Communication is key…
This is the time of year when lots of presentations are given to kick off the Autumn term. Some go well and capture our mood and attention and are highly motivating. Others less so. Although worthy in terms of what we need to know, how long will they stay with us, and will they change our behaviour as intended? It’s useful therefore, to spend a moment thinking about what the difference is, and how we can develop our communication skills further.
As leaders our communication skills are critical to the success of our team meeting our goals and objectives. We need to communicate to ensure all are clear with the direction of travel, to get everyone on board with the vision, mission and aims, and to ensure that this is kept to during the inevitable ‘bumps in the road’ (which ‘are the road’ for any Ryan Holliday fans). We need to be aware of what is going on for ourselves, our people and in our environment, and communicate our needs, communicate to support their needs and to understand what is going on and how best to move forwards. Communication is crucial in eliciting feedback, and giving feedback, understanding and resolving problems together to make the best decisions possible. The way we communicate determines how authentic, serving and intentional our leadership presence is perceived to be by others.
Put simply, communication is key.
Our next blog will take a deeper dive into giving and receiving feedback, a key component of leadership communication, and important when considering stakeholders such as parents, as well as staff and students – which is why I’m running a webinar for GSA on October 10th at 4pm entitled ‘Successful Difficult Conversations with Parents’. For today, we’ll stay more general, and think about public speaking and influencing people positively through our presentations. How can we develop our communication skills and what practical steps can we take to have the necessary influence?
Some talk about incorporating Logos – Ethos – Pathos in this style of communication. In short, Logos is building up logical arguments, perhaps using facts and statistics, Ethos is demonstrating the authority or status you have on your subject, to build trust and confidence in your audience in what you are saying, and Pathos is appealing to the emotions and getting the audience to feel angry or sympathetic, for example.
Another, even more practical, suggestion is to use the Know – Feel – Do model (K-F-D). This is a simple tool that helps you to bring clarity to the change you want to achieve with your communication, so that you craft a clear strategy on how you intend to influence people, and can be applied to an audience of 1 or 500.
People don’t just want to be ‘informed’ (“What do you want them to know?”). They also need to know what action you want them to take as a result of that knowledge (“What do you want them to do”). At the same time, it’s also important to understand what interests and motivates the people you want to influence, so that you can connect with them and make them care (“What do you want them to feel”?). Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and thinking about how you want them to feel helps you to find out how to best deliver your message or how to involve people in a motivating way. K-F-D reminds us that sometimes it is not about “educating”, but about understanding and motivating the people we are communicating with.
So, we can craft our messaging by asking ourselves three 3 simple questions:
• “What do I want them to know”?
• “What do I want them to feel”?
• “What do I want them to do”?
When planning, I prefer to tackle the “do” first, so I am totally clear on the direction of what I’m going to say, then think about “feel” and finally the “know”, because otherwise I can get bogged down in the detail of things I find interesting and add superfluous colour to the arguments I think are important. If I have “do” and “feel” totally clear, then the “know” becomes more succinct and simple which carries the message better.
It's always a good idea to have some time pre-presentation, even just 5-10 minutes, to centre ourselves on the messages we want to get across, and how we want the audience to feel, so we can consciously match our energy to that, rather than rushing in from a previous meeting bringing those feelings into the new situation.
In summary, if we want to communicate effectively anytime, anywhere, we should make sure that we talk to the head (know), the heart (feel) and the hands (do). In this way, we’ll have the best impact possible and, most importantly, inspire the change we want to see in people’s actions.
To book the GSA webinar on October 10th at 4pm click here: ‘Successful Difficult Conversations with Parents’.