Figure 11.1 The communication wheel
Language is the main tool of the consultant. Quite simply, the way you talk, present and write will determine how successful you are as a consultant. The language you choose tells a listener a lot about you and indicates how client-centric you are. Great consulting communication is all about clarity of thought and an ability to express things in ways that are meaningful to your clients.
Everyone wants to and must communicate, as it is an integral part of everyday life. We use language all the time, often without thinking about it. Language is the mechanism for interaction between people, and consultancy is concerned primarily with interaction. Some professions can get away without needing to worry too much about the finer points of communication. If you are making a physical product, it is the product that matters, not how you talk when you are doing your work on a production line. Consultancy is different. The product is often just words, in the form of reports and presentations. Even when a consultant is employed to manage change, a significant part of the management of change is how you influence and direct people using language.
Great communication skills will enhance any consultancy. Although it should not be encouraged, even relatively weak sets of recommendations or engagement proposals can convince clients if they are well presented. Conversely, poor use of language can destroy the best consulting opportunities. It is of no use at all being the world’s greatest subject matter expert, if you cannot share and explain what you know. The most successful consultants are not necessarily the best experts, but they are the most capable of effectively imparting what expertise they have and influencing others.
Communication is central to everything the consultant does. Whether it is understanding a client’s issues, collecting information, developing reports or feeding back to a client, these are all activities which are based on communicating. Consultancy is a business that is dependent on relationships, and what and how you communicate will determine the relationships you build. Communication is vital to sharing ideas, developing consensus, challenging assumptions and influencing people – all tasks essential to consulting.
Obviously, a consultant must be able to write and to present. The fundamental capability to put pen to paper or use a word processor is rarely a problem for consultants. But consultants suffer from the same issues that dog many aspects of business communications. Unfortunately, whilst there are some exceptions, business speakers and business writers on the whole are not models of brilliant communication. Business language can be dull, it often utilises clichés and relies on jargon. It suffers from too much output and not enough listening, and it regularly results in miscommunication and ambiguity.
Not everyone is a natural orator or a gifted writer, but whilst those talents will undoubtedly help, they are not necessary. Speaking, writing, presenting and listening skills can be learnt and improved, and a few simple concepts can help to enhance the capabilities of most consultants. This chapter provides some pointers to improving your communication skills. It describes what communication is, and suggests a simple way for you to plan and execute your communication. It also discusses one of the central but underestimated language tools of the consultant – asking questions. Finally, the chapter looks at some of the traps in using language that consultants should avoid.
What is communication? This is a surprisingly hard question to answer in a way that everyone will agree to. Communication is one of those concepts that we all intuitively grasp, but struggle to give succinct and meaningful definitions of. The problem this poses is that if we cannot easily define the concept, we cannot be sure we all share the same meaning.
Essentially, communication is the transmission of information from one person to another. This definition is typical, reasonable and technically correct, but it is not enlightening and I think it misses two of the most important points. The first is that communication is a goal-directed activity. We communicate for a reason. When you think about this, it is obvious. But it is a point often forgotten. One of the reasons communications fail is because the speaker or writer is not clearly conscious of or focused enough on the desired goal. Secondly, communications should be something you take pleasure in. What makes the great speakers and authors great is that they enjoy using language. Yes, they are adept with all the tools of communication, and, yes, they are aware of the goal they are trying to achieve, but at the same time they delight in the act of communication. This seems all too often to be forgotten in business.
There are a host of different ways to communicate. Most obviously there are the written and spoken word, but within these categories there are a range of communication skills to be applied. Ways of using language include: asserting, explaining, recommending, questioning, answering, reinforcing, summarising and reflecting. Communication has specialised techniques, such as negotiating, persuading, asserting, confronting and developing relationships. Some activities, like training, facilitating and interviewing, are essentially applications of communication. Critically, communication is a two-way process, and a key part of all interaction is listening, which is especially important to consultants. Although this chapter focuses on language, communication is not just about words – body language, gestures, tone, pace and so on are all essential components of how well you communicate. Individuals tend to have biases to some forms of communication rather than others. As a consultant, it is helpful to develop the ability to use the full range of communication skills.
