Getting the message across | Up Front Communication

Death by email

Dec 5, 2012 Posted by sergy@upfrontco.com Getting the message across Comments Off

The Unclutterer had an excellent post a few days ago regarding uncluttered email communication.

It’s funny how a system that supposedly increases productivity and streamlines communication needs strategies for dealing with communication pile-ups. Heavens knows I’ve fallen prey to email clutter; my inboxes are horrid messes filled with emails that will never be read more than once, messages that I still haven’t replied, ancient discussion threads, and other sins of electronic communication.

Erin (The Unclutterer) highlights some of the most important points I relate to my own clients regarding effective email communication. Her article goes into detail, but I will provide my own summary here.

Of the utmost importance is determining whether or not email is the appropriate medium at all. Very often a huge amount of time gets wasted sending emails back and forth when that same issue could have been resolved with a five minute phone call. Picking up the phone does cause some people anxiety – I’ve written about my own phone anxiety before – but for heaven’s sake, pretend you have a spine and just pick up the phone. It isn’t as scary as you think it is, and will save you time, effort, and stress in the long run.

Next, understand exactly what it is you are email about. Pick one or two specific issues and stick to those topics. If you aren’t certain what it is you are addressing, it might be better to pick up the phone. Maybe you need to sound off on a few different ideas. That’s a perfectly acceptable reason to contact someone, but that process is usually better when done in real time.

Third, keep your email concise and to the point. Unless you are writing a social letter to your friend, don’t use it as an opportunity to chat. When dealing with business, attention and time are valuable commodities, so don’t waste either with pointless pleasantries Be polite, and then show respect to your reader by addressing the issue without needless embellishment or tangents.

Finally, write an adequately descriptive subject line. It is with staggering frequency that I see business emails with no subject line, with banal and unrelated subjects, or even with subject lines that were rendered obsolete several exchanges ago. Your reader should know precisely what it is they will be reading about with a quick glance at the subject line prior to clicking on the email. That way they can plan how they are going to go through their email list and get their head into the correct context before even opening the message. This makes a huge difference in sparing time and energy in our daily communications.

Apologies to Erin for ripping off the subject of her excellent blog post, but the content was so similar to what I cover with my clients that I couldn’t resist bringing it up here again. If you haven’t yet seen the Unclutterer blog, check it out. She has lots of excellent insight into organization that can create a very real difference in both your home and business life.

Listless

Oct 1, 2012 Posted by sergy@upfrontco.com Getting the message across Comments Off

“Content is king!” has been a blogger battle cry for some time now. With so much information flying from every corner at audiences, attention has become a precious commodity and a powerful currency.* All bloggers and online info provider (myself included) like to think that our content is high value, high impact, unique, or otherwise special in some way. After all, we’re smart people – we know that content is king.

So why, pray tell, do so many bloggers fall back on the ultimate excuse for lazy content provision, namely The List?

You know what I’m referring to: the internet list. The piece of pithy work that will tell you the ten best, the eight reasons, the twenty most wanted, the five hottest XYZs. These “articles” promise to shed light on matters complex and mundane. They will give us direction and the ability to make better decisions. They will boil down our questions and dilemmas into a series of bullet points summarizing the good, the bad, and the ugly of just about any conceivable topic. We info consumers reflexively click on the promising link, reading list after list and taking in drivel that, despite its repetition and homogeneity, continues to sucker us in. I’m as guilty of this as the next person.

Here’s the rub: what lists provide in terms of readability and ease of creation, they almost always lack in actual content. When was the last time an internet list promising you “10 ways to lose weight for good” actually gave you any substantial information in terms of current research? Has the “Top 20 Tech Trends” list introduced you to some truly innovative products that are not quite market ready? I’m willing to bet that the greatest degree of development presented on that one was the latest iPhone iteration and its main Android competitor. You think of the topic, there is an internet list about it masquerading as a valuable article.

