4
Communicating well
What you will learn in this chapter
- The importance of communication for leadership and management
- The many different aspects of communication, including listening, body language and lingual clarity
- Some practical tips on how to communicate effectively
What is communication? Most of us take communication for granted, thinking that it’s about what we say and how we say it. True communication, however, really concerns what the person or people receiving your message understood. It happens only when the message you intended to send is the same as the message your audience received. This is surprisingly rare.
I once had a top boss who enjoyed talking in a whisper, often using odd phrases that were barely audible. He did this deliberately, so people would have to lean in to understand him. Like Marlon Brando in The Godfather he was asserting power over everyone, saying ‘I’m important, so you better try really hard to listen to me and I am not going to make it easy.’ People spent many hours trying to decipher his phrases and second-guess what he actually meant. What a waste of time and energy!
I am sure you can think of a boss or colleague who didn’t communicate clearly. Writing is even worse. How many of us don’t understand what a boss says in a meeting, or what a colleague’s memo means, but are too afraid to ask?
Communication goes wrong when:
- The message isn’t clear in the mind of the person sending it.
- The words don’t express what the sender means.
- The body language doesn’t match the words.
- The person receiving the message doesn’t understand the message.
- The preconceived notions of the receiver get in the way of the message.
Communicating well and clearly is one of the most powerful things you can do as a manager. It improves your efficiency, promotes clearer, more structured thinking, and reduces the frustration that arises from misunderstandings.
It can actually make the difference between success and failure.
So why is it so hard? In order to communicate well and clearly, you need to do the following seven things:
- Think about your audience.
- Keep it simple, stupid (KISS).
- Avoid jargon and catchphrases.
- Listen actively.
- Pay attention to body language.
- Say what you mean.
- Watch the positive to negative ratio.
You can do this with practice. Most people would say I am a good communicator, but it wasn’t always so. In my first performance review, my boss told me I needed to improve my presentations as I wasn’t clear. So I spent the next few years doing lots of presentations.
Think about your audience
Clear communication involves putting yourself in the other person’s shoes – something we often don’t think about before we speak or write. For example, someone who uses flowery, grandiloquent language in a roomful of non-native English speakers is bound to be misunderstood. Equally, someone who is speaking really softly on a conference call won’t be heard.
Think about your audience and try to imagine how they would receive your message. It also helps, I find, if you pretend you are talking to non-native English speakers, or a group of ten-year-olds. It will help you to express yourself more clearly and enunciate better.
If you are addressing a group of analysts or shareholders it’s different to when you are addressing your colleagues from different departments. Keep your audience in mind, and try to imagine how what you say will be understood – or not understood – by them.
exercise
Write a five-minute presentation on your most important project which will gain support from each of the following three audiences:
- the CEO;
- a peer whose team members you need to get the project done;
- a new recruit joining your department.
How has your audience’s perspective changed your presentation in each case?
KISS
Keep it simple, stupid.
This is one of the phases I have most often used in my professional life. We tend to overcomplicate things: maybe we think we are somehow being more professional or more strategic or more important. But we’re not; we are simply making it harder for people to understand.
I once got someone in to lead a workshop on ‘Clear Communication’ in a company I worked for. What that person did was simple but very effective. He asked everyone to write down what they felt was the mission statement of the organisation. Then he had people read them aloud. They were full of long, windy sentences and big words. He then had everyone write the statement using one-syllable words with six letters or less. What a difference it made! Remember – you are not writing a novel. You are trying to get your message understood.
Try to express your message in as few words of one syllable as possible. Use active, not passive voice. And keep it short.
‘The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.’
Thomas Jefferson
Effective presentations
Presenting well is something all good managers have to learn. It will materially impact your success – as those who shine at communicating well are often those who advance in an organisation.
Good presentations are to the point. They avoid death by PowerPoint. They don’t overload with facts, figures and more facts. They tell a story. They use humour and sincerity. Consider involving your audience at key points. Ask them a question rather than give them the answer.
Well-structured presentations help your audience to remember your key points. An old adage is: tell them what you are about to tell them. Tell them. And then tell them again what you have just told them. It works! Also, I find that sharing things in groups of threes keeps things digestible.
If you are using slides, make sure you have no more than three bullet points per slide. Try to make one or two main points per slide. Do not overload your slides! Keep them simple – avoid lots of words and charts and numbers. If you want people to remember a number, highlight it. Try simple pictures that capture what you want to say. But make sure your slides reinforce your words – otherwise, people will wonder why your visuals don’t match your words. And avoid just using pictures to ‘sex up’ content that have no relationship to what you want to say.
