When communicating, what is the best way to ensure your message is received?
If you've got a favorite way of communicating (perhaps by text, email, or in-person) that you use most of the time, you are undermining the effectiveness of your communication! If you've ever been frustrated that your team or manager isn't taking action on what you've told them must be done – this post & infographic is for you.
Not all modes of communication are created equal. The way you communicate should be selected based on 3 situational factors:
- Who you're communicating with
- The gravity of your message
- The outcome you're trying to achieve
1) The higher up the organization you go (from your buddy at the next desk to middle management to C-suite to customer) the more formality is expected. You might call your friend "dude", but not your boss' boss.
2) Different types of communication carry more or less weight. Sending someone a text is very different from sending them formal report, which is itself not as weighty as a signed contract. If you want someone to take action, choose a communication type with more "weight". You could easily ignore a text, but you wouldn't ignore a summons.
3) Phone and face-to-face (real or virtual) meetings are "synchronous" modes of communication; everyone gets the same message at the same time and can provide real-time feedback to everyone else.
E-mail and text are "asynchronous" (or out of phase) modes. Information flows in a chain, it isn't received by everyone simultaneously, and it isn't always understood in the same way by each person; feedback takes time and can get muddled in diverging streams.
Each mode has its strengths and weaknesses.
Synchronous modes are great for interactions, managing emotions and relationships, decision-making, getting buy-in and conveying urgency, but they're not a good choice for summarizing a lot of data.
Conversely, asynchronous modes work best for communicating data before a discussion, and for summarizing discussion results, but they're not a good choice for debates, making group decisions, or conveying urgency.
It's really boring to have someone reading a big table or list during a meeting. And it's really hard to get a group rallied to action in an email. A much better approach is emailing the info so people can read through it, and then having a meeting to get people motivated to act.
Choosing the the mode appropriate to your purpose will greatly enhance the impact of your messaging. Choosing the wrong mode can undermine what you're trying to accomplish by communicating.
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Each approach relies on an underlying logical flow that goes like this: [a] make sure the problem is clearly defined; [b] be open to all sources of information; [c] vet the information for relevance and accuracy; [d] use the process of elimination to narrow down all possible causes to the most likely few; [e] prove which of the suspects is really the cause of the issue; [f] generate a number of potential solutions; [g] evaluate the effectiveness, feasibility and risk of the potential solutions; [h] implement the winning solution(s); and [i] take steps to make sure your solution(s) don’t unravel in the future.
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