Transcripts
1. Introduction: With so much noise and
distraction around us, it can be really hard to capture attention and get what you need when communicating
with others. We often think all
communication is equal, that the content is
all that matters. But there is actually
a lot more involved. In order to have a
productive dialogue that moves us forward, we need to be intentional
about how we communicate. I've developed a
simple five-step plan to help you communicate in a more impactful
and productive way so that you can prompt action, make progress, and get results. Hi, I'm Abby Ireland and I run a leadership and
training consultancy called understanding
performance. And we specialize in
peak performance and productivity for
executives and teams. In this class, we're going
to cover how to prepare the high impact communication and why this is
critical for success. We're going to look
at how to flex or communication style
based on the recipient. And we're going to explore techniques to
structure impactful, verbal, and written
communication. We're also going
to look at how to prompt recipients to take action and how to skillfully
follow up at a later point. Powerful communication
takes effort to get right, at least at first. But the more we practice, the more natural it becomes. So we're going to
equip you to make your communication as
impactful as possible so that you get what you
need when you need it without getting
stressed in the process. So your project is
going to involve completing each section
of the class worksheet. As you go through the lessons, think of an upcoming
situation in which you need to
communicate with impact. Or you can always think
of one from the past. Throughout the sessions, we're going to be using an example so that you can
apply the techniques to your own scenario. Please do share your
completed worksheets in the project gallery and ask any questions at all
as I'll be able to respond to you directly
if you post in there. Now, let's get started.
2. Preparing for Higher Impact: In this lesson, we're going to explore what we can
do to prepare for high impact communication that improves productivity
and outcomes. So we're going to
dig into what we mean by impactful communication, why it matters, and what
can get in our way. Impactful communication
is efficient, effective, and it leads to better
results with less effort. It's needed in
situations where we might need to make
progress on projects. We might need to work with
difficult stakeholders. Maybe we need to meet deadlines and get results under pressure, or we might need to
get someone's help to achieve something
that matters. Now, there are huge
benefits when we take a more proactive approach to
communicating with others. We're more productive,
we waste less time. There is less confusion. There's less room for
misinterpretation, less room for mistakes
were also more aligned. We have more clarity. We can work faster and we can
achieve stronger results. We also save other people's time if we communicate concisely, if we remove complex information and if we provide
clear instruction, impactful communication
makes it easy for everyone involved to see
what is needed and by when. As a positive side effect, we also experience better
working relationships, better interactions, and we increase or enhance
our credibility. Despite all the benefits
that are, however, psychological factors that stop us from communicating
effectively, we might find ourselves in urgent situations where we need to get something
done quickly. We rush and we lacked time to prepare our communication
for properly. So it comes across as
careless, long-winded, maybe confusing, busy-ness.
It's another thing. It also means we don't have the headspace to plan
or to think clearly. All that clutter in
our minds can be so hard to make sense of. And so we end up
communicating all of that noise to others as well. So it actually
takes more time and more effort to communicate
concisely and with intention. Just dump all of
our thoughts into an email or a verbal dialogue. Another block we have
is tunnel vision. We might prefer to
communicate in a certain way. But that means we also
believe that that's the right way that
everyone else should understand and everyone
else should align with. Differences in
communication preferences can lead to clashes, can lead to misunderstandings
and confusion. That makes it even harder
to get things done. So to overcome these blocks
and these limiting beliefs, we need to get in the
right headspace and make it a habit to
communicate with intent. It takes time to
build strong habits. But the more we practice, the easier and faster
it's going to become. Eventually we want to be able
to do this on autopilot. So it takes less effort, less brainpower to get it right. And we also need to carve
out time to plan or communication so that it lands well with our intended audience. We go through four stages when we're learning
something new. At first, we might not even be aware that the way we
communicate matters. We might feel like we're on the right track just because
we're communicating. But we don't think about
how we're doing this. So this lack of
awareness puts us in the unconscious
incompetence quadrant. Then we learn new ways
through classes like this. And we realized that we are
consciously incompetent. We are aware that we can
communicate differently for better outcomes as we apply
the tools and tactics, we move to being
consciously competent. So this takes effort. It can feel difficult
to can feel frustrating as we try things out
and we make mistakes. And finally, we move to unconscious competence after putting everything
into practice, when we're able to
get to this stage, we are able to operate on
autopilot in a skillful way. Things known undertake efforts. We naturally can think
and act in ways that lead to more impactful
communication. So what we're gonna do is
look at your worksheet and identify your top blocker
and write this down. Note down what you can do
to overcome this blocker. You can share your questions on the discussion board and I will be happy to respond to you directly list of all the
benefits that you will experience if you are able to communicate more impactfully, how is this going
to make work and life easier for you
and for others? And finally, decide
where you currently sits on the conscious
competence matrix and decide what you need
to do to move further along towards the unconscious
competence quadrant. In the next lesson,
we're going to explore this in more detail.