Each of these aspects of communication is the subject of many books. Consultants tend to be practical people and focus on improved communication via presentation or writing skills courses. It is worth making the effort to understand even a modicum of the academic theory of communication (e.g. Hargie, see page 279), as this can be enlightening and give many ideas on how to improve your communication skills.
A consultant working in a professional domain is primarily interested in being effective. Hence, if you understand what communication is, the next helpful question is: what is effective professional communication? When asked to describe what makes good communication, it is common to use criteria, usually expressed as adjectives, such as clear, lucid, intelligible, absorbing, accurate, coherent, informative or enjoyable. It is certainly worth thinking about such criteria, but I believe that effective professional communication can be defined in terms of two statements. Effective communication:
As consultants our most important goal is to communicate effectively and this is the emphasis of this chapter. However, it is worth bearing in mind what the difference between effective and excellent communication is. Being effective is good enough, but understanding what excellent communications are gives you something to aspire to. What I think separates excellent from merely effective communication, is that excellent communication:
Not everyone is or will become excellent at communication, but irrespective of how well you use language, you can improve your speaking and writing skills. Improving communication skills requires that you actively seek feedback, which at times can be painful, and that you learn from the feedback. My first consulting report was thrown back to me across a desk by a partner in Coopers & Lybrand, covered in a mess of red ink and exasperated comments. Excruciating as that experience and others were, the feedback was valuable and worked. I now have several books published, each of which has sold thousands of copies, and have been translated into multiple languages. Yet I am still aware of how much I have to learn and I seek feedback on written materials and presentations all the time. Partially this is to improve the individual document or presentation, but more importantly it is to continue to improve the effectiveness of all my communications.
To explain how to improve your communication skills I am going to use a simple model of communication. There are many more complex models, which are useful for discussing specific aspects of communication or understanding detailed mechanics. But I want to use a model which is easy to understand, practical and useful to consultants. The model I am going to use is the communication wheel. This is a model I developed some years ago when working with groups of experts to help them think about and achieve better communications, and to help them avoid some communications blunders typical of their professions. As with all simplifications, the model has some flaws, and needs to be interpreted flexibly and with the application of a little common sense. But I have found it a very effective way to help people improve their communications.
This model is shown in Figure 11.1. In this section, I will briefly explain each part of the model, to enable you to identify any areas of weakness and to focus on enhancing them.
The model has several features. Firstly it is shown as a circle (or wheel), which represents the fact that any single act of communication may result in further communications. Communication is an ongoing process, each interaction can encourage further interactions, and this is the basis of dialogue. The model has an outer wheel and a central hub. The outer wheel is concerned with transmitting information, but communication is a two-way process: as well as transmitting you receive or listen. The importance of listening is indicated by its position as the hub of the communication wheel. The outer wheel has six steps, each of which I will briefly discuss below. The first four steps are about planning communication, and the last two are about executing communication. The model can be applied to all sorts of communications that consultants are involved in, whether presenting, speaking in a meeting or writing a report. This model can be used to help improve formal communications, but it can also help with the most informal of conversations.
Let’s briefly explore each of the steps.
The first step in communicating is to be clear about why you are doing it. Communication is a goal-directed activity, and unless you are clear about the goal you will not successfully communicate. Yet all too often we start conversations, write documents or develop presentations without being absolutely clear about why we are doing this. In the process of consulting there are often many goals that each communication must achieve and this can result in messy and confusing interactions with clients.
Occasionally, the goal of communication is to share some information, but more often as a consultant it is more complex than this. You communicate to persuade a client to take action, to have decisions made, to gain support or consensus, or perhaps to impress a client. Providing information when, for example, your goal is to influence a client to take an action, may not be enough. Unless your design your communication around your goal, it is unlikely to succeed.
