should the transacting of your important business information be any different?

The best communicators know that the understanding loop isn't complete until it comes back full circle to where it started. The receipt turns one-way communication into two-way communication. The monologue becomes dialogue.

There are many ways to ask for a receipt of understanding. One of the simplest and most powerful tools is to ask for confirmation (see Figure 8.3).

When the message comes back to you, you can verify: Did they get it? Is it 100% accurate? If not, you get a second (and third) chance to go back and try again.

A lesson on the power of two-way communication comes from the fast-food industry. In the 1980s, the restaurant drive-thru process was a nightmare. Tons of mistakes would be committed between the time customers would give their order and pull up to the next window. Customers would order one thing and receive something completely different.

But suddenly, everything changed. Drive-thru mistake rates plummeted. What business breakthrough led to such performance improvements? The industry discovered an innovative solution: employees started repeating the order back to the customer over the intercom. They started checking their understanding.

The next, even greater leap forward came in the 1990s, when McDonald's introduced the verification board, an electronic visual display that enabled customers to see their orders before they were put in the system.⁴ Visual verification creates the ultimate in true, two-way communication. For most people, sight is their dominant sense. If you can literally see that someone understands you, then confirming that understanding becomes much easier.

Too many leaders skip this step of checking for understanding. They assume it's there, and settle for “I think they got it.” Yet, the more important the information, the more important it is to verify understanding. After all, if Taco Bell will do it for a $3.19 Crunchwrap Supreme, isn't your business worth the same effort?

Key 4: Own and Fix Communication Breakdowns

Not long ago, I was flying a regional jet from Cleveland to Hartford. After the plane had boarded, the flight attendant came on to the PA system and explained they were waiting for the pilot.

After 35 minutes of sitting with no updates, the side door opens and in walks someone who appears to be a pilot. He heads straight to the cockpit.

Five minutes goes by…nothing. Ten minutes goes by…nothing.

Then, over the PA system:

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot here. Thanks for your patience. I was all the way across the airport, waiting to go on a flight to Chicago when I got the call to come over here and fly this plane. Those of you that know the Cleveland airport know how far away that is. Sorry for the delay. It's the company's fault.

I was startled by his last comment. “It's the company's fault?” Was the pilot saying that he wasn't to blame, but the airline was? As though, somehow, “the company” is this entity that exists separate from him?

I can imagine that the pilot was in an uncomfortable situation. Maybe his ego couldn't bear the thought that people were thinking this was his fault. Maybe this delay was all due to a company error. But, frankly, as a passenger, I really wasn't interested in assigning blame. I just wanted to get home. I'd prefer the pilot just apologize and get the plane moving.

There's an old saying that says, “Anyone can steer the ship when the seas are calm. It's when the waves are rough that leaders are tested.” You can have decent communication skills and great intentions, and sometimes, even then, communication will break down. These breakdowns (as painful as they seem) are opportunities. Think of them as communication moments of truth. In that moment, how do you respond? Do you find the fault or the fix? It's in these moments that people see what you're really made of.

On September 29, 1982, 12-year-old Mary Kellerman of Elk Grove Village, Illinois, died after taking a capsule of Extra-Strength Tylenol. Over the next few days, seven more people died in the Chicagoland area after taking cyanide-laced capsules of Extra-Strength Tylenol, which was Johnson & Johnson's (J&J) bestselling product. The bottles had all been tampered with.

The “Tylenol murders” were a public relations disaster. Marketing experts predicted that the company would crash and burn. Yet, just one year later, J&J had regained 30% share of the $1.2 billion analgesic market. Their solution?

Courageous truth-telling, ownership of the issue, and swift action. In other words, great leadership.

It started with communication. James Burke, the CEO of J&J, appeared in numerous press conferences and gave straight talk about what had happened. He said that J&J would do the right thing. He said that customers came first. Then, he put his company's money where his mouth was.

Almost immediately after Burke made his promises, J&J halted Tylenol production and advertising. On October 5, 1982, it issued a nationwide recall of Tylenol products. Product recalls at that time were still unheard of in the United States. For perspective, there were 31 million bottles in circulation, valued at over $100 million. J&J also offered to exchange all Tylenol capsules already purchased by the public for solid tablets, free of charge.⁵ James Burke owned the situation the company was in. He didn't say, “They should have told us sooner” or “It's the company's fault.”

The exceptional leader puts herself on the hook: she's 100% responsible. If there's a problem, she asks, “What could I have done differently to make sure understanding happened?”

If you're genuinely committed to achieving your desired outcome, you must own the entire process of communication. It doesn't matter if you're the sender or the receiver of information. You'll do whatever it takes to make sure that information transforms into insight.

Key 5: Make the Implicit Explicit

People are good at many things. Mind reading is not one of them. If you rely on implicit hints, there's a good chance your hopes will be dashed. Create an environment in which people can say what they mean and mean what they say, and you'll go a long way to improving the quality of communication.

Lee is a sales and marketing executive. He's a master at making the implicit explicit. I've had the pleasure of working with Lee at five different points in his career, and each time he's made a move and started leading a new team. He spends the first two days with this team at an off-site retreat, establishing how they can best work together. He strives for clarity and transparency. Some items he always covers include the following:

• Personal background and preferred style of working
• Expectations he has of team members
• Expectations team members have of him
• Expectations team members have of each other

He also establishes norms of communication for the team:

• How often should the entire team meet?
• How often should subgroups meet?
• What's the best method for communication?
• What are our expectations for “timeliness” in replies?
• Are emails late nights and/or weekends off limits or within reason?

