Effective Communication: Be Bold. Be Brief. Be Brilliant!
Communication, more specifically poor communication is one of the most frequent causes of stress and tasks not being completed. It’s often overlooked that it’s not always what you are saying, but how you say it that makes all the difference. There is a lot of noise that can get in the way of your intended message, without you even realizing it.
Emotions! Oh boy! These suckers in the wrong context will totally derail what you are trying to say. Unless you’re trying to hype up a D1 team during half time, or in my experience, occasionally motivate a basic training platoon, lots of emotion is not generally a good thing. It can seriously detract from the actual message. We're not just talking about anger here either. Sure, it will zap your message quickly as well but all of them have an impact, and not always the one you are looking for.
I like extreme examples, so here’s one. Ever walk away from a eulogy thinking “Man Skippy was a really good dude who accomplished so much and was loved by so many!”? Probably not. You probably walked away thinking how sad that was and feeling bad for Skippy’s family. But that was never the speaker's intent at all. The point was to highlight a life well lived, but because of the emotion attached to the delivery, the takeaway was far different than the intended message.
So, when you do use an emotional appeal in delivering your message, make sure that it doesn’t overshadow what you are actually trying to get across. Use it as a message highlighter. Something to draw importance to the issue without becoming the focal point.
Is emotion the only thing that can cloud your message? Why no, no it’s not! Thanks so much for asking!
One that we can all relate to is time! That man made construct that governs our lives! I’m not talking about time of day here either. While that can definitely impact your messaging, that’s typically due to the physiology of your audience and unfortunately you can’t control that. No, what I’m talking about is how long it takes you to say something. You’re in a race with the audience's attention span. Not only that but you could be in competition with their emotions if you don’t get to the point. In fact, it’s happening right now as you read this sentence. See the other paragraphs we all nicely broken up into small and easily consumable chunks. Not this one though. Nope on this one I’m really taking a long time to get to the point. Even just now you though to yourself, “what was the point?” and contemplated skimming back through the paragraph.
See? See how awful that is? Get to the point already Travis! That’s what you need to do when you are getting a message out to your teams. Get to the point. After all everything revolves around time, and your time and their time is equally important. So, make sure you are keeping that in mind and being brief and impactful.
Lastly, bring on the brilliance! This can come in different ways for different people. Some people need to write everything down and practice what it is they want to say. If that’s you then go for it. Make it a priority and intentionally make time to do it prior to meeting with your team. Other people, myself included, like to be a little more improvisational with their speaking. I have my bullets I know I want to hit and then just have go from there.
Whatever approach works best for you, please whatever you do, remember to have fun! This may be the only time you see your entire team all day. If it’s all gloom and doom that’s what they are going to carry with them. Celebrate some wins, give some credit to those who are killing it, make fun of yourself a little. Make sure they all walk away informed, with plenty of time to complete their tasks, and with a smile. I promise this works!
Be Bold. Be Brief. Be Brilliant.