Make sure you use a clear voice with lots of expression. Always practise beforehand. If you run into trouble at a transition point, change your presentation so it flows better. If it’s too long, cut it! Try never to speak for more than 25 minutes. Most people will click out after 30 minutes even if you are an accomplished speaker.
Video yourself presenting. With today’s Smartphone technology this is really easy. And very helpful. If you shuffle too much, move around, speak too quickly or too slowly, your video will enable you to see that objectively and practise to fix it.
Avoid jargon and catchphrases
All businesses use jargon far too much. One company I worked for used numbers to refer to everything. Anyone who didn’t work there hadn’t the foggiest notion what they were on about. It really got in the way of what they were trying to sell – which was business improvement tools. Worse still, this jargon was all over their website. So no one really understood what they did. Now thank goodness, there’s been a major programme to eliminate the jargon, so that customers are much clearer on what the company sells.
exercise
Find a document you really think is full of jargon and ask your team to rewrite it together so that a stranger can understand it. You’ll be surprised at how much clearer it is. I guarantee you will uncover different meanings and understanding for different phrases that you all assumed you understood, clearing up your communication in the process. Indeed, jargon can have disastrous consequences. In his bestselling book, The Big Short, Michael Lewis implies that overuse of complex jargon, and people’s inability to admit they didn’t know what it meant, was responsible for the biggest financial meltdowns of recent history.1
Tip
Read aloud what you’ve written. If it doesn’t make sense, fix it.
Equally annoying are catchphrases and filler words. If every second word is ‘like’ or ‘you know’, people tune out and stop listening.
Listen actively
Think of a boss you liked working for; someone you really admire. Now list the qualities of that person. I bet being a good listener is on your list. It is a real trait of almost every inspiring leader, manager and teacher. Now, think of a bad boss and do the same. I bet that he/she doesn’t listen.
Listening is not the same as hearing. Hearing is passive, while listening involves making sense of what we hear. It is an active process that demands complete attention. When you listen to someone you are saying, ‘I value you – it’s important that I understand what you have to say.’
It is quite clear when someone is not listening to what you have to say. They demonstrate:
- a lack of sufficient eye contact;
- a glazed expression;
- interrupting;
- not being able to reply to questions;
- turning their body away;
- showing impatience.
So how do you listen actively? A simple mnemonic, LISTEN, can help:
- Look interested – maintaining eye contact with the speaker helps you to concentrate; an alert, interested expression will actually make you feel more interested (in the same way that it is difficult to feel angry about something if you are smiling and laughing).
- Inquire with questions, to check your understanding. Don’t make assumptions.
- Stay on target, using any slack thinking time to consider the implications of what the speaker is saying.
- Take notes, to help you concentrate and refresh your memory later.
- Evaluate the whole message, watching body language as well as hearing the words.
- Neutralise your feelings, acknowledging to yourself any prejudices you may have.
In the end, try summarising your understanding of what someone has said. By reflecting back to check your understanding, you are giving someone conclusive proof that you’ve listened to them. You can also use this in reverse. Try asking someone to summarise their understanding of what you’ve said.
Pay attention to body language
In face-to-face communication, research suggests that only about 10 per cent of the words make up the message that is understood. The other 90 per cent consists of your body language, gestures, facial expressions, posture, your tone of voice and non-verbal utterances like sighs. If your words are spoken in a way that isn’t matched by your body language and tone they will be misunderstood. If you say ‘I agree’ in a meeting with clenched jaw looking down at the floor with your arms crossed, do you think people will be convinced?
Consider how you pick up on messages from other people, even when they are not talking. We look for eye contact, we consider their posture and gestures, and we look at their facial expressions, and react to their use of space and touch.
Body language is very difficult to control and some people claim they can tell whether someone is telling the truth or not by their body language. But you will undoubtedly be a better listener and communicator if you take it into account. And remember: people with highly developed skills of interacting are more likely to become most successful.
The tone you use to say things dramatically influences your message. The way you are feeling is conveyed in your voice through the way it affects pitch, the rate of speech and volume. Variations in the emphasis which we place on words can also result in completely different messages being conveyed, even though we might use the same words in both situations. Remember, most people will rely on the message conveyed by how you have said it rather than by the words you have used.
