communication

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

“No, I’m asking you a question.”

img1.jpgWhile on a recent cruise, I played on-board tennis with a Belgian girl and a married couple from South African. It was decided that I would play doubles with the Belgian, upon which she asked, “Which side would you like to play?”

I answered her question with a question: “Which side would you like play?”

“No, I’m asking you a question,” she authoritatively said in a thick European accent.

“Oh, right — I guess you did. I’ll take the right side,” I responded.

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the language confrontation. In trying to be overly courteous, as many Americans do, I complicated what should have been a simple exchange. The take-away: forced modesty should always be avoided.

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READ MORE: English, communication, culture, language
Saturday, April 23, 2005

Effective Messages

A message, whether an email, voice-mail, sticky note, or blog post is a mini presentation. It is a way of conveying information to an audience. To effectively do so, I try to adhere to the following 3 principles.

  1. Be brief. Say what you need to say, and nothing more. Keeping it simple will allow your audience to understand and remember what you want them to.
  2. Be detailed. In what you do choose to say, tell the audience specifically what they need to know. Tell them what the issues are, and your thoughts on them.
  3. Have structure. Delivery the message in an organized manner. Maintain the determined structure as you present your content.

If you are brief, detailed, and structured when conveying information to an audience, your message will come out loud and clear. Now if we can only make sure we have good content… Hopefully this was.

(Source: The McKinsey Way by Ethan Rasiel)

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READ MORE: business, communication, features