Like most busy people, effective communication is one of my greatest daily challenges as a leader.

In this DuxNotes newsletter – the first in a while – I’ll share the process I use to craft communications for external stakeholders and team members. It’s something I was taught almost thirty years ago in my first job as an account director in an advertising and marketing agency, and it’s something I use every day.

Effective leadership turns on influencing and persuading others to invest their time and effort to work on achieving a goal together. In turn, effective communication is key to enabling others to perform under uncertainty, whether they are in your team, customers, suppliers, bosses or any other stakeholder.

What is effective communication and why does it matter?

Effective communication is a process of influence and persuasion to ensure your message is received, correctly understood, and results in the thinking and behaviour you desire.

Everyone you speak with has choices. They can listen to your story and buy into it, and devote their attention and time to the thing you’re talking about. Or they can do one of the many other things that other people want them to do.

Why does it matter? If we can’t influence others, we can’t lead them, and we won’t get what we want in life.

Leadership is influence – nothing more, nothing less.

John C. Maxwell.

Seven Simple Steps to Effective Communication

Here are the steps I take to craft important communications, no matter the context or audience, or if it’s an email, a strategy document or a speech. It’s what expert copywriters and advertisers use to get “cut-through” and have their messages heard.

If you practice and use it correctly you’ll get people to stop scrolling, sit up and listen, and even be on the alert for your next message.

1. Practice the Five R’s: Relevant message, right message, right person, right time, right way.
2. Put your audience at the centre: It’s not about what you want to say, it’s about influencing your audience.
3. Know your audience: Do the research, understand motivations, problems, pain points, what they care about and what their lives are like. What do they want, think and feel?
4. Keep it simple, stupid: A simple, relevant main message, easy to remember, with a simple call to action. How can you help them feel and think that your message offers a better path.
5. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat: Literally four times. In a written or verbal delivery, say the main message in the heading, at the top, repeat it in the middle, repeat it again at the end.
6. Ethos, logos, pathos: Have the right person provide the message as an established authority, connect with the audience’s logic by being consistent with their worldview, and use emotive language to connect with feelings and thinking patterns.
7. Call to action: Make an offer and ask them to do to what you’d like. Eg, “buy now”. Close with this.

Why do the Seven Steps work?

It works because of relevance. It’s about getting the right message to the right person, the right time and the right way. By aligning with your audience you help connect deeply into their world and the thoughts and feelings in their brains. If you don’t align then your messages will probably be ignored and fail to be classed as important enough to pay attention.

When there is a particularly important or high-stakes conversation I will spend much more time in the seven steps than conversation itself. And I find when I do that, the conversations are short and sweet and generally go well because the messages are well-crafted and calibrated to connect with the audience in the right way.

Want to dive a bit deeper? Check out Mastering the Five R’s of Effective Communication.

And here’s the call to action.

Reach out to me (ben.sorensen@gmail.com) if you’d like to chat about strategy, leadership, innovation and how to communicate more effectively.

PS – check out my mate Adam Commens’ new podcast, Giving Back. Adam is a former Australian Kookaburra Hockey player, former coach of the Hockeyroos, Australia’s Women’s Hockey Team, and is currently High Performance Director for Belgium Hockey.