This trend has been brutally evident on the LinkedIn groups I am subscribed to. These groups, which are aimed at communications professionals, are frequently used to promote members’ blogs. Many LI discussions are actually links to blog posts. The number of blog posts that present god-awful lists like “25 Things to do in a Job Interview” containing drivel such as “Be 10 minutes early for the interview” is staggering. What I find more extraordinary is that these lists are populating the daily discussion boards of groups dedicated to communication. Surely we can find more interesting things to write about!

Unfortunately, The List is a rather popular type of online article. They contain information that is comforting in its simplicity and familiarity and they don’t tax our ever-shortening attention spans. I’ve come across many advice articles on blogging and freelance writing that openly advocate generating List-type posts when you can’t think of anything good to say, when you are pressed for time, or when you want to crank out content stat. Apparently these articles are such an easy sell in terms of freelance website content generation that they are considered one of the better types of articles to shop around. But when audience attention is the highest form of payment, what statement does generating fluffy List articles say about our opinion of the value of our audience’s attention? That it isn’t worth generating content with real value? That our garbage, I-don’t-know-what-to-write work on which we spent a minimal amount of effort is worth our audience’s time? I think that it doesn’t say much for the writer’s opinion of their readers.

This rant does make some very generalized statements and certainly cannot be applied to every List type article out there. There are some that are highly entertaining and have great comedic value. I will also admit that I have seen some that provide excellent content, well written with valuable information. But for every one good List article, there are fifteen dreadful ones.

Don’t fall into the trap of using lists as an easy way to generate content. If you have something good or important to say and a list is the best structure to present it, then go ahead, but make sure you take the time to create something of substance. If content is indeed king, make damn sure your emperor is actually wearing clothes.

*Hat tip to Seth Godin

Winging it

Sep 24, 2012 Posted by sergy@upfrontco.com Getting the message across, Performance Comments Off

“Hey, we need you to fill a space in our program. This speaker just backed out, see, and it’s too late to find someone outside the organization to fill their space. The presentation needs to be related to Topic XYZ. Don’t worry, you’ll do fine – you’re so good at winging it.”

I shuddered every time I got a request like that – and those requests (or similar) happened more often than I would have liked. The core of the problem was the impression that one’s ability to “wing it” was tantamount to an almost mystical capacity for speaking at length about any topic at any moment with no notice. This is a false impression: “winging it” – aka improvisation – takes practice. It takes huge amounts of practice, as well as a deep knowledge of the topic about which you are improvising.

What improvisation is not is simply cobbling something together out of thin air at the last minute with no real effort.

During a middle eastern music and dance show last night, my dance mentor gave a wonderful summary of how a skilled improvisor works. Middle eastern solo dances are generally improvised. When the dancer is performing with a live musician, it is understood that a significant part of the music will be improvised as well. Dancer and musician play off one another, and the quality of their interaction is a considerable indicator of their level of skill. They are able to do this sort of improvised performance because of their level of understanding of the songs, musical structure, and physical technique they are working with. My mentor used the analogy of a Christmas tree to explain the art of improvisation:

Every year you put up a Christmas tree. The tree is set up in the same place in the house and many of the decorations will be old favourites that are pulled out every December. Instead of the tree looking the same year-to-year, however, it is always different. Ornaments are hung in new places, new decorations are added, and sometimes old ones are left in the box. But the fundamental structure of the tree stays the same. Improvisation is like this. The musician and the dancer can improvise because they understand the underlying musical structure, the beats and rhythms they are working with, and the overall skeleton of the song they are working with. The result is a performance with the technical precision of a choreography and the intensity and passion of spontaneity.

This analogy can also be applied to other forms of performance art. Jazz and blues musicians use their knowledge of songs and specific rhythms to enable jam sessions where different musicians will go on lengthy improvised solos while the others continue to provide the backup sounds. Despite the fact that the solos are not pre-planned, they work within a structure that allows the musician freedom to play while informing the other players when to swoop back in and bring the song back to a cohesive whole. This takes a great deal of knowledge and confidence.

Speakers who develop their improvisation skills follow a similar pattern. They have deep knowledge of the content about which they speak (their song), and they have excellent understanding of speech structure and composition (their rhythm). Because of this, they are able to seemingly pluck fully formed speeches, presentations, and arguments out of the air, much as the dancer and musician appear to perform a carefully choreographed performance piece on the fly.

