We make New Year’s resolutions about things we feel are important…losing weight, exercising, saving money, planning effectively, etc. What about communication? In order to accomplish anything, we have to be good communicators. Have you made resolutions about that? Maybe you should. Here are some ideas to get you started. First, an overriding vow:

”I vow to stop taking communication for granted and give it the respect it deserves. I will no longer make excuses that I don’t have time to apply the techniques that I know will help my readers, my listeners and me – no matter how busy I am.”

“I will stop” Resolutions…
Here are three habits you might want to stop in 2013:

• I will stop frivolously sending e-mail without thought or planning.
• I will stop thinking about what I want to tell my readers/listeners and consider what they need.
• I will stop using “Any Questions?” as a close for my presentations.

“I will start” Resolutions…
You may resolve to establish some good communication habits in 2013. Below are some ideas for writing e-mail, delivering presentations and leading meetings.

Goals for Improving Your E-mail Communications
Here are some good habits for writing e-mail that you might consider adopting:

• Taking a few moments to plan each e-mail before sending
• Thinking about what your readers need to know (not what you want to tell them)
• Using more descriptive subject lines
• Including a statement telling your reader about the topic and how urgently you need a response
• Checking that you have used a professional and constructive tone

Goals for Improving Your Presentations
Presentations give you opportunities to demonstrate your knowledge and establish your credibility. To polish your presentation skills, you might consider:

• Taking care to keep your words, voice and tone and body language in sync so they are all sending the same message
• Planning questions ahead of time to ensure you involve your audience
• Listening respectfully and actively to others - even when you don’t agree with them

Goals for Better Meetings
As meetings are such time-consuming events, you might also consider sprucing up some of your meeting habits. As a good leader, make an agreement with yourself to:

• Only have meetings when a meeting is the best way to accomplish the task at hand
• Send out an agenda ahead of the meeting and ensure all attendees are clear about the objective
• Stick to the agenda and pre-announced meeting start and stop times

Let’s make 2013 the year of clear communication. You know what you need to do to improve your communications at work. So stop procrastinating and do it! Or stop doing it!

You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, your ideas won't get you anywhere.
— Lee Iacocca

Lee Iacocca definitely knew what he was talking about. In business, people develop an impression of you through your communication skills – your ability to impart what you know and what you can do.

In IWCC’s communication skills workshops, we often ask our participants to travel through time with us to learn about the image they reflect through their communications. Here’s your chance to take the trip…

Let’s say that it is December 7, 2013. You happen to be sitting in a room filled with people who have been receiving communications from you all year. Some of them have never met you face-to-face. They have been reading your e-mails and reports, and some of them have attended your presentations. As luck would have it, they are all talking about you and your work. The intriguing part of this trip is that you are invisible. You can see and hear what everyone is saying about you, but they cannot see or hear you.

What words or phrases would you like to hear them use to describe “YOU” and your work?

Now you need to get busy! It’s time for you to brainstorm all the words and phrases you would like to hear these folks using to describe you.  I will give you a few minutes to brainstorm. And, don’t be afraid to be a little outrageous!

Now look through your list of words and highlight your top three … the three words or phrases you would like to hear people use over and over to describe you and your work. Now, review those top three. Can you reflect those images in your written documents and/or through your presentation skills?

Of course you can!

The sobering side of this exercise is that you can also reflect the exact opposite of these images. If you want people to view you in a particular way, you have to represent that image or brand through everything you do, everything you write and everything you say.

Now, let’s return to today, 2012. Here is our challenge to you:

1. Gather a variety of samples of your writing – e-mail, reports, proposals, texts – anything you write. Read them as if you are seeing them for the first time. If you were the reader, would you use your three favourite words or phrases to describe you?
2. Look at a video of a presentation you have delivered…or video your next presentation. If you were a listener in the audience, would you leave that presentation using your three favourite words or phrases to describe you?

Are you reflecting the image you want through your communication skills? If not, now is the time to start.