With the spoken word, goals are dynamic and can change as a dialogue unfolds. A skilled speaker is adept at modifying goals as a conversation continues. However, it is best to be consciously monitoring where a conversation is going compared to the initial goals. Sometimes a change in goals is a correct response to additional information that becomes apparent during a conversation. Often, especially in intense or heated conversations, we accidentally lose sight of our initial goal and start just responding to each individual part of a dialogue. Everyone finds that sometimes they start a discussion and part way through think ‘where is this going?’, having lost track of what it is all about and what outcome they want. Journalists and politicians are adept at deliberately making their interlocutors lose track of the objective of the dialogue.
The starting point for all communications should be to understand what the goal is. You can understand this by asking yourself questions, such as:
If you cannot answer these sorts of questions, do not be surprised if your communication is ineffective.
Communications must be appropriate to the person or group being communicated to and in the style they prefer. This person or group is your audience. Effective communication is meaningful and appealing, from the audience’s viewpoint. Client-centric consultants always seek to communicate in the most appropriate way for a specific audience. This means that you must be prepared to tailor whatever you want to say to the audience, and the same point may need to be said in different ways to different audiences. It is important to remember always that you are not communicating to yourself. Fine words that you like are worthless unless your audience likes them too. You must use terminology that is meaningful and appealing to your audience, as it is only what makes sense to your audience that matters.
There are many factors that need to be considered when thinking about audiences. What are their media preferences:
The better you understand your client’s communication preferences, the more likely you will be able to influence them.
However, as you tailor your approach to your audience don’t lose sight of why you are communicating. There is a risk that you can forget what you want to achieve, in delving too deeply into how people like to be communicated with.
Many people wanting to improve their communication skills will focus on their language and use of words. For a consultant, a far better and often simpler way to improve communication skills is to think more clearly about these first two steps of the communication wheel. Simply by having clarity over why you are communicating, and by understanding who your audience is and what their communication preferences are, you will significantly improve the effectiveness of your communications. If you focus on these two points alone you may never become a great or memorable speaker, but you will be effective and sufficiently influential for consultancy needs. Everything else is finesse, these are the fundamentals.
The next stage of the communication wheel is about developing the specific messages you want to communicate. What are the points you need to get across that will help you to achieve your communication goal? This is a step worth being patient about starting. We are all tempted to jump into the action of writing documents or creating presentations. My advice is to hesitate a little. Do not work out your messages before you know why you are communicating and to whom. A message is only relevant when you know who you are communicating with. If you do not know what you want to achieve and who you will be influencing to achieve this, then there is little point in working out messages.
Effective professional communication is simple and concise. What you communicate should be made up of a central message, any supporting messages that reinforce the central message, and key information that verifies these messages or helps them to be understood. This information should be at an appropriate level of detail for the intended audience. There can be a temptation to write lots to try and impress. In reality, the most powerful information is concise. Everything that does not contribute to the central message of a report or presentation should be discarded. A well-written and concise document is of far greater value to your clients than an elongated and rambling tome.
However, whilst brevity is to be preferred, a coherent communication is more than a set of messages strung together. Any communication must include appropriate levels of context and scene setting. This depends on the audience and their familiarity with the subject. Critically, any communication, whether it is spoken or written, needs to have a logical and understandable structure to aid comprehension. This means some of the words in any communication are not about transmitting the messages you want transmitted, but will be information related to the process of communication and understanding. This includes explanations of what is being communicated, such as ‘I am now going to talk about …’, or signposts to the structure of communication, such as ‘once I have completed the introduction I will …’.
The ordering of messages is important to enhance impact and influence your client’s reactions. To improve the structuring of your messages you can use the classic consulting approach of Minto’s pyramid principle. It is an excellent way of structuring your thinking, and if you are unfamiliar with it I recommend investing some time in reading up on it. I am also a great fan of mind maps, which can help in structuring very diverse information. (For both topics, see the references on page 280.) It is interesting to note that both the pyramid principle and mind maps are primarily about structuring thinking, which can then be applied to how you write or present. They are not purely writing techniques. This point underlies the principle that it is clarity of thought that makes great professional communication, not a huge vocabulary, understanding of grammar and syntax, or ability to drone on and on.
Finally, words are not the only form of communication. When speaking you must consider your body language, as well as your dress and appearance. There are also factors like pitch, tone, speed, volume, pauses and so on to get right. For the written word, characteristics like document format, layout, font, colour, tone, style, as well as the use of visual aids, all have a direct influence on the effectiveness of your communication.
