I recently attended a conference on current economic conditions in New York City. The speaker was a senior leader of a global banking institution. He clearly had taken a great deal of time putting together his slide deck, which included complex graphs and charts. He spoke with a booming voice and had a strong presence in front of the room. He was clearly very intelligent, and he knew his content. The audience of 150 people included banking professionals with a wide range of experience. I was picking up occasional interesting data points, but was having difficulty following any themes. It turns out I wasn’t alone. At the end of the talk, the speaker asked for questions. A 40-something audience member raised his hand and asked, “This is all very interesting, but what do you want us to know?” The speaker seemed baffled.
“Do you want me to repeat my whole presentation?” he asked.
“Not at all,” the audience member said. “I just don’t know what you want us to know from all this. Are you hopeful for the economy? Are you concerned? Is there some specific action or approach you think we should adopt? What do you want us to know?”
“Oh,” the speaker said. He paused, looked at the screen where his last complicated slide was still projected, and said, “I guess I want you to think about the following.” He then gave a two-sentence statement that summed up what he wanted the audience to know. It gave context to all of the data he had been sharing. Without that statement, attendees would have left the room with their own ideas of what the talk was about, or worse, befuddled by what they had heard.
At Exec|Comm, over our 35 years of experience, we have helped tens of thousands of people hone their presentation skills, often in one-on-one coaching settings. When coaching someone, I usually start by having him run through what he plans to say to his audience, whether the person is meeting individually with an important client or speaking at his company’s quarterly “town hall” meeting. The person often arrives with a complete set of notes or slides he has spent hours preparing. After he has delivered his content, I’ll start by asking, “What’s the key take-away for your audience? What is the one sentence you want resonating in everyone’s head when you are done talking?” I’m surprised by how often the presenter says, “Hmm. That’s a good question. Let me think about it for a minute,” which means he hasn’t verbalized it for himself and therefore didn’t tell his audience his main point. Think about that. If the speaker himself doesn’t express his main point very clearly, his listeners don’t know what they are supposed to hear. Since we all take in information through our own filters, each person in the audience may have picked up on a different point in the speaker’s talk, and each person leaves with a different impression of the speaker’s intent. As a result, the speaker has no ability to control the message his audience hears.
Most of the time, we only have impact if the person to whom we are speaking can convey our message to someone else. If you are a lawyer and you’re speaking to the Assistant General Counsel for your client, that person has to convey your point to the General Counsel. She has to convey your message to the company president. He has to convey it to the chairman, who has to tell the board. There is a better chance that your message will be conveyed consistently if you are clear about the message yourself. If you aren’t clear about what you want them to know, there is no hope the message will get through.
Now think about it from the audience’s perspective.
We all make snap decisions. The “we” applies to everyone: to us as professionals, to our clients, to our teams, to our colleagues. Many issues we decide on the fly should be decided that way. Fax the document or email it? Delegate the assignment to a junior person or just do it myself? Mustard or mayo?
Unfortunately, we also make snap decisions about important matters. “Which client’s work is a priority?” “Is Jack the best associate for this assignment?” “Should I recommend ‘buy’ or ‘sell’?” We make snap decisions because we have so many things to decide in a given day. Since everyone makes snap decisions, each of us has a better chance of influencing others if we have clear, strong messages that can be easily understood. Honing your message therefore becomes crucial to your success.
Whenever you are participating in a discussion with clients or colleagues, craft a clear message. A clear message:
● Is short
● Uses simple language
● Is focused on the needs of audience
Keep It Short
Limit your key message to one sentence, preferably fewer than 10 words long. Because so many complex business documents are written in long, complex sentences, we have trained ourselves to think in large chunks of information. While that is arguably necessary in written documents, it isn’t helpful or effective when conveying messages orally. Consider breaking the content into smaller sentences to help your listeners.
If we talk for 20 minutes in a meeting, our audience will remember only a few essential comments. The audience needs to be able to grasp your message quickly and efficiently. The key question is: “Will my audience be able to repeat this message to someone else after this meeting?” If it’s unlikely that listeners will be able to do so because the message is too long, too vague, or too difficult, it is unlikely you will have the impact you desire.
Read the following aloud:
Everyone’s active participation in the bank’s events is crucial to helping us develop a conscious and cohesive firm culture that we can all be proud of and that will help us attract high-quality associates.
Now, turn your head away from the paper and repeat the statement you just read.
You can’t do it, right? It’s too long. You have to translate what it means to you.
Now try the same with the next sentence:
We hope to see you at as many firm functions as possible.
You are probably able to repeat that sentence easily because the message stands on its own. Save the “why” and the details for separate sentences. Those sentences help me buy into your idea, but they are separate from the idea itself. Give your audience a simple concept to grasp and convey to others.
You may want to consider bringing closure to this issue in the near future before the economic situation changes drastically enough that the fundamental reasons for structuring the deal as we have envisioned it no longer exist.
By the time the speaker finishes that sentence, the audience has forgotten the key message. It’s simply too much for a listener to digest in one gulp.
We need to close the deal soon.
That statement is clear and direct.
Use Simple Language
Sophisticated professionals fall into two traps. First, we try to show how smart we are. Second, we fail to recognize our industry jargon.
Big words do not impress anyone. Big ideas do. Exec|Comm recently surveyed more than 1,800 business professionals, asking what impresses them about other people’s communication skills. When asked to rank the top three communication skills from a list of dozens of items, not a single person ranked “Using sophisticated vocabulary” as a top-three choice. In a professional setting, you’re not graded on smarts. People assume you are smart. You’re graded on having impact. That means getting people to take action based on your ideas.
Get to your point. Your goal when communicating is not to be cute or clever. Your goal is to be clear.
Messages That Resonate
During the time of Sarbanes Oxley, when risk and regulation were very hot topics in business, I was working with the leadership of a large professional services firm as it prepared for an internal annual meeting.
The partner in charge of the firm’s risk management group was very worried