Tuesday Tips

When you communicate, how interesting do you want to be?

A lot? A bit? Don’t know? Don’t care?

Most people I ask would rather be interesting, than not.

But let’s be honest: most communications aren’t that interesting, are they? We’ve all sat through pointless meetings, tedious presentations, received sprawling emails…

Fortunately, to be “a lot” interesting, there are only two steps to master:

1. Know what people find interesting
2. Use them

For the first of these, we all know what people find interesting:

• Humour
• Interactivity
• Stories
• Analogies
• Variety
• Passion
• Brevity
• Etc

We all know this.

So, why are so many comms boring?

Simple. Because people don’t use these interesting things.

Here’s what I’ve found to be the simplest way to be interesting:

1. Create your list of “interesting things” – like my list above
2. When you’ve completed a communication, ensure you include at least one “interesting thing” every couple of minutes/paragraphs
3. Use a highlighter pen to highlight all these “interesting things”
4. Check to see if there are any sections which aren’t highlighted (since “highlighting” = “interesting”, that means that “unhighlighted” = “potentially boring”)
5. For any unhighlighted areas, insert 1-2 “interesting things” – ask a question, tell a story etc – to break it up
6. Remove all evidence of your highlighter pen, and send the communication!

And that’s it. Nice and easy. And now…

Action Point