Communication Tips

On our August 2024 Leadership Call, John Coonrod provide a few helpful resources for effective communication strategies, and to make the best of our limited time.

Make good use of Google Contacts, especially the “Labels” feature. Each contact can have as many labels as you want (eg, Members, Vendors, Officials) and you can send an email to everyone in a label by entering it in the “To” line.
There are Google Sheets Mail Merge Extensions that allow you to send personalized emails to a whole group of people. I use “Yet Another Mail Merge” which has a free tier for small lists or an annual fee for large lists, and it keeps track of message opens, responses, clicks and bounces.
Active Voice. In English there are two voices: active (subject verb object – “I broke the dish.” and passive (the dish got broken.). Often academic and bureaucratic writers use passive voice, which is both boring and hides accountability. Always use active voice.
The Rule of Three in writing. The rule of three is a writing principle based on the idea that humans process information through pattern recognition. As the smallest number that allows us to recognize a pattern in a set, three can help us craft memorable phrases. Some exemples: “I came, I saw, I conquered”, “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”. For more writing tips, click here.
The Rule of Three in Answering Questions. Sometimes you’ll be asked a question that you don’t have a ready response for! If you say “There are three things you should know about that” it will jump start your mind and provide you with those three things, and you’ll stay concise so that you won’t give them 17 things..
The Rule of Three in Photography. Similarly, the human eye prefers things that align with ⅓ of the frame – vertically, horizontally or both. Many cameras have an option to show you a grid to help you frame your picture.
Google Photos (photos.google.com) is the best tool for busy people. It offers three great advantages (rule of three!). It stores photos very efficiently, it lets you share entire albums of photos with a simple lin, and it has a wonderful editor that lets you crop and correct the lighting without permanently changing the original photo.
The 3-30-3 Rule. You have just 3 seconds to get enough of someone’s attention for them to give you 30 seconds. You then have 30 seconds to get them interested enough to give you three minutes. You should not try to get more than 3 minutes.

Featured photo: Unsplash