[clear thinking ezine]
Helping foundations, nonprofits and progressive businesses make a
bigger impact.
This issue: Create Your Team of Rivals
From Clear Thinking Communications and Susan Parker
Please pass this issue on to your colleagues.
Word count: 949
Estimated read time: About 4 minutes
Article: Create Your Team of Rivals
President Obama has popularized the term "team of rivals" by
appointing several former rivals for the presidency to his Cabinet.
By doing so, he is surrounding himself with people who will debate
and argue with him. He will get the benefit of other ways of
thinking and viewing the world. He will, I believe, be a stronger
and better leader by having the strength to invite other people's
viewpoints to the table.
It's a great idea and one that can help you in your communications
work.
By creating your own team of rivals, you will strengthen your work
as a communicator. By team of rivals, I mean anyone who thinks in a
different way than you do.
At the heart of good communication is clear thinking. The better
you can think through what you want to say and who you want to
reach, the better you communicate.
The problem is that it isn't enough to rely on your own clear
thinking. Your approach to viewing the world is shaped by your
experiences, your biases and the way you use your brain. To get the
level you have reached, it's an approach that works. It's just not
enough.
Here's an example of the rut that many communications professionals
fall into: an unquestioned love of storytelling. In
communications, many of us believe that story telling is the
central way to get our message across.
People will only be moved to take action, the theory goes, if they
are moved by the emotion of a well told story. I agree--mostly.
Story telling can always play a central role in any
communications campaign.
But stories aren't the panacea that communications professionals
make them out to be. They can be misleading, incomplete and worst
of all, irritating to the audience who you want to reach.
I once wrote a report on a multi-million program that paired
volunteers with people who were homebound. The program abounded
with feel-good stories, which I duly reported.
But my editor, a former program officer at a large foundation, was
unimpressed. So what? she asked. Where is the data that shows that
this program made a difference in the community, in the health care
system, in any way at all?
She was right and her hard-nosed insistence on finding the facts is
shared by others in the field. As a result, I went back, read the
evaluation reports again, and found only stories that illustrated
findings from the evaluation. I included some stories that exemplified evaluation
findings about the failures of the program. It made my report stronger and more
likely to reach a broader audience, including people like my data-driven editor.
On your team of rivals, find someone who loves data--it may be
someone in accounting, evaluation or a program director. They will
help you stay grounded and make sure that your communications
materials respond to people like them.
Here's another good person to have on your team: the skeptic. This
can be a person who asks a million questions, who wants to know
about the failures of a program that you might wish that people
would just go ahead and implement, or fund or in general embrace
whole heartedly. The skeptic is often irritating--and worth
listening to closely.
The skeptic is great to have on your team because she asks
questions that many people in your audience will ask as well.
People know that no program that a foundation funds or nonprofit
organization carries out is perfect. They want to know what worked
and what didn't. What lessons did you learn from your failures? What
are you doing differently as a result? They will not buy the story you are
trying to sell unless you acknowledge that the program had its flaws.
In recent years, foundations like the James Irvine Foundation have
received a lot of attention and praise because they are open about
the mistakes they've made. The Irvine Foundation's
"Mid-Course Corrections"
report about the failures of one of its largest programs was published in 2007
and is still generating talk in 2009.
I recently spoke to an executive at a large nonprofit who felt that
his organization had made a major mistake by refusing to communicate
the failures of its key program. One of the consequences of that
failure was that the organization's own employees did not know that
they were about to lose their jobs.
"What I like about the Irvine report is that they very clearly said
what went wrong and why," this executive said. "That's what I felt
what was missing with us. When there isn't clear communication
people feel betrayed."
If you don't take into account these other ways of thinking, you
risk missing out on connecting with a huge segment of the people
who you most want to influence.
To create your own team of rivals, walk down the hallway. When you
are thinking about a communications campaign or simply how to get a
message across, take the time to walk down to accounting, the
evaluation department, administration or anywhere you can find
someone who thinks differently than you do.
If it's someone who slightly annoys you with their requests for
data or skeptical questions, all the better. Ask them what they
think about what you're doing. Ask them for their input. And
listen. Withhold judgment. See what they say. Pay attention to how
it is different from the way you think.
You will get valuable information, I promise.
And it won't cost you a cent.
When you withhold judgment about another person's way of thinking,
you can see another view--a view that many of the people that you're
trying to reach might hold as well.
*********
Clear Thinking Consultations
If you have something to communicate but aren't sure exactly where
to start, call for our free 30-minute consultation "Five Questions
To Ask Before You Start Worrying About Communicating." We'll help
you think clearly about your goals, spot any potential problems and
get a preliminary roadmap for next steps.
If you enjoy Clear Thinking, please forward it to friends and
colleagues.
© 2008 Susan Parker, Clear Thinking Communications. All rights
reserved. You are free to use material from the Clear Thinking
eZine in whole or in part, as long as you include complete
attribution, including live web site link. Please also notify me
where the material will appear.
The attribution should read:
"By Susan Parker of Clear Thinking Communications. Please visit
Clear Thinking Communication's web site at
www.clearthinkingcommunications.com for additional tips on
communications for foundations, nonprofits and progressive
businesses." (Make sure the link is live if placed in an eZine or
in a web site.)
PRIVACY and SPAM POLICY: I never rent, trade or sell my email list
to anyone for any reason whatsoever. You'll never get an
unsolicited email from a stranger as a result of joining this list.
Just complete the simple form. It takes about 20 seconds. And
you'll also get our free article "Are Your Good Works Going
Unnoticed? Seven Mistakes that Foundations and Nonprofits Make (And
How to Fix Them)."
Want to unsubscribe to Clear Thinking? No problem. Go to the link
at very bottom of this page. Click on that and it will take you to
a web page where you can unsubscribe with just one click.
Return to Archive