3. Flexing Your Communication Style: When we communicate with others, we need to communicate in a
way that resonates with them, or we can end up with crosswise relationship
challenges, confusion, and ambiguity. The best way to get out of our
own heads is to understand our stakeholders and try to see things from their perspective. We need to know our
audiences and our own style, and then we need to flex
to land our points. So ultimately, we
want to make it effortless for the other
person to respond. And we want to make it easy
for them to progress or act. And what we want as humans, we all take in and interpret
information differently. We distort, we delete, we generalize
incoming information from the outside world. We all have our
own skewed version of the truth of reality. This is due to metaprogramming
that we all have. These are the unconscious programs that are
running through our brains that filter
our experiences. So as a result, when we're
communicating with others, we can feel like we're
saying one thing, but it can be interpreted entirely differently
by someone else. So to help us better
understand how others operate, we can use personality
profiling tools and various different assessments
you may have heard of or you may have been
through some of these yourself such as MBTI, insights, disk and hogan. So today we're going to be using the disk profiling
approach to see how our communication
preferences are shaped by our individual styles. We have four different categories
of personality profile. But it's really important
to remember that no one person is 100%
of any one of these. We are all a blend
of two or more. We're all capable of behaving in a way that describes
another style. It's just that we
have a preference for one style over another. So the key point is that we have preferences for how
we'd like to operate, how we like to communicate
at work and beyond. So these profiles give us guidance when
interacting with others so that we have a
better understanding of their preferences. We still need to
be careful not to make sweeping
assumptions though, about someone
else's preferences. So we do need to
look for evidence, we need to look for data
to backup our assumptions. And this data can come from
previous interactions. It could come from
just observing how does a person communicate? How do they communicate
verbally or via email when they're
speaking to us, when they're talking to us. So first we have the
D personality profile and this stands for dominance. People in this category
tend to be direct. They tend to be fast-paced. They're very goal oriented, big picture in their
communication style. There phrase would be, let's get to the points. They are perceived
to be decisive, their competitive,
determined, and assertive. As this character tends to be quite high level and really
focused on taking action, they can also have
short attention spans, which means that we
need to communicate in a way that grabs their
attention and holds it. A typical strong D would
write something like this. Sandra, please send you updates by close
of business today, so we're ready for
Thursday's meeting. Thanks, Tim. Is short, it's sharp, it's concise and to the points, but it can also be seen
as a little abrupt, but others with a different
communication style. Next, we have I or influence. People in this
category are sociable. They're friendly, they're
optimistic, their expressive, that easily distracted,
and very enthusiastic. They like to bond on
a personal level when working and they're
very people-oriented. Now their attitude
when communicating with others is,
let's be friendly. An e-mail from an individual could look something like this. Hi Sandra. Hope you're having a great day. Thanks for your time yesterday. It was lovely to catch up. As discussed, please do send
through your updates by the end of the day so
we can incorporate them into our deck for
Thursday's meeting. Thanks again for
your help looking forward to hearing from you Tim. This communication style here is much more conversational. It's friendly, it's open. So you can see that
this type of person really likes to connect
and build rapport. Next, we have steadiness
or stability. This character is people oriented with a
comma energy than the outgoing I S characters
are loyal, that amicable. They're respectful and calm. They care about others feelings. And their approach
is, let's be tactful. They are patient,
they are reliable, they're great listeners
and good team players. The risk is that it's not
always easy to figure out what they truly think
because they are so tactful. And so this can be
really challenging. And S might write
something like this. Hi Sandra, How are you? It would be much appreciated if you could send
across your updates by the end of today
for phase one of project hawk as we have our
big meeting on Thursday, please let me know if this is doable and what I can
do to support you. Many thanks, Tim. So the S checks in to see
how the other person is. And they want to ensure that the other person
feels supported to. Our final character is the C for compliant or conscientious. Now, their approach
to communication is, let's be precise. So the C-style is
