Communication is critical for our professional and our personal lives.
I'm Matt Abrahams, and I'm a lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and the host of the GSB's Think Fast, Talk Smart, The Podcast.
I am so excited today to share with you five key takeaways from my class, essentials of strategic communication.
When it comes to our communication, many of us make a fundamental mistake, we start from the wrong place.
We start by saying, this is what I want to say, rather than thinking about what our audience needs to hear.
We need to do reconnaissance, reflection, and research to better understand our audience's knowledge level, their attitudes, their resistance points, along with their expectations and motivation.
By taking the time to really think about our audience, we can make sure that our messages resonate, and are more likely to be remembered, and acted upon.
Most communication needs to be goal-driven, especially strategic communication.
To me, a goal has three parts, information, emotion, and action.
In other words, what do you want your audience to know?
