Clarity

In The Box Podcast

Episode 22: Stealing Ideas, Working With Narcissists, Making Art For Yourself And More – Podcast

Garth Beyer

On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we took a stab at answer questions about making art for others or for yourself, one way to gain clarity when faced with a decision between two options, why people fear their ideas getting stolen, one way to handle a heavier workload (likely due to a promotion) and what to do when engaging with a narcissist. Enjoy.

Episode 22: Stealing Ideas, Working With Narcissists, Making Art For Yourself And More

Art – Make art for self or others?

Decisions – One way to gain clarity when confused about making a decision?

Stolen – Should people fear their ideas being stolen?

Responsibility load – What is one way to handle being given more responsibility (think like getting a promotion)?

Bonus – One way to deal with interacting with a narcissist?

 

Stay Positive & Remember to subscribe

Right And Clear

Garth Beyer

I was in the middle of a discussion about the use of the word “regret” in a client training memo. The word was being used in an extremely untraditional way.

One person thought it made sense. The other, not so much.

Not having been involved in the project, it was a fresh term and client for me. The two discussing the term asked my opinion and I had to say both were right.

It was the right use of the word, but I didn’t believe it was a clear use of it.

Often times when a disagreement takes place, the discussion leans toward who is right and who is wrong, often failing to result in a decision that’s clear.

Which is more important to you? Being right or being clear?

 

Stay Positive & Be Selfless, Be Clear

Seeking Clarity

Garth Beyer

I hear a lot of good ideas. (Yes, nearly everyone I meet I ask what they would work on if they had all the time and resources to make it happen.)

I see a lot of people quickly give up on their good ideas because when they communicated them, they didn’t communicate them clearly and got discouraged.

Certainly if you can’t communicate your idea, it’s not a good one, right?

You see where I’m going here.

We need to surround ourselves with people who don’t criticize our ideas, but point out the spaces which aren’t clear.

When people ask about your idea, (usually) they’re not trying to break you; they’re sharing their confusion with you.

When I ask a question to flush out someone’s idea and I know they can’t respond immediately, I say, “you don’t need to respond right now. Think about it differently and get back to me later.” Sadly, few understand clarity is something figured out over time.

For now, know you have permission to go back to the drawing board, you have permission to suck, you have permission to think about it a bit more.

For great (not just good!) ideas follow these steps:

1) share your ideas

2) listen to people’s confusion so you know what you need to clarify

3) break. think about things differently

4) share your idea again

5) repeat steps 2-5

 

Stay Positive & Please Don’t Get Held Up On Step 1

Overcoming Communication Palisades: Part Two

Garth Beyer

Yesterday you learned a four-step process to overcoming communication palisades. Now I am happy to present the Public Relations checklist for overcoming communication barriers, also known as the 7 C’s of Effective Communication.

7 C’s of Effective Communication: Clarity, Conciseness, Consideration, Completeness, Coherency, Courtesy, and Correctness.

1. Clarity: The more you focus on something, the more clear it becomes. Make sure you maintain your focus by only communicating a specific message by using concrete wording and adding emphasis only to the message itself, not tangents of the message.

2. Conciseness: Many reporters will take pages of notes on an event and go back to high light only the important facts. Being concise is creating a message out of only those highlighted features. Conciseness involves minimizing word usage; it is the combination of “brief” and “point”.

3. Consideration: Quite plainly, know your audience. Stick your feet in their shoes and wear them out. Consideration is about tweaking the words that you have used to focus on what you want to deliver, so that they also adhere to the wants and needs of the audience who will receive the message. This is your opportunity to empathize.

4. Completeness: Completeness is about representation, about credibility, about conveying all the facts accordingly. In conveying all the facts, it answers any questions that may be sparked by the presented information. When you work on making something complete, it is the only time that it is expected to add more information to the focus so that it answers those questions.

5. Coherency: While a message may have all its facts, do they flow? Making a communication coherent insinuates adding transitional phrases, checking and re checking the wording, and breaking the message into segments while maintaining the connections.

6. Courtesy: Remember the end of Overcoming Communication Palisades: Part One?    Be human and stay positive.

7. Correctness: Being straightforward, get an editor. In fact, get five editors, a few friends, and a couple of co-workers or other people in the PR field to review your message. Just do it, you may never realize how much it matters, but if you don’t do it, you will. That’s the unsatisfying result of correctness.

As everything in PR and communication, there are always more ways to look at definitions, tables, concepts, etc,. Other C’s that get thrown into the fray: credibility, content, context, continuity, capability, channels, and concreteness. All of which involve some part or another of the concepts I have presented.