structured there, process-driven,
their task-focused. They like to base decisions on facts and figures and evidence, and they have high standards
for themselves and others. They can be quite detailed,
quite analytical, and very focused on accuracy
in their communication. So C character might write
something like this. Sandra, as discussed earlier, please send you updates on phase one of product hawk items 12.3 of the risks and issues register by 05:00 P.M. today. I will then update
the overarching deck with your inputs ahead of our Thursday morning meeting at 10:00 A.M. kind regards Tim. So you can see that this
style is much more formal. It's detailed, it's precise, It's very task-focused,
very professional. So little personality spills
into the communication. So now that we've summarized the four key personality types and communication preferences, think about a person
or a group of stakeholders you
want to engage with, or a situation in which you can upload all your
communication style. And always remember
to be aware of the personality style
you are working with and how they see the world. Tailor your approach to the person you're
interacting with. Think about their preferred
communication style and try to engage in a manner
that they will respond to. Ask yourself what
style will land best with them based on
what you know about them? You can write this down
on your class worksheet. You can also practice
communicating verbally or in
written format using different styles and
seeing whether this has an impact on the response
that you receive.
4. Structuring Your Communication: So when we take
time to structure our communication
clearly and concisely, it can be incredibly powerful. This is true for verbal
and written communication, but we often underestimate
the impact it has as we're too focused on
getting our message across in whatever way we can. The first thing we need to do
is consider a message flow. And we need to do some planning. If we want to land on
point with impact. Over time, you will naturally start to craft
communication in this way, but it does take
effort at first. And this brings us back
to that concept of unconscious competence that we will eventually evolve into. So think about the
various elements that are contained in a message
to someone else, whether verbal or written, we will want to consider who
we are communicating with. Y, what we are communicating, how we expect things to be done and what's happening next. This gives us a really
clear structure to follow. For an e-mail, we want to use all elements as
effectively as possible, such as the subject line, the main body, and sign off. E.g. when you're contacting someone about an
upcoming meeting, we could simply use the word
meeting in the subject line. However, this doesn't give the recipient a lot of
useful information, especially if they tend
a lot of meetings. They might even ignore it. If it doesn't stand out, if it doesn't immediately
tell them anything useful about the information
contained within. A better approach would
be something like this. Project hawk update session
Friday 21st, October. This automatically
draws attention to the topic and
the due date and it gives an insight into what
the email will focus on. Keeping your subject
line useful but concise is a great way to get
people to take action. Really think about what
would encourage someone to click on the
message and read it. Your subject line is
almost like a book cover. It entices someone to open
it and see what's inside. You also need to think about the content of what
you want to say. So communication
isn't just about regurgitating everything
into your mind, into words or onto an e-mail. It's really important
to structure your content so that
it's easy to find, easy to read, and
easy to act on. So this is an example of an
email constructed without putting a lot of thoughts
into structure or impact. Tim has written his
email with a lot of unnecessary detail and wording that could be easily condensed. Thankfully, he has
written paragraphs, but he isn't being very
directive about what he wants. So instead he's asking lots
of open-ended questions, which mean that the discussion
could go back and forth. So a more productive approach would be for Tim
to suggest what he thinks should be done and then seek consensus or
different opinions. E.g. instead of saying, do you think we
could work on this? Tim could say,
let's work on this together and discuss
when we meet. In this email, Tim
has also incorporated a number of other requests which make it really confusing. The recipient might be unclear about which part takes priority, and it can be
really easy to miss something in amongst
those paragraphs. So by simply typing
up the e-mail and structuring it differently, we can automatically see that it is a lot
easier on the eye. We have a clear subject lines so we know what the
email is about. The key points for discussion on neatly summarized
using bullet points. If you want to demonstrate priority or encourage
action, taking, a good tip is to
use numbers instead of bullet points because this
can be really impactful. This gives the look and
feel of a to-do list, which can prompt the
