“A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.”

– Winston S. Churchill

Sir Winston had a way with words. That’s for sure.

Many bosses and leaders regularly address their team. Most of the time, these presentations or speeches are delivered during rather informal meetings. Sometimes they’re more formal and include some slick slide deck. Sadly, we’re in a meeting intensive era where workplace meetings often consume more time than actually getting anything done. We’re often busier meeting about the work than we are doing the work. So it goes.

Constructing and delivering effective presentations or speeches to your team is a worthwhile study, but that’s not my point today. Today, I want to focus on how we speak to our team to foster higher performance and a more achievement-driven culture.

What we say matters.

How we say it also matters.

How long and how often we say it can matter, too.

If you don’t think so, just ask any successful professional sports team coach who has been fired?

People stop listening. Some may never start.

Jack Welch died a week or so ago. In spite of how you may feel about him as a corporate leader, this much is true – the man had the ability to quickly turn a 300,000 person behemoth. Nobody in corporate history had proven as effective as Welch in getting a message through to the troops, up and down the chain. His candor cut through the clutter and got into the hearts and minds of GE employees faster than companies many times smaller than GE. General Electric had no peers during Welch’s tenure. That’s why Wall Street loved him. The man delivered financial results, not just speeches.

How much time do you spend on your speaking ability? Are you growing and improving your ability to communicate so everybody understands…clearly?

Some leaders put the burden on others. “It’s their job to know and understand what I want,” says one CEO. That’s a foolish perspective. He’s the one doing the talking. They’re listening. Yet he wants to put the full burden on them while he hides behind the fact that he’s the boss.

I’ve worked with top-level leaders who struggled with all sorts of communication challenges. Some go to great lengths to avoid confrontation. Others struggle to stand in front of a sizeable crowd. Still, others find saying precisely what they want difficult. I even worked with one CEO who intentionally communicated with ambiguity in order to create what she called, “productive tension.” Being unfamiliar with that phrase I asked and was given this explanation. “People are left to wonder about it and that makes them work harder to please me.” Interesting. Horribly abusive in my opinion, but interesting. 😉

What are we trying to accomplish when we speak? Or write?

It’s important to know the answer before we communicate. Situations dictate different desired outcomes.

What you need to communicate can range from bad news to good news, from major problems to exciting opportunities, from stern warnings to enthusiastic encouragement. Public speakers learn to know the audience. Know who you’re speaking to. Top leaders know who they’re speaking to already – or they think they do. But context, the specific context of the people, matters. Not all the people in your organization are capable of hearing the exact same communication. That doesn’t mean they can’t get the same, or similar, message, but you’d better not deliver it identically to everybody.

So you have to figure out what you need to communicate – and that will determine what you say and how long you say it. It’ll also likely impact how long you want to spend saying it.