Friday, 11:30 a.m.
It is finally Friday. It has been a long week, but certainly a productive one. The road finally seems downhill toward the finish line.
“Bi-beep,” the internal chat system lights up in the corner of Katherine’s screen. She is the CEO’s chief of staff: “Hello Katherine, can you type?”
“Yes, sure.”
“Next Thursday there is a board meeting. They would like you to present the project you are driving. Are you okay at 15:00?”
Conflicting emotions run through Katherine’s mind: amazement, pride, panic, happiness… After all, the question is probably rhetorical, so she hurries to answer: “Sure, 15:00 is no problem, thanks.”
Only after answering, it occurs to her that she could have asked a few more questions, like: What are the expectations? How long should the presentation be? Any particular points or questions that the board wants to address? She will send an e-mail asking for more details or she will turn to Andrew, Alessandra, or Mary as they are all members of the board.
Thursday is close: She only has 3 full working days to prepare. Even adding the weekend, time is still short. So, Katherine decides to inform the team immediately and get everyone to help.
She calls for a meeting in half an hour. They are all there and from their faces, it is apparent that they are wondering the reason for the meeting. It is quite unusual for Katherine on such short notice.
When Katherine explains the reason, to her great surprise, they all look at each other and spontaneously start a round of applause. Everyone congratulates her on the opportunity that will give great visibility to everyone’s work and they ask her how she intends to prepare the presentation.
“I think we will have to line up everything we have produced so far and present it following a logical thread.”
“Katherine, in the past Andrew was asking me to help him when he had to present to the board. His mantra was: ‘less is more.’” It is Elisabeth who takes the floor. Finally, without any pedantic or superior tone.
“It is good advice,” Mark reinforces, “Present the overall situation and get quickly to the 2 key points where we want approval and support. All the rest are details that may sound irrelevant at that level, raise unnecessary questions, and possibly start defocusing discussions. The more you load the presentation, the higher the risk of running out of time, before reaching a validation on the key points.”
“It’s the same thing Andrew always said.” Elisabeth adds: “They are all smart and well-prepared people. They already know the situation, they have probably talked about it at the board level at other times and many of them have certainly already gone through similar issues at other times, in other boards, in other companies.” Then she adds: “An easy way is to organize your presentation in 3 logical steps:
• First present the situation, grounding it on facts and data. Use only information that we can back up with confidence, nothing that can generate arguing or doubts on our credibility. And let’s carefully select the numbers we present, they are instrumental in paving the way for the next step.
• Then introduce the problem, or the circumstances that have occurred, what has worsened the situation, reducing our share and margins.
• Finally, the last step: Reveal the solution, which is our recommendation to get out of it.”
Katherine listens with great attention: She is also happy that Elisabeth is trying to help. Jokingly she says: “It looks like a tale...!”
“It is!” James intervenes. “It is the typical structure of classical mythology. Movies also often follow a similar structure. Billy Wilder, the famous movie director, suggested a 3-acts model: The first act introduces the hero, the existing relationships with the other characters, and their aspirations. In the second act, the hero faces some obstacles or impediments that keep them away from achieving their desire. In the third and final act, the hero finds a solution. Most of the movies follow this pattern.”
James has polarized everyone’s attention so he continues: “If you think about it, obstacles create emotions in the public and that’s why they are there. The more you want to emotionally involve the audience, the more the authors complicate the situation with problems, unexpected events, etc. A story can be easily remembered and shared, emotions strike, and engage. Those who decide, our board members, must be ‘involved’ emotionally, not just rationally.”
“Where does all this sudden passion come from?” Maurice asks jokingly, “Don’t get me wrong: I totally agree with what you’re saying.”
James reflects for a moment before replying; he is a bit embarrassed. The whole team is watching him: “Well ... as a hobby I am a theater director. I run a small semiprofessional company.”
“Wow! A second life.” It was Mark who spoke; everyone laughs. Maurice gives a pat on the shoulder to James who, wholeheartedly, continues: “The other thing that theater teaches us is that everything is performance. What you say is of course very important, but how you say it is even more important. Your tone of voice and your gestures must convey confidence.”
“Yeah, it’s true: I read an article that talked about the 7-38-55 rule.” Mark speaks again.
“Which is?” asks Katherine.
“Research says that only 7% of communication goes through speech, 38% through tone of voice, and 55%, by far the largest percentage, through body language.”