Have you ever wondered why some colleagues tend to get the best projects or even the best jobs? Why do some people get accolades while other good workers go unnoticed? You might even feel people are not treated equally … and that seems unfair doesn’t it?

Can you define the culture in your organization? If asked, could you list a set of values and beliefs that permeate your workplace? If you answer “no” to these questions, you need to do some serious homework – if you want to be successful that is.

Here’s a fundamental truth: we convey much of our value through communication, i.e. how we write, how we interact, how we present.  What you need to know is if the way you communicate aligns with the prevailing culture in your workplace. Organizations, departments and teams have a prevailing culture that dictates what it takes to be “valued”…and they may each value different characteristics or communication styles.

You need to understand two things about your workplace: what works around here and how must I communicate in order to be seen, heard and valued. You don’t need to be a business guru to figure out the culture where you work.  You need to be a good detective.  Look for the clues!

Here’s a recommended approach to get noticed:

First gather clues to what is valued where you work:

• Who gets noticed, and why?
• Who does everyone respect, and why?
• Who does everyone, including management, listen to? Why?

Then gather clues about what is not valued where you work:

• Who is a great contributor but goes unnoticed, and why?
• Who has great insight but is ignored, and why?
• Who has great ideas to share that no one listens to? Why?

Watch and listen over the next week to spot these people. Remember, good detectives search out all the clues. Record the specifics of how these people communicate - the language they use, their writing style, their voice/tone/body language. Even take note of how they dress.

Only after you have gathered the evidence and reached defendable conclusions can you determine where you fit. Are most of your communication behaviours and approaches falling into the “valued” or “not valued” category? Once you know what works around your organization, then you can plan what you need to change or accept.

IWCC believes that communication skills give you the “edge” you need to be noticed and appreciated where you work. How you communicate dictates how people perceive you. We’d like to share a short assessment to help you take the first step to uncover the truth about “what works around your work place”.  Download and print IWCC’s “Environmental Assessment” questionnaire. Good luck with your detective work!

In our last BLOG, you looked at the first category of confusing words – homonyms. If you are just tuning in and you are not sure what a homonym is, visit IWCC’s last BLOG entitled “Are you confused by confusing words?” You can find it on our website at: www.iwcctraining.com/blog.

In this second BLOG of our three-part confusing words series, we will look at words that sound similar but have completely different meanings, like: assure/ensure/insure. We will also explore some common phrases that can be confusing, such as: supposed to. 

In our writing communications skills workshops, people often ask us to help them take the confusion out of words that sound similar. Here are a few words and phrases people often find confusing.

Assure/Ensure/Insure
Why are these three words so difficult? They all have the same meaning: “to make sure or certain or to guarantee”. However, you will look less professional if you don’t use them in the right context. Here is some help:

Use assure when you refer to people. Use ensure when you want to guarantee something happens. Use insure when you want to protect something (usually financial). Here is a sentence to show the difference between these three words.

“I will assure our Director that our printing department can ensure we receive the pamphlets next week to help our new Customer Reps explain to clients all investments that can insure them from income loss in retirement.”

Good/Well
People often use good when they should use well and vice versa. So what is the difference? The grammatical explanation is that “well” is an adverb and therefore works with a verb. Good on the other hand, is an adjective and therefore works with a noun. As helpful as that may be to some folks who know their grammar, what about the rest of us!

Look at it this way…both words are describer words that provide detail. Use “well” when you want to describe how someone or something did what ever they are doing; use “good” when you want to describe someone or something. Here is an example of how to use both words in a sentence.

“Noah is a good auditor and therefore he performs audits well.”

Affect/Effect
Are you guilty of misusing these two words? Well, we want to keep you out of grammar jail…so here’s how to use these words properly. The grammatical explanation is to say that “affect” is a verb and “effect” is a noun. If that doesn’t help, here is a simpler explanation. Use “affect” when you are talking about action. In other words, when you want to produce a change, or influence something. On the other hand, use “effect “when you want to refer to a result or consequence. Here is a handy trick to help you remember: a is for action = affect and e is for end result = effect . To understand the difference in meaning, read the following sentence that uses both words.

