How To Tailor Your Message To The Audience

Hi there, I'm Ben Morton and welcome to another episode of the Leaders Kit Bag. It's the weekly micro edition of my podcast. Each episode is just six minutes long and is designed to provide you with tips, tools and tactics around specific aspects of leadership and management. It addresses some of the most common, common challenges you will face as a leader or manager. They are all recorded unscripted whilst I'm out walking in the countryside. So you'll probably hear birds tweeting in the background or just ambient noise as the people around me are going about their day to day life. That's all I'm going to say by way of an introduction. So let's dive straight in to this week's episode. If you've ever found yourself speaking to.

An individual, perhaps your boss, a colleague or customer, and you've got a sense that they're just not understanding the point you're trying to make, despite the fact that you've repeated yourself several times, then today's episode of the Leader's Kit Bag is for you. And if you've ever found yourself communicating to a group of people, and I've got the feeling that half of the audience is absolutely on board with you and gets the point you're trying to make, and at the very same time you're looking at another half of the group and they're staring back at you with a confused, perhaps even pained look on their face, then today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag is is also for you. And that's because in today's episode we're looking at how we can tailor our message and how we deliver that message to suit the audience we're with. I'm going to start this episode of the Leader's Kit Bag with a statement of the blindingly obvious. We humans are not all the same. We don't think and communicate in the same way. We have different maps of the world. We think differently and navigate the world in slightly different ways. What this means is that the way in which we communicate with one person that might be highly effective doesn't work with another.

This can also be true of groups.

It's quite common for a team or.

A group to have a large percentage.

Of people who all think and communicate in a similar way. This could be as a result of the function within which they work, or maybe it's due to the sector within which they work. Perhaps it's cultural. There could be a whole number of reasons. But groups aren't all the same. And at the same time, some groups can have a preference for how they communicate. For example, some people are very much big picture thinkers. As soon as they've heard the headlines, they're happy. And they can then become quickly bored or disengaged when there's too much detail. And at the very same time, there are other people who are detail thinkers. This is very much how I operate within the world. The detailed thinkers, once they've heard the big picture, will straight away go to the minutiae of analyzing the idea. Like, how's it going to work? What are the steps? What are the benefits? What are the risks? What do we need to do first? So to bring this to life, let.

Me tell you a quick story.

Once upon a time, I was working in a different consultancy and my now friend Richard, who is very much a big picture thinker, proposed the idea of running an event for past current and potential clients. He shared his overall vision for this event with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. And me being a detailed thinker, immediately in my head, I'm processing it and thinking about, okay, what do we need to look like? What will the event look like? If we're talking about this now in November, then we probably need to get save the dates out before Christmas. What's the agenda going to look like when we need to send out whnau invites, when do we need to secure the venue by etc. Etc. You get how us detailed thinkers work now, right? And as I then started articulating some of my detailed thinking, I saw some of the energy and excitement fade from Richard. And I'm not sure if he ever actually said these words, but I get the feeling he felt as though I'd just thrown a bucket of cold sick over his idea. That wasn't my intention. It's just we both think and communicate in very different ways. So your takeaway from today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag is to tailor your message and communication style to the audience with which you are communicating. And if you don't know the communication preferences for the group you're working with or communicating with, then communicate in different ways. That way you can ensure that your message is being not just heard, but understood by everyone you're talking to. That's it for today's episode of the Leader's Kit Bag. As always, I hope it's been useful. Look after yourself and look after those people. You've got the privilege and responsibility to lead until next time. Lead on.