“Perfect: You convinced me. Let’s do this then: Elisabeth, James, can you start developing the story? Mark and Maurice, you will be the ‘judges.’ Come on, let’s start right away… let’s write down the basic ideas, then on Monday we take stock and start putting the pieces together. How does it sound to everyone?”
Deep Dive—Foundation of Effective Communication
Each of us communicates. But doing it effectively is a skill of a few. The effectiveness of the communication is measured according to the result we get by communicating: Has our interlocutors received the message we wanted to convey? Did it spark their interest? Did it cause a change: an action, a purchase, or an opinion?
Then, what are the best practices for effective communication? Regardless of the type of communication, the main objective will be to put our interlocutor at the center, building a personalized, structured, and incisive message that resonates and generates a reaction. To do this it is necessary to:
• Define the goal and the desired result: Communication always determines a change (of perspective, knowledge, action, and so on). It is necessary to clarify our goal in advance (inform, discuss, motivate, encourage action, ...) and the result we want to achieve to determine the direction of our communication.
• Know the interlocutor/audience: In front of us we have people with specific needs, habits, beliefs, tastes, and levels of knowledge. They are influenced by their system of values, aspirations, and emotions and by that of family members, peers, influencers, role models, and so on. Therefore, to be effective in our communication, we will have to:
• Research our interlocutor or audience’s needs, habits, beliefs, preferences.
• “Put us in their shoes” and foresee:
What they may want—Is their need aligned with our goal and the result we want to achieve?
How they can react to our message—What objections should we expect? How can we handle them?
Finally, we will have to understand what they already know about the topic and select what information to insert or omit in our communication, building an ad hoc message for our interlocutor and avoiding being repetitive or generic.
• Identify #1 big idea: This is the core of our communication. It is the main message that we want to convey and influence our counterpart. It is the idea around which we build the communication and the call to action. And... “Less is more”—a single idea, supported and correctly structured, is better than a multitude of thoughts that are difficult to remember.
• Structuring the story (storytelling): With the emergence of Design Thinking and Human Centricity, storytelling has been confirmed as the most effective means of communication. A story, in fact, can be easily understood, remembered, and shared. It brings concreteness to an abstract and/or theoretical message. As in movies, the story has a protagonist around whom the plot revolves, so an effective storytelling has a character at the core and a big idea around which the narration is articulated. The latter must hook, involve, surprise, and finally reassure the interlocutor. To be effective, the structure of the story will have to follow a precise and predefined flow, often detailed operationally in a storyboard. Typically, the story features:
The main and, possibly, the secondary characters
The current situation (reality)
The desired situation
The gap between the current and the desired state
The action plan to implement the desired state
The interlocutor’s engagement increases adding humor, questions, polls to the story
• Consider the main channel of the interlocutor’s information assimilation: The communication must consider the coexistence of verbal and visual, logical and emotional components in different percentages depending on the interlocutor. The learning channels are:
Visual: Visual people absorb and share information through images, graphics, and concepts. They prefer short, fast, and structured communication (bullet point), complemented by images, graphics, and numbers. Without the visual component, they get bored and lose attention.
Auditory: Auditory people prefer words (written or heard), request and express themselves with excellent linguistic correctness, and consider the visual part as optional.
Kinesthetic: Kinesthetic people prefer sensations and emotions to logical communication. Without an emotional, tactile, tasting, olfactory experience they will not be able to fully understand the message. Inspirational and value messages, shared experiences, and demos are essential for this target.
Getting the communication channel wrong has a direct impact on communication effectiveness. For example, take communication between a visual and an auditory. The visual will probably see the auditory as too wordy, inefficient, and ineffective. On the contrary, the auditory will consider the visual quick, hasty, sometimes almost rude.
If we face an audience, it is advisable to adopt a comprehensive, integrated style that covers all the communication channels. This guarantees to be effective with all.
• Working on non-verbal and para-verbal communication—More than 90% of communication is made up of posture, facial gestures, eye contact (non-verbal), tone, pauses, and rhythm of the voice (para-verbal communication). Knowing how to manage the non-verbal and the para-verbal contributes to the effectiveness of our communication and the assimilation of information. The general rule is to emphasize the most relevant words or ideas by turning up the volume/tone of the voice and slowing down the pace. The breaks, on the other hand, are excellent allies to create space for reflection. Let us remember, however, that para-verbal communication is always influenced by our interlocutors: If they speak fast, our average pace must be fast; if it is slow, we will have to calibrate and pace their mode.
Figure 9.1 Effective communication