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Talk it up (and down and across).

Article Excerpt
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

No matter what level of co-worker yo're speaking with, there are specific strategies, models, and guides you can use to make communication more effective. Sharing technical and task information must be balanced with courtesy, comptence, and an understanding of your audience. Learn the common pitfalls and solutions to sharing progress reports and marking voice and effective.

In our roles as engineers, project managers, and technical managers, we need effective ways to communicate. Our jobs require us not only to speak effectively but to get others to listen and take action based on our communications as well. Our ability to talk up, down, and across our organizations has great impact on what we can get done and how we are perceived in the organization.

In this article, you'll learn about Sarah and her progress to her boss. She didn't get her points across effectively and was humiliated by this experience. We'll critique her report and offer a general outline for giving an effective progress report every time. You'll also learn about Bob and Sue and their game of phone tag. We'll guide you in this scenario to change the game of phone tag into phone catch.

A basic equation drives our design of communications:

Purpose + Audience = Communication design

This equation has its roots with Louis Middleman and Harold Kurstedt of Virginia Tech. The equation means that we must and should articulate the purpose of the communication and the audience for this communication. Together, the purpose and the audience guide the design of the communication. Business reports that ignore purpose and audience usually get ignored--or worse, they create confusion, increased uncertainty, unnecessary job stress, and poor decision making.

First things first

If you don't know who is supposed to do what as a result of information, you don't need that information. If your information does not support decision making or action, the information is simply not needed. Your purpose must be considered together with the audience for the communication. Why will they be receiving this report or listening to your presentation? And who are they?

Write down your purpose. Then read it aloud. Does it make sense? Is this what you will be doing? Does it sound good when you read it aloud? Now instead of hiding this in your own mind, put your purpose front and center in your presentation or up front in your document or tell the person what your purpose is ("We need to crash the project because ..." or "I am seeking a raise."). Clearly, you must consider your audience when developing the purpose. We will have a different purpose with top management than with our project team when briefing the project. With top management, our purpose may be continued funding for the project. With the project team, our purpose may be to identify key problems and brainstorm solutions. These will be entirely different presentations because the purpose varies greatly based on the audience.

Consider the audience

Formally examine the composition of your audience. How can you best describe the audience? How many people constitute your audience? What is their interest in your communication? What are their backgrounds, experiences, education, common...

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