Clear communications: A key to success

Communicating clearly is one of the most important things we can do to ensure interpersonal and career success. When we do it well, people know exactly what we mean and what we expect, both of which help get them focused and on-board. When we do it poorly, the opposite usually happens. Here are some ideas to help ensure clarity in your communications.

Two things support clear communications. One is the way we think, which affects the clarity of our ideas. The other is the way we talk, which affects the clarity of our expression. Although thinking and expressing are different, they are closely related and equally important in creating clear communications. Let's start with clear thinking.

Clear Thinking

I recently read an article that said the most impressive executives have the ability to think on their feet and then clearly communicate their thinking. While I certainly agree with this, I believe a big part of it results from the thinking they do before they get on their feet. Unfortunately, too many of us - whether executives or not - begin communicating, often about important things, without having thought through our ideas and the points we want to make. When this happens, the clarity of our communication suffers. What can we do about it?

Here are some guidelines to help you clarify your thinking before you get on your feet. They're simple, easy to use, and consistently work if you take the time to practice. If you apply them well, they will noticeably improve your interpersonal effectiveness and chances for career success.

- Create a direct message that deals with the most important things first. Start with the result you want your communication to produce. What do you want your message to accomplish? It could, for example, be getting funding for a project, selling the executive team on a new product offering, or deepening a relationship. Whatever it is, it must be crystal clear to you. It is your destination. You will organize everything that follows around it. Writing it down in a single sentence or two is the best way to begin.

- Layer your message so details logically unfold in support of the result you are after. While this is often difficult - more so for some interpersonal styles than others - it is a key to clarity, since it prioritizes and organizes supporting detail. It is essential that you spend enough time with it to do it well. When you do, it provides an easy roadmap for your audience to follow on their way to your destination.

- Keep your message simple and straightforward. Provide no more detail than necessary to support your main points, but all the detail necessary to do so. This is a balancing act, but one that becomes easier the more you practice. Often, you can summarize smaller details at a higher level to supply solid support without the distraction of too much information. Think of it as color-coding your map to make it easier to follow. You can always provide more detail later, in response to questions or in a handout.

- Personalize your message for the audience you are addressing. To enhance your clarity, visualize your audience, and then create a message with that visualization in mind. This will help you target the message to their interests, knowledge level, and background. It will also increase their interest in what you are saying and the perceived clarity of your message. Remember, it's not about you; it's about engaging your audience.

- Use language that is appropriate for your audience. This is a reminder to keep jargon out of your communications. While you want to always be mindful of this, it's especially important when addressing people or groups from different functional areas of the organization or outside the organization itself.

Now that we've covered the essentials of creating clear messages, we're ready to talk about how to enhance our clarity in expressing them. This is clarity of expression.

Clarity of Expression

Underlying clarity of expression is the idea that clearly communicating with others is hard work. It is not, contrary to popular belief, a natural process. Instead, it's one that takes learning and practice, but is essential to improving your interpersonal effectiveness. Here are three of the biggest clarity culprits - along with some simple things you can do to rid yourselves of them.

1. Failing to get or hold the attention of others. When this happens, it means your audience isn't fully engaged and focused on what you're saying. You've lost the competition for their attention. The result is less of their time spent actively listening to you, and more of it drifting off to other things.

The most important thing you can do to address this is to make eye contact with the members of your audience, whether conversing one-on-one, in small groups, or in large formal meetings. Although it's a simple thing, it's surprising how often speakers miss it, making eye contact with everything but the eyes of those they wish to engage. Don't let this happen to you.

Consciously pick someone in your audience and make eye contact, before you start to speak. Then hold that eye contact until you have finished your thought. Pick another member of the audience and do the same thing, moving through the group or room as you talk. When you do this, your audience will feel the engagement. The result will be more attention to you and more focus on understanding the points you are making.

2. Using more words than needed to make your point. The most common form of this is "beating around the bush." Don't do it. Use simple words that have the most shared meaning among the members of your audience, and use only enough of them to get your point across. Don't be fooled by the simplicity of this advice, though. Reducing the number of words we use to improve clarity of meaning is hard work. It requires conscious attention and practice to get it right. It is well worth the effort, though. When coupled with good eye contact, it improves clarity dramatically.

3. Not speaking persuasively. This is a big one, with three pitfalls of its own. One is speaking too fast, a second is speaking without emphasis, and a third is jumping from thought-to-thought.

- Begin by slowing down. Most people talk too fast, whatever their reason for doing it. Talking fast will never improve clarity of expression, or for that matter, your executive presence. What it does, instead, is tell your audience that what you have to say is not very important, which gives them permission to drift off to other things while you continue talking. If they're not paying attention to what you're saying, it's difficult for them to perceive you as a clear speaker.

- Talking too fast also feeds the second problem, which is speaking without emphasis. It does this by foreclosing your opportunities to use intonation, changes of pace, vocal inflection, volume changes, and pausing to help your audience understand how best to respond to what you are saying. Without that help they won't be clear on what you think is important, what deserves attention, how much urgency there is, or how much energy to put into what you want them to do. Pausing, especially, needs emphasis here, since it's the silence your audience uses to digest what you have said. If you want them to think about something, pause and give them time to do it. If you don't, it's likely they won't (and if they do, they will no longer be listening to you).

- Finally there is the problem of jumping from thought to thought, which is often fueled by undisciplined enthusiasm. While enthusiasm is good, failing to control it is not, and will destroy the most persuasively crafted message. It does this by causing you to discard your message architecture. So instead of demonstrating the coherence in your thinking, you race your audience around in circles of unfinished thought until they finally give up and move their mental attention elsewhere. Don't let this happen. Keep your enthusiasm and let it show, but control it. Use it to support your message through enriching your non-verbal communication without clouding the architecture underlying the communication itself.

Keep these simple tips in mind, and practice them on a daily basis. If you do, you'll be surprised at how soon they become second nature, and how much they enhance your effectiveness.

- Paul Aldo is the Managing Partner of IPS, an Atlanta-based executive consulting firm that helps executives and senior managers develop the interpersonal skills and leadership qualities needed to succeed in the executive suite. You may reach Paul at paul.aldo@executivepresence.com or 404.851.9699.