Too busy to be clear

These important people don’t think they can take the time to be clear. They save minutes, but others may spend hours trying to figure out what they want and need.

• Schedule meetings at the beginning of the day to avoid distractions and ensure everyone’s full attention.
• Guard against interruptions; for example, request the person hold his or her calls for ten minutes in order to get information.
  
• Be efficient in meetings — have a written agenda even for a two-person meeting. The agenda shows others how much you value the person’s time.
  
• Show you are taking notes and recording comments.
• Be appropriate but keep pressing for the details you need. Sometimes, you need to steer your boss to clarity.

The next time the boss slams papers on your desk and says, “We need this yesterday,” do the following:

1. Stifle the urge to answer “in your dreams.”
2. Answer immediately. Respond with a positive, “Yes, absolutely — will do.” After all, this is the boss. And this reply will relax your employer because it’s what any boss wants to hear.
3. Ask for prioritization.

This step is essential: Because you are already fully aware of your priorities and the allotted time to accomplish them, answer, “Here’s the situation, Boss. I’ve got these other two priorities you want by 3 o’clock today. Which of these can be put off until tomorrow?” By following these steps, you have forced the boss to be clear. Your boss needs to prioritize — that’s a boss’s job. Sometimes your boss will go away without making any further demands, realizing that you are already working on important projects.

Understanding unprepared people

Some people may have difficulty getting fully prepared for negotiations. For whatever reason, they never seem to have all the answers. You can do one of two things:

• Postpone the meeting.
• Conduct the meeting at the unprepared party’s office. Tactfully invite your counterpart’s support people who may know more about the subject.

Understanding Interrupters

These people even interrupt themselves. They lose their train of thought while they are speaking and tend to jump from point to point.

• Take careful notes while an interrupter is talking. But don’t write the ideas down in the order they are presented. Write a topic heading. Make notes, and when the speaker switches topics, leave a lot of space. Write a new topic heading and the notes. When the speaker switches back to a previous topic, go back to that topic section and continue your note taking.
  
• Concentrate and stay focused. This is hard work.
  
• Keep reminding the speaker of the most recent statement before the interruption. Don’t leave until you get a specific answer.
  
• Be appropriate but keep pressing with your own specific questions.

Understanding Tangent people

Some people are not clear because they ramble; that is, they go off on a tangent.

• Listen up to a point. You are listening especially for a good point to break into their discourse so you can bring them back to the topic.
  
• Be assertive when you interrupt. Not impolite, but firm.
  
• Your first statement should be a validation, “Yes, you’re right. Now, as to the purpose . . .” That’s how you get people with this type of communication pattern back on track.

Steering Others to Clarity

Nobody wants to be a bad communicator. Most people are insulted if someone tells them they are difficult to understand. At the beginning of my seminars, I discuss the basic skills needed in every negotiation. Then I ask students to rate themselves on these skills. I have never had anyone in any seminar describe himself or herself as a poor communicator — even those who say that communication is the area that they need to work on the most. When the other party is not being clear, your job is to steer that person toward concise communication. Don’t just toss them this book (although it may make a nice gift). Coax from your counterpart a clear statement of intentions, wants, and needs. Your technique for acquiring this information depends on the type of person you are dealing with.

Try being a journalist

When you think of clear writing, the most common reference point is your daily newspaper. From coast to coast, there is a consistency in stories written for the newspaper that seems to cross regional lines, ownership, and size of the newspaper. You may find it odd that so many journalists write in the same style with the same degree of clarity.

Actually, every school of journalism in the country teaches students about the “five horsemen” of journalism: Who?, What?, Where?, When?, and Why? The journalist is supposed to answer these five questions in the first paragraph of a story. The next five paragraphs should each expand on the answer to one of the questions. The least important information appears at the end of the story. That way, if the story is too long for the available space in the newspaper, editors can just delete the end of story, and no important information is lost.

Look at a copy of today’s newspaper. Pick any story that interests you in the first section (or the news section if you read your daily paper online). I point you to that section because stories there are more likely to follow the traditional structure of news writing. Reporters depart from the structure in some of the special-interest sections, such as the sports or entertainment sections. As you read the first paragraph of a straight news story (especially a story from one of the wire services), notice how the reporter explains:

• Who the story is about
• What the person did to land in the news
• Where the event happened
• When the event took place
• Why the event occurred

Read the last few paragraphs of the article and notice how trivial that information is compared to the first few paragraphs. Notice how the first few paragraphs after the lead paragraph are packed with important material compared with the information later in the story. Use the same technique, and you can’t go wrong. Remember: You’re providing the information your listener needs to know to achieve your goal. Organize the facts like a newspaper story.