The final part of planning your communication is to determine how you will communicate. What media will you use? Will you communicate formally or informally? There are many factors to consider, including audience preferences, but also what is most appropriate for the situation. For instance, very sensitive information must be transmitted in a different way than general information relevant to all members of an organisation.
An important consideration is the timing and level of repetition of communications. Timing is crucial to effective communication. Simply, there are good and bad times to communicate. You should also bear in mind that messages, especially if they are complex or radical, can take several attempts to be heard and understood. What this means is that important messages should be repeated consistently and often in different media. Anyone who has worked with clients on change programmes knows the importance of frequent, repetitive and consistent communication. Communicating once is never enough for any important messages in an organisation. If you ever feel tempted to say ‘but I told you that’, then probably you have not communicated a message enough times.
Some messages take time to sink in and people need the opportunity to discuss and challenge. Without the ability to explore and challenge information, people are less likely to understand or accept it. Hence, when planning how you will communicate, make sure there is an opportunity for your clients to question and discuss anything you propose or recommend.
Having thought about why, what and how, a good test of any communication materials you have developed or conversations you have planned is to ask yourself ‘so what?’ If you communicate what you plan to communicate in the way you plan to do it, what will it achieve? If you cannot answer the question ‘so what?’, then it is likely that the communication will be ineffective.
If you are clear about why you are communicating, and who you are communicating with, have designed a concise and effective set of messages, and have developed appropriate materials to be delivered at the appropriate times – you will effectively communicate. You never know how your audience will respond until you have communicated, but the better prepared you are, the more likely you are to succeed.
In reality, you do not always have time to think through every aspect of every communication. Some client conversations just happen without time to think through how you should respond. There is no easy answer to this, other than the points that I have described will work for all types of professional communication. If you practise them, they will become automatic, subconscious and fast enough to use in the most unexpected of situations.
You never know if you have successfully communicated until you have feedback from your audience. The more prepared, the greater the likelihood of success, but you must not assume you have achieved your communication objectives until you have a definite response from your audience.
Ideally, this response is formal feedback or directly checking your audience’s understanding of what you have said. Often this is not possible or appropriate and you have to look for more subtle clues, such as body language and behaviour following your communication. What you are seeking is to determine whether your messages were understood and whether they were accepted. Most of all you should be seeking to determine if you will achieve the goal that your communication originally set out to achieve. Client behaviour is the most important element of feedback. Normally, you communicate to generate some form of response in your client – if you do not get this response then the communication has failed.
Feedback is also essential for improving your own communication skills. If you never get any feedback, all you have is your own opinion on how well you communicate, which is liable to be wrong. It is amazing how many people assume they are good speakers or writers, but do not seek feedback. Without feedback, an assessment of how well you communicate is just that – an assumption.
As a consultant you will have a significant amount of information to disseminate. You will want to share ideas, explore concepts, influence and guide clients. To achieve these you will be writing and speaking, but to be able to transmit relevant information you must start by gathering information. This is done by listening. Listening is one of the most underestimated skills, and one we generally spend least effort to improve, and yet people who listen well are at a significant advantage to those who do not, especially in a profession like consulting. As an example of this, often in client sales meetings we are so engrossed in making our sale that we miss comments from the client which indicate what they really want, and hence lose the sale. Always listen.
In terms of the communication wheel I use listening as a generic word for all ways of receiving information, including hearing, reading and observation. Irrespective of how you listen, having information enables you to moderate your ideas and behaviour.
Listening is not only essential to gathering information. Listening is an important part of developing relationships and of encouraging people to listen to you. People rarely form relationships with other individuals who do not listen to them. People are less inclined to listen to anyone who will not listen to them.
