Every leader knows that communication provides the most opportunity to really mess things up.
That’s why Chairman and CEO Peter Handal and his team at the New York-based Dale Carnegie & Associates Inc. spend so much time working with executives around the country about how to be better in business and better communicators. In fact, they work with 400 of the Fortune 500 companies.
Smart Business spoke with Handal about how to be a better communicator.
What are the keys to effective communication?
First is to know your audience. It’s really important to know who you are talking to because you could be conveying a message differently depending on the audience itself.
Second would be once you know the audience, you should talk in terms of their interests. You don’t want to lecture at people. You want them to see what’s in it for them. And so you want to talk in terms of their interests.
The third principle is you should be talking on topics you’ve earned the right to discuss. That may sound silly, but have you ever seen someone get up in front of an audience and talk about a topic they really don’t know a lot about, but they did some Google research and they feel like they’re an expert on? You can see through that right away. When someone is talking about a topic they really own and they’ve earned the right to talk about because it’s their business or they’re a marketing person and just live marketing or because they’re a techie — when somebody knows that topic that well and they’ve earned that right, they communicate more far effectively and you can feel that energy.
Another principle that Dale Carnegie uses a lot is simply smile. They make the connection between you and the people that you’re communicating with and that’s making the assumption that you’re on the video or Skype or in person, but that’s something that really helps communication. Facial expressions are very important. Those would be some broad things.
Another principle I add is be yourself. This is different than the earning the right to discuss something. That’s the topic itself, but to be yourself, meaning you’d try to get up in front of an audience and be someone you’re not. I for one am not a spell-binding orator so if I were to get up in front of an audience and try to give some sort of oration like Cicero in Ancient Rome, it would be a total flop because that’s not who I am. I tend to be more conversational so when I give a talk, my style is more conversational. It’s far more effective to be yourself.
Some psychological things are important. You want to make the people you’re talking to feel important. You don’t want to talk down to them. You want to treat them as equals. You want to make them sincerely feel that they’re important to you as you’re talking to them, and if you have that in mind when you’re doing a communication, it comes naturally. Also, using someone’s name makes them feel important and it gets their attention. The Dale Carnegie saying is that a person’s name to that person is the sweetest sound in any language. Dale Carnegie wrote that back in the 1930s and it’s true. It gets their attention and it draws them into the conversation, and if you combine making people feel important with smiling and using people’s names as you’re talking to them, that sets an atmosphere that makes the communication much more effective than if you were just getting up there and lecturing.
You mentioned that leaders need to know their audience. How do you do that?
For example, asking whoever is arranging the event or the venue, ‘Who are the people that are going to be there or what do they do? What levels are they in their organization?’
Another technique that I use a lot is to simply get to wherever I’m going to be and walk around and talk to people. That accomplishes two things — you get to know the audience and you know who they are, you’ve had some connection with them even if it’s a brief, ‘Hi, how are you, where do you live?’ kind of thing, but it also makes you much more comfortable up there in front of a group because now, instead of talking to a bunch of strangers, there are people in the audience that you’ve met. It’s more like sitting around a dining room table or a restaurant and chatting with people you know. That makes the communications much more effective.
