Communications – Common Language
Clarity of communication is a critical component of all business transactions. Without understanding, we are prone to execute instructions in a manner different than that desired. So how then, can we as communicators ensure our message is clear and understood by those receiving it?
For communications to be clear, they must possess several key qualities, one of which is common language. Common language is more than a specific language; it also includes a common frame of reference. People from different locations often use words and phrases the meaning of which is not broadly understood. And even among individuals sharing a like understanding of this slang, an off-normal word association can inhibit understanding.
One of the best illustrations of two people speaking one language, English, but not understanding each other because of a lack of common reference is Abbot and Costello’s “Who’s On First?” routine first performed in the early 1930’s.
Video 1: Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First?” from the 1945 film The Naughty Nineties.
Recognizing Common Language Challenges
Preventing communication misunderstandings will eliminate the often costly need for rework and renegotiation in addition to the damage done to relationships. Several activities that help identify when a common language challenge is likely to exist:
- Identifying the language and fluency level of audience members
- Learning the regional living differences of audience members
- Listening for requests for clarification or restatement
- Looking for the appearance of inquisitive or confused facial expressions
- Checking for alignment between audience member responses and information communicated
Minimizing Common Language Challenges
In addition to recognizing common language challenges, communicators can proactively minimize the occurrence of these misunderstandings by:
- Communicating in the language of the audience or employ an interpreter to do so
- Eliminating the use of colloquialisms from communications
- Checking for understanding of key messages and action requests
- Using visuals to augment verbal communications, particularly for complex or abstract concepts
Karen K. Juliano is StrategyDriven ’s Editor-in-Chief and Director of Communications and Marketing. Prior to joining the StrategyDriven team, she helped produce weekly programming for a Public Access Television station and served as a production assistant in the public affairs office at United States Naval Base, Philadelphia. To read Karen’s complete biography, click here.
Sign up for our Email NewsletterCommunications – Becoming a More Effective Speaker
To climb the ladder in today’s business world, public speaking is a requirement. The higher you climb, the more you will need to hone your skills in this area. There are some basic and some advanced skills that will help you to get the most out of the time you have in front of your audience.
This article will present several tips to enhance your public speaking skills. You will learn the basic Dos and Don’ts of public speaking, and then take a look in greater detail at some advanced skills. You will discover ways to engage your audience and improve their chances of retaining the information you give them and you will learn how to avoid some common pitfalls.
Remember, the most important part of public speaking is getting your audience to receive and retain the information you provide. It’s about them, not about you, so you must adjust your delivery accordingly. If your audience walks away from your presentation better informed and better prepared to do their job, everyone benefits.
Speaking Basics
These tips can, and should be used any time you are delivering information to a group of people. Your goal is to direct your audiences’ focus to the information you are delivering, to hold their attention and to leave them better informed, and maybe even inspired, at the end of the presentation. The following tips will help you to achieve that goal.
Don’t Read
The first rule of public speaking is ‘don’t read’ to your audience. Look at them. This can only be accomplished by proper preparation. Know what you are going to say. Memorize it if necessary. Index cards or a teleprompter should be used as a guide only, not a script.
If you feel nervous in front of a room full of people, then pick several points on the wall in the back of the room on which to focus. Looking at these points will give the illusion that you are looking at the audience. They will never know that you are focusing on the clock, the door and the empty chair.
Use Visual Aids
If all they have to look at is you, your audience will lose interest very quickly. Use visual aids to introduce a topic, underscore an idea or create a theme. The most common visual aid is a presentation or slide show. Since most people are visual learners, graphs and charts are a great way to deliver information. Pictures can be very helpful as well because they add life to a presentation.
Be careful not to make your visual aids too complex or too busy. Some simple rules to follow:
- Organize your visual aids around one single idea or theme. The objective should be clearly defined and obvious to your audience.