recipient into taking action. Being more directive can really help to push the
conversation forward to. So instead of asking someone what date and time
works for them to meet and then waiting for a reply before you
then have to reply, you can just suggest one or two options that they
can choose from. This helps to
conclude your e-mail. It also gives you more control
over what happens next. So remember, use paragraphs to separate each point
you are raising. Use headings and
subheadings to break down big chunks of texts and make it easier to digest your e-mail. Use bullet points to make readability even
better and try to land just one key message
in your communication. If you're trying to share
too much in one email, it can be confusing and it
can cause a lack of focus. We can chunk down
information so that it's easier to process and
easier to manage. E.g. I like to use
the rule of three, and I provide no more
than three key messages in a communication if possible. Demonstrating this,
this provides clarity, it provides focus, and it
provides memorability. So you might also
want to think about the best channel for your communication.
Would it be email? Will it be the chat
function, a phone call, or a face-to-face conversation,
virtual or in-person. Lots of things to consider. Context is going to dictate
the preferred channel, but this will be flexible and it's going to
be interchangeable. E.g. you might want
to communicate via e-mail if you have
important information, a lot of details
or instructions to convey to someone or a
large group of people. But if e.g. you have a quick question that
requires a quick response, you might think that
chat works best, or you might want to have a
more detailed conversation, but it doesn't really warrant
a full-blown meeting. In that case, picking
up the phone might work best and having a face-to-face
could be most effective. If you want to dig deeper, you want to build
greater connection. You want to get a
better understanding of the person or people
you are dealing with. Finally, think about the content of your communication message. Clarity is key and
ambiguity can arise, which causes confusion
and misinterpretation. And this can be
due to a number of factors that can be due
to cultural differences. There can be language barriers, style preferences, the
choice of words used. So e.g. some phrases
and words can dilute impact or they might
not really add any value to a
discussion or an e-mail. I'm flexible on approach that
leaves things open-ended, but it doesn't really invite the other person to drive
the approach either. We kinda hanging there. By close of business. This means different things
to different people. We assume everyone
else will have the same time in mind as we do, but this isn't true, etc. It doesn't tell us anything. It can mean different
things to different people. Ideally implies that we would like something
a certain way, but we aren't clarifying
whether this is a must-have or a nice-to-have. As soon as possible. It can mean different
things to different people. So we can be much more
concise and specific in our communication
to reduce or remove any ambiguity and
to drive progress. E.g. by tomorrow could be clarified to stay
by 05:00 P.M. today. Seeing is the person
needs to deliver today in order to give you
something by tomorrow. Or if we really
do mean tomorrow, What time are we expecting
things to be done by? Can you get this to me? Could change from a question
to please send this to me. So we are being really
clear that we're not asking a question where we would be okay with a no answer. And I will respond shortly, can be tightened up to state. I will respond by
midday tomorrow, so no one is left
guessing as to what shortly or soon actually means. Some words and phrases can
be removed altogether. So if possible, I'd like to talk to you about project
hawk could simply be, I'd like to talk to you
about predict hawk, and so on, could be removed entirely as it doesn't
provide any extra value. It's easier to start crafting written communication
than verbal. As you've got more
time to think about things before things
get sent out. So take a few extra minutes
to review what you write. Look for any
unnecessary words and phrases and remove these. Be really ruthless
and cutting these out and practicing
crafting tighter, stronger, more
concise messaging. And when reflecting
back on what you write, ask yourself, does
it show confidence? Does it show certainty
and a sense of progress? If there are too many open
loops and questions which are throwing back to the recipient,
see if you can adjust. These are arrange a call to get clarity rather than going
back-and-forth on email. Look at an email you
recently sent out and try to fine-tune it using the
tactics from this class. There's space on your
class worksheet to start jotting down
your draft outline. If you prefer, you
can start crafting a future e-mail using the points we discussed
in this lesson. Remember, we want
to consider flow, we want to consider channel, and we want to consider
content for extra points. Tried to structure your
content in a manner that aligns to stake holders
personality type. Refer back to listen
to if you need a recap of these
four core styles.
