What do all individuals or teams at the top of their craft have in common? Systems. Every successful system is built with repetition in mind. The most effective communicators know the importance of having these in place to drive success. Here are the (3) systems we’ll focus on today:
1. Knowing your audience
2. Creating thoroughly, editing ruthlessly
3. Delivering with intent
Knowing Your Audience
Knowing your audience is the foundation upon which all else is built. We look at this through the lens of an initial evaluation. When you go to the dentist, the doctor, the car dealership, the bank, the butcher, and hundreds of other places, evaluation happens first. We use a quote – “What gets measured gets managed.” As a speaker, if we can’t identify the needs of our audience, creating any communication is an uphill battle.
Understanding the audience can start by simply answering a few questions-
- Who am I speaking with?
- What’s the talk about?
- What’s most important to them?
- How much time do I have?
- What is my finish line?
From here, you can dive deeper into understanding what the audience may already know about your topic. What are their pain points? Who are the current decision-makers or influencers? What helps them understand or act? Being proactive about knowing where we want to end is crucial. Without a finish line, we’re running a race blindly.
When we measure our audience, we manage our message.
Create Thoroughly, Editing Ruthlessly
The next step is creation. Without the foundation of understanding our audience, it’s hard to build. With building, we encourage including enough, but not too much. Another quote we love – “As much as necessary, as little as possible.” This concept ties to the theory explained by Tim Ferris in his book ‘The 4-Hour Body’. He describes it as creating the smallest dose to produce a desired outcome.
As many speakers know all too well, the problem exists when we decide to include more, for the sake of more. We ramble, the message goes off track, and before we know it, we’ve lost the audience. Here lies the beauty of editing! After we’ve created a message based on the needs of our listeners, it’s time to trim the fat.
The quantity we’re using needs to balance out the quality, otherwise the scale tips toward information overload. Your goal when communicating should be to create understanding and buy-in, not resistance.
Delivering with Intent
Finally, our delivery. Yes, it matters, and probably more than you think. Knowing your audience and building your message is only as powerful as how it’s delivered. What are you doing physically? How do you sound vocally? We call this your Executive Presence. Every speaker has it or lacks it, and it’s implemented with intent. There is no in-between.
Physically, where your eyes look when you speak, how you use your hands to emphasize a point, and how your body moves or doesn’t can make or break your audience’s experience. Vocally, the volume you speak with, the inflection and emphasis behind your words, the pace in which your message is shared, and the lack of non-words can also help or hurt.
Ignoring your executive presence is like having the best golf clubs, the most comfortable shoes, the nicest golf course, and ideal weather conditions, but forgetting to learn how to swing.
We start our communication skills courses by asking a simple question: How would you like an audience to describe you? We get responses such as confident, engaging, charismatic, polished, authentic, comfortable, relatable, and knowledgeable, among many other positive words. All of these adjectives result from our executive presence AND our message.
Getting back to the magic of repetition, these systems are created to reduce friction and decision fatigue. When circumstances get challenging, top performers get back to the basics. James Clear says it beautifully – “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” Creating systems and understanding the magic of purposeful repetitions over long periods is what separates the good from the great.
Whether you’re just beginning your communications journey, or looking to fine-tune and sharpen your skills, go back to the little things and repeat.
