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Communication
Writing, speaking, and listening as instruments of leadership: the briefing, the difficult conversation, and the case made in public.
Chapter contents
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Difficult Conversations 6 entries The four sentences that do the work, feedback that changes behaviour, saying no, and delivering a decision people will dislike.
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Foundations of Communication 5 entries What communication is for, why clarity and simplicity differ, and why a message must be delivered far more often than feels necessary.
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Institutional Voice 5 entries Speaking for an organization rather than yourself: message consistency, the public statement, open records, and when to say nothing.
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Listening and Inquiry 5 entries Listening as an information system: questions that get real answers, what silence means, and hearing bad news well.
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Persuasion 5 entries Making a case: evidence and its presentation, pre-wiring, building a coalition, and recognising when persuasion has failed.
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Spoken Communication 7 entries The briefing, presenting to a board, speaking without notes, hostile questions, and talking to a reporter.
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Written Communication 7 entries Conclusion first, the one-page discipline, documents that survive the room, and email as a governance instrument.
Entries filed directly to this chapter
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01
Email as a Governance Instrument
Email is a record that outlives everyone on the thread and reaches audiences never contemplated. The discipline is not writing less; it is writing the same thing everywhere.
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02
Writing That Survives the Room
Write for the reader who was not there. Everything a document leaves implicit is supplied by shared context, and shared context is exactly what disappears first.
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03
The One-Page Discipline
The constraint is not about respecting the reader's time. It forces the writer to resolve what they actually think, and a page that will not close is usually reporting an unfinished decision.
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04
Conclusion First
The narrative build works when the reader has time and no power. Reverse it for anyone who has neither, because they will stop reading before your argument arrives.
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05
Writing Is How Decisions Persist
A decision that exists only in the memories of the people who were present will be gone within two years. Writing is not documentation of the work; for anything meant to outlast you, it…
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06
Repetition Is Not Condescension
The point at which a leader is thoroughly sick of saying something is roughly the point at which the organization has begun to hear it. The two experiences are not comparable and cannot be…
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07
Register: Formal, Plain, and When Each Fails
Register signals what kind of event this is. Getting it wrong tells people something about the situation that you did not intend, and they will trust the signal over the content.
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08
Read the Room Before You Choose the Words
Three questions decide the message: who is present, what each of them can act on, and what will be repeated afterward. The third is the one leaders forget and the one that carries furthest.
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09
Clarity and Simplicity Are Different
Simplifying a complex thing can destroy the information inside it. Clarity preserves the structure and removes the obstruction, which is harder and is what the situation usually requires.
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10
What Communication Is For
Before choosing words, decide which of four things you are doing. Most failures are a message doing one job while the audience believes it is doing another.