It is common to assume that listening is automatic. It is not. Hearing sounds and seeing writing on the page is automatic. Listening is not merely the use of your senses, it is a mental activity. Your brain is not a passive recipient of stimuli – it interprets and filters, often subconsciously. Hence, listening is not foolproof – you will filter out information, your concentration will lapse and at times you will be distracted. Even if you physically receive information, it does not mean you have actually taken it in. This is one reason why you should seek feedback and test understanding after communicating – to make sure the information was taken in, and was interpreted in the way intended. If you are the listener, and it is important that you understand, you can check your understanding by summarising or reflecting back to speakers. A response in the form ‘let me just summarise what I heard … is that correct’ is a powerful way to check your listening.
The guidelines for listening are:
Whenever you need to take in information, be conscious of your physical and mental state and try to overcome feelings or office environmental factors which are stopping you listen. Never be afraid, for example, to halt a meeting to resolve an irritating noise that is stopping people listening. Also, try to learn about your own listening biases. This can be hard, but is very revealing. What sorts of information do you find easier to take in and what do you struggle with? What are your limits? If you can only read in 15-minute bursts, there is no point scanning your eyes across text for hours at a time. What sort of information do you find easy to absorb, and what takes more effort?
If you only listen to the words, you will only gain a partial understanding of other people’s viewpoints. There are many important areas for observation in any conversation. What are the speaker’s eyes, body language and gestures saying? Is there any fidgeting and activities not related to conversation – do they indicate anything? When you are listening in a group, observe the positioning or seating arrangements, and the level of interaction between people in conversation. But don’t listen just to the content or just interpret the body language! You need both. Also, whilst we all have an innate capability to interpret body language to some extent, care is needed with the interpretation: it is subjective and culturally specific. Try to look for clues that information is or is not being accepted, and if it is not obvious, seek feedback by asking questions like ‘does everyone accept this …?’ or even better actually test understanding by asking more specific questions. Unfortunately, this is not always possible.
All aspects of communication are interrelated. Every time you communicate, you need a listener. Help them to listen by communicating in a way that will make it easy for them to follow what you say. This is partially about being clear and engaging, but it is also about removing any obstacles that stop them listen. Conversely, every time you listen, your response has an effect on the person you are listening to. If you really want to understand what someone has to say, listen in a way that encourages them to be open with you.
There are many aspects of communications I could have written about in this chapter, but there is one I am going to focus on a little more and that is questioning. A consultant must be competent at writing reports, developing and giving presentations, and in general conversation with clients. If you are not, you need to develop those skills quickly, and there are a myriad of books and courses on these topics. The precise communication needs will depend on the type of consulting you undertake and the preferences of your client base – but you will always ask questions whilst engaging with a client. However, questioning skills vary greatly between consultants, and rarely is a competency in asking questions set as a criterion for being a consultant. It should be.
Simplistically, you can think of a question as a request for information. But questions perform a much wider role in our conversations than this. Posing questions shows interest and is therefore important as part of relationship building. The questions you ask reflect the way you think, and hence will influence how clients judge you. There are usually multiple ways of requesting information, and the precise way you do it, and the clarity and style of question, mirrors your thinking. Questions can also lead or influence another person’s thinking, although this also depends on how the question is asked as well as the words used. Depending on the tone and where the emphasis is placed, a simple question like ‘why did you do that?’ can be interpreted as showing real interest and request for information, as an indication of disagreement or as a reprimand.
The precise wording of questions is important. Compare two similar questions, such as ‘do you like working in this department?’ versus ‘what do you like about working in this department?’ It is easy to mean to ask one of these, but actually to ask the other. The type of response and the information it contains may be very different.
There are many types of questions, and as a consultant you should consider the best way to find out whatever it is you are seeking out to find out. Common types of questions are:
Consultants should take care in phrasing questions, and in using the most appropriate type of question. The tone, pace and speed of questioning are also critical. In the haste to get information, it is easy to start firing off lots of questions without giving someone a chance to answer them. If you want information, ask one question at a time and leave time to listen to responses. On the other hand, firing lots of questions at once can be used as a deliberate technique to confuse people. Stakeholders who oppose your work or want to be difficult may sometimes use this technique. As a consultant you should avoid it.
