The ninth Block and Limitation to Business Genius are clumsy communication skills. And they’re often clumsy because people make the mistake of thinking: effective communication = ‘the transfer of information from sender to receiver.’
It doesn’t.
Effective communication (as Dr Sandi Mann highlights in her book Psychology Goes to Work) = ‘when the sender creates a message that is understood by the receiver.’
Admittedly, they sound strikingly similar, but here’s why they’re different:
Non-Genius communicators boldly broadcast what they want to say (irrespective of the type of person they’re communicating with). That’s why, in a business context, you’ll often hear them mutter, ‘How many more times do I need to tell them?’ or ‘They just don’t get it!!!’
Genius communicators, however, consciously tailor their message so it resonates as much as possible with their target audience. Look at BankAmericard, for example.
Back in the 1960s, and early 1970s, this US credit card company found its name worked perfectly well in the USA. But, around the world, it was a different story.
This is why, in 1977, its founder – Dee Hock – came up with an ingenious new name for it: Visa.
And why did he choose this name?
Well, firstly because Visa is a word that’s understood in multiple languages and countries across the globe; secondly, Visa is a word that stands for universal acceptance.
Likewise, here’s a stroke of Business Genius the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) came up with in 1923.
The company was in its infancy and keen to find a cunningly clever way to promote itself with the public, and also to put one of its key competitors – Great Western – in the shade.
So, what did it do?
Well, according to the author Andrew Roden, LNER decided to relabel one of its trains – train No.1472 (which, basically, was just a ‘column in the timetable’) – and in the process it ended up creating a legend: The Flying Scotsman!
Suddenly, by using the Genius of communication and an ‘evocative, resounding [new] name’, which suggested both speed and freedom, it was able to transform the regular 10 am train (from King’s Cross to Edinburgh) into living metal.
So, whether you’re communicating face-to-face, via email, or speaking at a conference, please remember this: what you say no doubt matters, but how you say it often matters more.
And, if you’re after some living proof of this, the world of business books is a pretty good place to start.
Back in 2005, Dubner and Levitt could easily have written one of those stodgy textbooks on economics, but it wouldn’t exactly have flown off the shelves. So, instead, they repackaged profound economic insights in an accessible way to help fascinate and interest a mainstream audience. The result? The global bestseller Freakonomics.
Likewise, in 2012, was the reading public beating down the door for yet another book on body language? No, not really. But then along came a supersmart body language book with the catchy title – Spy The Lie (written by four former CIA agents) – and suddenly readers lapped it up.
And so the list of highly resonant titles goes on, from Steven Silbiger’s The 10-Day MBA to Jim Collins’s Good to Great.
Next time you want your communication to connect, bear in mind: ‘It’s not what you’re selling, it’s what they’re buying’ that ultimately counts …
UP! YOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS
NUGGET
It could be argued that David Ogilvy – the co-founder of the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather – was one of the top Business Genius communicators of the twentieth century.
After all, back in the 1960s, his drive and talent helped attract 19 clients (ranging from Schweppes to Shell) whose revenues actually exceeded the revenue of the UK Government!
Ultimately, however, central to Ogilvy’s success was the view that ‘you cannot bore people into buying’ something.
On the contrary.
As he spelled out – in his autobiography Confessions of an Advertising Man – ‘Advertising is a business of words’, and those words need to help a client’s offering to be ‘heard above the crowd’.
Some of his most famous ads – such as the eye-patched ‘Man in the Hathaway Shirt’ probably mean zilch to the modern generation. However, if you’re interested, take a good look at his ‘Guinness Guide to Oysters’, for example, to appreciate how deceptively powerful his factual advertising (‘the more you tell, the more you sell’) could be.
Likewise, consider the Genius advertising copy he once provided for Rolls-Royce as a mini-masterclass in the power of persuasive communication: ‘At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock …’
USEFUL TIPS AND
ESCAPE STRATEGIES
If you want to UP! your communication skills, here are three useful tips and strategies that can help:
1 KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
Psychometric research indicates that different people prefer to communicate in different ways.
With this in mind, here’s something I created called READ (which is basically a distillation, and amalgamation, of several psychometrics ranging from MBTI to HBDI, and SDI to psychologists Merrill and Reid’s Social Styles Model) which can help you to connect more effectively with whoever you want to connect with.
Here’s how it works.
Although human beings are far too complex to squeeze into psychological boxes, if there were four boxes we could squeeze more or less everyone into (to make it easier for us to READ them like a book) these would be those four:
R: Results-orientated people, as the name suggests, are primarily interested in results. They’re not interested in fluff or waffle. They’re super-driven, often impatient, and want you to get straight to the point (rather like Sir Alex Ferguson, Gordon Ramsay and Lord Alan Sugar, whose autobiography What You See is What You Get!, says it all really).
To communicate with an R, don’t bore them with the details. Use bullet points and snappy one-page summaries. Best of all, talk results!
E: Emotions-orientated people are primarily interested in emotions. They’re the caring ones (who Merrill and Reid referred to as ‘amiables’) who are genuinely interested in how you are, and what you’ve been up to. Think Joanna Lumley (the former Avenger), for example, David Schwimmer (of Friends), or maybe even a variety of social entrepreneurs who are guided as much by ethics as by profit.
