Personal Communications strategy

The first of our new ‘In conversation with…’ series looked at how to create a personal communications strategy. The series is designed to broaden members’ business and behavioural skills and future events will consist of conversations with our Chief Executive, Caroline Stockmann, along with a variety of guest speakers and experts who will talk informally on the behaviours and skills needed to develop a successful career.

The ACT’s Business of Treasury research shows that one of the biggest blockers to progressing in a treasury career is the honing of communication skills. These, along with relationship building skills and influencing skills, are key to ensuring treasury is represented at the highest levels.

But when it comes to our careers, we simply don’t approach developing our communication skills in the same way as we do for other areas of development. If we have a project, we put together a project plan, with milestones and an understanding of the resources and support that will be needed. We need to treat our communications strategy in this way – setting milestones and looking at the resources and support we will need to achieve our goal.

Where do we start?

1. Think about how you communicate. Leadership success is often down to good communication. Think about how you sell yourself and whether you are as effective as you could be both in terms of communicating up and communicating down.
2. Relationship building. You need to build trust and mutual understanding in order to get the best outcome, not only for yourself but also for your team. An important aspect of this is to look at things from others’ perspectives and think about where that person is coming from – this will help you to get the best outcome.

The Ladder of Inference

Understanding people’s perspectives is a good way to develop our relationships – both in work and outside it. Chris Argyris developed the Ladder of Inference which looks at how we behave in any given situation. It considers how we translate the data in front of us based on our experiences. We are all selective about what we hear and this means we don’t always focus on the facts which can lead to misinterpretations. How can we combat this?

• By being aware that this is how we are interpreting data and by actively trying not to be influenced
• By focussing on the facts
• By being explicit in our communications
• By adapting the way we speak to the audience as people listen to things differently

The effect of COVID-19

Online meetings have affected how we work with others. In terms of our body language, this is more difficult to read on screen and we therefore need to look out for physical cues more than we would have done previously. We also need to be mindful of how we present ourselves – how do we look on camera in terms of our size, the way we are sitting etc. The other challenge with online only communication is that it is easy to retreat and for mental wellbeing to go undetected. Being aware of these issues helps us to combat them.

The importance of listening

The best way to overcome all of the above is by actively listening. When you are speaking to people listen to what they are saying and hear what they are trying to tell you - don’t think about the past or worry about the future but think about what is being communicated in the present.

How can you show that you have been listening? When you are in a meeting don’t be afraid to be the last one to speak. Often this can give you the advantage of being able to repeat comments back verbatim to show that you have listened, and then you can add any additional comments you may have.

How do you go about setting your communications strategy?

Caroline has developed a tactical strategy she calls RIVAS to help you set your communications strategy. It is a technique to enable you to look at what you want to achieve.

R – result - what is your goal?

I – intention - understand why you want to do this? Keep asking yourself why you are doing this so that you can drill down to the root cause. This will help you to remain focussed.

V – visualisation - visualise success. Think about how it will look, feel, smell to succeed.

A – actions - what are the milestones you need along the journey?

S – support - who do you need to help you with this?

By breaking down your end objective in this way it will not only help you to focus, but ensure you keep on track and are more likely to achieve your goal.

Other tips to help you along the journey

• Research difference styles and experiment with these. You may not think a style suits you but with practice you can learn different skills and be authentic if you put in the practice.
• Identify key meetings and how you can build your successes in those meetings. How will you change your behaviour to get your message across?
• Ask for open feedback.
• Think about your audience and what will work for them and adapt how you say things to match them.
• Work on your presentation skills – how do you present yourself/ how do ensure you come across as confident.
• Use humour very cautiously – you don’t know how things will be perceived so it’s best to be carefully of this in a work environment.
• In the online environment it’s important to use facial expressions and you may need to exaggerate these more to get your message across (practice this to ensure you get this right).
• If you are talking to people who are being aggressive you can dial down the situation by lowering your volume and aggression to just below theirs – this will help you to diffuse the situation.
• If you work with ‘alphas’ a good way to deal with this is to get support from those you know in the group as they can help to bring you in to conversations.
• Always be explicit.
• Smiling is a good way to elicit a positive response – not only does it make you feel better, but it usually makes others relax and smile back.

Final thoughts

You can start your communication strategy journey by reflecting on what you want to achieve, looking at RIVAS and thinking about how you would complete the RIVAS form (which can be accessed here). Remind yourself of your values and then put in goals and milestones along the way.

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Thank you to Caroline Stockmann for sharing her insights. For further support on business and behavioural skills visit the strategic insights podcasts, available here. The Career Hub also has a variety of tools to help with business and behavioural skills and can be accessed here.