5 Steps For Creating & Delivering Successful Communications

It’s the month of May and finally quarantines are loosening up! Not without bumps in the road, albeit, but we appear to be moving forward. Hope you have remained well through it all. There are some things i will miss. I so enjoy morning and evening walks in the middle of my neighborhood streets with absolutely no cars … just quietness with the occasional sharing of a wave to other neighbors out walking.

This morning I was listening to the birds singing to each other and thinking about their way of communicating. Got me thinking about the Indians who used “fake” bird calls to communicate back in the day. They sent exact messages to each other that connected.

Today when humans communicate there can be a lot of grey in our messaging that creates gaps in the intention of our messages. These gaps leave room for the recipients of the message to interpret our intention from their perspective, i.e. in their own way! There is not a clean connection, or as they say in the tech industry, there is a disconnect at some level of the transmission.

Over the last 7 weeks, have you experienced any grey or gaps in your communications? Two huge changes in all our lives invite these communication gaps to occur .. `1) remote communications via zoom and other online platforms 2) home 24/7 with the same people, love them or not! Both provide so much room for assuming and not so much room for confirming due to a variety of reasons. It is so easy for disconnects to take place at all levels.  Many people predict a continuation of both these scenarios as we go into our “new normal” and even beyond that point. The gaps have to go, and the good news is they are easy to fix with a little more attention to being exact with our communications.

Here are 5 steps for creating & delivering exact & successful communications.  Hope they are useful and deliver you some results that demonstrate the difference “exactness” can make! Let me know ..

1. Know Your Purpose. Begin with having a clear purpose for your communication. Know “why” you are communicating. It doesn’t matter if the purpose is to have someone purchase your offerings or if you just want a second helping of mashed potatoes. Knowing your purpose, your why, will give clarity and a target for your next steps.
2.  It’s Not About You. Know who you are communicating with, verbally or in writing. Your communication must be created so that it “connects” to where “their” mindset is. What is going on in their heads. It is NOT about your mindset … It is always about the mindsets of the people receiving your communications.
3.  Identify The Connection. Every communications is a matching of a need and a solution. In step 3 you now know your purpose and who you are communicating with. What is the “match?” What will purchasing your offerings give to your hoped for buyer? What is the “match” that will make that person with the mashed potatoes pass them on to you?
4.  Focus On Your Heart.  Now its time to think about developing your communications based on all of the above. If you focus your mind on the first 3 steps, you might come up with nothing. It can feel very clinical. BUT if you focus mentally on your heart as you think of the first 3 steps you will discover, immediately in many cases, a story from the past, an experience, a more loving or fun idea for your communications. It works like a charm. You will love it … no pun intended.
5. Clarity & Success. The last step is to structure your communication for a clear and successful delivery and receival and there is nothing more full proof for success in communications than the format of a story. We love stories, we hear stories, we remember stories and part of that is because of their structure: Apply it in your words and/or in your mind to all your communications, even very, very short ones (3 words only can do it!) Achieve clarity & success using the story format: -> an opening that sets the stage (puts you in sync with your recipient)  -> something happens (matching of your need/solution from the heart) -> an ending (the desired result)

Here’s to your communications success!

#communicationsstrong

margie