Less Chatter, More Matter: The Communications Podcast

#67 Inspire change with these key messaging tips

• Season 1 • Episode 67

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This week on the Less Chatter, More Matter podcast we've diving into change messaging and how you can make sure yours is effective, inspires action and resonates with your audience.

Generally, we've seen a lot of change messaging filled with corporate language, jargon and a lot of inpersonal content. All of which doesn't inspire anyone to do anything, nor does it influence people to know, feel or do something that they have traditionally done a certain way for a long time.

So, using experience, behavioural science and the magic of effective comms theory - we've boiled all of that down into five key tips on making sure your change messaging hits the right way, every time. Find out more in this week's episode!


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Mel:

Hi, and welcome to Less Chatter, More Matter, a podcast about all things communication without the waffle. I'm your host, Mel Loy, and in this show, I will give you short, punchy, practical communication tips and insights. You can start using in your communication practices right away. I'm a former corporate communication executive who happily took a redundancy, started my own business and never looked back. These days I use my 20 plus years of experience to help guide organisations of all shapes and sizes in how to communicate more effectively. I'm wife to Michael, cat mum to Cookie, aunty to 12 nieces and nephews, a yoga teacher, and a group fitness fanatic. I promise these episodes will always be short, sharp, and helpful, so let's get amongst it. Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode and another week. It is awesome to have you here. Before we kick off today, I have a small favour to ask. Each podcast episode takes at least two hours to prepare, record and edit, which means each year we're spending more than a hundred hours to bring you free learning. Now, I love doing it because I really believe that sharing knowledge is how we keep improving communication and keep improving the profession, but it's also how we improve work and personal relationships. All I'm asking of you, if you haven't already, would you be a helper and please take a couple of minutes to rate and review the show. It really does make these hours worthwhile and it helps us to know what's working and of course, what I can improve. Now, speaking of improving, if you've been listening to the show for a while now, you'll know I'm a huge lover of learning. I am a self described lifelong learner. Which is part of the reason why I'm in Sydney this week. I'm attending the Rethink Change conference where I'll be participating in a couple of masterclasses. So I'm really looking forward to that and looking forward to all the other sessions at the conference where I get to learn from wonderful change professionals from all over Australia. I'm also speaking at the conference itself on the topic of change comms, of course. Now, I've only got 45 minutes, so I can't talk about all the things, but I am focusing on the most important things. And that is that people are at the centre of change, not deliverables. And that means that people are at the centre of our communications too. But too often the change messaging that I see is completely ineffective. It's full of corporaties, jargon, and it doesn't really resonate with your audiences. If you want people to know, feel, and do something differently, then you've got to put their perspectives and experiences at the centre when you're writing your messaging. Also, you've got to think about what would actually get them to change their minds on something. So today I'm going to share five tips for writing effective change messages. And some of these are based off my own experiences and others are based on the power of behavioral science. So let's get into it. The first tip is to make sure your messaging balances both the head and the heart. And what I mean by this is you need to make sure you're not just talking about the facts, but also recognising that you are talking to humans. And those humans have feelings. Messaging that appeals to the head appeals to our sense of logic. So these types of messages talk about things like the business reasons why something is changing, the facts, the benefits of the change, and the WIIFM Principle. What's in it for me? Messaging that appeals to the heart has emotion woven into it, and it also includes that sense of empathy, showing an understanding of the audience and their unique contexts and experiences. It helps people feel seen. So for example, a message like, I know I've asked for a lot of change in the last few months, and I know this is adding to our already busy schedules. Yes, it's stating the obvious, but it's showing that people are acknowledged in their feelings. Both the head and the heart are equally important. If you want to make a compelling case for change, then you absolutely need good reasons as to why. And that means facts and evidence. It means logic. If you want people to actually change, then they also need to feel like you care and that they're valued and seen. So that means that we need messaging that draws on emotions. Now, interestingly, Neuroscientists have found that you can't have one without the other. Both the logic part of our brain, which is the prefrontal cortex, and the emotional part of our brain, the anterior insula, are very active during decision making. What is super interesting, though, is that in studies of people who had damage to the emotional part of their brain, they struggled to make decisions at all. We absolutely need to have emotional connection through our messaging if we're going to get people over the line. It's like the wonderful Maya Angelou once said, people don't care what you know until they know that you care. Okay, the second