How much time do YOU spend communicating? Think about all those phone calls, messages, casual conversations, presentation, meetings, emails, briefings, collaboration sessions, workshops…the list goes on and on! It’s CRAZY, right?
All around us, we hear people saying the same thing:
“If I have to explain it over again, I’m going to explode!”
“Why don’t these people get it, already?”
“When will people just STOP so I can Take Care of the Real Work?”
“Why doesn’t the message sink in?”
But it never stops. There is always another call to make, another email to answer, another person wanting a piece of your time. So, instead of trying to hold back the tide, let’s approach the question from a different angle.
What if communicating with people IS the “Real Work”? What if the problem is NOT that people are constantly reaching out to us, but that instead, for some reason, our messages are not getting through?
If we take this approach and think about our communication “overload” in a different way, we quickly arrive at a far more creative, potent question. “How do we make sure that our message gets through?”
Now this question is genuinely fabulous because it offers a powerful, positive statement of intent. Take a look at these three killer clues.
- “How do we…”; this sets the tone – affirmative, forward-looking, creates that intent
- “Make sure that…”; there’s no turning back now – we are making a commitment
- “Message gets through”; the heart and soul of the issue – our message is pivotal and our focus is on making sure that our message reaches our audience as we intend it to
Keeping this statement of intent in mind, we can talk about whether our message is cutting through by thinking about it in two ways:
- How does our stakeholder relationship frame the communication? Does our message fit with the audience and circumstance?
- What signposts do our stakeholder relationships call out? Do our messages make sense in the context of these signposts?
Stakeholder Relationships – Do Your Messages Fit?
Understanding how our stakeholder relationships frame communication expectations is a great place to start.
When our stakeholders reach out to us, they have implicit expectations around how the communication will be conducted – what we will talk about, how we will conduct ourselves and what tools and techniques we will use. They may be seeking advice, a specific action, a sense of reassurance or confidence, or maybe just simple clarification; whatever it is, the relationship will define what is acceptable communication and what is not. The relationship and the roles that both parties play implicitly set that framework.
Think for a moment about how you talk with your Project Sponsor.
I would happily bet that you do not sit around a desk together on a Monday morning, slurping a coffee and sharing weekend war-stories. Why? Because the relationship comes with ground rules that set out how you conduct the communication; it sets limits around what topics and behaviours are acceptable. It means that simply put, some types of communication are not appropriate, either in form or content, for a given audience.
What does this mean in practice?
When we plan our communication strategies, it is so important to step back and think about the nature of our stakeholder relationships. Are the relationship boundaries documented somehow? Consider whether any formal project artefacts capture the form and function of these relationships – does your Project Charter, Business Case or Project Management Plan define the relationship roles and responsibilities?
We have the best chance of managing the communication overload where we document those boundaries as early as possible, making sure that everyone involved has crystal clear expectations and agreement around how we will work together.
This is the foundation for our Stakeholder Management and Communication Management planning – understand who we are working with and how we will interact. Once we have agreed on these boundaries, then it becomes so much easier to plan the mechanics of the communication process
- WHAT messages will be communicated
- HOW those messages will be delivered
- WHO expects to receive the messages
- WHEN the messages are appropriate
- WHY the messages are being delivered
So ask yourself these simple questions:
- Are your key stakeholder relationships clearly documented and agreed by everyone involved?
- Does your project documentation include agreement on those critical mechanical points – the Who, What, Where, When and Why questions?
Set out the framework around how your relationships will operate, make the boundaries crystal-clear – and you will immediately understand whether your messages are appropriate for your audience.
Signposts – Focussing On What’s Really Being Asked
Once we know our relationship boundaries, we can kick it up a gear and look for signposts that show us where our communication needs to focus.
Signposts. Reading between the lines. That incessant, pain-in-the-butt email that you keep seeing every week, asking for yet more changes to your document may NOT be really asking for what you think! If we think about communication requests (OK..demands!) in the context of these signposts, then we are far better placed to understand what is REALLY being asked for.
Signposts…they may not be obvious, but they are certainly there. Think about the people you are connecting with. Their roles will come with certain responsibilities and priorities, that may not always be immediately obvious to the outside observer. Performance measures, market demands, resourcing decisions, competing priorities and so on.
If we can identify these drivers and understand how they influence our stakeholders’ thinking, then we can read between the lines and focus in on what they are really looking for in a dialogue; we can focus our message on what really matters.
How does that work in practice?
Think about your own situation. Do you have a Product Owner that asks for something different in the Project Status Report each time, never agreeing on a set format or style? Signposts…the Product Owner will inevitably be under pressure to achieve sales targets, increase market penetration and deliver tangible benefit outcomes. Rather than just being generally picky for the sake of it, the constant requests may be signs of emerging pressures – performance benchmarks, revenue targets, strategic drivers that are focussing his or her attention.
If you can recognise these signposts, then you are better placed to understand why you’re being questioned so much and can help focus your response in ways that matter to the Product Owner.
Again, our communication planning comes into play here.
For each key stakeholder, ensure that your communication planning careful considers their drivers, responsibilities, expectations and place in the organisational food-chain. Use a simple Salience Analysis to understand their power, legitimacy and urgency. Invest the time, early and often, to understand where the signposts are found and what they are telling you – use them to concentrate your messages on those all-important touch points that actually matter.
Pulling It All Together
We can’t stop the communication overload – but we can look at it in a different light and turn it into a powerful tool for thinking about how to get the best from our stakeholder relationships.
“How do we make sure that our message gets through?”
Forget the interruptions and distraction. Take a step back and ask yourself those all-important questions
- How does our stakeholder relationship frame the communication? Does our message fit with the audience and circumstance?
- What signposts do our stakeholder relationships call out? Do our messages make sense in the context of these signposts?
Turn the communication overload into a positive opportunity to understand your stakeholders and work out what really matters to them.
So here’s a challenge. Ask yourself whether you have captured your stakeholder relationships – the boundaries and signposts – in your communication planning. Do you know what your stakeholders are really asking for? Do you know what matters most to them? Do your messages target those signposts?
I’d love to hear your thoughts – please share your stories and experiences. Have you tried this approach? What do you do to make sure your messages cut through to the right people, in the right way?
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