The Recipe for Great Communication

so what's the recipe for great communication if we were going to think about our communication as a meal what are the ingredients that we need to have present in the meal how do we put together a great meal well let's think about it this way there are really five ingredients that have to be present all the time for great communication to be possible right the first ingredient is clarity how do you make your point clearly it's got to be clear the second ingredient is brevity how do you get to the point quickly how do you

not waste people's time the third ingredient is context how do you help people see how your point or how your message fits in for them how does it make sense for them the fourth ingredient is impact how do you make it stand out how do you make it memorable and the fifth ingredient is value which is fairly self-explanatory how do you make your message valuable for the people who are consuming it five ingredients that will go into every communication meal clarity brevity context impact and value okay great so we've got our ingredients now the next

question is how much of each ingredient do we need and just like cooking a great meal that's going to depend different meals are going to need different ingredients they're going to need the ingredients in different proportions and different audiences are going to have different palettes they're going to want different things out of their meal so the really savvy communicator is going to look at their row of ingredients and is going to be able to determine based on the audience that they're preparing their message for what ingredients need to be dominant so how do you figure

it out well when do we need clarity to be an important ingredient well when there's a lot of complexity around the situation or around the issue you need to make sure that your message includes plenty of clarity so people understand what this is really about when do we need a bit of brevity well when time is short when we think attention spans are short when your audience is going to be very very senior you want to make sure you have enough of the brevity ingredient how about context well maybe when there's unfamiliarity with the topic

or maybe when you're communicating with people that have a lot on their mind or are walking in to listen to you having just come from something very very confusing you probably want to make sure you use plenty of the ingredient context how about impact when do we need to have a lot of impact in our messaging well when there's a lot of noise when we really need to work hard to make it memorable right when we really want it to stand out and we think that's going to be hard to achieve we got to make

sure we add plenty of impact and then the fifth and final is value and i think when there's skepticism when there's choice when there's competition when a decision has to be made and there are other choices that could be made we have to work hard to make sure that there's plenty of value in the meal that we're creating all five of these ingredients are going to be present in every meal that you create in every communication that you put together you always want to make sure that you have some clarity and some brevity and some

context and some impact and some value but depending upon who you're cooking for depending on who you're preparing for you're going to make choices of which of those ingredients needs to be most dominant think about your communication like you're preparing a meal for an audience and you want to impress them you want them to have a great experience and different audiences have different palettes which means you have to adjust the ratios of the ingredients depending upon the situation you