Outbound communication

Getting the outbound communication right is vital for your team's brand and reputation, which contributes to building trust and influence with other teams and stakeholders, as well as your team's own confidence.

After a healthy and constructive internal discussion on an important matter, the outbound message that is then communicated externally should ideally be consistent and coherent. If there is no consensus or agreement internally, then that itself should be communicated, but in an articulate and concise way.

The manager does not always need to be a spokesperson for the team, which would create another single point of failure. Instead, outbound communication can be delivered in a number of ways, and by different team members, which can actually strengthen the message being delivered.

Different people will have different approaches to presenting the same message. Furthermore, the variety itself and simple novelty in having a different person speak up is a powerful tool. A good manager can recognize this phenomenon and the opportunity to use it to empower and develop the team.

Having said that, on some delicate matters, the manager may be the only appropriate person to communicate externally. This can have a big impact on stakeholder management, which we'll come to shortly.

On an individual level, confidence is the key component in delivering an assured and convincing message. The most widely accepted science behind personal communication is the 7-38-55% Rule, by Dr. Albert Mehrabian. While his research and findings are specific to communications of feelings and attitudes, the simplified formula is still useful because a lot of communication is about feelings and attitudes, like confidence.

When the message is more factual, it's natural that the content or words themselves become more significant, for example, in a release note, bug or performance report, or something more quantitative such as a metrics report. However, how these artifacts are prepared and presented is still important. If a TV newsreader gets their line wrong repeatedly and the line is hesitantly delivered, then you're much less likely to believe the story being reported, even though it may be the truth. Confidence breeds confidence.

If your outbound message to a project steering group is that the project has been delayed, you need to be sure of the reasons and be able to confidently express them and defend them if necessary. Your spoken words, how you say those words, and your facial expression or body language, all affect the audience's confidence level and response, in a ratio of 7-38-55%, respectively.

In the simple pie chart in Figure 2.2, you can see that the spoken words element is insignificant in comparison with voice, tone, and body language:

Therefore, it is useful to remember that how you say something can be more influential than what you say. The delivery should always support the content. This makes the recipient's experience more authentic and their impression of the messenger more genuine.