"Extreme temperatures affect the quality of the drug and sometimes the overall effect results in lost product."

“Supposed to” versus Suppose
Do you get confused about “supposed to”, a phrase that confuses many writers? Well, be confused no more! When writing about something that is said/believed to be or is arranged, intended or expected, use “supposed to” in your sentence. And use “not supposed to” to suggest that something is not allowed or is prohibited. When you mean think, believe or imagine, use “suppose”. When we say the phrase “supposed to”, it often sounds like “suppose to”. You might be able to fool your listeners by slurring these phrases, but you can’t fool your readers. You either spell the phrase correctly…or not. Here is an example of how to use both words in a sentence.

"Suppose he does attend the training workshop and learns to operate the heavy equipment safely – the way he is supposed to operate it.
Here is one more…just for fun!"

Moot point OR Mute point
Is a “moot point” mute…not necessarily. Use this phrase when you want to say that a piece of information or an idea is of little or no practical value, has no meaning or is irrelevant. Some people use “moot point” to mean an argument that fades away and is never heard  - hence the incorrect spelling “mute point”. But remember although a moot point has no meaning, it does have a voice…moot not mute. Let’s put these words in a sentence and see what happens.

"Following a successful demonstration of how the software works on our system, the IT Managers remained mute as they felt their concern about compatibility was now a moot point."

When presenting or facilitating in front of a live audience, effective speakers use visuals to create interest, improve understanding and increase retention. You can even use your body language as a visual to enhance your message.

But what about when you present or facilitate with a virtual audience? What visuals can you use? How about “wisuals”? No, it is not a spelling error…wisuals are visuals you paint with your words. You can paint wisuals through stories, examples, analogies, anecdotes, and contrast, just to name a few.

Wisuals are not a nice to do…they are a must do. If you don’t provide your listeners with wisuals, they either tune out or create their own visual to understand and remember what you say. However, if they misunderstand or misinterpret the facts and data that you are sending them, they will create the wrong wisual and walk away with the wrong message.

If we know that the human brain uses stories and pictures to make sense of information, doesn’t it make sense to give our listeners what they need? Like any fine art form, wisuals need to be well thought out and then well articulated. Here are three tips to help you start painting worthwhile wisuals.

Be picky - Identify your key points

What specifically do you want your listeners to take with them? You can’t paint a wisual for every fact or piece of data in a virtual presentation. First, identify your key messages. Then paint wisuals to sear these key messages into your listeners’ brains.

Plan ahead – then practice

If you don’t want to be embarrassed by bungling your story or analogy, take the time to prepare. First, effective wisuals take thought. Ensure your wisual is appropriate for the topic, the listeners and your message. And second, a terrific wisual can be destroyed by a poor delivery. Write your visual out on an index card. Read it out loud and practice, practice, practice until you have it just right. Record yourself on a tape recorder and listen to your wisual. Are your voice and tone supporting your wisual? Remember, your virtual audience can only “listen” too.

Choose words that create pictures

If your wisual is going to work, it has to paint a clear picture. Choose words that carry their own image rather than words that name concepts or vague ideas. A picture word names something that has mass and occupies space. You could take a picture of it! Here’s a small example of the difference between picture words and idea words:

“When I say the word St. Bernard, what do you see? Right…a big brown & white dog, drooling profusely and carrying a keg of brandy around its neck as it gallops through the Swiss Alps to rescue someone from an avalanche. Pretty clear picture? Now, when I say the word aspect, what do you see? Right…nothing at all.”

Fill your wisuals with picture words and action words so your listeners can see the story unfold. They will see it and take it with them as a memory.

The Choice is yours…

You can paint a wisual that accurately portrays your key message, or you can rely on your listeners to conjure up a wisual from their perspective. You choose!