Communicating with impact
Communication is a good product person's secret weapon, but we don't often talk about what it looks like. Here are some things you can put into practice today.
Lately, as I work on a fully distributed team with half of them on the other side of the world, I’ve been thinking a lot about communication, and how many relationship issues with teammates and stakeholders result from communication failures — either the timing was off, or it was in a medium that people don’t consume, or you said it once at the end of a video call where it’s 9 p.m. local time for half your team.
I’m sure at this point, you’re saying, yeah, no shit. Failures of communication cause relationship breakdowns; news at 9. But I think it’s worth calling out what I mean when I say communication. There is so much more to consider than just composition and syntax. The timing, the medium, the tone, the delivery. The options can seem daunting, but it’s actually good news. It means you have numerous dials you can turn if you run into turbulence.
It’s not just about communicating the right update ahead of when it’s needed, though that’s important — it’s about having a communications strategy that is tailored to the impact of what you’re communicating, the audience you’re trying to reach, and whether you need help from them. For smaller features, it might just be something you mention in a Slack update or a review session with the folks in charge of talking about it with customers — marketing, customer success, support. For a larger feature or a new product launch, I have found it valuable to create a communication plan, where I lay out each update, the audience I need to receive it, the lead time they will need, and the most suitable medium for it. Many teams will be happy to build this type of plan with you.
While there’s an art to communication, and experience is the best teacher, I’ve found that there are a few principles that are guaranteed to strengthen your message every time.
Repetition
Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself. Information often has to be communicated multiple times, paraphrased in different ways, to ensure everyone in the audience gets it. This is why I like to follow a mantra I learned back when I started out in tech as a technical writer: “Tell them what you’re going to tell them; tell them; then tell them what you told them.” It goes against our instincts not to be annoying or waste time, but repeating an important point is often welcome.
Listening
Listening is the most important part of communication and we don’t give it nearly the airtime it needs. Real, active listening not only demonstrates that you’ve heard what’s been said — it shows that you’ve understood not just the content but the spirit in which it is given. I like to use phrases like, “Let me just say what I think I heard, and please correct me if I’m wrong...” and a trick I like to use is to intentionally paraphrase using different words from the ones used to show that I’m not just repeating things rote.
Medium
Different people prefer different types of communication, so using a single medium for an important message is inevitably going to leave some people behind. As someone with ADHD, I sometimes struggle to sustain attention in video calls, so being able to read documentation is helpful. For others, text is impossible to absorb, but a short video explainer could be just the ticket.
When communicating with someone specific, it can be useful to mirror the way they communicate with you, because that’s likely how they prefer to talk. Ensuring people are comfortable when talking with you can go a long way to making sure the message lands.
Also, make sure the medium and size of the message are proportional to the scale of the impact. If you use a big, impactful vehicle for even minor changes, they’ll start to lose their impact and folks will stop paying attention. If you use bite-sized updates to communicate things with significant impact, they’ll go unnoticed and people will be taken by surprise, which can cause major problems and foster distrust — definitely a setback that you don’t want.
Timing
Always consider the right time for information to be received. Pay attention to your organizational trends. When folks are underwater in monthly payroll or fiscal year end or a major release, this is not the time to communicate things you want people to pay attention to, especially if you want them to change their behavior or processes based on it.
A lot of us are raised with a fixed mindset toward communication — you have a talent for writing, the confidence for speaking, you’re a social person — but there is a reason they are called communication skills. They are eminently learnable and a fundamental human capability. Anyone can become a stronger communicator, and it is especially important in building collaboratively. I hope that these practical tips give folks some things to think about and try out, whether you’re establishing a foundation or refining a practiced skillset.