Communicate with Mastery

JD Schramms’ Speak with Conviction and Write for Impact

Adopting A Communication Mindset

AIM Framework (Order Matters!)

1. Audience: the most crucial starting point for all communication. How do you learn about your audience before you are in front of them? (e.g., online research, personal contacts, sleuthing, GlassDoor, online documents, mini focus or interview groups, posing as secret customers or participants, arriving early and listening, asking “gatekeepers” of what has recently worked or not). Without a clear audience in mind, how can a leader provide an impactful message?

• Think about the primary and secondary audiences. Are there unintended secondary audiences? (e.g., if your message is “forwarded along”?)

2. Intent — Your Reason for Communication: both the intention of the speaker or writer, and the action in the minds of the audience. It’s not simply what I want the audience to think, say, or do, it’s what they choose to do as a result of the communication

• Set a single crystal clear intent for every communication they have — something from the audience’s viewpoint that the speaker intends to bring forward

3. Message — Delivering on Your Intent with Words That Matter

• If the audience is the “who” and intent is the “why,” message is the “how,” how they will structure and channel their message
• Consider the medium that will be most approachable for your audience. How far do I need my message to go? How long do I want my message to “last”? How formal is my message? What medium is easiest for my audience to access, use, or understand? How interactive is the choice of medium?

Many channel options depending on interaction and ease of access best for your audience

• The more complex message may require a mix of different channels, strategically designed in concert with one another
• Once you’ve chosen your channel, what are the main points you wish to make in your communication? What are the key reasons and examples you can offer in support of your points?
• Let the information about your audience inform your tone and word choice

Beyond AIM: the Leadership Communication Canvas

1. Audience: with a primer and secondary audience in mind, it’s important to consider who you can reach vs. who you must reach. Who is on the short list of the most crucial audience members to target? Is there a “test audience” to read, review, give feedback before it goes forward?

2. Value Proposition — What Do You Bring to the Table for This Message?

• “Why You?”
• Why are you the one to bring forth this communication? What is your credibility, your source that powers you to make this message? What is your authority to speak or write on the subject?
• If there is a gap in your knowledge or people’s perception of you, can the message be crafted in a way such that the gap is not an impediment to your success?

3. Channels — What Vehicles Will You Use to Share Your Message? For high stakes messages, it’s important to brainstorm all possible channels available to deliver your message

4. Connections — What Will Engage Your Audience? A compelling, clear subject line, one directly tied to an action item and engages the reader to open the email. Speakers can do this with storytelling, statistics, a photo, chart, graph, cartoon experience, an insight, questions to bring the audience into their world.

• In fact, many leaders have found that they continually reduce time spent “telling the troops a message” and more time “fielding questions” when they can craft effective personal stories that truly connect

5. Assets / Resources — What Do You Already Have or Can You Develop to Move Your Audience? What are your “note cards of evidence” that can be arranged and rearranged to create a compelling argument?

6. Activities — How Can You Reach the Audience That Needs to Hear Your Message? How do you make sure your communication doesn’t fall on “deaf ears”? Who can you invite or forward your email with a note of their endorsement to be helpful here. Leaders today must cause the audience more than ever before.

7. Partners — Who Can Help You Do This?

• If they don’t follow, then you are not leading.
• To be truly effective, you need to rely on others to help you create, test, refine, and disseminate the message. Whose partnership is crucial to the success you seek? Do you need an executive champion within the organization? Is there a thought leader (e.g., academics, leaders, luminaries, critics for input) outside the organization who can echo or amplify what you write or speak?

8. Message Structure — How Will You Frame the Message? Most solid communications have an introduction that previews, a body that delivers content in a clear way, and a conclusion that reviewed and calls the audience to some level of action. A strong persuasive presentation will move back and forth from status quo (a sense of “what is”) then swing back to “what could be” until, near the end, the speaker calls the audience to a “new bliss” and engages them with a clear call to action.

Great speeches undulate between status quo and call for action

9. Results — What Do You Want the Audience to Think, Say, or Do After You Communicate? Set your eyes on a big hairy audacious goal!

Speaking with Conviction

• Only 7% of our impact on an audience is verbal, the actual words we share. 55% of our influence is visual (body language has a great deal more influence than we would expect!), what the audience sees! 38% is vocal communication, how we say it, which means 93% of our impact is non-verbal…without our words!!!
• Vocal: your message can be beautifully structured and outlined but undermined by something as simple as the sound of our own voices — how loud, how soft, how quickly to create excitement, how slowly for impact
• Vocal success depends on 5 metrics: pace, volume, clarity, filler words, animation vs. gravitas. Vary pace depending on the point. Projection is about how we breathe.
• Visual communication depends on 5 aspects: eye contact, posture, gestures, physical movement, speaking space. When I look at my slides or notes, I’m giving up an opportunity to connect with my audience. Successful speakers have clear, strong posture with executive presence, starting with arms close to the waist. Be aware of your speaking space and distance between you and your audience. Sustain eye contact for 4–7 seconds with each audience member especially those that ask questions

Writing for Impact: Active, Brief, Clear (ABC)