tip for your change messaging is to make sure you are writing from your audience's perspective, not from your perspective or the business's perspective. And by the way, this isn't just about messages for change. So many comms messages make this mistake. And whether that's for campaigns, Business as usual, operational comms, et cetera. So when we're writing from our own perspective, we are performing the cardinal communication sin of not focusing on our audience. What we should always be approaching comms with is making sure we've got our audience hat on. Think about what's important to them. It's the good old, old fashioned, what's in it for me, the WIIFM principle. Too often messaging is written with the what's in it for my business mind instead. So, for example, here's a message that could be written from the business's perspective."As part of our commitment to excellence, we're conducting a brief survey to gather feedback on our services. Your input is invaluable to us. Please take a few moments to complete the survey linked below." So that might not sound so bad, but what you may notice, if you go back and listen to that again, is there's a lot of use of the words like we, our, us, so it's all about them. It's also all about the benefit to the business. There's nothing about what the reader gets out of it. All it says is the company apparently has a commitment to excellence. So what? It's also very vague. It could belong to anyone or any business. If we were to rewrite that for the reader's perspective, it could sound something like this. And I'm pretending this is an insurance company."If you want us to make your insurance work better for you, this is your chance. Take a few minutes to complete our brief survey and share your feedback on our services." So notice there's words like you and your in that sentence. It leads with what the reader gets out of it, which is better insurance services. It's also tailored to the audience because it's about their insurance products, not about the business in general. So you see, there's quite a few differences there. And it's not just requests for action like that example, though. When you are writing your key messages and talking about the benefits of change, talk about the benefits for your audience. During change, if people can't see a benefit in doing something differently, it's very unlikely they'll do it. Instead, they will find a workaround or they will avoid the action altogether. So you have to make a compelling case with your messaging and talk about those benefits to the audience. Here's another example I shared on my LinkedIn a few weeks ago."We are implementing this new payroll system to ensure all our systems integrate more seamlessly and we have improved reporting. This will strengthen our organisation's governance." Again, notice it's all about the benefits to the organisation. It's about their systems integrating, their governance improving. But honestly, so what? What does this mean to Joe Bloggs sitting in the mail room, for example? Now, I asked readers of that post to give me their suggestions on how this message could be rewritten from the reader's perspective. And I love what Helen Goodwin came up with. Shout out to Helen. And by the way, she's an extremely talented writer, so this is on brand for her. She wrote the reader's perspective like this."What's new? Our payroll system. What does it mean for you? Get paid on time, every time, thanks to a seamless system integration behind the scenes. Access all your payslips from the past X months and get detailed reports at tax time. Know your pay and bank details are secure with our top notch organisational governance." How good is that? It's a friendly tone. It gets to the point about what it means for the audience. It's all about them. Love it. So I'm sure you get the idea now. Think about what's important to your audience. And if you see a lot of words like we or our in your writing, those could be little red flags that you're writing from your perspective, not from the perspective of your audience. Okay, the third piece of advice for constructing your change comms messaging is to talk not just about what is changing, but what's not changing as well. Now here's why. There's this thing called the status quo bias, and it is very powerful. We love the status quo. That comes from the old parts of our brains that were designed to keep us safe, and so therefore we avoided taking risks. The status quo bias, unfortunately, results in us resisting change, of course, but it also means we can delay or even just avoid decision making altogether. The other piece of this is loss aversion. So loss aversion theory was developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. And what they found is that people typically value potential losses more than they value potential gains. In fact, a potential gain has to be perceived as at least twice as good as a potential loss, if we're even to consider changing. Now, what this means for change comms is we have to work really hard to make the potential gains. Or the change that we want people to do seem really good, really beneficial, particularly when people might perceive they're losing something in the process. But more importantly, it means we need to play to this sense of comfort people get in the status quo, which means your messaging should include information about what's not changing. So for example, maybe you're implementing a new platform for people to log maintenance issues at their store or their site, and you can talk about how the platform will make it quicker and easier for those issues to be resolved. And yes, that is a benefit, but if people are already used to using another platform, or God forbid, a paper based system. They might be uncomfortable with using something new. So in that case, talk about what's not changing. Maybe the process itself won't change. It's just the platform that's changing, or the escalation of