Does your message stand out? Do you make it easy for your audience to remember what you say? Does your message make an impact on the mind of your listener?
You need to care about this, because there is so much competition for the mindshare of every audience. There are so many things that come at each of us all day, every day. It is indeed a noisy world, where everyone feels a sense of overwhelm with the amount of things to manage, the number of messages, the amount of content, the frequency of meetings, the 24/7 access others have to us. Overwhelming, indeed. So, if we don’t work hard to help our audience connect with our message and remember what we say, then our message will just start to blend into all the other background noise. And so will we.
So how do we stand out? How do we make our message have impact? It’s not complicated, but it does require a little work… just like anything else worth doing. These simple five steps are a great place to start:
- Know what you want to accomplish. What are your goals? What do you want them to do? Are you asking for something?
- You have to understand your audience’s perspective. What will be valuable to them? What will cause them to sit up and take notice? This is a critical piece of awareness.
- Then, outline the key elements of your message. Yes… do an outline. If you don’t know what the key elements of your message are, then no one else will either.
- In the modern workplace, we are addicted to visuals, for better or for worse. So, the next step is visuals… but only after you know what you want to say. If you need to create visuals, then make sure that they are easy to absorb and don’t look like a passage out of “War and Peace.” Your slides need to be simple, clear, consistent, and not require a lot of reading.
- Finally, you will need to deliver the message in a way that does not distract your audience… and if you say “um,” “um,” “um” it won’t matter how strong your message actually is. No one will hear anything other than “um.” In addition, you will need a toolbox of delivery skills that will help your audience retain the key messages you have worked so hard to identify.
Do you want your audience to remember what you say? Do you want your message to make an impact? Then you have a little work to do. It’s not complicated. But it will take some work.
Good luck.
Does your team:
– Take too long to make decision?
– Fail to ask for what it wants or needs from you?
– Make things too complicated?
– Deliver unconvincing or disorganized presentations?
– Have new hires who are unprepared to communicate in the workplace?
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