Some of you will be familiar with Tripp and his hilarious sketches about conference calls and corporate life. I saw this sketch last week about business speak, how it is sometimes overused and how confusing it can be.
Have a quick look (2.45 mins) and see if this is how you have started to communicate or how the people around you talk:
Having delivered training programmes for many different industries, I have come to expect that they all use local jargon, some more than others. If you want to have an impact on a programme it is important to understand, and use, the internal language but I think the skill in communicating is making information simple enough to understand and use.
People do tend to assume that everyone knows their jargon, their acronyms and their world, but, in reality, we don’t! As we don’t like to look stupid, we tend not to explore, some of the things we don’t understand, by asking questions. Isn’t it better to understand things rather than have to guess at a later date?
As communication is a 2+-way process, it is the responsibility for all involved to ensure the message hits the mark, and, the consequence of getting it wrong can be catastrophic and costly.
A friend of mine is an IT expert and when he talks to me about my computer, my wifi set-up and cyber security, my eyes glaze over! I don’t have a clue what he is on about and, because I am not interested in learning the in’s and out’s of IT, I don’t try to understand. The downside of this is, I have to keep asking him to pop over (for a beer) to fix stuff and I am sure he gets fed up with me!
5 top tips for effective communication:
- Understand your audience – what do they know and what do they want to know?
- Look for body language clues – if they don’t understand you, it will show in their facial expression
- Ask questions to check understanding – getting them to tell you, what they understand, helps with learning and retention
- Listen to what they say – this will help you to gauge if your message is landing
- Use different methods to get your message across – people learn in different ways, so work with their preferences if possible
How effective is your communication? If you are not getting through to people then what can you change to have a different impact?