How To Say What You Actually Mean

There is a story of four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realised that Everybody wouldn't do it. Consequently, it wound up that Nobody told Anybody, so Everybody blamed Somebody.’

Has this ever happened to you? You ask the team to do something and somehow it doesn’t get done the way you intended or maybe nothing happens at all!

There is an old adage amongst marketing and corporate communication professionals that says something along the lines of, ‘you have to say something seven times before people really hear what you are saying (or want to buy from you)’. Whilst this might not be the exact wording there are a couple things we can learn from the sentiment;repetition can be powerful – most of us learned our multiplication tables this way AND people have different communication or learning styles.

So, when preparing to communicate a message to your team consider these factors.

Clarity Of Message

If we really want to be clear about what we want to communicate, it is worth taking a moment to check what it is that the recipients need to understand. Too often we expect people to be mind readers and do not give the people the background to our thoughts.

Are we looking to provide information so that people are aware or do we need them to take action and if so what action do we expect?

Are we prepared to repeat the message and increase the chances that it has sunk in?

Know Your Audience

What does your team already know about the subject matter? What other things are they focusing on at the moment and how important is your topic to them? What do you know about the personalities in your team and how they prefer to receive communication?

Are they visual?

Some people prefer to receive information or learn something by seeing pictures, diagrams, illustrations or even receiving the information in writing so that they can take their time reading it. People who have a visual preference may give this away by using visual words themselves. For example, see, view, picture, review, sketch.

Are they auditory?

As you can guess this means some people are happy to receive information orally or verbally and can retain the information easily. They tend to use words like, ‘Hear, listen, sound’

Are they kinaesthetic?

This generally refers to people who learn by doing and putting things into action straight away. For example you explain a new piece of software, this person will prefer to use it straight away and learn by doing. They may use words like, ‘Feeling, sense, move forward, touch (as in ‘touch base’).

So when communicating to a group of people you need to be aware that different people will want it in different ways. This means that using a variety of communication channels or methods of communication will increase the chance that people will take in what has been transmitted.

These methods could include face-to-face, telephone, email, information sheets, intranet, meetings, discussions, videos, e-learning, role plays and many more depending on the situation. It also pays to be a little different or creative in your approach as people tend to remember the unusual.

Checking Mechanism

There is a great communication creed that sums up the need to have some way of checking what has been understood. It says, ‘The only way to know whether the message has been received and understood is by the response we get.’

So always test to evaluate what has been understood. Avoid questions like, ‘Did you understand?’ as in most situations people will just say ‘yes’ as they think this is what you want to hear! Ask open questions i.e. questions starting with ‘what, when, why, where, how and who’. You might sample random pieces of work, set quizzes or just ask them to explain it back to you or to tell you what they will do next.

In summary, never ever assume that just because you have told someone something, that will understand what you have said. Take time to think about what the message is and what you want them to do next and then make sure you check for understanding.