The Art of Communication...or communicating in art.
On this morning’s Breakfast Show, Kevin Keegan told Chris Evans that he thought Jurgen Klopp was right up there with the best Liverpool managers of all time because – He has Passion!… for the club, the sport, the players and he communicates it:
“Communicating with the fans, not giving cryptic clues out, … he talks a language they can understand.”
This made ultimate sense to me, that by being able to communicate with Liverpool supporters, he had their backing and as Chris said, “If you have the city, the jobs half done”
This made me think of a chat I had with a friend of mine who works in education. We were discussing how our hard working teachers and support workers often go above and beyond their job role. This is partly because they are working directly with and for people whose outcomes are affected by what they do,(the same can be said for many people working on the front line) but for her it is also directly affected by the way her manager communicated the need for and ultimately their appreciation of a job well done. She is prepared to go those steps further because the way she is asked and because she knows it doesn’t go unnoticed.
I think, across the board, great communication is the key to success.
There are so many options out there to “make you a better communicator” web sites, personal development courses, blogs, self help books. People understand how important it is to success in our relationships, personal and business. Specialists also need this skill.
Good data analysts are great if they are able to interpret the patterns they see to others. They communicate the trends and comparisons to the people that need to know, in a language they understand. There are many things in an analysts toolbox to help in this task; narrative, charts, graphs, maps, tables.
Images are the ultimate communication, whether presenting big data trends and comparisons, informing people of change, getting your team on board with a new direction or presenting a complex system. We all use them; coaches draw formations on whiteboards, friends scribble maps of directions, teachers draw pretend cakes to explain fractions, we show pictures to children learning to read and follow the steps of diagrams on furniture assembly instructions. We communicate daily using infographics, even more so in the world of smart phones when text messages can be simplified by an emoji and most apps get around a lack of space by using images. ?
This is an example that I put together as part of a contest. It illustrates how sometimes the explanation of what is needed comes scribbled on the back of an envelope and it takes some careful work to create an attractive, professional image that tells the story.
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