- Use no more than three colors. Using more than three colors will make the visual aid feel too busy and distract your audience from its meaning. Choice of colors depends on the mood or feeling you are trying to convey. Some examples include:
- Yellow – Bright, sun, intellect, caution, notice me
- Orange – Power, unusual, eye-catching, weird
- Red – Bold, urgent, powerful, angry, emergency
- Dark Blue – Communication, sky, sea, calm, steady
- Light Blue – Playful, sky, up beat, flow
- Green – Growth, money, earth, power, plants, spring
- Brown – Wood, solid, dull, ground
- Black – Sleek, finished, formal, final
- Purple – Bright, psychic, regal, royal, intuitive, artistic
- Use different styles of lettering to catch the class’s attention. Examples include:
- CAPITALS
- lowercase
- BLOCK
- Shadow
- Slanted
- UNEVEN
- Always use a border around a poster or slide.
Visual aids do not always need to be a slide or poster. For example, if you are discussing the strength and durability of a new all-weather cell phone, throw it against the wall, drop it in a bucket of water and then take a phone call. Being dramatic can be a great way to demonstrate your point.
Control Your Body Language
Don’t stand behind a podium during an entire speech or presentation. Interact with your visual aids, even if you are just pointing out a fact or line on a chart. If you are interacting with someone in your audience, take a step or two toward them. This gesture will demonstrate that you are interested in them and what they are saying.
Keep your hands out of your pockets. When necessary, use your hands to direct the audience’s attention to the screen or another visual aid. Gesture with an open hand to a member of the audience if you are calling on them, but avoid pointing with one finger at someone. This may be taken as a sign of aggression.
Adjust Your Tone
Use inflection to get your point across. A monotone voice will lose an audience and perhaps even put them to sleep. Sound excited and your audience will be excited. If necessary, over-emphasize your words. What may seem like over-doing it to you will come across as energetic to your audience.
Think about the words you want to emphasize ahead of time and practice. Your use of inflection can actually change the meaning of your words. For example, place the stress on the word on bold in the following sentences and see how the meaning also changes:
- I never said you stole the money. (No, but someone else did.)
- I never said you stole the money. (I said that Sally stole the money.)
- I never said you stole the money. (I said you borrowed it.)
Use Examples
As demonstrated above, they will enhance your message and they will tie your concept to a real-life situation. Keep the following rules in mind when choosing your examples:
- Keep your example relevant. If you are speaking about delivering quality customer service, use an example of when you received quality customer service or of when you received poor service.
- Discuss the example. What made this a positive customer service interaction? Why was the service poor?
- Keep your example simple. If your audience can’t understand the example, then it does nothing to help them understand the concept.
Advanced Skills
If your goal is to teach your audience about a new product, process or a policy change, you will need to employ more advanced speaking skills. In this situation, your goal is not just to deliver information. Rather you must ensure your audience receives and understands the information you provide and be able to apply it on the job as well.
Ask Questions
It can be easy to fall in the trap of becoming a ‘talking head.’ One way to avoid this is to include your audience in the presentation. You may ask questions that tie the topic to the audience. For example, ask:
- By a show of hands, who here works in the Finance Department?
Choose a member of the audience, who raised their hand and continue:
- How will this change in policy effect you?
Asking questions allows people to feel included. If the question and response are applicable to a group, like the Finance Department, then others in that department will pay attention even if they were not called upon. If you take this approach, be sure that you ask questions of several groups or departments so that you include a larger portion of the audience.
You may also call directly on people rather than asking for volunteers. This has the effect of getting your entire audience to pay attention. No one wants to be the one who is called on unprepared.
Lead a Discussion
One of the most effective skills, and the one that is probably most difficult to master, is leading a discussion. This method is often used in Law School and is generally referred to as the Socratic Method. The idea behind this method is to guide a conversation using questions and accepted facts to keep the conversation on its proper course. As participants discuss their views and, essentially think out loud, others will learn from what is being said. A good teacher will ask the participant to justify their response and the audience will learn as a unit why the response is correct or incorrect.
Effectively applying these skills takes practice but, like any other valuable job skill, will payoff through advancement and a greater sense of confidence.
