How to be a great communicator

Ann Pilkington provides five top tips on how to boost the effectiveness of your communication strategy.

We all know that effective communication is an important project success factor, but it’s also one of the hardest things to get right. It’s anything but a soft skill; it’s a discipline grounded in theory, with well-researched models to help us plan, and it should be subject to robust measurement to ensure we’re getting it right. So, how can we boost the effectiveness of communication on our projects?

1. I wouldn’t start from here!

It’s important to know where you are starting from. We can make a good guess about what our stakeholders are thinking and feeling, but they might have concerns that we haven’t thought of. Sometimes, it’s the smallest things that cause the greatest concern. A change impact assessment can help here and enable communication to be focused where it’s needed most.

Spend time doing some research. This doesn’t need to be onerous – some short telephone interviews or pulse surveys can tell you a lot. Remember that different stakeholders will have different views and these can change during the life of the project. The insight you get can be used to inform communication objectives.

2. Where do you want to go?

Set some communication objectives for your project. These should be about outcomes – what do you want your stakeholders to think, feel or do? Try to make them SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timed). Having clear objectives helps to focus communication and enables you to measure it.

You may want to measure outputs too, ie what has been done. For example, newsletters sent out, social media engagement (likes, clicks, etc), stakeholders met. These can be thought about as KPIs. For example, if you want a group of stakeholders to understand something about your project, that would be an outcome. You might decide that to make this happen you need to meet with all or some of them; that would be a KPI.

Objectives, like stakeholders, will change through the life of the project. Remember that in the early days there may be some resistance to change, depending on what the project is doing, so the aim should be understanding – and there needs to be a focus on listening. A positive view of the project is more likely to result if stakeholders feel listened to, so avoid too much focus on selling the change.

3. Who are you going to take with you?

All good project communication starts with knowing who your stakeholders are. They may change over time and they may be more interested or important at different stages of the project. Be as specific as you can when drawing up your stakeholder list. In some cases, it’s fine to capture a group – for example employees who all have the same job. But you will also want to think about naming individuals. Take ‘the board of directors’ – this is too general as different board members will have different levels and types of interest, and you will want to treat members of the board as individuals.

Remember to look internally and externally. If the impact of your project is largely external to the organisation, you still want to take employees with you. And if it’s an internal business change, remember to look externally too. Job losses or office moves, for example, can all attract media and possibly political attention. Also think about who is helping you to get there. The answer here, of course, is the project team. With all the focus on those whom you are asking to make a change, it can be easy to forget that members of the project team are important stakeholders too.

We can’t expect to get our stakeholders on board if the project team isn’t clear about the direction of travel and doesn’t explain things consistently. Keeping everyone up to speed with developments is crucial, so make sure there is a communication plan in place specifically for the team. The project team can also be the eyes and ears of the project and may spot emerging issues. Make communication an integral part of your project meetings. Every time a decision is made, ask the question: what are the implications for communication? Agree the message, which stakeholders need to know, who will tell them and when, then finally how feedback will be captured and fed back.

4. How are you going to get there?

Once we know what we are trying to achieve and we’re clear about who our stakeholders are, the road to take, ie the communication channel, becomes a lot easier to work out. We need to go where our stakeholders are and tailor our channel to the message. It sounds obvious but it can be easy to get swayed by a shiny bit of technology. The key here is to put ourselves in the shoes of our stakeholders to understand what they read, watch, etc.

Remember the adage ‘the medium is the message’ too. What this essentially means is that the way you communicate becomes part of the message. For example, nothing says disrespect more than dumping your boyfriend/girlfriend by text! But the same message delivered quietly one-to-one and couched in terms such as “it’s not you, it’s me” is basically the same message, but is more likely to leave the injured party with their dignity intact.

Think about using storytelling to explain what the change is about and why it’s happening. There is lots of evidence to show that we are more likely to retain facts when they are part of a story, and our attention is more likely to be held. Stories need to have a pattern if they are to engage. Check out Paul Smith’s CAR model, comprising Context (the introduction of a villain or challenge), Action (what is done, including a setback or failure along the way) and Result (including a point of learning for the reader or audience). You can often see this technique used in television documentaries to hold viewers’ attention.

5. Are we there yet?

There is no mystery to the measurement of communication and it doesn’t need to be onerous as long as we set well-structured outcome objectives and KPIs to check progress. Make sure that communication is part of any lessons learned exercise. If done as the project progresses it will help to ensure communication improves by building on successes. And it will be a real benefit for future projects too. What worked well? How were stakeholders identified and prioritised? What didn’t work well and why?

Ann Pilkington is the author of Communication Projects (Gower) and co-author of the APM People SIG paper Communication Planning. She is the co-founder and director of PR Academy, the largest centre for PR and communication qualifications accredited by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.

10 ways to be a better listener

1. Have an open mind as well as an open door. Be curious and open to the ideas of others. Avoid going into a conversation having already decided what the outcome will be.

2. Plan to listen. Make listening an integral part of any communication plan. Do this by understanding who the stakeholders are and their interests. Then when a decision is being made, it’s easier to know which stakeholders to go to.

3. Effective feedback mechanisms. How will you hear from people? Ensure the mechanism works for the stakeholder. Some may be happy to engage on social media, others may prefer a different approach. If in doubt, ask them what they prefer.

4. Listen to act. Organisations and projects that listen but don’t act on the feedback will soon lose the confidence of their stakeholders.

5. If you can’t act, explain. Stakeholders understand that the project won’t always be able to act on their feedback. But what they want to know is that their voice was heard and taken seriously. So, make sure the feedback loop is always closed.

6. Listen to check understanding. “The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.” This quote, attributed to George Bernard Shaw, reminds us how important it is to check understanding. Build time in communication plans to check stakeholder understanding of what has been communicated.

7. Qual or quant? Pick the best research methodology for the task in hand. A survey (quantitative) is good for finding out what people do or don’t do, but if you want to find out why, a qualitative method such as interviews or focus groups may be better.

8. Ask the right question. Get some specialist help with survey and interview design. It’s a specialist skill. Asking the wrong question won’t get you the insights you need.

9. Create a supportive environment. Encourage people to speak up and respect their view. Make sure there are opportunities for confidential feedback too, and always respect that confidentiality.

10. Step out of your bubble. Walk the floor; talk to people you wouldn’t usually meet. You never know what insights you may gain!

Listen to Ann Pilkington, Tim Lyons and Elizabeth Harrin discuss how to be a great communicator on the APM Podcast