There is a really interesting TED Talk video about the difference between our experiencing selves and our remembering selves that I highly recommend you watch and is embedded below.

The experiencing self is where we feel and experience things around us in the moment and the remembering self looks back and reflects on our experiences as memory. At 3.45 mins in I started to see how perhaps the science here could be useful to comms and engagement professionals in our interactions with audiences.

Daniel Kahneman the TED Talk lecturer recounts a study from the 1990s and what is really fascinating when you compare the real time experience with the memory. In the study one person experienced more pain during a medical procedure than another (they were asked to log their pain in real time) in that he/she had more pain spikes and over a longer period of time than the other.

When later asked to recount how painful their experiences were the person that suffered more in the moment did not remember the pain as much as the person that suffered less spikes over a shorter period of time. What contributed to these results was the fact that the person who suffered less pain in the moment ended on a high pain moment, whereas the first person who suffered more ended on a relatively low pain moment.

So what does this tell us, perhaps that it’s not the sum total of a person’s experience of a painful or stressful situation, but how it feels at the end. What I’m wondering is how can we use this knowledge to improve employee engagement and successful delivery of culture change by improving the last ‘moment’ of our audience’s communication and engagement activities.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Wealie x

As employee communicators we need to ensure that our employees:

• Are kept up to date with key information about the company, team, key projects, training, etc.
• Fully understand the role they play within the team, the company and delivery of strategy and plans
• Are engaged with and are actively supportive of the team and the company actions
• Are working at optimum efficiency and within company guidelines and tolerances

What are the benefits of effective communication?

• Engaged Employees – If people are communicated to regularly and in an effective manner they are much more engaged with the company/team and have a more positive attitude towards their work and their customer.
• Ensures Consistency – If everyone understands what the company/team is trying to achieve and their role within it, you will get a much more consistent approach and less tendency for people to come up with their interpretation of what they think something means.
• Promotes 2 Way Feedback – Regular and effective communications invite people to engage in discussion (communication is a dialogue after all!) and provide 2 way feedback between management and employees, departments and colleagues. This in turn promotes a culture of sharing ideas and knowledge, but also making these happen.
• Ensure Compliance with Regulatory Bodies – Effective communications and training information ensures that our employees are compliant with all regulatory requirements and aware of all the company guidelines/policies and/or where to find them.
• Ensure Common Understanding of Strategy and Goals – Employees understand how their work fits into the bigger picture and what the team/company as a whole is trying to achieve.
• Promotes a Positive Attitude Towards Change – Employees that are communicated to effectively around change respond much more positively to it. Communication can also identify champions within the company/team willing to help embed change.

How should you communicate with your people?

When communicating with employees it is important to remember that they have seven key drivers:

1. Reward – How much I earn / financial bonus
2. Recognition – Non-monetary, recognition by peers and leaders, and direct manager
3. Opportunity – My opportunity for advancement / to experience different areas
4. Process – The way in which I work /my level of autonomy / my workload
5. Personal Pride – How I feel about the job I do / how my job makes me feel about myself
6. Product – What I work on / whether I get a choice / my creative license
7. Working Environment – My desk / building / facilities / location of office

What should your communication take into consideration?

There are a number of key communication elements that we have to get right in order to deliver effective communications which result in the desired action being taken by the audience. These are:

• Audience – Communicating to the right people
• Timing – Communicating at the right time
• Message – Knowing exactly what it is you have to tell people and what you want them to do
• Clear – Communicating your message and call to action (i.e. what you have to tell them and what you want them to do) in a clear and simple manner
• Concise – Delivering your message and call to action succinctly (i.e. cut the waffle)
• Language – Using language and phrases that the audience understands and relates to (i.e. no unnecessary jargon or use of manageze and strategeze)
• Tone – Use a tone that reflects the brand guidelines, message and audience you are communicating to
• Channels – Using the appropriate communication channels, which fit the audience and message needs (e.g. road shows for key company information to all employees or intranet for cafeteria opening times)
• Context - Give a flavour of the bigger picture and how local activity fits with the overall company strategy

Understanding How Communication Leads to Engagement

Engagement is both emotional and rational: people act according to their short or medium-term interests and how they feel. Engagement is personal and voluntary; it can’t be guaranteed and has to be worked for.

