3 Steps To Get Your Point Across

Courtesy of Dreamstime.com

You have an idea, message, or point you want to get across.  So you sit down to figure out the best form of communicating.  Maybe it’s through hosting the ultimate meeting, with a dynamic keynote.  Or, maybe you spend time crafting the perfect flyer that you’ll email and snail mail out.  Maybe, you communicate your point with a funny, viral video on youtube.  You come up with ten different ways of communicating your point and do them all only to feel like no one is listening.
For a third year in a row our church has taken a more simple approach to the way we do Christmas.  The idea is to remove all distractions and focus solely on Christ.  Simple message; yet hard to do.  There is tension to maintain the holiday spirit without losing focus on why it exists; however, it is possible.  The first two years this message created a little bit of buzz; however, this year it’s picking up some steam.  One of the most important values we forget when it comes to communication is PATIENCE.  Without patience we lose hope and forget that to get a message across we need to:

1. Repeat: Repetition is important, repetition is important, repetition is important because it becomes familiar, and when something is familiar it’s more comforting, we have more time to wrap our emotions around it.  On top of patience you need persistence, so don’t say something once, say it until others are sick of it.
2. Clarify: Chance are the first time you do something complicated it’s won’t be clear.  Especially, if it requires a lot of paradigm shifts.  Spend time on what it is you want to communicate, how you want to communicate and to whom specifically you want to communicate to.  You can never be too clear.
3. Apply: If you preach and teach something you don’t live out, it’s going to be very hard to communicate. If you preach wise money management but don’t manage it yourself, then you aren’t going to be able to speak to people’s emotions. If you talk the talk but don’t walk the walk people are going to know and they are going to have a hard time grasping onto a hypocrites message.  You don’t have to be perfect, you just need to be authentic.

Again, the key is PATIENCE, without it you’ll just get frustrated.  A message takes time, it takes care because no two people will hear it the same way.  Also give your listeners time to digest, process and apply your message to their lives.  Give them permission to push back and follow up.  A message that’s well crafted, repeated and fueled with passion will find it’s way.

Are you happy with these three steps or would you add something else?