5. Prompting Action: After structuring the message, we need to ensure that it's very clear what the recipient
has to do next. So at this point, we want to
add a call to action or CTA. Now, this is about
landing your point clearly and moving
towards action. The implications if you don't do this well or that
nothing gets done, people miss the points or
the urgency of a request. So tell them what you need. A call to action is defined
as an order or a demand to do something in order to achieve an aim or deal
with the problem. We see these all the time on adverts and in
marketing campaigns, companies are always telling
us what they want from us. It could be something
like color snail. Complete this survey,
visit your nearest store, buy one, get one free. We're used to hearing and seeing call to actions in
our everyday life, but we don't always think to use them in our own communication. When dealing with others
at work, everyone is busy. Everyone has a lot going on. So a call to action can really help to cut
through the noise, provide direction,
and make it easy for someone to do what you're
asking them to do. E.g. a. Very simple call to
action would be please send me your face one updates
by 05:00 P.M. Wednesday, as we will add these
to the reports, it's a very clear request. We know when it's due
and why it's needed. It's also concise and there's
no room for confusion. When creating a call to action, it works best to also keep it on a separate line so that it's
easy to spot in an email. Now a call to action is going to help you to be extra clear and focused on your reason for reaching out to
someone else as well. You can then track and
measure progress and you can move forward
much more easily. Call to actions also
provide accountability for the other person to
know exactly what's required of them and
then to deliver on it. Now, in a verbal interaction, you can also use
a call to action at the very end of
your discussion so that all parties are on the same page about
what is needed. And you might also want to repeat this message a few times throughout your discussion in order to reinforce
what you are saying. Your call to action may also change depending on who
you're interacting with. If you're communicating
to someone more junior, you may be more directive and give it a little
bit more context, a little bit more
information and guidance to support that person
to take action. You may also add some
wording to offer your support if they have any questions or
if they get stuck. However, if you are
communicating to a peer or someone more senior, your requests wording may not be as detailed because
you want to give that person the autonomy to take action using their own approach. So now it's time to take action
on your class worksheet. There is space for
you to come up with a call to action for
your own example. Add this to the message that
you are currently crafting.
