KCard : Mistakes
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Mistakes in
communication
This KCard presents some common mistakes which are made by
some of our clients during their communication activities. The important
point isn't really the list which couldn't be complete anyway, but rather the
idea that some widespread assumptions made in communication should sometimes
be questioned. Thousand words worth pictures
'A
picture is worth a thousand words'. This must be one of the most common
mistakes we've experienced our clients making. The saying is so widespread
that even just the idea of questioning it makes someone look like an
ignorant! People use this saying to justify the fact that they focus all
their presentation and communication on visual support (like slides) and
dismiss or neglect verbal aspects. Nevertheless,
many objections can be made to this focus on visual communication, here are
just a few: Basic psychology
tells us that people have different level of usage of their communication
channels, in other words some people will tend to prefer visual communication
while others might prefer auditive (in a given
context). It isn't a good idea to bombard an auditive
with visual data, it just won't affect him as much as speaking would. Some
words simply don't translate well into pictures. Obvious examples are
feelings, such as 'lowliness' or 'fright'. On a more business level, in
general, dynamic words are difficult to translate, like processes, actions or
events. For each of these examples it might be possible to create a suitable
picture, but this picture would be so complicated that its interpretation
would require much more effort than that of the word. Of course,
the word could simply be written on the picture, but this is a poor way of
using a word, because words usually need putting into sentences to make
sense, then your pictures get overloaded and inefficient. Pictures,
especially slides, also have a static nature which verbal expression does
not. Precisely, while presenting your case verbally you can adapt in real
time to the reactions of your listeners. When using slides, if you feel
you're presentation isn't hitting its target and that the way you're presenting
your cause isn't the best it is usually too late, you won't be able to adapt
your cautiously prepared slides in real time. This aspect is particularly
important when the communication is aimed at influence, where you need to
convince and not only inform. When
using pictures to present your messages you open the way for an additional
risk of confusion, this is that your audience looses focus and spends more of
their attention on the form (colours, pagination, fonts, spacing,
diagrams...) than on the content (the actual message). This is particularly
obvious when preparing your slides with your co-workers, you just have to see
how much time you spend discussing format details instead of the real message
content. This also risks happening with your audience who might get
distracted by the strange look of your arrows or bubbles. We're definitely
not saying here that you shouldn't use visual support for your presentations
but don't over estimate their strength nor under estimate their weaknesses.
In particular, adaptivety to the reactions of your
listeners is a very important part of communication (a vital part in
convincing) and this is a drastic advantage of verbal communication against
visual 'prepared' communication. Stronger and louder
When
someone fails to communicate an idea the most common reaction is to simply
repeat the same message louder and stronger. What happens in this case is
usually that the listener tends to close even more and iteratively becomes
less and less open to the communication. The
solution to this situation is to adapt your message to your listener's views.
As soon as you feel that the listener is closing you should try to know why
and then adapt your message. A simple way to discover what's not pleasing him
is to let him talk. In fact a good sign of someone closing (and not paying
attention anymore) is someone who is trying to take his turn to talk. Listening before talking
A common
thing that happens is that people who enter a communication with a defined
objective (and a plan to achieve it) tend to want to lead the communication
to be sure to unroll their plan. This is tempting of course, because people
think that if the other leads the communication they will not be able to use
their plan as prepared. However,
letting your counterpart speak before you (and most people really do want to
speak first, you just have to let them do so) will give you valuable
information for your own communication that will follow. Of course, this
approach is more complicated as it requires skills to create and adjust your
message in real time during the communication. That's why most people prefer
heavy preparation of slides which requires less skill. But what's for sure is
that skilful agile communication is much more effective (especially for influence
kinds of communication). |
Ideas to develop
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