Here’s the kicker: this takes practise and study – lots of it. Skilled improvised speech requires the speaker to be highly knowledgeable about their chosen topics. Information must be gathered and absorbed. Related subject matter must be absorbed. Opinions need to be formed, vetted, re-formed, and tested. Think back to your university days – that is the kind of study undertaken by many a storied speaker. Equal work must be then put in on speech crafting itself. Having imaginary debates, re-scripting past conversations, studying classical rhetoric, scripting speeches and presentations, studying the techniques of master public speakers, and joining groups like Toastmasters are all ways to practice speech crafting.

Next time you watch someone give a brilliant spontaneous speech or watch a presentation and are mesmerized by the speaker’s skill, don’t chalk up their performance to some innate ability to effortlessly “wing” speeches. Rest assured that they work hard at what they do. They work extremely hard. Successful improvisation isn’t a skill that you do or do not have; it’s built up with hard graft. It is, however, something totally accessible to you and to anyone else willing to put in the work. Once you know your song/topic and rhythm/structure like the back of your hand, you’ll be able to create brilliant improvised speeches as well.

When the lips are flappin’, but the brain ain’t kickin’ in

Jun 18, 2012 Posted by sergy@upfrontco.com Getting the message across 1 comment

Despite all best efforts, some people are simply difficult to communicate with. You’ve likely met a difficult communicator; no matter how hard you try, they seem to miss chunks of conversations. No matter how clear the note, they still twist the message. No matter how explicit the instructions, they still manage to screw them up. It doesn’t seem to matter what type of communication you use, how quickly or slowly you speak, how many metaphors or descriptions you provide, or how transparent and clear-cut your writing is.

I’ve got a few ideas of my own as to why certain people are persistently difficult to communicate clearly with:

1: They habitually fail to pay focused attention to the person or item at hand.

This is a big problem in an age where information flies at us a mile a minute, where we are in a perpetual state of stimuli overload, and where people are proud that they can “check emails and have a conversation at the same time” (hint: they can’t). After a while, having a fractured attention span that wanders from one thing to the next – even if it is only wandering to the chattering in the person’s own head – becomes habitual. This is a habit we need to break. Focus and attention span is something that can be improved through concerted effort and mindfulness, but it is possible. This is something that I myself am working on improving, and while it might not be easy, it is rewarding.

2. They have an agenda they are pursuing.

Realistically, we are all pursuing our own agendas at all times. These agendas can be completely benign (I’m hungry, so I’m going to bring this conversation to an end so I can eat), altruistic (I want to help this person), or more…suspect (use your imagination). Depending on the urgency and prevalence of that agenda, communications can very easily be twisted to ensure that the person hears or reads what they need to hear or read at the time. With some people and in certain situations or organizations, this can colour just about any communication instance.

3. They do not feel you have anything of interest or worth to say.

This is pretty self-explanatory, and can be due to myriad issues. At any rate, the person simply becomes accustomed to filtering out what you say. This can be seen in situations where weak leadership has lead to mistrust or downright dismissal of just about anything a manager could have to say.

4. They’re paranoid.

We’ve all encountered at least one person who interprets just about anything directed at them to be either an insult, a threat, or at the very least something that contains subtext of which they must be deeply suspicious. I find this is usually paired with either whipcrack tempers or with timidity and low confidence.

5. It’s not them…it’s you/me!

This is a tricky one; if it seems like everyone is impossible to communicate effectively with, or if you never have a good reasonable chat with a person, the issue might be looking at you from a mirror. Look for the common denominator – if you have trouble with everyone, is it likely that the whole world is made up of crappy communicators except yourself? If you are the only person in an organization who persistently has a major communication hang-up with a particular individual, does that mean that the individual is a good communicator with everyone except you? Admitting that the problem may be us is difficult, but the good news is that means it is possible for us to change the situation. Maybe you need to get to know the other person better and develop more understanding of their mannerisms. Maybe you need to improve certain areas of your communication style to ensure you are giving the message you need. Either way, changing ourselves is a lot easier than changing other people!

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