How to Deliver a Compelling Message?

You need to send out clear messages to communicate effectively, because without clear messages, your audience will get muddled signals. It has happened in numerous corporate stakeholder meetings where different parties end up with different take-aways from a meeting.

To deliver a compelling message, a speaker can use any of these following four techniques −

The Burning Platform
The benefits for you are…
This aligns with corporate goals because…
This is what success looks like

Let us now discuss the above given techniques in detail.

The Burning Platform

This approach provides a hypothetical scenario of what happens if changes are not made and the goals are not achieved. This technique is also known as the technique of introducing the opportunity cost or failed opportunity price. It proves extremely effective especially in the face of some crisis.

People in such cases are already aware of the issues and will be listening to the consequences of any further inaction with a lot of attention.

The benefits for you are…

This approach provides the audience a more personal point of view. The audience members will understand that they stand to win something for their own and family, if the goals are to be achieved.

If there are no benefits to the people individually, there will be no motive or drive behind their participation or actions. It then becomes very difficult to motivate people as they don’t see any personal benefit in the goals being realized.

This Aligns with Corporate Goals because…

This type of speech helps address the issues that critics raise on the new changes and whether they are going to be in accordance to corporate compliance. Some changes, especially the ones that step into unchartered territory, are met with some opposition and cynicism.

However, in such cases, the onus is on the speaker to clarify how the goals are in line with the vision and mission of the organization. The speaker can also pull out previous company decisions in similar scenarios from their archives, and quote any precedent to such changes, if any.

This is what Success looks like

This is the opposite of the burning platform technique, but is equally effective and when used with the former technique, it is an unmatchable combination. Using this technique, the speaker can first set the agenda and then deliver the resolution.

Here, instead of talking on – ‘how the not meeting of goals can prove disastrous’, the person speaks on ‘what goals can do for the company’. This helps in providing a vision of how the success will look like to the people in their professional and personal lives.