Clarity and insight are not the same thing

This week in Clarity First we have been having lots of discussion about things that are both core to communication and on the fringe of it.

One big ‘aha' moment came during Thursday's Accelerator Workshop.

‘This isn't just about communication. It's about negotiation', said one new participant.

This was a magical penny drop.

The same penny drop occurred in three other corporate workshops I ran. 

To craft a clear message is a critical and useful thing to do.

To crafting an insightful message is not the same – and frankly harder to do.

It involves both doing and not doing a number of important things.

Crafting insightful messages requires you to do many things, including the following five:

1. Be crystal clear about your value-adding purpose. This is where negotiation skills start to play a role.
2. Understand your audience deeply. People skills, stakeholder management, business acumen as well as negotiation are key here.
   
3. Summarise the right data accurately. Critical thinking plays a key role here
4. Draw out useful insights. Ditto here, along with synthesis and again business acumen. Think carefully as to whether your message will hit the right notes at the time it is delivered.
5. Tie all of those things together to craft one single, powerful, insightful message that packs a real punch.

All of this means avoiding, at a minimum, the following three things:

1. Creating meaningless titles in Word and PowerPoint that look like this: Finance or Sales or Risks
   
2. Blindly filling in templates without constructing an overarching narrative for the whole communication
3. Holding back from sharing a point of view.

I hope that helps. Have a great week.