To communicate with an E, simply show a genuine interest in how they’re feeling and, if they’re going through painful change at work, let them know you’re there to provide help and support.
A: Abracadabra-orientated people are primarily interested in the magic and zing of business (and often tend to be very good at standing up and giving entertaining presentations and coming up with ideas during brainstorms). Think Jonathan Ross, Eddie Murphy, Tony Blair, Ruby Wax, etc. etc.
To communicate with an A, keep it interesting and sparky, and value their input.
D: Data-orientated people are primarily interested in data. Or, more to the point, they get their comfort from data (and therefore dislike things being too vague or imprecise). So think Sherlock Holmes, Spock from Star Trek, or countless scientists, academics, accountants and IT experts, who love the details.
To communicate with a D, simply make sure you’re thorough, and that your research, facts and figures are perfectly precise and exact.
Admittedly, this probably sounds simplistic (especially as most of us are a blend of all four). However, there’s definitely something in it, as they say.
When my first book Gen!us came out, for example, I got a real sense of READ in action. An E, for example, would say something like, ‘Well done. That’s a great achievement. Your dad would’ve been very proud!’; an A would say, ‘Wow! Fab bright yellow cover!’; a D would say, ‘Do you mind if I have a look inside it?’; and an R would simply cut to the chase and say, ‘What are the sales like?’ or ‘What are you doing on the PR front to help promote it?’
So use READ to help you tailor your message accordingly.
And, if you’re giving a presentation to a group, you may want to consider using a blend of all four. Make your message clear and concise (to appeal to Rs), creative and engaging (to appeal to As), have a supplementary pack with loads of additional information (to appeal to Ds), and fortunately Es will probably like you and your talk, whatever you do.
Finally, just one more thought: whatever your personal READ profile might be, please be aware that there’s no right one, or wrong one. They all have pluses and minuses in the workplace. Often it’s a question of degree.
- Rs, for example, are great at being direct (but sometimes they can be too direct).
- Es are wonderfully nice (but sometimes they can be so nice that others take advantage of them).
- As can be highly creative (but sometimes this can cause them to be chaotic).
- Ds can be brilliant with detail (but sometimes they can become over-detailed, leading to death by PowerPoint or perhaps picky fault-finding).
Anyway, that’s quite enough detail for now. The only reason for saying all this is to highlight how important it is to be able to flex your communication style, as and when necessary.
2 ALWAYS COMMUNICATE BENEFITS
One of the golden rules of business is that people seldom buy features, they buy benefits.
In other words, they’re probably not that interested in the Black & Decker drill itself; they’re more interested in the holes that the Black & Decker drill can help them create. Likewise, if they buy a Teflon saucepan, they’re probably not that interested in the science of saucepans; they’re more interested in how a Teflon saucepan can help them to cook without burning the food they’re cooking.
With this in mind, as ‘Everyone lives by selling something’ (to quote the Genius Robert Louis Stevenson) here’s a trick that can help you to turn the features of what you’re selling into benefits, instantly.
It’s basically three words that McDonald and Leppard recommend in their book How to Sell a Service, and those three words are: ‘which means that …’ So, for example, instead of saying, ‘This jumper has a zip down the middle,’ better to say, ‘This jumper has a zip down the middle which means that you can take it off quickly, and easily, the moment you get hot, without having to pull it over your head’.
3 SHARPEN YOUR MESSAGE
A few years ago, when I travelled to Berlin to give a talk on innovation at a marketing conference, I had the opportunity to listen to one of the other speakers (whose message has always stuck with me).
He basically gave lots of green, blue, red and yellow balls to lots of different people in the audience and said: ‘When I say go, please can you throw them at me all at once, and I’ll try to catch them.’ Sure enough, he couldn’t. There were too many. And when he went to catch a new one, he ended up dropping an existing one.
Then, however, he deliberately gave one ball to one person in the audience, and asked them to throw it. This time he caught it easily. His point? People can’t take in too much information, or too many messages, at one time. So, whatever message you want to communicate (unless you get paid to obfuscate) keep it clear and simple …
BUSINESS GENIUS IN ACTION:
NEXT STEPS …
In summary, if you want to UP! your communication skills, here’s how:
- Pinpoint the gap between broadcasting and tailoring (because effective communication isn’t just a one-way street where we simply tell others what we want to say; it’s more of a two-way exchange in which the message sent needs to be clearly understood by the receiver).
- Investigate how Genius communicators often repackage messages (for – as we saw with Visa, the Flying Scotsman, Freakonomics and David Ogilvy – it’s not only what is said, but how it is said that matters).
- Leverage the power of READ (to help your business communications resonate with results-orientated people, emotions-orientated people, abracadabra-orientated people and data-orientated people).
- Orchestrate a plan to sharpen your communication (like the one ball, one message Berlin example I gave earlier, because this will enable you to break free from pointless information overload).
- Target the amazing benefits of what you’re selling (for at the end of the day people don’t buy features, they buy benefits, so always use the three magic words of ‘which means that …’ to transform one into the other, instantly).
UP!SPIRATION
‘Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.’
F. Scott Fitzgerald (author of The Great Gatsby)