By the end of two days, everyone knows exactly where Lee stands and where he's coming from. There will be no surprises. Through his explicit candor, Lee creates a huge reservoir of trust.

Establishing explicit norms of communication increases your effectiveness. After all, don't you want people to know the rules of the road before they start driving? It takes more time up front, but it's time well spent.

Leaders who don't create clear expectations default to a “hint-and-hope” strategy. It's alive and well in Old-School command-and-control style organizations. With their rigid hierarchies, people at the top establish a norm in which they don't want to hear any bad news from below. People who have been “dinged” in the past for speaking up learn to keep their heads down. Out of fear of repercussions, they only hint at a problem issue, and then they hope that the people above them on the organization chart get the message and take the appropriate action.

Here are a few common examples of hint-and-hope in a workplace:

• Employees are afraid to speak up about customer issues they experience on the front line. Their valuable customer insights don't see the light of day. Result: any potential opportunities to improve the customer experience never occur.
• Managers who spend most of their days in meetings but only have candid conversations in those meetings after the meetings, because they won't call out the real issues in the actual meeting. Result: poor decisions get implemented.
• Executive teams who go off-site for two days of “strategy meetings” but spend the whole time discussing the crisis of the day because it's more comfortable to talk about the daily fires than tackle the big cultural and systemic issues that cause the crises in the first place. Result: the company's progress stays stuck on a treadmill.

How do you banish hint-and-hope? You start with inquiry, transparency, and honesty. You make the implicit explicit. Being genuine sets the proper tone for working together. When you keep things real, the people you work with will appreciate you treating them as adults. This will foster better teamwork and communication.

Key 6: Master the Medium

Once you take on the role of leader, you are viewed differently. You live in the heat of a spotlight and under the focus of a microscope. Everything you say and do (and everything you don't say and don't do) gets scrutinized. People spend their nights and weekends thinking about you, wondering what you think about them.

The irony, of course, is you're probably not thinking about them. You're thinking about all the things you need to get done.

Except for a rare few, organizations are not democracies—they're hierarchies. In a hierarchy, things aren't flat and equal. The corporate ladder, and the power that comes with each rung, are very real. If you're in a leadership role and naively act as though you're the same as those you lead, you're doing your team a disservice. You also weaken your influence.

If you're going to lead, you need to embrace the spotlight. It's an integral part of your job. Use its heat to amplify your message. Communication doesn't exist as a separate entity from you. It's an extension of you. You are the medium and the message. Your challenge is to become the best messenger you can be.

In 2006, Sir Ken Robinson gave a talk called “How Schools Kill Creativity” at the annual TED conference.⁶ His 20-minute talk has been viewed online at TED.com more than 63 million times. It's the most viewed TED Talk in history.

What makes it so compelling? It engages. It delights. It teaches. It inspires. It makes you think and feel. It's not just a speech. It's an experience. Robinson doesn't just talk. He gives a bravura performance.

Robinson knows that his delivery is as important as his content. Not only is his message on creativity but also he's incredibly creative in how he shares his message. He knows that to inspire others, he must model inspiration. He knows, to paraphrase Gandhi, that he must be “the change which he seeks in the world.” Robinson knows that communication is felt as much as it is heard.

There's an old proverb that states, “It's not what you say, it's how you say it.” If you want to improve your delivery, you need to master the delivery medium, that is, you.

Leadership is a performing art, and you are your own instrument. To play well, you need to know how to use all the delivery tools you have at your disposal. To use music as a metaphor, your ideas and words are your “notes.” Your voice and body is your “instrument” that you play those notes on.

There are many leaders who are actually quite brilliant, but they can't communicate their ideas to others without putting them to sleep. Their tragic flaw? They completely ignore their instrument, and they only focus on the notes. They wrongly assume their ideas are so interesting that they will communicate themselves. This weakens their power enormously, as do notes played through a poorly tuned instrument fall flat. To play well, you need to understand and practice using all the parts of your leadership instrument. These parts fall into two categories: your voice and your body.

The different elements of voice include the following:

• Volume. Are you loud enough so everyone can hear you comfortably? Do you create variety in volume so that people stay engaged?
• Pace. Do you speak too slowly or quickly? What impact does your speed have on your listener?
• Intonation. How much do you use the range (low pitch to high pitch) of your voice? Modulation in range can help to emphasize certain points.
• Diction/pronunciation. Do you sound easy and clear to understand? If you do, you'll come across sounding more intelligent.
• Passion. Are you excited by your subject? If you're not, why would anyone else be?
• Fillers. Do ums, ahs, and ers dilute your message?
• Pausing. Do you stop and take a breath for air? Pauses give your listener a moment to digest what you've just said. Pauses create a perception of you as confident.

Different elements of body include the following:

• Facial expressions. Does your face say, “I'm interested in you?” or “Speaking is more painful than root canal?” Faces are huge conveyors of emotion. Get some feedback on how yours comes across.
• Gestures (hand, body). Do your hand and body movements support your thoughts or get in the way of them?
• Posture/stance. Do you stand upright (confident) or slouch (weak)? Are you open to the people you speak to or closed off with how you stand?
• Movement. How do you use the space that you're in? Does movement move the message forward or hold it back?

Each element of your voice and body may seem like a small detail, but details matter. Each piece adds to or subtracts from the greater whole of your message. If you start to focus on using your instrument in an intentional way, you'll be way ahead of most leaders out there. No one's expecting you to become a Hollywood-level performer, but even a small change can make a big difference. How you come across is the foundation of your personal brand and the basis of your professional reputation.