Perspective

To kick off the New Year, we want to give you a powerful new communication tool.

At the risk of sounding like an infomercial, this tool promises to supercharge your communication skills. It can help you plan, prepare, and deliver when the stakes are high. It will make your presentations more efficient, effective, and impactful. It’s an all-in-one solution that supports you from ideation all the way to execution.

But before you picture a cutting-edge AI platform, a virtual meeting plug-in, or a holographic coach living in the metaverse, relax. This tool isn’t technological at all.

It’s perspective.

More specifically, it’s the habit of seeing communication through the eyes of your audience.

Before your next presentation, conversation, or pitch, pause for a moment. Imagine that you are your audience. Picture yourself sitting in the boardroom, the conference room, or across the desk, listening to yourself exactly as your audience will.

Now that you’re in their seat, ask yourself these eight questions:

1.     Am I engaged right away? Does the presenter (you) make the information relevant from the start? Do I understand why what I’m hearing matters?

2.     Is this easy to follow? Is there a clear, logical structure, or does it feel scattered?

3.     Is this a conversation or a lecture? Does it feel like the presenter is talking to me or at me?

4.     Are the key messages easy to digest? Did the presenter do the hard work of focusing on what truly matters or am I drowning in a data dump?

5.     Is the data brought to life? Are there real-world examples, stories, or illustrations, or is everything stuck at an abstract level?

6.     How’s the pace? Is this coming at me like a Fast & Furious chase scene or is it comfortable and digestible?

7.     Do the visuals help or hurt? Am I torn between deciphering dense slides and listening to the presenter (still you) or do the visuals and talk track seamlessly support one another?

8.     Most importantly, do I want to be here? Am I leaning in or tuning out? And why?

Once you’ve honestly logged your answers to these questions, use them. Adjust your content, approach, and delivery to improve what your audience experiences.

At its core, communication is inherently interpersonal. It’s one person (or team) sharing ideas, knowledge, or vision with other people. Communication isn’t valuable simply because it exists—it becomes valuable only in what it delivers to the audience; you should aim to deliver understanding, clarity, information, energy, confidence, and/or inspiration.

Adopting your audience’s perspective, and shaping your communication around what they need, is one of the most powerful tools you can use to elevate your communication skills.