People feel commitment to their job or profession, their team, their manager and the company in differing degrees; some people connect more to their job and ‘their customers’, others more to colleagues and so on. The manager influences all of these factors.

How do you know how well you communicated?

Measuring the effectiveness of your communication is just as important as delivering it. Measurement is key to understanding the success of your communications and an opportunity to invite feedback – Too often we just tick the box on a communication after it is delivered.

You can measure communications in many ways using informal and formal channels. A good communicator makes use of the measurement systems available within your organisation, but also uses the most powerful form of measurement – feedback. By inviting feedback you can not only measure the success of the communication, but also enter into valuable two-way dialogue, which will help to hone your future communications and engage the audience with your message and the company.

• Do prepare in advance of a presentation (never just wing it, it will show…..badly).
• Don’t just dump all your ideas down onto PowerPoint as a stream of consciousness!
• Do plan your presentation out on paper before you start creating it in PowerPoint – outline your story and the key slides, their objectives and key messages that you want to cover.
• Don’t assume that your audience has the same level of knowledge around the details as you do. This is doubly important when creating cascade presentations and it is key that you provide sufficient detail in speaker notes for the lowest level of knowledge.
• Do use work that other people have already completed, but be wary of using other people’s slides directly without amending them, is the info still up to date and is the slide still effective (e.g. it may have been seen too many times before or could be too technical for the audience).
  
  Make sure that when you use other people’s slide/info that you adapt them to the look & feel and tone of voice of your presentation.
• Don’t just create your presentation based on what you want to say and/or what you think your audience wants to know.
  
  The best presentations are created based on having asked the audience what they want to know about before you create your presentation. It’s a little bit of extra work, but the benefits far outweigh the extra work.
• Do send your presentation round to peers/interested parties for comment/feedback where appropriate before you present. They may be able to pick up on errors/missing info or add additional info/insight to your presentation. The best presentations are rarely created by one individual.
  
  However, be mindful of sending out your presentation to too many people; don’t lose sight of what you are communicating!
• Don’t create your presentation and then assume it will never change if you need to present it again. After every presentation you do, think about the questions that came up.
  
  If this is a presentation that has a long shelf life you might want to address the recurring questions in your presentation to avoid them coming up again.
  
  With every presentation your delivery should become much slicker and easier if you adopt this process.

Consistency of Style & Tone

• Do use a consistent look and feel throughout the presentation. When working on corporate presentations ensure that you adhere to the presentation and branding guidelines.
  
  Is your presentation using the corporate stationery/template, but even more important is it using the correct tone of voice? Large corporations often have Tone of Voice Guidelines, which are either part of the Brand/Presentation Guidelines, or part of a guideline suite.
• Don’t mix up different styles through your presentation (e.g. if you start out using Title case in your headings keep this going throughout).

Visual Accessibility

• Do break up your presentation with relevant images and/or graphics. Not everyone needs them, but many people are more visually stimulated and therefore need to see imagery or graphical representations to understand as well as just the words on the screen.
  
  When choosing imagery, try to use images that have some connection to the slide objective/key messages.
• Don’t use difficult to read or uncommon fonts that might not be saved on other people’s computers. So for instance the font Comic Sans or the Calligraphy style fonts.
  
  When working with corporate presentations there will invariably be brand guidelines on the fonts that have been approved for presentations.
• Do use a font size of 14 pt or larger – smaller fonts may mean that people will not be able to read it. Rule of thumb – If it can’t be read then it shouldn’t be on your slide!
• Don’t use garish background and font colours, remember it might be easy to see when you are less than 50 cm’s from your screen, but how will it look projected from about 6 metres away?
  
  Also, just because you like the mix of Fuchsia and Lemon doesn’t mean other people will! Stick to neutral colours & tones, blues, blacks, greens & whites if you are not working with a branded template.
• Do be mindful of people with colour blindness; avoid teaming the colours of red and green together!
• Don’t create long bullets with several sentences; try to keep your bullets to single sentences, two maximum.
• Do use bullets instead of paragraphs. People find it very hard to read off of the screen and paragraphs can make people instinctively switch off and disengage with a presentation as they appear to be hard work to read. Again – Keep it simple!
• Don’t use more than 6 bullets per slide (blank slide); if you have headers and footers on corporate stationery/template this may need to be lessened.
• Do put a clear line break between bullets, this helps to make them easier to read and makes them look neater on the screen. Remember that “presentation” i.e. the way it looks is as important as the content when communicating.
• Don’t use more than 12 words per bullet point on your slides and where possible avoid this on your speaker notes – keep it clean and simple!
  
