Your message and other things you say

As a follow-up to the previous post on things that shouldn’t be said, there are also things that should be said.

I was a newlywed of less than a year when I had some great advice passed on to me from someone who quoted it as being passed to them from a wise sage many years before. And it likely was passed to him through generations as well.

“Son, there are times when there is only one correct thing to say in response to your wife. Make sure you say it.”

Anecdotally this was probably in the context of the “does this dress make me look fat?” genre of questions, but there are also so many times that social grace and propriety dictates a proper response. Perhaps the greatest proper response is “Thank you” whenever granted a measure of grace or platitude. “I’m sorry” is proper when someone shares a pain or grief (business or personal). “The boss is a rat fink” is not proper, ever, even if true.

Which raises a fine line for realists like myself who take great pride in sharing the truth, even when it hurts. The truth is NOT always the best thing to say, which is a completely different thing from saying that it’s OK to lie. Regardless of the context — business, personal, acquaintence, stranger — the way to build a connection and cultivate an environment that will receive whatever message we have to give is to say the proper thing and treat people as people.

I’m reading the book Whale Done now, and it outlines the importance of trust in a relationship before any action will be taken. Speaking correctly is a step in that relationship building process.

If there’s a right thing to say, say it.

Had a speaker I was working with the other day express shock that I recommended removal of an agenda slide from their PowerPoint.  “Shouldn’t I tell them what I’m going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what I told them?“  That is one method.  And not one I ascribe to very much.  We talked some about the point, and bascially came to the conclusion that the reason people do this is that they’ve always seen it done that way.  When we established what the message of the presentation was and how we could clearly communication that (and only that), it quickly became obvious that talking about what he was going to talk about wasn’t helping the message one iota.  So he dropped it.
I’m not saying there can’t be times when a roadmap of communication won’t be effective.  But I am saying that use of such a device should be calculated and purposeful, and not thrown in as the default.  In most cases, there are a lot more creative and reasonable ways to get the message out, across, and remembered.

One other aside.  One problem with the T4 (tell them times three) approach is that telling is not the most effective way of communication (ask any parent!).  For a rather good treatise on why this is, I recommend the book “Telling Ain’t Training” (also an ASTD conference by the same name).  If all you can think of is to tell them, you aren’t being very creative, and likely aren’t being very effective.  There are almost always better ways. Unfortunately, few of them are demo’d on a regular basis, so the majority of presentations ape what they have seen, and that isn’t typically good.

Make your point and your message memorable.  Don’t mimic mediocrity.