Making Your Communications Count

Mal Fletcher Added 05 May 2009

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Reducing your team's Reaction Times

In tough times, when companies and organizations and their leaders are under pressure to get results fast, our communications often let us down.

You're not a leader until and unless you can make the tough calls. But dealing with tough calls requires that we have ready access to information and that we're able to assimilate and disseminate it quickly.

Whilst reflection is an important part of leadership and taking time to digest data is a key to wise decision-making, too much time and energy are often wasted simply because of slow reaction times.

Leaders must be able to feed their teams up-to-date information on developing situations - and fast. Otherwise, staff are left hanging in the wind, working on priorities that have ceased to be the most important.

When that happens, instead of focussing on what's important, team members will lock onto what's urgent and the big picture goals will be lost in the fog of activity.

Over time, frustration will build and team members will feel increasingly disillusioned - all because the leader hasn't communicated quickly and clearly where the priorities should lie.

You can radically shorten the reaction times within your team right now - by simply taking a look at your emails.

Try the following:

1. Twitterize your communications!

If your team are busy doing the job they're employed to do, they will sometimes struggle to assimilate information on the run. New data is coming at them at speed and they simply won't have time to digest every piece of it well.

Most of them will be reading your emails or memos on a PDA. Most BlackBerry's and iPhone show only about 40 words at a time on the screen.

Any more than that and the reader has to scroll, which isn't always easy when you're running across town, or trying to multi-task in a meeting.

Twitter has kept its users to 140 characters. In the beginning, this was purely a result of necessity. American phone companies limited text messages to 160 characters - and Twitter was set up as a phone-based social network. (140 characters allowed space for the username.)

Over time, though, the 140 character limit has become popular with users and readers alike. It forces people to say something to-the-point.

Try to remember the 40 words per screen - fit as much as you can into that space.

As with any form of writing, you will get better at shortening your emails as time goes by; it will become second nature.

2. Stay on topic.

Determine before you start typing that you're going to say just one thing and say it clearly.

Having just one subject makes action easier for the recipient. It's much easier to focus on doing just one thing at a time - especially when you've actually already got 10 things on the go.

(It also makes it easier for them to file the email once they've taken action - no 'which folder do I put this in?' problems.)

3. Talk in specifics.

As much as possible, talk in specifics such as numbers, rather than generalities or descriptions - adverbs and adjectives.

'The project is currently way behind schedule on major tasks,' is nowhere near as succinct as, 'The project is 3 weeks late delivering X to Y.'

4. Use concise terms.

I've never completely understood why each profession in this world seems to need to invent its own language. Lawyers have lawyer-speak, doctors of course have their own tongue, and corporate types often speak in complete gobbledy-gook.

Sometimes, of course, specialized concepts require specialized terminology. But much of the time, people who sound confusing are, well, confused.

Churchill was asked why he used short words in his speeches. He replied, 'I like short words.' So do your employees and colleagues. Try to say what you mean in the simplest possible terms. Recognize this piece of prose?

'Mary was the legal owner of one diminutive potential sheep whose haliberments were as lacking in colour as congealed atmospheric vapour…'

No? Perhaps you know it in its simpler form:

'Mary had a little lamb whose feet were white as snow…'

Why confuse things? If you want action, use action words!

5. Delete anything you've written in the heat of emotion.

Make sure you take a moment to read your own missives before pressing the (sometimes fatal) 'send' button.

Omit anything that says: 'I was right all along', or 'I told those so-and-so's up on the top floor that this would happen, but did they listen to me?!'

Try to reduce the number of times in your career that you'll say, 'Man, I wish I hadn't sent that mail…'

6. Kill the comedy relief.

If people in your team want to hear good comedy, they'll go to a club, or rent a movie.

Unless you're Woody Allen's corporate clone, what looks pithy or particularly clever to you when you're penning an email probably isn't that good.

Even if it is funny right now, there's no guarantee it will still amuse later when it is read. Stay focussed on the business at hand.

7. Focus on the strongest strategic argument.

If can give more than one reason for pursuing a certain course of action, focus only on the strongest one.

Don't get caught up in multilayered arguments or long, drawn out and one-sided debates.

Your team don't need to read a treatise by Plato; they need to know why they're doing one thing as against another. Give them the best reason you have and leave the rest.

8. Add a brief encouragement.

Encouragement is not the breakfast of champions, as some would have it. It is the breakfast, lunch, dinner and late-night supper of champions.

To give someone encouragement is quite literally to give them back their courage, to restore their heart for the fight.

You don't have to gush; just a simply line like, 'Great comments in the planning session today, thanks' or, 'I appreciated the way you applied yourself to finishing that project plan, thanks'.

Getting that kind of feedback can make someone's entire month - and inspire long-lasting loyalty to you and the team.

Of course, encouragement must always be sincere and specific. You must try as much as possible to comment on specific behaviours, rather than general attitudes.

9. Wait overnight.

Often, a communication needs to get out into the field quickly. Sometimes, though, you will have the luxury of being able to sit on it for a night.

When you can, it's worth taking that opportunity - especially if the material in your email is likely to be either controversial or open to possible misunderstanding.

It's amazing how often a little pause for reflection can make us think again about that ultra-clever quip we were going to make. And, when important data forms part of your instruction, it's helpful to have time to check and double check your facts.

OK, ready for your next email? Go to it…