real/brilliant: Communication Strategies for CEOs and Managers

What’s your communication strategy?

If you’re scratching your head, that’s okay. A strategy is simply what you’re trying to accomplish with the communication you’re writing. Easy, right?

Well, many people emailed me last week to say that the thinking part of writing was the toughest part. “How do I begin to think about about that brochure for my company?” “How to do think about writing an entire employee handbook?” “I’m just writing it, I don’t want to think about it.”

So, here’s how to think (and how to develop that communication strategy).

1. What is your objective? First you begin with a general objective, say you want to improve sales. Then you move to action objectives–a series of planned steps. “To accomplish a specific result by a specific time.” Then you specify your communication objective, “As a result of this communication, my audience will . . .”

2. What communication style do you choose? Once you know your communication objective, you need to figure out the appropriate style for that objective. Communications expert Mary Munter has named the different types of communication as either tell/sell style or the consult/join style. The tell/sell style is for occasions when you want your audience to learn from you. Tell is informing or explaining, sell is persuading or advocating. The constul/join style is for when you want to learn from your audience. The consult style is a collaboration (such as a questionnaire) and the join style is sharing of ideas (brainstorming session). Sometimes you will use a combination of styles, and that’s okay.

3. What is your credibility? There are two kinds of credibility. Munter calls these initial credibility and acquired credibility. The first–initial credibility–is how your audience perceives you before you begin to communicate and the second–acquired credibility–is the credibility you earn as you communicate. In order to communicate well, you might want to use a combination of the two. Begin with your initial credibility and then build on that credibility as you communicate.

In another post, we’ll discuss learning about your audience with more specific steps. For today, what kind of strategy are you going to use for the current communication project?

Tagged as: brilliant, communication strategy, real, thinking, writing