More importantly, practicing the skills outlined here will help you to engage your audience and accomplish the goal of leaving your audience better informed and better prepared to do their job. Remember, in the end it’s about them. Have you direct their focus to the information delivered? Did you hold their attention? Do they understand the information you provide and can they apply it on the job?
Lucas D. Ives is a training consultant at Verizon Wireless and a StrategyDriven contributor. A dynamic facilitator, he excels at creating and delivering captivating training focused on the business professional. To read Lucas’s complete biography, click here.
Communications – Leading a Discussion and The Art of Asking Questions
“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.”
Author Unknown
Teaching via the Socratic Method
The best way for someone to learn something and to retain it, is for the individual to figure it out on their own. This is the concept behind the Socratic Method. As the teacher leads the conversation, the student observes, participates, and eventually understands. This method is most often used in law school, to the dismay and embarrassment of many law school students. Often the legal professor is ruthless when cutting down student ideas, asking what universe they live in because their version of the law certainly does not exist in this one. This tactic has the effect of ensuring students study.
While the insults and embarrassment law students live with would certainly not be acceptable in the business world, the constructive application of the Socratic Method can provide a great deal of benefit to businesses and employees alike.
The idea behind this method is to guide a conversation using questions and accepted facts; keeping the conversation on its proper course. As participants discuss their views and essentially think out loud, others will learn from what is being said. A good teacher will ask a participant to justify their response and the audience learns as a unit why the response is correct or incorrect.
It may sound simple but remember, a discussion is, at a minimum, a two-way event. You need to get a point across, and because others will be speaking as well, you will essentially be using their voice. In other words, you must direct the conversation to your desired conclusion.
Choose Your Setting
The best way to lead a discussion is to be at eye level with your audience. By standing behind a podium or in front of a classroom you are portraying the image of an orator or teacher. Your goal should be to draw ideas and information out of your audience. While you may be teaching or training this group, you want them to feel comfortable voicing their ideas. Most law school classrooms are designed with this concept in mind. The class is usually arranged in a horseshoe with the professor at or below eye level of the class. If necessary, you may choose to sit down on the edge of the stage or the table and look your audience in the eye. This body language will encourage participation.
Be a Director
Direct your conversation. Because others are involved, there is the potential for the discussion to get off track. When this happens, ask a question that will redirect the focus back to the desired topic. Ask, why will this move be good for the company? How can this policy change spur growth and increase revenue? If you get the correct response right away, ask the audience member to prove it. What was wrong with the old way? You are not just looking for what is correct, but also why it is correct.
To effectively lead a discussion you must learn how to ask a different kind of question. Determine what questions you will ask prior to giving your class or presentation. Make sure to use a variety of question types such as open-ended and close-ended questions.
Open-ended questions are used when you are looking for a more detailed response. These can be used to determine if the participant or audience truly understands the information you are delivering. They can also be used to encourage discussion or to let the audience talk their way through a problem.
- Why do you think this policy benefits us in the long term?
- What results can we expect to see after implementing this change? Why?
What, Why and How are great question words to use when seeking a more detailed response. If you are looking for more detail or clarification of a response, ask a follow up question:
- Can you tell me more?
- Would you elaborate on that for us, please?
- Can anyone explain that in a different way?
And ask for examples:
- Can you describe a time when you had to deal with a hostel client?
- Give me an example of when you could apply these steps to your job.
Close-ended questions elicit a one-word, often a yes or no, response. These can be used to quickly check for understanding or as a way to respectfully stop the conversation when it strays off course.
- So you think this new process will show long-term results?
When the participant answers, “Yes,” affirm their response and move on to the next point in the discussion.
- You’re absolutely right, this will be a great move in the long run. Now, let’s move on.
As mentioned earlier, you should formulate your questions in advance and have a clear idea of the response you are looking for as well as what incorrect responses you may receive. Also, think in advance of how you will respond to your audience’s potential answers to your questions. Should you say, “Tell me more,” or should you elicit others’ feedback?
Remember, you are teaching your audience ‘to fish.’ Simply telling them of a new process may be easier, but guiding them to a thorough understanding of the process and why it is better for the company will yield better results. You will promote critical thinking and leave your audience knowing not just what, but why and how.
