.
Communicating
Eff ectively
To succeed as a manager in today’s frenetic business environment, you need
to be able to capture and keep people’s attention. Whether you’re speak-
ing informally with your team, presenting to a group of your colleagues,
writing an email or report, or leading a meeting, your ideas are constantly
competing for your listeners’ and readers’ focus. One moment they’re fol-
lowing your analysis of third-quarter fi nancials and the next they’re think-
ing about an email they have to respond to, or their child’s head cold.
When we’re on the receiving end of communications, we crave compel-
ling, concrete, simple doses of information with an authentic voice. Creat-
ing this kind of communication requires careful planning and preparation,
whether for writing or speaking, in a memo, presentation, or meeting.
Finding your voice as a leader
We’re accustomed to thinking that great communicators have a special
kind of charisma, a way of holding themselves or of writing that makes
86Managing Yourself
them sound authoritative. John Antonakis, Marika Fenley, and Sue
Liechti, researchers at the University of Lausanne, studied charisma in
dozens of business leaders and found several physical and rhetorical tactics
that were universally effective—so effective that in one study, they resulted
in a 60 percent improvement in how observers rated leaders’ competence.
But charisma isn’t a magic trait that some people have and some peo-
ple don’t. Becoming a masterful communicator is possible for anyone who
learns the set of behaviors these researchers identifi ed:
• Animated voice. Monotone voices sound apathetic, so vary the
volume of your voice when you speak. Use your voice to express
emotion and pace yourself. Use pauses to create drama and convey
a sense of control over your environment.
•
Facial expressions. Make eye contact, and let listeners see as well
as hear your passion. You don’t want every emotional reaction to
be transparent (for example, it’s rarely a good idea to show anger),
but smiles and frowns, concern and amusement, all communicate
your humanity.
•
Gestures. Your body language can emphasize a point. For exam-
ple, clasp your hands to illustrate “working together,” “integration,”
or “solidarity.” Or let your palms fall open to demonstrate “opening
doors,” “transparency,” and so on. You can experiment with your
own vocabulary of gestures by practicing your presentations in
front of a mirror.
• Expressions of moral conviction or shared sentiment. Affi rming
shared beliefs and experiences can be highly motivating, as sociolo-
gists have long known. When you refl ect back to your group mem-
bers their own values or ideas, you activate these primal feelings of
solidarity and excitement. Build around points of connection.
•
Contrasts. These are easy to learn and use: some variation of “Not
this—but that,” or “On the one hand—on the other hand.” The form
generates drama naturally and is pleasing to our brains, which like
dualities.
Communicating Eff ectively87
• Three-part lists. Three is, indeed, the magic number: it shows a
pattern, gives an impression of completeness, and is easy to re-
member. Use this technique when you’re at the dramatic high point
of a comment, especially a call to action.
But for these techniques to work, you also need to integrate them into
your natural presentation. A robotic sequence of gestures and three-part
lists will fall fl at unless they’re infused with your own verbal style and phys-
ical habits, not to mention your own values and experiences. Especially
when you present to an audience that already knows you—your team, for
example— remember that the fi gure you strike “on stage” needs to gel with
the leader they know from the break room. To bring your self-presentation
into closer alignment, ask yourself:
• In what situations do you feel most comfortable communicating?
How can you adapt the tactics you use in that setting more broadly
to other settings?
• What authentic parts of yourself are you struggling to express at
work right now? For example, maybe you feel passionate and asser-
tive about your work, but you don’t come across that way in meet-
ings. How could one of these tactics help you convey that part of
yourself more clearly?
Practice using the tactics outlined here until you fi nd what feels most
comfortable to you and allows you to feel natural and most compelling in
front of others.
As a new leader, you may not feel that you’ve found your authentic voice
just yet. But as you work on understanding what matters to you as a leader
and how you want to present yourself in the presence of others, you’ll start
to develop your own voice to communicate and infl uence others.
Mastering the written word
Many people you work with may know you almost entirely through your
writing, from emails, reports, proposals, and presentations to texts, IMs,
88Managing Yourself
and social media posts. Yet, with this form of communication, you have
limited tools to capture and keep others’ attention: you can’t lean forward
or gesture to emphasize a point. That’s why good writing isn’t just about
grammar and usage, but structure, clarity, and voice. You don’t need to be a
professional writer to achieve this effect; instead, take the following steps
as you compose and refi ne your words.
Step 1: Prepare
Before you begin writing, you need to know what you’re trying to say.
Are you arguing for a particular idea or point of view? Are you provid-
ing background context for a discussion? Are you documenting an internal
process? In the HBR Guide to Better Business Writing, writing and usage
expert Bryan A. Garner recommends writing out your three main points as
full sentences, spelling out your logic as clearly as you can. That way, when
you begin to write, you already know the ideas you want to convey and the
supporting points you’ll make.
Begin thinking about your audience as well at this early stage in the
process. What do they already know about your topic, and what questions
will they have? Is your audience internal or external? Will they be opposed
to or aligned with your ideas? Will they want just the headlines, a detailed
outline, or both? Pick an organizing principle that will make your idea as
accessible as possible to your reader. (See exhibit 6-1.)
Once you’ve chosen an organizing principle, create an outline that
places your ideas and supporting points in order. This may feel like overkill
for, say, a simple email. But the more you practice this process, the more
you’ll realize that even the shortest written communication benefi ts from
preparation and a structured approach.
Step 2: Write your fi rst draft
You don’t need to start writing at the beginning of your outline. Begin writ-
ing the section or material you feel most comfortable with, keeping your
outline in front of you. When you’ve fi nished that, choose the next item
you’re comfortable writing, and so on. Stop periodically to compare your
draft to your plan. Many writers save the introductory material until the
Communicating Eff ectively89
EXHIBIT
Organizing methods for writing
If you’re writing:
Consider using
this organizing
method: By:
Feasibility studies, re-
search results, and plan-
ning reports
Compare and
contrast
Evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of
two possibilities
Any type of internal docu-
ment intended for par-
ticularly busy readers
Order of
importance
Putting the most critical information at the begin-
ning of your document
A document that traces a
series of events
Chronological Listing events in the order in which they occurred
Instructions or user
manuals
Process and
procedure
Describing who does what and when
Trip reports, descrip-
tions of machinery, and
research reports
Spatial
arrangement
Describing one aspect of your topic at a time
Work orders, training
materials, and customer
service letters
Specifi c to gen-
eral, or general
to specifi c
Starting with a specifi c or general concept your
readers are already familiar with and then moving
to a specifi c or general concept that’s new to them
Technical reports, annual
reports, and fi nancial
analyses
Analytical Formulating a hypothesis and testing it through
questioning
Source: Adapted from “Writing Skills” in Harvard ManageMentor. Boston:Harvard Business School Publishing, 2016.
Electronic.
end; it’s often easier to compose an engaging and effective opening para-
graph once you know what your conclusions are.
Garner suggests writing your fi rst draft as quickly as possible. “Your
sentences will be shorter than they otherwise would be,” he says. “Your idi-
oms will be more natural, and your draft should start taking shape before
you know it. If there’s a painful part of writing, it’s doing the fi rst draft.
When you shorten the duration, it’s not as painful.”
Step 3: Edit your draft
Once the draft is complete, set it aside for as long as you can. Getting some
distance will help you spot places where you’ve overplotted your argument,
gone off-message, or let your voice falter.
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