Consultants should base advice and decisions on facts and concrete observations, and a key source of this is questioning. In Chapter 6 I described how you need both qualitative and quantitative data. Even with qualitative data you should seek to be precise. Precision comes from the type of questions you ask, and assessing whether the answers given are precise enough. Probe with questions like ‘when?’, ‘who?’, ‘precisely in what situation?’ General statements, like ‘the culture is the problem’ or ‘department X does not help’, need to be turned into concrete specifics.
Questioning is such a standard part of everyday conversation that it is taken for granted. Take the time to think about your questions, and if you do not get the type of response or level of interaction you expected then think about what in your question prompted the response you did get. Improving questioning skills will pay dividends to all consultants.
If you want to excel with communications as a consultant, there are three traps to avoid. These hazards are not unique to consulting, but are prevalent within the profession. They are all related, yet slightly different aspects of using language. Each of them can be an accidental hazard, but may sometimes be deliberately used by consultants. The three traps are:
Jargon pervades the business world, and consulting is a profession that wallows in it. Consultants seem to love inventing and using jargon. It is a habit that should be discouraged. There are a number of reasons consultants use jargon. Four of the most common seem to be:
Jargon can be excused when it is used as an efficient shorthand that an audience all understands and is comfortable with. Jargon often encapsulates complex concepts within a single phrase, and hence provides an efficient way to communicate. The problem is that not everyone understands the phrase in its context as jargon, and so when it is used the listener may be left in the dark or completely misunderstand. When a consultant is talking with other consulting colleagues then arguably they can use whatever jargon they like. Generally, jargon is acceptable when it is used between two people of equal technical expertise, or similar cultural or organisational background. However, using jargon is a habit, and the more it is used the more difficult it is to talk without using it or even recognising the fact that your vocabulary is littered with jargon.
Consulting and business jargon are interwoven, and fads in business generally result in new jargon with consultants. Examples of some of the more hideous pieces of consulting jargon I have come across include: paradigm shift, archaeology of data, control architecture and integrated talent management. To the user, such phrases may be an important part of their language and their way of thinking. But there are usually simpler alternatives, and in using jargon a consultant fails to remember or consider the client’s perspective. Some readers may not regard these phrases as bad jargon, which stresses the point that what is and is not acceptable jargon is in the mind of the listener. As a consultant, you want to speak in the language that most appeals to your listener.
Even relatively common words from certain specialisations may appear as jargon to clients. For example, consulting project managers regularly get excited about the difference between project and programme managers and may be upset if they are referred to by the wrong title. Clients rarely care about the difference. Whilst clients are perfectly capable of understanding these words, an obsession with precise terminology can be a barrier and shows a lack of empathy with clients. IT consultants often talk about architectures, as in process architecture, systems architecture and data architecture. These are helpful concepts in the context of a discussion between knowledgeable participants, but can baffle the uninitiated, and even between experts can mean different things. Likewise, common business terms such as stakeholder may not be the everyday language of some clients.
Complex or obscure words are often used by some consultants as a way to impress clients, or to give an impression of some new thinking. Often this thinking is just the repackaging of old ideas. A classic example of this is the word transformation instead of change. Initially, the word transformation was meant to indicate a particularly radical change, but increasingly it is used by consultants to refer to almost any change.
In truth, few clients are impressed with ‘consulting speak’. Clients may be frightened by jargon into buying your services, but this will not be the basis of a long-term relationship. Obscure jargon may occasionally impress, but more often it puts people off and shows your inability to understand the client. A real skill is to explain complex ideas in everyday language. It is always better to explain complex issues in everyday language than to show off and use words which other people do not understand. Jargon increases the risk of misunderstanding and ambiguity, which may come back to bite you. Jargon is especially unwelcome when it is used to hold clients deliberately at a distance from a real understanding of advice being given, or to exert power over the clients.
Sometimes clients become accomplices in this problem by accepting jargon. It is the responsibility of everyone to question unknown terminology – either to improve understanding or to expose nonsense. But everyone has sometimes silently listened to unfamiliar jargon, perhaps too embarrassed to raise the ‘what does that mean?’ question when someone uses a term that is not understood by all. Jargon can enable an authoritarian yet, in reality, vacuous speaker to get away with a lack of content. Rather than seeing the speaker’s vacuousness, clients occasionally end up impressed. The fact that this can work, does not mean it is an approach you should follow. Client-centric consultants never want to position themselves in this way.