those issues won't change, or even the form fields will be similar to what they're used to already. Find the points of similarity or the things that aren't changing as well as the points of difference. It will give people that sense of comfort and they won't feel so overwhelmed by the change. Okay, the fourth tip for your messaging is to avoid hedging language and use concrete language instead. Now, hedging language is when we use words or phrases that soften a message. So in comms, it's that kind of language is often, that's often used to keep things intentionally vague or flexible. And it's usually done because people fear being wrong. They fear something won't go to plan or they want to distance themselves from a decision that's been made. Now, the problem with using hedging language instead of concrete language is that it reduces the confidence in your message and in the person delivering it. And in change, we want to reduce fear by increasing certainty. We help to increase certainty by showing confidence in the decisions that are being made. So here's an example of hedging language."We believe the changes will not be as significant as some people think, and it appears the senior executive team seems to be confident in the future direction of the business." So in that example, words like we believe, not as significant, appears, etc, etc, they're all examples of hedging language. They are not concrete, and they do not inspire confidence. So instead, we could say, "the change is going to be less significant than anticipated, and the senior executive team is confident in the direction of the business." Not only is that more concrete, it's more confidence and it's more concise, which again is excellent for great comms. Uh, here's another example of hedging language in action."The new system should be available for testing by mid year, and we hope to bring everyone on board a few months later." Now, firstly, there is nothing concrete about that message, and it's very common of many change messages I've seen before, especially with tech implementations. It's intentionally vague because they know it might not go to plan. But the flip side is it gives no confidence to the audience. And if we're using words like it should be available and we hope to bring people on board, there's no concrete timeframe either. So the audience may be left thinking, why on earth are you telling me about this then? Even if you think there's a risk to the project not progressing to plan, you can still be more concrete than not. So for example, we could rewrite that to be, "we are scheduling testing of the new system for June and the rollout for September. If the schedule changes, we will let you know." So it still covers your butt, but it gives confidence. Okay. The final tip for today on creating change messaging is to use language that implies a personal identity. So what does that mean? Well, sometimes it is as simple as adding one or two extra letters to a word. So for example, instead of asking someone to lead change, we can ask them to be a change leader. Instead of asking somebody to drive change, you could ask them to be a change driver. I know it seems like such a small difference in language, but it really makes a big difference to getting people to act. And there's a few studies that back this up. One of the most famous is from the USA when during an election season, researchers asked one group of people if they would vote and asked others if they would become voters. And those who were asked to become voters were much more likely to show up and cast their ballot. Another study involved groups of kindergarten children. When there was a mess to clean up, they were asked if they would help clean up, while another group was asked if they would be helpers. And again, the language that implied the identity, which in this case was helpers, resulted in more action. So, in your messaging, start to look at how you might turn some of those verbs, like taking action, leading change, etc, into nouns, and see what happens. Okay, it's time for the episode recap. Today, I shared five tips on messaging to help you become an even better change communicator. Number one, balance head and heart. Make sure you appeal to both the logic and the emotion parts of your audience's brains. Number two, write from the reader's perspective. Make it about what's in it for them, not what's in it for the business. Number three, talk about what's not changing. Remember, people love the status quo and are adverse to risk. So reminding them that some things will stay the same can help counter resistance. Number four, use concrete language. Avoid using hedging language that softens the message or makes it vague. Inspire confidence by using concrete language and examples. And number five, use language that implies an identity. So take those note verbs and turn them into nouns. So for example, using change leader rather than leading change. Now, if you'd like to learn more about change communication, you are in luck, my friend. Next week, I'm running our next change communication skills, virtual bootcamp. It's a 75 minute webinar every day for four days. You'll get access to the recordings, the templates, all the materials for 18 months afterwards. And score a free copy of my book. Huzzah. Also, because we're approaching the end of financial year, I'm offering a sneaky 24 percent discount because FY 24. So if you'd like to take advantage of that, head to the link in the show notes to enrol and use the code HMC24 to get your discounted ticket. Okay, folks, that's all we have time for today. Next week's episode is in the can, and I can't wait to share it with you. I've interviewed an absolute expert superstar on how to make the complex simple in your comms. And you are going to love this one. And hopefully I'll see a few more of you online next week with the change comms bootcamp. In the meantime, keep doing amazing things and bye for now.