The Message is Clear: you need to listen

Learning to communicate is as much about what you say as how you say it, writes the Times' Steve Farrar

Cary Cooper is professor of organisational psychology at Lancaster University Management School and author of Shut Up and Listen: The Truth About How to Communicate at Work. He said communication skills were vitally important.

“We should teach them to all graduates,” he said. “When two people are equally talented, what determines why one gets the job and the other doesn’t is communication skills. You can’t move up without them — there’s a communications ceiling.”

Cooper said it was important to have a passion for what you were trying to communicate as well as a grasp of the bigger picture into which your message fitted. You should also listen to your audience, to pick up on non-verbal clues such as eye contact or body posture and be able to adapt your style in response.

Peter van der Sluijs, managing director of Neesham, a public-relations firm, is a seasoned communicator — the skill at the heart of the business he has run for 11 years — but he felt Neesham could win bigger pitches if it changed its approach to presentations. In March he attended a two-day course run by Reed Learning on selling and presenting with impact. In front of the other participants, he came to realise that his pitch had been ill-judged, almost entirely focused on his company’s credentials.

He now looks at the pitch as a form of dialogue, where he has to give the potential client what he wants. As a result, sales pitches have been restructured, starting with an attention-grabbing statement, then outlining the benefits, listing Neesham’s credentials and then giving the potential client options.

“The impact has been significant and our success rate in competitive pitches has already gone up significantly,” Van der Sluijs said.
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