Did you know that most of what you "say" in person is communicated by your body language and tone rather than by the words you speak? This can be a little disheartening when rolling out an announcement or big news to a staff audience. In this month’s e-newsletter I provide four steps to success to help get around this challenge. Given the wealth of statistics that show employees are looking for leadership and direction from their employers, and notably, their senior management, there is no time like the present to brush up communications within your organization. Here’s the first step from the article. If you’d like to receive the e-newsletter you can sign up here.

Step 1. Fail to plan, plan to fail

Planning is a journey, not a destination. The simple act of planning will bring forward issues and ideas you hadn’t thought of.

· Start with your objective in mind – although obvious, it’s easy to forget. The first step to any strategic communication is defining your objective. Each message you deliver should have a specific audience and purpose.

· Make a list of all of your audiences

· Identify the role each group plays in your initiative – will they be go-to people for inquiries once the project starts? Are they a link in the chain? Do they just need to know, but won’t be directly involved? Are they responsible for training other staff and volunteers? This helps identify what information each group will need. This might even cause you to rethink timing or order of information to each group, for example, brief department leaders or go-to people first.

· Identify the issues or concerns for each group – anticipate any positive or negative reactions, and make sure you have answers for each. Remember the first question each person will have is, how will this affect me?

· Identify the action you’d like to inspire in each group – everyone needs to know his or her responsibility in the process and what you are asking each of them to do.