During a Speak with Impact experience with Hawkes Learning, a participant shared a communication challenge that captured something I see leaders do all the time.
The message had technically been communicated, but an important piece of context was missing. The words themselves weren't necessarily wrong; the listener simply didn't have enough information to understand what those words actually meant.
That's a clarity problem.
When communication breaks down, our instinct is often to add more. We create another slide, write another paragraph, schedule another meeting, or give a longer explanation.
Sometimes that helps. Other times we bury the message even deeper.
One of the ideas I teach in Communicate with Clarity is to identify the ONE THING you want people to understand, remember, or do.
It sounds simple until you try it.
The more knowledgeable you are about a subject, the harder it can be to determine what someone else actually needs to know. You understand the history, know the acronyms, sat through the planning meetings, and remember why the decision was made.
Then you communicate as though everyone else has been standing beside you throughout the entire process.
They haven't.
Clear communication requires thinking about the message from the listener's side of the conversation. What do they already know? What don't they know? What context do they need? What can I leave out without hurting understanding?
If I'm asking them to do something, is the action clear? If they remember only one thing tomorrow, what should that one thing be?
Those are very different questions from, “What do I want to say?”
I think leaders sometimes confuse completeness with clarity. We want to include everything because everything feels important to us, but saying everything we know doesn't guarantee the other person understands what matters.
Sometimes clarity means adding context. Sometimes it means removing half of what you planned to say. Sometimes it means replacing jargon with ordinary language or answering the question everybody in the room is wondering but nobody has asked.
The goal of communication isn't to prove how much you know. It's to make it easier for someone else to understand what they need to know.
Before your next important presentation, meeting, conversation, or email, identify the ONE THING first.