The written word is often more useful than the spoken word

The written word is often more useful than the spoken word when you’re trying to communicate clearly. When you have something to say, write it down, look at it, edit it, and make it right. When the words are your own, you don’t have to release them until they are as near to perfect as possible. Many people believe they can’t or don’t know how to write as clearly as they speak. This is rarely true. The simple fact is that when you write instead of speak the words, you can see more easily whether your message is unclear. You can see in black and white that the words are ambiguous or your thoughts are incomplete.
Also, the written word disallows such conversational crutches as “ya know what I mean?” When used as a rhetorical question, this phrase doesn’t clarify the issues. It moves the conversation deeper into confusion. The process of putting your thoughts into writing brings you face-to-face with your failure to communicate clearly. Rather than bemoan your lack of writing skills, open your eyes and say honestly — maybe for the first time in your life —
“Wow, I didn’t realize how poorly I have been communicating my ideas.”
Here are some basic tips to get you on the road to clear communication:

• Use short sentences.
• Use short words.
• Avoid jargon and abbreviations — even when you are writing to another professional in your field — unless the other person uses these terms exactly the way that you do.
• Complete your sentences.
• Stick to one idea per paragraph.
• Have a beginning, middle, and end to the overall communication.
• Be accurate.

Don’t be afraid to number paragraphs to cover different points, but don’t delude yourself into thinking that numbering paragraphs brings order to a document that otherwise lacks coherence or good sense.

Keep your commitments

Being clear includes being consistent in the words you say and the deeds that follow. If you say one thing and do another, it’s confusing. Your inconsistent conduct turns an otherwise clear communication into a real puzzlement. Keep each and every commitment that you make during a negotiation. In life, keeping commitments is important; in a negotiation, it’s essential. Keeping your commitments is the acid test of clarity; it’s also the bedrock of trust. A notorious thief can look you in the eye and say, “I will have that assignment on your desk at 2 p.m.” If the assignment is there, the thief has gained your trust. On the other hand, if an honest person misses the 2 p.m. deadline, your trust in that person is diminished. If you tell the other party that you will call back at 9 the next morning, be sure to call at that time. Breaking your promise calls your integrity into question and creates confusion about what exactly you meant when you promised to call back at 9 a.m. Failing to keep your word also upsets the other party. Such inattention may be considered, debated, and evaluated by the other side. Their loss of trust may call into question side issues and create tensions that are counterproductive to a negotiation.
If you are negotiating with someone on behalf of a client or company, failure to keep commitments is harmful to you and the party you’re representing. This neglect can damage your relationship with your client or your standing within the company. Word often gets back about your unprofessional behavior. Professional negotiators are often falsely blamed for not returning calls or not providing documentation in a timely fashion. Don’t provide grist for that mill.

Cut the mumbo-jumbo

Some concepts are, by nature, just plain difficult to grasp. Sometimes being clear requires creativity. For example, if you have many numbers to present, try putting them in graphs — bar, pie, or line charts — anything but reams of numbers. Keep the lists of numbers as a backup. By all means, oversimplify technical points at first — you can explain fully later in the conversation, after you have your listeners hooked. Also, define jargon and spell out acronyms. For example, I say, “I’m going to LAX,” and people from outside of Los Angeles may not know that LAX is the airport. People from New York head to JFK. You got it. It’s the airport. Avoid references that may leave your listener wondering what the heck you’re taking about. In written materials, footnotes and appendices serve the purpose of clarity. Do everything you can to make listening and understanding easy and enjoyable.

Know your purpose or goals

When you know exactly what you want to say, communicating clearly is much easier. In the past, you must have had the urge to say, “So, what’s your point?” — usually with an exasperated tone. More often than not, a person who is asked that question looks surprised and fumbles for a good, onesentence answer. When the speaker doesn’t know the point, the listener is hopelessly lost.
In any communication, you should know the point and be keenly aware of the overall purpose or goal. Simply saying, “Oh, I just like to talk” is okay for recreational situations. But if you’re trying to get someone else to provide some action, approval, or acquiescence (that is, if you are in a negotiation), you need to have your short- and long-range goals in mind.