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Have you ever been on a conference call that was boring? Or attended a meeting that dragged on for an hour, listening to loads of people talk about lots of stuff, but which resulted in no actions at all? Or watched a presentation, where the presenter simply read out very wordy slides. All of which made you think two things – “This is dreadful” and “I’m losing the will… for you to live.” It’s depressingly familiar, isn’t it?
Communication just isn’t very good. In fact, I’ve found that people think there are two main problems with it:
- finding the time to craft their own beautiful communications
- being forced to wade through everyone else’s rubbish ones
Unfortunately, though, this just isn’t the case. We’re all guilty of poor communication. So here are four simple ways for you to communicate miles better than you do now. So that you get loads more done, in loads less time.
NINJA TIP #1: Start at the End
Communication is supposed to cause something. It’s a means to an end. This ‘something’ could be an action. A decision. Getting some advice. But there has to be some point to it. Or, well … there’s no point to it. So, when you’re preparing your communication:
- Don’t start your prep by thinking about your communication.
- Instead, start with what you want the audience to DO after they’ve heard you.
Once you know this DO, your communication will be much more likely to get them to do it. Also, it’ll be much shorter – because you only include the stuff you need to, to get them to do the DO.
For example, once you know the only purpose of a meeting is to decide whether to do Project X or not, you simply invite the relevant people to a 10-minute meeting, saying, “We need to make a swift decision on Project X. Please come with your views on whether we should or shouldn’t do it, and why. We’ll quickly agree what we all think, make the decision, then crack on.”Ten minutes - not one hour. Focused - not vague. Leads to an action, not a Talking Shop.
NINJA TIP #2: Invest Time Preparing a Great First Impression
Here are two indisputable facts:
1. First impressions are incredibly important.
2. With communication, nobody spends much (any?) time rehearsing their first impression.
So we miss a real opportunity every time we communicate. But it’s dead easy to fix. Here are some examples.
With emails, your first impression is your subject title. So don’t use boring ones like 'Miscellaneous' or the dreaded 'FYI'. Instead, make them more intriguing – 'Sandra, a quick question to ask…' or 'Making sure you get paid this month' work much better.
It’s the same with meetings. Call something 'update' and everybody cries off, or turns up late, or hates you. Instead, include your desired output in the title – 'Quick meeting to agree next steps with X'.
And when you get to the meeting? Your opening sentence is your First Impression. So practice your opening sentence to start positively. For instance, when you say "Thanks for sparing the time to see me", it can sound weak and deferential. Whereas starting with "I’ve been looking forward to today’s meeting. There are two new ideas that will make a big difference to all of us"… well, that’s a much better start.
NINJA TIP #3: Be Interesting
I cannot believe I have to include a tip saying ‘Be interesting’. It just sounds so obvious. Since the world is full of such boring communication, ‘being interesting’ might be common sense. But it sure isn’t common practice.
The easiest way to do it? Simply identify things that people find interesting… and then do some of them! For example:
- People like interactivity. So prepare questions to get them speaking.
- They like humor. So go on Google/YouTube and find something funny you can include.
- They like relevance. So ask them in advance what content they want you to cover. And then focus everything on that.
- They like trivia. So include some.
- They like variety. So make sure your slides look different from each other.
- They like brevity. So make it as short as you can.
I’m not saying you have to do all these things. But, if you want people to think you’re interesting, you’ll have to do more than none.
NINJA TIP #4: Make It Shorter
Nobody loves needlessly long comms. Doing Ninja Tips #1-#3 will ensure you:
- are crystal clear on your Call To Action, and your content is geared to achieving that
- start interestingly, so people engage from the start
- keep being interesting, so they keep being engaged…
… so things will be much shorter anyway.
But you can still do more. Set yourself up for shorter communications. Don’t schedule meetings that’ll last an hour. Instead, try, say, 45 minutes. And then challenge attendees to finish in less. Making these tiny changes makes a massive difference. Check out this maths…
If you reduce one meeting every day from 60 minutes to 45...
... you save 15 minutes a day.
That’s over an hour a week...
... Which translates to over 40 hours a year. By doing this just once per day, you’ve saved one working week per year that you would have spent in sub-par meetings. An entire week! What’s not to love about that?!
And so let’s end with your Call To Action…
The minute you finish reading this article, you’ll communicate with someone. It might be a chat, an email, a meeting… Whatever it is, apply at least one of these Ninja Tips to it.
And if you’re only going to do one of them? Do the first – know your Call To Action. After all, when you don’t know where you’re going, you tend to end up somewhere else. But when you know what you want people to DO... everything’s quicker. Everything’s easier. And it’s much more likely to work.
About the Author
Communication expert Andy Bounds wrote this article for us. To become even more of a Communication Ninja, check out his:
