How can we help you reach your goals?

 So far, you should be asking two questions of yourself:

1. What's the purpose of this communication?
2. What change needs to happen as a result of my message?

The answers to these questions give you clarity about the end result of your message. If the purpose is to CONNECT and produce a change in relationships (between you and your team or between team members), you'll know that your message succeeded when that change occurs. The next article will give you even more detail on measuring that success. 

Perhaps you are speaking to team members that you know well. Or to customers that you don't know that well. No matter what, a brief reflection on who is listening to your message will help you connect with them quickly. Use what you do know about them to answer these questions:

1. What is their position in work/life?
2. What are their current circumstances (related to your message)?
3. How are they reacting to those circumstances?
4. What do they value?
5. What do they fear? 

Your answers to these questions may look something like this:

1. They are members of my team: supervisors and account specialists.
2. Our new Chief Marketing Officer has a new strategy that puts pressure on the organization to administer special provisions for large group accounts and decrease turnaround time. 
3. My team is trying to figure out how to deliver on the new strategy. They are looking for ways to economize operations while also doing the work of increased demands.      Documentation of operational changes is slipping. Turn around time is suffering. Client complaints are stressing them out. They don't fully understand the new direction of our CMO. 
4. They value exceptional service to our clients. They also value process and having control over their workload. 
5. They fear letting down their clients. They fear that their jobs are at stake if they don't perform. 

Do you see the need for effective communication to this audience? Just reading through this audience profile, you can sense that there is conflict. Pressure, special provisions, trying to figure out, increased demands, slipping, suffering, complaints, don't understand, letting down clients, jobs at stake. 

As you answer these questions for your own audience, look for those conflicts. Those are opportunities for change. You can help them through it. This is why you are their leader. It begins with effective communication. Effective communication, as you have seen in this series, requires some level of reflection.

In this scenario, the audience is looking to their leader for both encouragement and guidance, which means they need a change in perspective and a change in operations. Their leader can deliver on both. What stories will resonate with this audience? 

For encouragement, a personal story where the leader has faced similar circumstances where a change in perspective was needed to get them through difficult times would work wonderfully. 

"I'd like to tell you a story from my career in sales when I was struggling with some of the things you are struggling with now…." As the main character of the story, this leader can talk about those things from his own life--especially the conflict--that will relate to his audience…because he's taken the time to know them. 

If you are telling a personal story, ask yourself:

1. Is there a story from when I had a similar position as my audience?
2. Was I ever in similar circumstances as my audience? What is my story about that?
3. Did I have similar reactions to my circumstances as my audience? What's the story?
4. Is there a story from my life when I held the same values as my audience?
5. Is there a story from my life when I feared something similar as my audience?

The leader in this story can use the personal story as an intro to helping his people understand where the CMO is coming from and why it's important for them to embrace the new strategy. 

In the next article, we'll look at another kind of story that will help this leader guide his team.

Challenge: Choose an audience you often deliver communications to and create an audience profile with the five questions in this post. 

What kind of insights did you gain by answering these questions? 

Read/Watch all of the STORIES AT WORK articles/videos. 

Ask Rance to keynote your event.

Interested in a customized Leadership Storytelling workshop? Learn more. Contact us.