Patrick Forsyth - Communications : Smart Skills.

SMART SKILLS:
COMMUNICATIONS

Turning Words into Results

PATRICK FORSYTH

Legend Press Ltd, 107-111 Fleet Street, London, EC4A 2AB

Contents Patrick Forsyth 2019

The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.

Print ISBN 978-1-78955-001-6

Ebook ISBN 978-1-78955-000-9

Set in Times. Printing managed by Jellyfish Solutions Ltd.

Cover design by Linnet Mattey | www.linnetmattey.com

All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, and place names, other than those well-established such as towns and cities, are fictitious and any resemblance is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is the fourth book that Patrick Forsyth has written for Legend Business Books Smart Skills series. The subject matter of the new title, Communications, is fundamental to all business success, as well as the activities of business writing, meetings and persuasion addressed in his three previous books and to other titles in the series.

Patrick himself has a talent for communicating sound behavioural advice, grounded in personal experience with jargon-free clarity, which is immediately understandable. After identifying the foundations of success in communication and the virtues of preparation, the author moves on to apply his general principles to specific activities: communicating face-to-face, the various forms of business communication, making presentations, being persuasive and bringing together all the skills to negotiate successfully.

This new addition to the Smart Skills is for all business people: in mid-career, self-employed or entering the commercial world for the first time. Readers with some time in business will relate Patrick Forsyths advice to their own experience and will recognise along the way their own communications shortcomings. I wish that this book had been around when I started out in business many years ago.

Jonathan Reuvid

One should not aim at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.

Marcus Fabius Quintillian

We all communicate much of the time, and the workplace is no exception. We do so for all sorts of reasons, for instance to:

Inform

Instruct

Prompt action

Persuade

Motivate

Change opinions

Prompt debate or discussion

Stimulate the generation of ideas

Build on prior contacts or thinking

Often all goes well. Often we hardly think about it. Indeed how difficult is it to say: What time do you call this? to the postman or ask for a salary increase, or make a presentation to the Board?

Well, leaving aside the postman, the answer may be not only that such things can be difficult, but also that when they are poorly executed problems are not far behind. In most workplaces you do not have to eavesdrop for long to hear the immediate results of poor communication: But I thought you said You should have said What!? Similarly, failing to get your point across at a meeting or making a lacklustre presentation can change the course of subsequent events to your detriment. Today we also have a plethora of ever advancing electronic routes for communication to get to grips with and use effectively.

There are challenges: for instance, those making a poor presentation often cite lack of time to prepare as an excuse. More often than some recognisable fault destroying or diluting the effectiveness of communications, it is lack of any thought that jeopardises it. It is assumed all will be well and no great thought or preparation occurs.

This is dangerous because the fact is that communication is often not easy, indeed a host of factors combine to create difficulties. For example, think about this: how quickly and easily could you tell someone who doesnt already know how to tie a necktie? And no, you cannot demonstrate words only.

This book addresses these problems: how to overcome difficulties, how to deal with specific modes of communication for instance making a presentation or writing documents and overall it highlights the opportunities that good communication produces. This is key. The reason to take any sort of interest in how communication works is because of the results good, accurate and clear communications can achieve. How you communicate also affects how you are seen: it creates a profile, for good or ill, and enhances (or otherwise) reputations.

Two further things: first, with limited space individual chapters here have a tight focus, but include points used in context of their particular method or type of communication that may have relevance elsewhere in this Smart Skills series. Hence, for example, a point about face-to-face communication may be useful when considering presentations. Similarly, the chapter about the overall aspects of preparations is designed to be relevant to any kind of communication. Secondly, the book is intended to be useful whatever role someone may have and whoever they communicate with and how they do it communicating is a career skill (influencing how you fare in the workplace) as well as a necessary work one.

There is a need to take it seriously, but that said, the communications process is essentially common sense and the thinking that reading this book can prompt is designed to make your communications more likely to be effective and achieve what you want.

Note: Lets get to a specific lesson immediately. What about political correctness? Someone took me to task recently about using the expression manning the office. I think this makes a point: you can take this sort of thing too far. After all the suggested alternative staffing the office means something different. It usually means recruiting people to work in the office, whereas manning the office normally refers to the process of who is on duty at what time, shifts and so on.

That said, even if you want to say ridiculous occasionally, this is an area for some care. Any references to gender, sexuality, religion, political opinion and so on, must be checked, first to see if it is necessary and secondly to make sure that if so the message is delivered with suitable sensitivity. In the meantime I shall try to practice what I preach as we go on.

Please be sure to lock your door securely before entering or leaving your room.

Notice on the inside of a hotel bedroom door.

The notice quoted above makes a good point. Someone wrote that, printed it and put on 252 doors and still didnt notice that it was nonsense and it is just one sentence. How many times have you heard someone in your office say something like: But I thought you said