  On speaker notes when you have more than one sentence or message per bullet break it up with clear line breaks, e.g. as per this document.
• Do keep your bullets to a single line where possible, this keeps your slides looking clean and tidy visually.

Slide Layout & Content

• Don’t try to cram too much detail/information into one slide. This is not just the number of words (though that is a big part of it), but also the number of key messages you are trying to cover.
  
  One slide should really have no more than 3 key messages unless it is an early positioning slide where you are outlining a number of messages at a high level that you then go into more detail later in the presentation.
• Do keep your slides to a minimum, maximum 15 slides for a 30 min presentation, NB this does not include Q&A time! This assumes a 2 minutes per slide presenting ratio (which most struggle to maintain).
  
  A trap that a lot of people fall into is to try and combine slides together to make a presentation appear shorter. In truth it just makes it more complicated to present, look untidy and also ruin the pace of a presentation as you can spend far too long on a single slide instead of moving on.
• Don’t put in meaningless slides, e.g. additional slide titles, agendas on a short presentations, etc.
• Do have some fun with your presentations. The presentations that work best and are the most memorable are often the ones where you have a bit of fun and engage with your audience.
  
  This goes for the content and the way in which you present it. Remember people buy people, if you don’t seem to be enthusiastic about your content why should they?
• Don’t use acronyms unless you have previously prefaced them with the actual title/phrase and all acronyms should be written out in speaker notes, especially for cascade presentations. However, as a good communicator you should try to avoid them where possible.
• Do use handouts – especially for complicated diagrams or detailed information. Depending upon the style of your presentation you can choose to give these out before, during or after your presentation.
  
  If it is a cascade presentation then you should indicate in the speaker notes that there are handouts and when these should be delivered to the audience.
• Don’t put word for word exactly what you are going to say on your slide. This immediately makes people switch off and they may cease to see either the slide or hear what you are saying.
  
  This is a common mistake that people make when presenting and is especially true in cascade presentations where the presenter doesn’t know the content and doesn’t have good speaker notes to refer to.
• Don’t overuse sound and animation – 9 times out of 10 the animation that is used is unnecessary and irritating to the audience and in a cascade presentation can cause confusion and embarrassment for the presenter.
  
  Think – do I really need to animate this slide; does the sound effect actually add anything? Animation is most useful when you are building concepts, or wish to introduce information in a trickle effect.
  
  When you do use it please ensure that you make sure that you have detailed animation notes in the speaker notes.

Timing & Delivery

• Do create detailed speaker notes using bullet format rather than paragraph to make them easier to absorb for people presenting your presentation.
  
  You should provide the following on each of your slides:
  
  *Slide Objective - What is it that you are trying to achieve/get across
  *Key Messages – What are the key messages that you need to ensure you get across within this slide (This may be the same as the slide objective)
  Supporting Messages/Information – Additional information/messages that may be useful when explaining the slide/discussing themes and details of where to find supporting documentation/handouts
  Animation Notes – Explanation of any animation used and how it builds
  Activity – Details of any activities that are to take place at this point in the presentation.

  Your first slide should also contain the following information in the speaker notes:

  *Presenter Notes – A bit of info about presentation, what/who it was created for, whether it is for cascade, who the author is and when it was created.
  *Presentation Purpose – What is the overriding aim of the whole presentation
  Presentation Key Messages (May be the same as your presentation purpose)
  How to use the Presentation – Necessary if you intend for this presentation to be used by other people and therefore should as a rule always be put in just in case

• Don’t over script your presentation – especially if it is likely to be used by other people. Keep it simple, use bullets in your speaker notes and break it down using the framework above.
  
  Remember, not everyone talks the way you do and their logic might lead them to relay information in a different order to you.
  
