I’m working on a couple of presentations this weekend and thought I’d share a few thoughts about communicating. Most of these were learnt the hard way.
- Understand your audience. If it’s one executive, do everything you can to determine his or her “hot buttons”: Key motivators, personal and organizational goals, likes and dislikes. If it’s a small group, analyze the group the same way by keeping in mind the groups objectives and their relationship with their peers. Personalize your messages to your audiences preferences in any and every way you can.
- Focus on a few key messages. You may know all there is to know about the subject, and may be tempted to explain it all. Resist this temptation because you risk diluting your message. Choose no more than five key messages (fewer is better). If you can’t reduce your list, you need to pull back to a higher-level perspective.
- Marketing firms used to say that the consumer needed to hear the message 7 times for it to register. I don’t know if 7 is the right number for my type of work but I do try to find several ways to deliver my messages. I tell them what I am going to so, say it, demonstrate it, use humour, provide evidence and summarize it.
- Stay on Topic. Questions may lead you off topic. Resist that temptation. Remember your key messages and lead the conversation back to on topic. Don’t dilute your most important messages by wandering afield.
- Choose your medium carefully. Your key messages and your audience’s preferred communication styles should determine the medium. You can’t assume that someone will read your email and if the message is that important then you have to make sure it’s received and understood. If your audience is an executive who wants to look you in the eye, make sure you meet face-to-face. And even though you like to scribble on the whiteboard while talking you need to consider that your audience might reject your message because whiteboard-scrawling might from their perspective suggest lack of preparation. If it’s important for you that your audience hears you then you must tailor your delivery to suit their preferences.
- Use formatting to reinforce your message: When you communicate face-to-face, your vocal intonation and body language deliver as much information as your words. In email or reports, intonation and body language aren’t available to you. Formatting can be used to substitute for them. You know what your key messages are but how are you going to make sure the reader remembers them? The act of formatting helps you think things through. Deciding what to bold or italicize, what to put in a bulleted or numbered list, what to separate into a sidebar, how to use color, what to illustrate through a chart or graphic … or in PowerPoint, whether and how to animate a graphic or bulleted list, and what to put into a “kicker box” at the bottom … these decisions help you think through your message.