6. Following Up: What do we do if things
don't go to plan? Now, it is important to keep up the momentum as
it can be really, really frustrating
if we can't move forward or if someone else
is being a bottleneck, this damage is our productivity, it damages our energy levels and even the quality of
our relationships. Sometimes we don't always
get a response when desired or were met
by radio silence. Or we might even get
pushback if someone resists or doesn't understand
the importance of what we're asking for. We think we're all
on the same page. Nothing happens even if
we spend time sending some clear communication in
a meeting or via an e-mail. So to summarize, here are
some tactics to get people to respond in a timely
manner to your requests. Always summarize what is needed and by when and you
can make this extra explicit by creating a
sub-heading called wasp I need from you so that
the recipient can easily spot this when
scanning your email. Secondly, you might want
to draw attention to key parts of your
message by highlighting, underlining or bolding the text. Now, don't do all
of these things at once and don't do it
more than twice in a written communication or
else it can really dilute the impact and it can
also be really annoying. Thirdly, you want to add a concise instruction
in the subject line. Remember to keep it
short but enough to make the recipient wants to click
and read your message. You want to state the
consequences as well. If the action is or isn't taken, what will be the
positive outcomes and what could the adverse
consequences be? You also want to put key
messages on a line of their own so that it's really
easy to draw the eye there. For verbal dialogue. You can use most of
these points by being very clear and concise
in your summary, reiterating key messages,
checking for understanding from the other person before
closing the conversation. You also want to strike
a balance between being accommodating
and being assertive, especially if you're not
getting the response that you need to take more control
and to move things forward, you could be more directive
over what happens next. Make it easy for the other
person to agree with your suggestion
rather than having to come up with an
option themselves. E.g. you could enter your e-mail with I'll make contact on Monday in case you have any questions or you need help putting
the data together. Or you could say something like, what time works for you
next week for us to discuss the data ahead
of the project meeting. So here's an example of
Tim's message to Sandra. Tim has used the subject line to highlight the deadline
and what's required. He's also explained why
what he needs is important. He then goes on to give Sandra an option if she can't
deliver on time. And this pulse is
accountability and responsibility over to
Sandra to get things done. Finally, Tim explains
the consequences if the information is
not provided and he also offers support to make it even easier for Sandra
to fulfill the request. So Tim might decide to
follow up with an email or a phone call if there's
still no response from Sandra in a reasonable
time period. But he's going to be
able to judge this if he needs to do it based on his knowledge of
Sandra's working style and to past experiences. The final thing we need to do is be very conscious
about saying or doing anything that can trigger the person in a negative way. There are certain phrases that can cause resistance
and they can make a person less likely to
do what we need them to do. They experienced what we call
psychological reactants. And this is a really
interesting concept whereby if someone is told to do something they resist because it threatens their
sense of autonomy, people don't like
being told what to do. And if someone tells
us what to do, we might be even
more likely to dig their heels in and do
the complete opposite. So to avoid triggering
with someone when in a verbal or written
conversation, trying not to use terms
such as you need to, or you must do this. You never do this. You always have to do this. You should or don't, or you are. Many of these are very
controlling and dictating while statements like you are holding this up or
you are too slow, can be triggering
as they feel like a personal attack
on our identity. Now, all of these terms will
cause us to get defensive. We're gonna get indignant. And that means we're
less likely to be collaborative in a situation. So instead, try using
words like please. It's a good idea
to remember too. I'm going to do this because
we can, by being polite, by being respectful,
we're more likely to see far better outcomes by providing suggestions
instead of instructions. We also allow the other
person to have autonomy. So by using first-person I
instead of second-person, you were also less confrontational and we come
across as less threatening. And if we do need to
give instruction, it's always good to provide
a reason because this helps the other person to understand and be more
likely to follow along. So we've covered a lot of
content in this class. And ultimately every single
situation is going to be different in terms
of what's happening, in terms of who's
involved and in terms of what
relationships alike. So for your final
action structure, a simple follow-up message
using the tactics shared to check in on progress or prompt action taking
on your own scenario, you can write your notes
on the class worksheets.
7. Final Thoughts: Thank you for taking
this class with me. I hope it's been helpful and given you some ideas that you can start weaving into
your future interactions, whether written or verbal. Remember, communication has
the power to influence, to drive action if
we use it smartly. So this means having a good understanding
of who we're dealing with and what style of communication will
land best with them. We also need to take the time to structure our
communication will consciously so that it lands with impact the
first time around, the clearer we are about what we're communicating
and what we need, the less time is
going to be wasted on crosswise and
chasing people up. And this has a huge impact on productivity as we're able to get things right
the first time. If everyone's on
the same page and everyone is clear on
what needs to happen. And when simply adjusting the way you communicate
and interact with others using language they
can relate to is going to allow you
to make progress more quickly with
fewer mistakes and fewer miscommunications
into integrating the cast tips into the
way you communicate. And remember, try to
practice a little bit every day until it becomes
second nature to you. Please share any
questions you have in the discussion
section of this class, and I look forward to
seeing your class projects. Thank you again and have
been communicating.
Abigail Ireland, Peak Performance Strategist