  By using bullets you allow a presenter the opportunity to pick out key information easier and therefore present it more naturally.
• Do allow your audience to react naturally (e.g. in a presentation if a question is asked answer it then and there where possible, if you make people wait until the end a question can be lost or people are wanting to leave and therefore reluctant to ask questions that may delay their escape).
• Don’t create a presentation which doesn’t allow time for questions or queries, remember communication is two way, you won’t have had a good presentation if no one chipped in nothing at all!
• Do rehearse your presentation before it is presented, even if you are not the one who will be presenting it.
  
  You need to rehearse it to fully understand the timing and to understand if the flow is working as you planned.
  
  Try to get an independent person (a long suffering loved one) to listen to you and give you some feedback on how the presentation went.

(*minimum requirement)

Before you put pen to paper there are some important questions you need to ask yourself.  Once you have the answers clear in your mind then you can begin creating your communication.  Until you are sure you have all the answers it’s best not to pick up your pen!

Do you understand the goal of your communication?

If your communication is going to be relevant then it must have a goal, a point.  This is usually any action you may want an audience to undertake and/or the outcome you hope to achieve through the action.  In order to understand you goal you need to ask yourself what you are communicating, to whom and why.

What are you communicating to your audience and why?

What is the subject (the what) and the message (the why) of your communication, for example:

Subject - The launch of a new product line
Message - You need all employees to be familiar with the marketing materials of the new product line when answering the phones to customers responding to the campaign mail out

In this example the subject (the product line launch) in itself is not the most important aspect of the communication.  The message to your employees that they need to be familiar with the marketing materials of the new product line is most important as this requires an action on their part to familiarize themselves with the marketing materials ahead of customer calls coming in.

A key mistake many people make is putting the emphasis of their communications on the subject rather than the message of their communication.   In the example it would be easy to write far too much about the new product launch and add in the message as an afterthought at the end of the communication.

In the following example we illustrate how you can have the same subject, but a different message and how this change of message drastically alters how you would think of wording your communication.

Subject - The launch of a new product line
Message - You want to share the great news with your employees

In the example above there is no direct action required of the audience as a result of the communication.  Your communication therefore has less urgency than the previous example and is more of an internal marketing piece than a specific call to action.

Often communicators get caught up in internally marketing their subject rather than delivering the essential message that needs to be conveyed, thus at best diluting the relevance of their communication, at worst ignoring the message completely.

Do you understand your audience?

Knowing who your audience is, what messages they need and how best to communicate to them is another vital step you need to take before writing any communication.

Who is your audience?

You may have several different messages on the same subject which are aimed at different audiences.  For example:

Subject - The launch of a new product line
Message - Managers need to ensure that they have shown the new marketing materials to their teams by X date
Message - Internet team needs to send the marketing materials live on the intranet and internet by a certain date
Message - Marketing team needs to initiate mail out on a certain date
Message - All employees must be familiar with new product line ahead of internet launch & marketing mail out

As you can see from the example above there are four distinct messages with four distinct audiences.  Targeting your messages to the right audiences helps to keep your communication relevant and ensure the right actions are undertaken by the right people.

Why will your audience want to receive your communication?

A key mistake made by many people is to assume that your audience will be as interested in your communication as you are and to the same level of detail.  When writing communications it’s important to step out of your own shoes and into those of your audience.  It doesn’t matter whether you understand your message, but whether the audience does.

To make a communication relevant to an audience it has to be crafted in a way that ensures they understand why it is important to them and how taking action will benefit them and if applicable how inaction will have consequences for them.   Using our example of the product line launch we can analyse the importance to each of the different audiences and what the benefits of action and consequences of inaction in the table below.

What do you want your audience to do as a result of receiving your communication?As illustrated in the table above their is a ‘call to action’ for each of the different audiences, i.e. as a result of the communication you send to them there is something they are required to do that will have benefits if completed and consequences if not.

Any communication that requires action from its audience needs to make sure that a ‘call to action’ is featured prominently and as close to the beginning of a communication as possible.  For example let’s look at how we might word the manager’s communication in our new product line example:

As you can see in the title we explicitly start it with the suffix ‘Action Req’ and the title gives a brief outline of the subject and action required.  In the first paragraph we succinctly address the subject (the new product line launch) without going into extraneous detail, but providing a link to more information for those who are interested. The second paragraph is the most important, it provides the call to action, explaining not only what needs to be completed, but also giving a deadline (something that is often missed out!). The third paragraph outlines key information in the timeline of the launch and availability of materials to managers and employees to help them in completing the action. The fourth and final paragraph is a positive reinforcement of the importance of the manager role in the success of the product launch and campaign and the benefits to them in increased sales if it is a success.