A good test for someone who claims to be an expert is to ask them to define a piece of terminology they use regularly. Even common business phrases like change management will stump some people, and this is a sign of a lack of real understanding.
Consulting jargon should be avoided with clients. Use clear and straightforward language in a client-friendly manner. A client-centric consultant always avoids pointless jargon. All terminology should be meaningful to the audience you are talking to. The only jargon a client-centric consultant uses is the client’s own jargon. One sign of a strong affinity with a client is when you adopt the client’s language. As a consultant you will jump from business to business and each one has its own jargon. When you first work in a new organisation, that organisation’s jargon may inhibit your own understanding, but competent consultants are never afraid to ask ‘what does that mean?’ and actively seek to pick up local jargon and linguistically blend into the organisation.
As a consultant your role is to educate, improve, help, facilitate and make change. Hence, obscure consulting jargon is particularly inexcusable for the management consultant, as communication is your core tool in achieving this role.
Somewhat similar to jargon is the misuse of what are actually useful words and phrases. I am not talking about the language pedants who will decry someone who writes ‘practice’ or ‘stationary’ when they should have written ‘practise’ or ‘stationery’. These may be mistakes, but they do not seem to diminish communication. What I want to focus on is the misuse of words and phrases that block communication and, worse still, inhibit clear thinking.
This is best shown with a few examples.
The words opinion and a finding are often confused. As a consultant, when you say ‘in my opinion’, you are giving a personal opinion, which may or may not have some basis in fact but will be supported generally by your expertise. On the other hand, a finding is a conclusion drawn from a sufficiently relevant sample of data. If you present opinions as findings you are misleading your client. A client has every right to conclude that something which you present as a finding has an evidence base and to ask to see the evidence.
Another classic example of misuse of language in my experience is the phrase best practice. Consultants regularly claim to be presenting something as best practice. Clients and other consultants often accept things as best practice. This should always be questioned. Who has decided or determined it is best practice? Occasionally it is best practice, but more often it is simply standard or accepted practice that has become prevalent over time for lack of an obvious alternative. Confusing best practice with standard practice is just lazy thinking. This is an example where the misuse of the phrase not only miscommunicates to the listener, but also often reflects weakness in the speaker’s thought. There is a risk that calling something best practice is not based on an attempt to make an approach sound good to a client, but is actually believed by the consultant to be best practice.
Similarly, when a consultant talks about helping a client with change this can mean many different things. It could be about the identification of change, the planning and preparation for change, the implementation of change, or making the change sustained. If you use the term without specifying which you mean, you and the client may form very different impressions, which will lead to longer-term difficulties.
I enjoy the flexibility of language, and understand that language is dynamic and ever modifying. I accept that old familiar words will gain new uses, which I may not like, and that new words, which I don’t understand, will come into common usage. But as a consultant you need to ensure that you are communicating what you seek to communicate. Be precise in your terminology. When you use phrases which in themselves make claims, such as best practice, make sure you are using the phrase when it is appropriate to do so.
I want to end this section with a very short point about the inherent ambiguity and indeterminacy of language. A language like English is extremely powerful and flexible. However, language is inherently indeterminate, and its flexibility makes the indeterminacy greater. By indeterminate I mean that there can never be absolute certainty that a group of people sharing a conversation are talking about the same things.
To minimise problems with language, always strive for clarity. Unless you are working with people of a very similar background, avoid jargon and use words correctly. Challenge the word or phrase where you think its application is inappropriate. But even when you have used the best phrased wording, you must accept that your listener or reader may not have understood you in the way you intended. You must always avoid assuming that someone has understood you, or that you have understood someone else.
Ideally, you should always check understanding. There are situations in which you can only say something once, but as a consultant you generally have an opportunity to enter into dialogue with your clients. When you have presented important findings or made key recommendations, test that your client has understood. This should be part of your ongoing discussions with them.
Language is the central tool of the consultant, and the way you talk, present and write will determine how successful you are as a consultant. The key points to remember are: