Step 3: Speak With Intent
While we live in a communication-saturated world, very little of that communication is actually effective. The majority of messages we send are ignored, and many of the ones that get through are misinterpreted, misunderstood, or disregarded.
Effective leadership requires effective communication. This does not mean speaking more, which only adds to the clutter. Instead, it means speaking less, but with greater impact.
Though his experience and observations, the author asserts that the quality of day-to-day communications in the workplace is "excruciatingly low." Managers give long speeches in which they dawdle about the subject rather than saying what they really mean. Their people spend hours in meetings debating what the leader really meant, guessing at his intentions and reinterpreting the message. When the time comes to act, there are hours of meetings to make decisions that could have taken minutes.
As a consultant to leaders, the author noticed three qualities that muddle communications:
- Succinct - Managers take much longer than necessary to describe their ideas, which often causes their audience to "check out" of the conversation
- Specific - Managers are not direct about their intent, but instead stumble toward what they want to say in an oblique manner, which leads to misinterpretation
- Relevant - Managers use language and concepts familiar to themselves, but not to the listener, who must grapple with their meaning.
Each will be explored in the sections that follow.
Be Succinct
Human beings are capable of speaking at a rate of about 100 words per minute, but are able to think at a rate of about 600 words per minute. The author suggests that this excess capacity is a factor in keeping people's attention - listening to us takes 1/6 of their capacity, and the rest is often spent on other things, which is why they "mentally wander off" in conversations.
One impediment to being succinct is the desire to sound important - to use words and sentences that impress our audience, rather than those that quickly and clearly communicate our ideas. Instead, people have the impression that what is being said is mere puffery. The author refers to a Chinese proverb: "Sincere words are not embellished; embellished words are not sincere." Even when people want to pay attention, they have to work harder to translate a meaning out of the tangled filigree of important-speak.
Going back to neuroscience, each word that we use represents a concept or relationship that will be evaluated by the user's mental processes - the more words we use, the more processes we spin up, and the more complex the task of listening becomes.
The same problem exists on the sending end: when we puff up our language, we have to work harder to express ourselves than we would if we got straight to the point. And it's not uncommon for a speaker to get lost in his own language and lose the thread of what he intended to say and either fails to communicate it or, worse, waffles and babbles until he can remember.
The author provides tow examples of a person describing an upcoming meeting to a colleague: one is elaborate and the second is direct. The juxtaposition makes it obvious that fewer words are easier to grasp. (EN: Though I do have the sense the more succinct version was less specific and meaningful.)
Another common problem is that people tend to think things through while they are speaking, rather than before they speak. The result is a stream-of-consciousness babble that meanders toward a point, such that the listener stops listening before the point is made.
The author also speaks to the power of metaphor, which can be highly effective in communicating concepts. A simple statement that "we should tend the crop we already planted rather than sowing new fields" directly communicates an idea that might have taken a lengthy presentation to convey with the particular details of the problem at hand. Especially for leaders, it's valuable to speak of "big picture" concepts rather than the granular details.
In summary, being succinct requires you to think about what you are going to say, then say it simply in as few words as possible, focusing on concrete or visual terms that present the heart of the issue.
Be Specific
While it's important to keep it brief, don't overdo it. That is, we still need to be specific enough so that people understand exactly what we mean. This may entail providing more information and using more words - but just enough to illustrate the point we are making.
(EN: The author provides and example and speaks in general terms about "including everything that's relevant in a dialog and nothing irrelevant" but doesn't really do enough to help discover the right elevel of detail to provide - so as such it remains a quandary: how much is enough, and how much is too much, is still guesswork.)
Be Generous
The author considers the principle of "be generous" in the nature of being considerate of the listener - specifically, consider the words that will be most relevant to their point of view in communicating your own. A listener is most attentive when you speak to his interests rather than your own, and in terms to which he can relate.
In part, this means choosing words carefully so that people understand exactly what you are trying to say - neither talking over their heads nor talking down to them.
Being generous also entails being respectful of the other person, though the author is a bit oblique. For example, "stop wasting time on that" is more abrasive than "that might not require so much attention." When you assault a person's dignity, their focus shifts from listening to you to defending against what they perceive to be a personal attack.
Being generous also entails being personable. People are generally distrustful of others who attempt to project an air of superiority. They are more open and amenable to others who are fellow human beings.
Being Succinct, Specific, and Generous in Practice
When coaching leaders, the author has found that many haven't put much thought into the way they communicate - they blurt out whatever is on their mind and leave the other person with the task of deciding what they meant.
Moreover, he's found in workshops that it is fairly easy to adopt a more effective communication style: when he discussions the importance of being succinct, people who speak in the workshop become more succinct, merely because they are mindful of it: they pause before speaking to compose their thoughts, and speak succinctly.
In the same way, anyone can be a more effective speaker merely by being mindful of the principles of effective speaking. That is, being focused and intentional in speaking results in speaking with focus and intent.
(EN: I've encountered some difficulty in cultures where the communication style is excessively blabbering. If you pause to consider what you will say, someone else rushes in to fill the gap in conversation, either restating what was just said or introducing new topics, so it's a race to speak quickly in order to be heard at all. I expect this is less of a problem for managers as they have a level of deference that causes people to wait for them to speak - and you can slowly earn the respect necessary for people to give you a chance to speak - but there is no good solution in a situation where you are with a group with whom you have not earned esteem.)
Aside: Digital Communications
Office communications in the present day are increasingly digital, and many workers regard email as the bane of their existence. Never before in history have people needed to absorb and respond to so much information on an ongoing basis. It's not uncommon today for an individual to have to read a dozen memos per hour, every hour of their day - which would have been unheard of in the age where memos were delivered on paper.
To this end, the author suggests that you be brief and succinct in your own communications - given that people have hundreds of messages, chances are they will scan the first paragraph to determine if they need to read the rest, so make your point quickly. And if you find that one paragraph does the job, write nothing more.
One observation: when you write long messages to others, they tend to respond at length, and when you write briefly, they respond briefly - so not only is keeping your messages brief and to the point a way of being considerate of others, it encourages them to be considerate in return.
There's a brief aside about emotions and email: considerable productivity can be lost, and relationships with others harmed, by a harsh message. And it may not have been the sender's intention to be abrasive, but email communication is difficult: we cannot leverage tone, expression, and gesture in the same way we can in telephone and face-to-face conversation, and because it is one-way we cannot read the other person's reaction and adapt.
The author suggests a practice of limiting email to impersonal and objective information. Unless you are completely certain the other party will receive the message with a neutral or positive reaction, consider using the phone or speaking in person.