Essentials of Strategic Communication

shoes
communication is critical for our
professional and our personal lives I'm
Matt Abrahams and I'm a lecturer at
Stanford Graduate School of Business and
the host of the gsb's think fast talk
smart the podcast I am so excited today
to share with you five key takeaways
from my class Essentials of strategic
communication
when it comes to our communication many
of us make a fundamental mistake we
start from the wrong place we start by
saying this is what I want to say rather
than thinking about what our audience
needs to hear
we need to do reconnaissance reflection
and research to better understand our
audience's knowledge level their
attitudes their resistance points along
with their expectations and motivations
taking the time to really think about
our audience we can make sure that our
messages resonate and are more likely to
be remembered and acted upon
most communication needs to be goal
driven especially strategic
communication to me a goal has three
parts information emotion and action in
other words what do you want your
audience to know how do you want them to
feel and what do you want them to do
when you're done with your communication
having a clear goal allows you to focus
your message on the needs of your
audience and it allows you to judge the
success of your communication after the
fact
[Music]
have you recently been victimized by
somebody who just Rambles on and on
doesn't feel so good does it
we need to make sure that we structure
our information so we make it easier for
our audience to follow in fact our
brains are wired for structured
information there are lots of structures
and Frameworks you can use to
communicate my favorite is three simple
questions what so what and now what what
is the information that you're conveying
it's your idea it's your belief it's
your product your service your offering
so what is about the relevance for your
audience what's the value that your idea
of product service or belief brings and
then finally the now what that's what
comes next maybe you're taking questions
or showing a demonstration or setting up
another meeting
by leveraging structure you not only
help your audience process your
information more fluently but it helps
you to think about your message in a
more concise and clear way
attention is the most precious commodity
we have in the world today we are
constantly bombarded with information if
we are to achieve our communication goal
and help our audience with the content
we're giving we must take the time to
engage them to me engagement is just
sustained attention and there are three
engagement techniques I'd like for you
to consider using the first is physical
engagement where you get your audience
actually doing something responding to a
poll typing into the chat collaborating
on a whiteboard the second is cognitive
engagement getting people answering
questions or considering an analogy and
the third is linguistic using the word
you or people's names draws them in
using terms like picture this or imagine
or think back to when are ways that you
can get your audience to visualize what
you're communicating
using engagement techniques help enliven
your communication and they help your
audience to engage and remember
finally even if we have the most
audience-centric goal directed
structured and engaging communication we
can fall flat if our presence isn't
strong
having an authentic confident presence
in your writing or speaking is critical
to your communication success if you're
presenting record yourself and watch if
you're writing proofread what you've
read and certainly ask others for
feedback to help you communication is
critical to your success using these
takeaways can help you improve your
communication we must take the time to
dedicate to this Improvement through
repetition reflection and feedback but
doing so will help you get your points
across
systems
[Music]
I never had a problem talking so I don't
think people who knew me would be
surprised that I'm in a role where I'm
doing a lot of speaking but I thought I
was going to be a doctor and then I met
calculus and we didn't get along and
then I met chemistry and we got along
even worse so I found communication as
my passion so I finally found the
subject that started with a c that
worked for me
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