Effective Communication

Question: How can we adapt our communication style for different purposes, (1) to sell (2) to inform and (3) to ask someone to do something?

The short answer is that you can maximise all your communications by understanding how communication actually works. I’ll take each scenario in turn:

(1) Selling

The first rule in selling and influencing (and to a certain extent all communication) is the WIIFM question in the other person’s mind – What’s In It For Me?

In order to answer that question about someone, you need to understand them first. What are their motivators, drivers and needs? What can I offer them to meet those needs? If we want to positively influence our communication, we need to understand and enable others to work out for themselves that our idea or proposition is in their interests and answers their unique WIIFM.

Understanding what motivates the other person is crucial. Imagine a child in a kitchen with a hot stove. You’ll tell the child ‘don’t touch the stove, it’s hot’. As you’re undoubtedly aware, the child is likely to touch the stove and burn themselves. Their primary motivation is their need for experience and growth so, despite your warning, they had to learn for themselves that touching a hot stove hurts. Their underlying driver (exploring the world) was different to yours (protecting them).

Most people talk about the features of their offer i.e. ‘the stove is hot’ or ‘the hotel has a pool, a sun terrace, a swim-in bar and is next to the beach’. It’s much more effective if you verbalise the benefits of your proposition to the person you’re talking to: ie. ‘you won’t get hurt’, or ‘Imagine sipping your mojito in the pool watching the sun go down over the sea’.

However, be aware that if you spend time discussing the wrong benefits you’ll risk not just failing to engage but you may actively turn them off. I once went to buy a car and the salesperson started by showing me the engine. I have zero interest in engines, so I couldn’t engage. He then set the radio to the sports channel to demonstrate the audio quality. I love coaching sportspeople, but I prefer music when I’m driving, so not only did it fail to connect but it started to actively put me off what was a perfectly good car.

The key here is to listen, probe and learn about the other person – what’s motivating them and what benefits they’re looking for. This exemplifies your respect for their capacity to identify and make good choices for themselves. You are effectively empowering them to conclude that your offer is right for them right now.

(2) Informing

In a situation where your primary task is to inform an audience, your communication style should be subtly different. Of course, you need to be clear, concise and organised. You’ll use facts, data and visual aids and stick to objective information. It’s important however that you still understand the underlying drivers.

If, like most people, you get nervous about a presentation, remember that whilst your motivation might be to give a great presentation (and possibly boost your self-esteem), the audience’s primary purpose is to learn things that will benefit them. Keep their purpose at the forefront of your mind, rather than concentrating on your own ‘performance’. They’ll experience a positive outcome if they leave knowing more than when they arrived, and will easily forgive any slight stumbling or hesitation on your part. By fulfilling their primary purpose (to become more informed), you will have automatically fulfilled yours too (to give a useful presentation).

(3) Asking for Something

Finally, if your main need in a situation is to get someone to do something, the key is to use assertive language. Assertiveness without aggression is a positive force. It acknowledges that everyone has needs and has the right to state those needs in order to get them met. It’s OK to ask for what we want. Use gently assertive language, “I would like you to ….” rather than “You must ….”. Take care not to slip into justification, i.e. “I would like you to ..… because the boss wants this to happen/because everyone else is doing it/because I am overloaded etc.”

The psychologist Manuel J Smith identified ten assertive rights, which I highly recommend reading about (although his book in which he first set these out is somewhat outdated now). There are plenty of other places to read up about the principles.

Assertive communication is a big subject and takes time and practice to perfect. I’ll return to the subject in a future article, but suffice to say for now it can be very powerful in enabling you to meet your needs and achieve outcomes and goals with others.

Ultimately, the key to all good communication is setting the expectations of the parties involved, ie. good contracting. By understanding the motivations and needs of both yourself and the other party, you can plan how best to meet these, and therefore increase the chances of a positive outcome for everyone.