Improve communication in your team of product managers

Key points

• Receive information, not just Transmit
• The goal of communication is to be understood
• Communicating is not just verbal
• Zoom in and out, shift left and right to add context

Communication is one of the most important skills you can have in business. You can have the best strategy but if your team, your investors, and your customers do not understand it; it is far less effective. The same goes for a simple email request.

The goal of communication

People seem to often misunderstand the point of communication, it is not to be heard but rather to be understood.

We all know that one person who goes into “transmission mode” and cannot receive information at the same time. We may even be that person at times…

If we recognise this common behaviour and concentrate on ensuring we are understood then we are half way there. We must also ensure that we have understood those that we are engaging with. This aspect is just as important and even when delivering a piece of information you must ensure that feedback is heard. This is key for engagement more broadly.

Know your audience

It is helpful to conduct a thought exercise on what you want people to think, feel or do when you communicate with them.

Think about this carefully and plan it out. Write it down and do so for the key elements of your audience. This is often best done as segment personas for large audiences. It can also be done at the individual level for something like a boardroom discussion or sales pitch.

Form and function

Most of us will be familiar with the adage that only 7% of communication is verbal. This actually comes from work done in the 1970’s by Prof. Albert Mehrabian and is known as the 7-38-55 Rule. Where 7% represents verbal, 38% the voice/tone and 55% being body language.

This is often misunderstood to mean that the words you use don’t really matter. In reality, the words are very important but the other aspects of communication are critical to being understood. It is also particularly important when it comes to communicating feelings or attitude. The audience will not believe you if your body language does not match your words.

Zoom in and zoom out

Something that is important when communicating is using the right level of detail. Many senior executives will wear their lack of detail as a badge of honour. Equally, may technical team members will use jargon and their detailed knowledge as a weapon. Neither approach is ideal.

Being able to zoom in and zoom out of detail will connect you to a larger audience. This technique will also help you to positively differentiate yourself from other colleagues.

This is absolutely a skill that can be learned and should be practised.

Shift left and shift right

The other skill you should practice is the ability to shift left and shift right. This is the ability to change topics laterally over elements such as functions, products, clients and markets.

Mastering this skill will help you to keep up with your audience and build rapport.

Combining these two skills of zooming in/out and shifting left/right will breed what is known as contextual fluency and help you to be understood and understand others.

Using the best method of communication for a job, whilst taking constraints into consideration will also help get you there.

Bringing that all together with a clear understanding of your audience will take you to the next level.

Never forget the goals; to be understood and to understand your audience.

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