I'll get right to the point. When communicating with others at work, start at the end. Don't keep people in suspense about the import of what you're saying. Start with the import, fill in a few salient details, and ask if they want more background. If they don't, you're done. If they do, give some detail, and then ask again. Keep iterating until done.
Do you want more detail? No? Then we're done. Yes? Keep reading. There's a lot more.
Storytelling has become fashionable in workplace communications. Trainers are offering classes in storytelling at work — to motivate, to persuade, or to drive the point home. Storytelling does have its place, but that place is much smaller than many realize.
In the modern workplace, most of us have too much work and not enough time. We want to hear what others have to say, but with a minimum of fluff. We care most about what. Why or how, or who said what are usually far less important, and if we want to know, we ask. We don't want to sit through a long tale of why or how to get to the what.
Want more detail? No? Stop here. Yes? Keep going.
In books and screenplays, suspense is delicious. It keeps us glued to the screen, or turning the pages of that book. We thrill as we try to sort out the relevant from the irrelevant, and predict how the plot will unfold.
But in workplace communications, any suspense is big trouble. Your communication is just one of hundreds your listeners receive each day. They have neither the interest nor the energy to devote to wading through suspenseful tales to learn how they finally end. They want the end, right now, at the beginning.
More detail? If not, stop. If yes, read on.
Two things In books and screenplays, suspense
is delicious. It keeps us glued
to the screen, or turning the
pages of that book.happen when you withhold a story's end. First, listeners try to guess the end as you go along, just as they would in reading mystery novels or watching movies. And if the story is explaining some bad news, they suspect that bad news is coming. They imagine bad things, and what they imagine is beyond the storyteller's control — often worse than the truth.
Second, because listeners don't know where the story is going, they usually have difficulty distinguishing the more important story elements from the less important. They accumulate questions. Confusion sets in. Confusion leads to misunderstanding; misunderstanding leads to trouble. It's all so avoidable if the communication starts with the end.
One last detail.
A strong aversion to starting at the end might arise from a desire for the rapt attention of listeners. That's fine, if you're employed as an entertainer. If you aren't employed as an entertainer, soon you might not be employed at all. Top Next Issue
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Related articles
More articles on Effective Communication at Work:
- Selling Uphill: The Pitch
- Whether you're a CEO or a project champion, you occasionally have to persuade decision makers who have
some kind of power over you. What do they look for? What are the key elements of an effective pitch?
What does it take to Persuade Power?
- The Limits of Status Reports: II
- We aren't completely free to specify the content or frequency of status reports from the people who
write them. There are limits on both. Here's Part II of an exploration of those limits.
- Conversation Despots
- Some people insist that conversations reach their personally favored conclusions, no matter what others
want. Here are some of their tactics.
- Critical Communications
- From time to time, we're responsible for sending critical communications — essential messages
that the intended recipients must have. It's a heavy responsibility that can bear some risk. A strategy
for managing those risks involves three messages.
- Monday Morning Minute Message Madness
- As a leader of a large organization, if you publish a "Monday Minute Message" to help employees
identify with the organization as a whole, there are some practices that might limit the effectiveness
of the program. Six suggestions can be helpful.
See also Effective Communication at Work and Workplace Politics for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
- Coming March 20: Top Ten Ways to Make Meetings More Effective
- Meetings are just about everybody's least favorite part of working in organizations. We can do much better if only we take a few simple steps to improve them. The big one: publish the agenda in advance. Here are nine other steps to improve meetings. Available here and by RSS on March 20.
- And on March 27: Allocating Action Items
- From time to time in meetings we discover tasks that need doing. We call them "action items." And we use our list of open action items as a guide for tracking the work of the group. How we decide who gets what action item can sometimes affect our success. Available here and by RSS on March 27.
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