When your message is not what people expect to hear, take particular care to match non-verbal communication with your words. Bear in mind that people often hear what they expect, or want, to hear. Ask them to summarise what you have said back to you in these cases to ensure they have understood your message.
Tip
Mirror image others – and yourself.
Mirror imaging others
You can be a more effective communicator by becoming a subtle ‘mirror image’ of the person with whom you are communicating. This is called ‘Pacing’. ‘Pacing’ means that you playback the tone, body language, facial expressions and tempo of the person with whom you are communicating in your own actions. Try practising this at home first. It can be very effective, especially to improve communication with someone where there is conflict or misunderstanding.
Mirror imaging yourself
Before you give an important talk, practise it in front of the mirror. Watch how you say things. Watch how you stand and practise your tone of voice. You can also give presentations to your family or partner and ask them to critique.
Say what you mean
I often read documents, or listen to presentations, where the author or presenter isn’t being clear. They are relying on fancy language, using too much jargon, or ‘organisation-speak’, rather than saying what they really mean to say. Make sure you check what you are going to say before you say it by saying it out loud. If it doesn’t sound right, correct it.
The same is true for interviews. If someone asks you a question and you blurt out a lot of stream of consciousness, it will not impress people. So if you are anticipating an important meeting, like an interview, try jotting down potential questions and answers in bullet points form to capture what you are going to say before you say it.
Email etiquette
Emails have become a scourge of modern working life. Remember how they were supposed to make life easier and more effective? The opposite has happened. Far too many of us spend too much time on too many emails that add little or no value to our work. Here are four simple dos followed by four simple don’ts:
- Do think about whether an email is the best means of communicating. Will a phone call do? Or a face-to-face conversation? Especially if the person works in the same building.
- Do keep your emails short and to the point. A simple one, three to five sentences, should suffice. Avoid more than seven sentences. People don’t want to wade through long emails. And do ensure your attachments are a reasonable length – or use other means to share such as Dropbox.
- Do DISCIPLINE YOUR USE OF EMAILS. Try to put aside set times to answer/write emails once or twice daily rather than interrupt what you are doing each time your inbox goes ping. Consider an email-free Friday.
- Do keep on top of your inbox. Try to delete your emails regularly and archive the ones you wish to keep.
- Don’t feel obligated to answer every email you receive. Many will be unimportant, unnecessary, or just junk. Ignore them. If they are important, whoever sent the email will be back in touch.
- Don’t cc: all on your replies. It’s a big warning sign to colleagues that you are point-scoring, politicking, insecure, or all three. Keep your recipients list to a minimum and reply to the sender only, unless asked to do differently.
- Don’t engage in endless long email trails. If there are more than three replies back and forth it’s time to pick up the phone.
- Don’t rant and rave on email. It you must vent via a poison pen email, do so. It can be therapeutic. But then hit DELETE! If you send it you will regret it.
Further resources
- http://www.presentationmagazine.com/effective-presentation-techniques-the-top-10-149.htm
- http://www.shutupandsaysomething.com/
Praising
The final point to remember is to watch your positive to negative ratio in communicating with others. Researchers have measured the number of positive statements in communication (things like ‘that is a good idea’ or ‘yes, let’s try that’), versus the number of negative statements (‘we have tried that before and it failed’ or ‘that’s not what I was looking for’). It turns out that teams who achieve a ratio of over five positives to each negative are much more likely to be high performing; medium performing teams had a ratio of two positives for every negative, and low-performing teams had more negatives than positives.2 Another Nobel-winning psychologist, John Gottman, monitored the conversations between newly-weds. Those with a positive to negative ratio of over five stayed married, whereas those with a positive to negative ratio of less than one (i.e. more negative than positive) got divorced.3
What does it mean for you? When you are communicating with people, try to say five positive things for every negative one. It will pay dividends in building stronger, more effective relationships with both those at work, and at home.
Top tips, pitfalls and takeaways
Top tips
- Before giving a talk or presentation, practise out loud in front of a mirror.
- Learn how to listen well; it is at least as important as speaking clearly and honestly.
Top pitfall
- Using organisational or professional jargon.
Top takeaways
- Communication is not a side issue: it is of fundamental importance for all managers and can make a difference between success and failure in commercial projects.
- Communication is multi-dimensional, involving indirect forms of communication such as body language.
1 Lewis, Michael, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Allen Lane, 2010.
2 Losada, M. and Heaphy, E., ‘The role of positivity and connectivity in the performance of business teams: a nonlinear dynamics model’, American Behavioral Scientist, 2004.