Cote d'Azure, Meeting Day 1: Afternoon
What do you call 60 people representing 11 native languages who are giving presentations and working together in small groups using English exclusively?
Good communicators. Really good communicators.
For some of these managers, English is their third or even fourth language. Then why is the communication so effective?
1. The speakers--whether in a presentation or breakout group--choose their words carefully.
2. That amounts to a lot of simplicity. Don't get me wrong; everyone here has a broad vocabulary and much of the subject matter is technical. But there is a delightful lack of cliches and jargon. That leads to subject-verb-object sentences without the extraneous adjectives so common to business.
3. When visuals are used, the same mental editing translates into brevity. Very few slides with full sentences or even paragraphs. Just enough to trigger the speaker's next story and keep the audience focused on the topic.
You can use these as part of the guidelines for your next meeting. You'll help people get to the point, stay engaged, and create more time for useful discussion.
What do you think? And what useful experiences and ideas do you have to build better--not lengthier--communication?
And it always helps--whatever the focus of your "stand up" communication--to visit Garr Reynolds at Presentation Zen.
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