Are You Talking to Me?

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Communications Management   ProjectsAtWork  

Communicating with a large group requires a different approach than addressing an individual or small team. But many leaders alienate a portion of the audience by not crafting a message that is relevant to their concerns. Often the devil is in the (excessive) details. Make sure you’ve heard your audience before you talk to them.

I recently observed a meeting where a group of five executives were communicating with a group of about 150 people. Judging by the smiles and pats on the back after the event, the executives felt it all went well, but the hum in the halls among the attendees told a different story. They were expressing frustration and confusion — complaints of not being able to hear or see who was speaking, bored by the messaging, much of which they felt was irrelevant to them, annoyed at the room layout, and unclear as to why the meeting had been held in the first place.

I suspect that most of you can relate to similar meetings in your organization, so how do we avoid these issues. Let’s look at some of the challenges of communicating in-person to large groups.

Understand your audience

When these things go wrong, the problems usually begin long before the meeting starts. Most large-group sessions involve some kind of messaging from a leadership function to a group of employees such as a project update or a corporate announcement. But if the …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.