The corporate world is jam-packed with meetings, presentations and important private conversations. In the midst of all this activity, how can you be memorable? What will separate you from the rest of the herd? What will make people think you’re a leader, a manager, one to watch?
A quick look at leadership and management job ads reveals that the ability to communicate clearly is one of the top skills required. Yet it’s an unexpectedly rare skill.
Many people who have gone through formal education seem to have lost their ability to convey information concisely and in a targeted way. As native speakers of our own language, we may foolishly assume that the written and spoken word are easily mastered and require no additional training. Sadly, too many of us fall into the trap of complexity and jargon when communicating on the job.
Most of our time at work involves writing, speaking and presenting – from emails and PowerPoint decks to reporting on our progress with the boss or checking in with colleagues online. But how effective are you? Are you seen as a waffler, a bore or a sharp shooter when it comes to your communication style?
Here are some top tips for improving your persuasive language skills when writing and speaking both internally and externally.
Focus on audience and purpose
In secondary school and university, we are taught the building blocks of language: nouns, verbs, sentences and paragraphs, even the art of the essay. But we’re not necessarily taught how to adjust our language based on our audience and purpose.
Most professionals are not taught to adjust their style and tone of voice based on who they are speaking to or what they are trying to achieve. There’s a weird disconnect. It’s like a robot mask comes down over their eyes and they’re writing or speaking into a black hole completely devoid of humans, lightness or humour.
Why? In formal education, we use an academic writing style where our audience is the lecturer and our purpose is to impress the teacher to ensure we get as many points as possible. That means jamming in loads of jargon, dates, quotes and numbers and avoiding our natural storytelling abilities. We must remain detached from the material.
If you believe your purpose is to impress someone when you’re writing or speaking with them, you’ll never achieve your aims. If it’s all about you then it’s boring. Listeners want to know “what’s in it for me?” and “why should I care?”.
Years ago, a large international consultancy firm was having a hard time winning business. Thanks to their well-known brand name, they always made the shortlist and were invited to present their solution to the client in a 60-minute session.
After yet another multimillion euro project was awarded to their competitors, they asked the potential client why they hadn’t won the business. It was for two reasons, they were told. The client couldn’t understand the consultancy jargon in the documentation or the pitch and the presenters had used 55 minutes saying how great their company was and only five minutes outlining the answer to the client’s problem.
If the consultancy firm had focused on their audience’s need (solve their problem) and understood their purpose (sell the client on their specific solution), they could have won the business.
Strong communicators always put themselves in the listener or readers’ shoes and use relatable language. Don’t use phrases such as “triangulate with” and “cascade to the team” when you can use human language like “speak with” or “talk to the team”.
Keep it simple
Another issue is overwriting and thinking that your first, unedited draft is good enough.
You will save yourself, and your readers, hours of pain by starting with an outline. Simply write down three to five bullet points summarising what you’re trying to say and then add in a few supporting points under each main point.
This structure gives you a framework, reduces waffle and creates nice logical signposts for the reader to follow. It is also more efficient as you can work on the document in five-to-10 minute chunks instead of having to clear your calendar for a day.
When starting out in our careers, we need to learn the lingo of our profession so that we fit it and look like we know what we’re talking about.
When I was in my 20s and working in marketing for an investment banking firm in New York, I read the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times on the train every morning. I circled words I didn’t know and looked them up afterwards so I knew what they meant.
After a few years, I was asked to write industry speeches for the senior leadership team and realised very quickly that they didn’t use financial jargon at all. They used clear language, humour and examples that were specifically chosen for maximum audience impact.
Famous thinkers and scientists understand the value of communicating complex ideas in a simple way. Most of us remember what the structure of DNA, the molecule responsible for heredity, looks like thanks to visual storytelling. The double helix is like a twisted ladder that untwists and unzips when it’s time to replicate. Genius-level communication.
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As a writer or speaker, your job is to remove anything gets in the way of the reader or listener’s understanding. You’re not dumbing things down, you’re just making them much easier to absorb. To paraphrase Einstein, if you can’t explain something simply, then you don’t understand it well enough.
The old saying “show, don’t tell” is one of the secrets of persuasive communication. For example, I can tell you that American stock markets are volatile following Trump’s election or I can show you a headline calling a drop in Elon Musk’s company the Tesla Chainsaw Massacre. This technique references popular film culture and gives you an emotive image of a financial bloodbath.
The power of story
From the time we’re born, we hear stories that tell us who we are and where we are from. Parables in the Bible, Irish folk tales, Greek myths and incidents from our family history all powerfully convey a sense of place and purpose to the listener through the words used and the emotions conveyed.
We are built for stories. Studies of the brain using MRI imaging show that when we tell someone a fact or statistic, only a couple of parts of the brain light up. But, when we tell someone a story, six or seven parts of the brain light up in both the storyteller and the listener. This makes stories sticky, or easier to remember than straight data.
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Transformational leaders communicate their vision over and over again in writing and when speaking. They paint a clear picture of where they want to go and why people should join them on the journey.
If you want to lead or manage, you need to work on your communication style to ensure people are inspired to follow you and trust you enough to stay the course.
Margaret E Ward is chief executive of Clear Eye, a leadership consultancy. margaret@cleareye.ie