Lucas D. Ives is a training consultant at Verizon Wireless and a StrategyDriven contributor. A dynamic facilitator, he excels at creating and delivering captivating training focused on the business professional. To read Lucas’s complete biography, click here.
Communications Best Practice 1 – Communicate 7 Times, 7 Different Ways
All too often vital communications go unheard, creating workforce discontent, reducing organizational effectiveness, and alienating clients. Why with today’s advanced communication mechanisms do so many messages go unnoticed? One answer is that people are so overwhelmed with modern society’s messaging that they sometimes don’t recognize the importance of a single announcement; filtering it out as noise. Another reason is that not all people meaningfully receive information in the same way and some important messages are only sent through channels not likely to be received. To overcome both these challenges, managers should consider communicating important messages seven times using seven different media.
Creating a Visual Company: What it means and why productivity hinges upon it
In a Visual Company people communicate visually with flowcharts, mind maps and other visuals just as frequently as they do with written documents. Why?
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We live in exponential times. It’s estimated that more unique information will be generated this year alone than in the previous five thousand years combined!
We’ve all heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Visuals let you condense information into a form that is both quickly digestible and shows connections and relationships. In a fast changing world, using visuals helps solve the information overload problem. I believe that within five to ten years, all companies will be visual companies.
Studies show that communicating with visuals is up to six times more effective than communicating with words alone. When you look at information presented visually, you can immediately see the key ideas and the relationships between them, instead of having to take the time to read a lengthy report.
In a global company with many different languages, visuals provide a common way to summarize and effectively communicate key ideas. Mind maps, organization charts, flowcharts, project charts, graphs, plans and blueprints are all very effective at communicating information clearly and quickly, within diverse groups and distributed organizations. Yet today less than three percent of business communication includes visuals. This is because, until the development of visual processor software in 2010, creating a visual was more trouble than it was worth.
Before the visual processor, visuals had to be created manually with complex graphics software, usually by an expert. Even for experts, producing a visual like a flowchart was time consuming and the results were often not presentation-quality.
But now, just as anyone can use a word processor to quickly create professional-looking written documentation, anyone can use a visual processor to just as quickly create professional-looking visuals.
With a visual processor, a typical computer user can create presentation-quality visuals in minutes. The visual processor makes the promise of the Visual Company a reality.
Why Become a Visual Company?
Visual Companies grow faster, operate at lower costs and are more profitable than other companies.
- A Visual Company is agile because it communicates new initiatives quickly and effectively.
- It operates efficiently with low costs because everyone understands the priorities and follows the same processes.
- It is flexible: knowledge is easily shared between people because it is documented and accessible.
In a Visual Company, processes are defined and documented with process flowcharts.
Projects are planned with mind maps and managed with Gantt charts and timelines that are automatically generated from the mind mapped plan.
There are clear assignments of responsibility that are documented with an organization chart.
Visual Companies formulate and communicate their strategy and operating plans visually. They summarize key issues using a mind map so these things can be easily communicated and understood.
Visual Companies illustrate their generic strategy with a matrix. They validate their strategy with a SWOT diagram.
And Visual Companies create their operating plans with a project chart.
Summary
A Visual Company uses visuals to summarize and quickly communicate key information. Its organizational structure, goals, plans, processes and expertise are documented and easily accessible, and all of its employees have a visual processor on their desktop, just as they have a word processor today. This allows the company to operate efficiently and to react quickly in order to take advantage of new opportunities.
Visual Companies grow faster, operate with lower costs and are more profitable than traditional companies . In the next decade all companies that survive and prosper will have to become visual companies.
About the Author
Paul Stannard is the founder and CEO of SmartDraw.com. A self-taught software developer, Paul began his career in the PC industry in 1980, founding a software company that developed software for Apple computers. Since that time, he has written more than a dozen published software applications, primarily graphics software. Paul, himself, wrote the first version of SmartDraw, and continues to play a key role in developing the company’s software products. To read Paul’s complete biography, click here.
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