The Communication Advantage
When employees cannot speak concisely and concretely, everything else in the company worsens
To improve the quality of your team meetings, teach your people to talk more concisely and concretely.
In a company whose employees can get to the point quickly, meetings are engaging. People listen and learn from each other. Conversely, in a company whose employees meander and take two minutes to say what could have been told in twenty seconds, meetings become wastes of time. People don’t listen to each other, or when they do, the information is conveyed so confusingly to become ineffective.
When employees cannot speak concisely and concretely, everything else in the company worsens. You get disengaged meetings, confusing reports, unclear tasks, abstract values, and ineffective communication.
Therefore, one of the highest ROI investments you can make today is to train your people to speak more concisely and concretely.
How to speak more concisely
Conciseness is the ability to convey information more succinctly.
Here is an exercise to become more concise. Before your next team meeting, think about the point you want to make, then ask yourself what your audience will retain. That is what you want to say during the meeting; nothing more, nothing less.
If you keep doing the exercise above, after a few weeks, you will become more concise and thus more engaging. Over time, it will become a natural skill.
How to speak more concretely
Concreteness is the ability to convey information relevant to your audience.
Too often, employees and especially managers talk too abstractly. They convey information in a way that leaves the audience asking, “okay, but what does it mean for me?”
I know of two exercises that are effective for speaking more concretely.
First, after you convey any concept, immediately ask yourself, “what does it mean for my audience” and answer that question.
Second, get into the habit of using visual examples when speaking. With words, paint the picture of how the concept you just mentioned affects people in their daily life. For instance, did you just spend a few minutes talking about the importance of ethics? Immediately follow up with a concrete example of how ethical employees behave in their day-to-day and how they respond to temptations.
Training your people to be more concise and concrete
First of all, if you’re not yet concise and concrete yourself, focus on becoming it. It’s ineffective to ask others to perform a behavior you don’t practice yourself. Read again the exercises mentioned above and apply them.
Then, once you’re concise and concrete, it’s time to train your people.
Here is the wrong way to do it: with a presentation. The chances are that your people already know the importance of being concise and concrete, and perhaps someone has already tried to explain to them how to get better at it. One more presentation won’t help.
Instead, here is what to do.
The key is to talk to your employees one by one.
First, notice when, during a team meeting, one of your people meanders while trying to ask a question or make a point.
Second, during your next private conversation with them, mention that you find their previous intervention very valuable but too meandering, and that made it less effective. Tell them that they would have gathered more support if they had been a bit more concise and/or concrete.
Then, and this is key, coach them through the following exercise. Ask them to repeat to you, right now, the intervention they made during the team meeting, this time more concisely and concretely.
If they succeed, great! Congratulate them and let them know that their intervention is now more understandable, even if they used fewer words.
If they keep meandering, guide them through the two exercises I mentioned earlier. Ask them, “what’s the point?” and “what does it mean for the audience?” Once they answer, tell them to repeat what they just said instead of the previous meandering intervention.
Keep doing this until they succeed in making their point concisely and concretely. Then, when they do, congratulate them and, again, let them know that their intervention is now more understandable, even if they used fewer words.
Summary
One of the highest-ROI people management actions you can take today is to teach your employees to speak more concretely and concisely.
However, just asking people to speak more concisely and concretely is not enough. You need to have them practice in front of you and give them feedback. If required, you must guide them.
Don’t be a professor; instead, be a coach.
Make people practice and give them feedback.
You might be interested in my online course on managing remote teams.