3 Essentials For Excellent Communication

 

When I interview my clients to understand their main business challenges, communication is usually one of the first themes in their lists. Great leaders are often great communicators, so we all know we should strive to improve the way we share our thoughts, ideas and plans. And this can be easier than we usually think.

So here is a short and sweet post on how you can have quick wins in this area. The three principles presented here can be used in a multitude of situations, for written or spoken communication, from giving instructions to your team, or speaking publicly, to explaining a concept to your child.

1 – Find the Core

Excellent communication has a clear, central theme. You know precisely what the heart of your message is. Not two cores, but one. And you will repeat that core enough times to make it stick in people´s minds. You will give examples, and you will expand it. But all around the same central concept or idea.

In their book ‘Made to Stick’, the Heath brothers explain the concept of the Commanders Intent (CI), created by the American Army to improve communication in the battlefield. The Commanders Intent is always a short, clear and straightforward message stating the core of the mission. Something like “Break the will of the enemy in the Southern region”. The battlefield is hugely unpredictable, so the troops need a clear guideline, with a message that will work as a compass for quick and vital decisions in the messy heat of the battle.

So before you open your mouth in your next meeting, ask yourself this question: What is the essence of what I want to communicate? If nothing else, what I want people to remember about it? Then make sure that you stick to your core. Use different ways to expand, clarify, exemplify and reinforce it, but don´t confuse your people by giving them a message without a clear core.

2 – Use a Simple Structure

This one is a great trick that serves well the one making the communication, and the ones receiving it. I have been using it for decades, and it always works amazingly well. Before you speak, think of a simple structure to your communication. The best preachers in the past used it regularly. They were often speaking to illiterate people who needed to grasp the main concepts and make use of them. So the 3 points message was created, and it is still a very effective strategy for good communication.

Simple structures help you when you are the one communicating because they give you a pathway, an easy-to-remember sequence to be used as you talk or write. If you keep the skeleton of your message in mind, it will be easier to add the flesh, and it will be harder to be sidetracked.

For the in the receiving end, the structure brings a needed expectancy, mainly if you share it in advance. For example, you are expecting to find here three essentials for communication. I used this structure of 3 points in the title to give you an idea of what to expect from this post. It creates curiosity, and it provides a sense of order to the message.

So once you know the core of what you want to say, give it a simple structure. It can be just something like: “… and there are three important factors to consider here. First…”. Of course, “three” is just an example. It could be four, five or ten, but be careful not to confuse your audience with an unnecessary number of points. I like to think that three is a magic number. Easy to remember and makes you summarize your message.

You can use more elaborate but still simple structures. When I need to explain something, my favourite is: What, Why and How.

For example, if I am telling someone how to negotiate better, I may say:

“When you are negotiating, be attentive to the emotions involved. Let me explain why this is important. Any decision processes in our brains start at an unconscious level. And emotions are the language of the unconscious mind. If you ignore it, it will be harder to understand what is going on and to make sense of the other side reactions. You can train yourself to observe your body reactions and then the reactions of the people around, to make an assessment of what is going on. Poker players do it all the time.”

So I first said WHAT I was going to explain, then WHY they should listen to what I was about to say, and then I told them briefly HOW it could be done, finally adding a short example. From there, I could expand the HOW thing.

3 – Check It

So many times, I made the mistake of assuming that people understood what I said. Communication is now what you share, but what the other side gets.

I was hired once as the CFO of a building company in Brazil. One of my first assignments was to understand the complex and bureaucratic process of corporate financing for developments with the government. I was lucky to have a great communicator to explain to me how it works. He would tell me about a set of procedures, while I wrote down as much as I could. Then he would pause, and ask me to explain it back to him.

Aviation uses this practice. Instructions from the control tower have to be repeated by the pilots, to make sure they got it right.

This is such a simple and effective way to make sure you are understood. All you have to do is ask people to say it back to you. We may be afraid of being offensive, or people seeing us as bossy or authoritative. Of course, the context has to be right. You don´t want to ask your boss to repeat what you just said. But in the right scenario, like speaking to your team, people who are willing to collaborate will not mind, mainly if you are friendly and creative to do so. I sometimes use questions like “Do you mind summarizing what I just said, just to make sure we are on the same page?”

 

Conclusion

Some people are naturally good at it. Not me. I had to work hard to improve my communication. I dealt with several personal insecurities, fear of rejection, the panic of public speaking, to name a few. Today I actually like to address teams or even large audiences.

I managed to improve it by dealing with my emotions, and by applying methodologies like the ones explained above. These three points are quick wins. You can become a better communicator immediately by using them. If you keep practising and experimenting with them, they will eventually become second nature to you.

I am a firm believer in the INFORM – PERFORM – TRANSFORM structure. You get information, you act on it, you repeat it again and again, and it becomes part of who you are. See? I did it again – simple structure, three points. Easy to remember, clear, and anyone can do it.