Sustainability – Effective Communication

Have you ever seen an audience turn off when sustainability, resource management or regulatory compliance is being discussed.  Perhaps consideration of some or all of the following may help you to be more engaging:

  1. Too technical  â€“ using language that is incomprehensible
  2. Jargon â€“ lazy thinking  – jargons need translating into everyday terms
  3. Ambiguous – either from a lack of clarity of ideas or from complicated ideas
  4. Lacking emotion – missing the emotional connection with the audience
  5. Too emotional – filling consumers with a sense of fear or failure or disbelief
  6. Being just like everybody else – boring !! – communicate what makes you different from competitors
  7. Disconnected – do you have a consistent story across everything and have your employees bought into it?

As individuals we can do a number of  key things to communicate better:

  • Pause
  • Actively listen
  • Focus on an immediate benefit
  • Go beyond words – do something
 Nelson Mandela said: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.”