Have you chosen the right method of communication?

Just as the messages to your different audiences will differ so may your method of delivering your communication.  There are a number of factors that affect the communications channels available to you, but it is important to ensure that you choose a channel that your audience is familiar with, reflects the importance of the communication and is the most cost effective and least time consuming where possible.

Have you evaluated your channel choice against your audience needs?

For instance using our new product line launch example, the director of marketing might hold 121 face to face meetings with the other directors to take them through the launch and subsequent online and direct marketing campaign.  Though this is a time consuming process, 121 face to face communication is the most effective way to transfer in-depth knowledge.  As there are only 12 directors on the board 121 meetings with each of them is feasible for the marketing director and worthwhile for such an important topic.  However, the managers number around 150, there’s no way that the marketing director would be able to get round them all in time before the launch, nor would it be good use of their time.

So for the managers we might chose to send an email (see example earlier) and perhaps have a presentation and Q&A session at the management forum that is happening before the launch.  This method ensures that significant importance is given to the message of the communication and that managers are given an option to glean more information in a face to face setting, but one that is not as time consuming as 121.

Depending upon the size of the internet and marketing teams responsible for the online launch and customer mailing respectively, the marketing director may decide to hold a meeting, or if the teams have been heavily involved in the project (likely in a large organization) then a regular update at project meetings and a confirmation email of the respective details should suffice.

Finally we have all employees.  It’s important to remember that this message could be the most important one for the company.  Therefore an intranet article explaining what is required will be posted after the managers email is sent out and then of course the managers will hold their team meetings.  In case of the manager cascade not working, further update intranet articles will follow and all relevant information and knowledge will be available on the intranet for employees to access.

Again the example demonstrates how the different sizes, needs, levels of knowledge and involvement of the audiences will have an effect on the type and number of communication channels you use and the frequency of your communications to that audience.

Have you remembered KISS – Keep it simple and succinct?

We often get caught up in our projects and get very attached to our work.  It’s easy to make the mistake that other people have the same level of interest, investment and require the same level of involvement and knowledge of our projects as we do.  The issue when we do this in our communications is that it is easy to put in too much information and dilute the relevance for the audience.

Have you asked a colleague to review your communication?

When writing your communications keep in mind KISS (Keep it simple and succinct).  Once you’ve written your communication leave it for a while before you read it back and get a colleague with more distance from the subject to review it and provide feedback.  Don’t be afraid to change your communication, especially to remove unnecessary words.  If you feel the need to provide additional information or are ambivalent at taking out something then attach it as a separate document or provide links to it on the intranet.  Try to keep your communication to the basics of the subject and focus on the message and call to action.  So looking again at our example, let’s focus on the intranet article for all employees:

As with the manager email the title alludes to the action required of the audience, though it is a little softer as this is an intranet article and the style a little more conversational in keeping with the channel chosen. Again the first paragraph succinctly introduces the subject of the communication and provides links to further information.  The second paragraph explains what is required of the audience and why, again giving a link to more information.  The third paragraph explains the in more detail about the team meetings and again emphasizes the requirement for employees to attend.  The fourth and final paragraph outlines the important info about the launch, i.e. timeline and again has positive reinforcement of the benefits to be gained from undertaking the required action and making the launch a success.

Conclusions – In a Nutshell!

Here are a few summary bullets to cover the key things to remember to help keep your communications relevant:

• Understand the goal of your communication – what is the subject and the message, make sure your communication focuses on the message not the subject
• Understand your audience – how many are they, do they have different messages, put yourself in their shoes, think about the level of detail/information they need, the type of language and terminology that they will understand and use it in your communication
• Choose the right channels for your audience – take into account the size of the audience, the best channels for reaching them, the complexity of the message and its importance.  Use the channel with the greatest level of penetration that can be delivered in a realistically cost effective and time efficient manner
• KISS – Keep it short and succinct – communicate only that which you need to convey, keep on message, ensure any call to action is highly visible and placed early in the message, emphasize the benefits of undertaking the action and/or the consequences of in-action, provide a route to more information where available