• Clear, concise, unambiguous
• Find powerful verbs
• It’s the leader’s task to synthesize, not summarize, when delivering a message: “What, so what, now what.” Share the information (“what”), tell us why it’s relevant (“so what”), and articulate what action is needed (“now what”). Offer the top points that worked and a few plans to focus on the next iteration. Synthesis is better than summary.
• Both substance and content matter: informative but also beautifully formatted and styled, easy to read, starting with an informative title (Why have you composed this document?). Have actionable headings and sections so a busy reader can skip all the body and understand your main arguments and asks. Identify the main thing a reader should know about your email or report and format as bold. Have ample white space for digestible messages. Look for lists or itemized points where appropriate
• Avoid conditionals (“I would suggest” to “I suggest” or “I think”)
• Reduce long phrases to single verbs that communicate an action
• Remove information the reader already knows
• Break long sentences into two or more (you’ll know if you had to take a big breath in the middle or if you got confused)
• Use informative titles and headings
• For pitches, can you synthesize your pitch to 7–11 words, enough to fill a billboard. How about to fit a bumper sticker or a short motto? What is the big idea to the little idea?
• Storytelling: the best storytellers drop us right into action without preamble. Place us directly in the scene of action to set the tone of the story
• Be intentional with your first and final words
• Offer less detail and eliminate doubles. Reduce acronyms. Reduce content to its essence
• Use the five senses and offer perspective to populate the story with details that help your reader connect
• A good story illustrates a point, convinces someone of an idea, or reveals something true. Why are you telling the story you’re telling?
• For stories, notice the story path: 90% of the time, we don’t need as much windup as we think we do. Be thoughtful of your story’s arc

Beginnings / expository setups are overrated

• If your story has data, make everything as simple as possible. Think of graphics as the tip of an iceberg: 90% of the total mass lies beneath the surface
• For data, avoid food charts (e.g., pies, donuts, spaghetti). Bar charts with stronger, tighter titles / power verbs can get the same message across and are more digestible. Simplify graphics for greater impact (eliminate legends and axis labels if possible). Highlight data that matters. Add color vs. gray or shadow strategically
• Break a complex story into multiple slides or reveals. One message per slide. Begin headlines with power verbs and make the headline matter
• Announce before you advance: you are driving the slides, not having them drive you! Maintain the lead role and tell your audience the next slide as you bring it into view
• Eliminate laser pointers: touch the image instead or talk about the element. Use color or shading to emphasize the element

Meetings

• Bezos: the ideal team size for a meeting is a “two-pizza team”
• Have a clear agenda and intent. State your intent clearly and early. What is your end goal? What actions do you want people to take? What do you want them to feel? What do you want them to understand? What outcome do you want?
• If you can stand while others remain seated, you gain some power
• Research shows if you share a corner or side of the table with the decision maker, reaching an agreement is easier than sitting across the table (e.g., adversarial chess playing is sitting directly across the table)
• Sit near the ends of the table to avoid tennis, ping pong head bobbing
• Choose a seat that minimizes barriers between you and your audience and gives you the greatest non-verbal advantage
• Person with the greatest speaking role should enter and choose a seat first
• When distributing a deck, delay as long as possible to take time to share your intent and agenda before you begin
• Think about how you balance voices in the room. You might look for opportunities to include the quieter voices, build something into the meeting for participants to reflect quietly, go to the board to offer ideas, provide information in writing

Tracking participation and monitoring the quiet ones…

• Interruptions: “I would like to make sure I finish two points before we move on in the conversation.” with a strong tone. Signal readiness to speak with movement or if by video, tap the computer with a pen to bring the video focus back on you
• Leaders should make their points at the beginning of their remarks in a meeting. That way, if you get cut off, you still get credit for having made the point
• Bookend your strongest speakers, positioning them in the opening and closing while putting the specialists in the middle. With multiple speakers, have each one remain in place until the next speaker takes the stage
• Questions matter: when the audience asks questions, we’ve inspired them to engage, inquire, take a risk, speak their minds. Instead of a Q&A slide at the end, is there an image or blank slide to transition into questions from the momentum of your presentation? Standing below a question mark also makes you look clueless!
• Are there reframing techniques to reassure your audience you truly heard their question and offer a clear, concise sound bite answer

Connecting with audience members who ask questions

• Ask clarifying questions, keep yourself curious and not defensive. Relate and connect with the person who asked the question.
• If they challenge your position, validate them: “I can see why you might think that” or “I used to see it that way too, but I’ve found…” or “I see the heart of the question differently.” Embrace less confrontation and greater connection to your audience
• Instead of the old icebreaker question, “what did you do today?” change to ask, “what questions did you ask today?” or “what did you learn today?”

Book Recommendations & Other Resources

• Nancy Duarte’s Resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences or her TED talk on “The Secret Structure of Great Talks”
• www.duarte.com/slidedocs/ (clear direction on mastering slides)
• “Make Body Language Your Superpower” GSB video
• Glenn Kramon “Winning Writing” document on successful pitches and memo writing
• Brene Brown on disclosing personally and being vulnerable: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
• Jerry Weisman: In the Line of Fire on great strategies for answering tough questions
• Nancy Duarte: Slide: ology
• Cole Nussbaumer: Storytelling with Data
• John Neffinger and Matthew Kohut: Compelling People
• Chip and Dan Heath: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
• Cara Hale Alter: The Credibility Code: How to Project Confidence and Competence When It Matters Most
• Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic: Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals
• Matt Abrahams: Speaking Up without Freaking Out
• Chris Lipp: The Startup Pitch: A proven Formula to Win Funding
• Nancy Duarte and Patti Sanchez: Illuminate: Ignite Change Through Speeches, Stories, Symbols, and Ceremonies
• Mary Munter and Lynn Russell: Guide to Presentations
• Deb Gruenfeld: Acting with Power

www.storytellingwithdata.com

jdschramm.com/mastery/

Power Verbs Part 1

Power Verbs Part 2

Power Verbs Part 3