Spell It: Discover three tactics famous leaders use to communicate effectively

When American billionaire entrepreneur Jeff Bezos was building Amazon, he placed so much value on writing skills that, in 2004, he banned all PowerPoint presentations.

Click start to play today’s Spell It, and add 44 words to your vocabulary, as we talk about the importance of effective communication.

Instead of PowerPoint, Bezos began the practice of presenting with ‘narratively structured memos’, which contained titles, and full sentences, and included verbs and nouns.

He’s not the only leader to focus so obsessively on communication skills. According to a November 2022 report in US-based business news website Harvard Business Review (HBR), communication is no longer thought to be a soft skill in the world of business – there’s a constant drive to improve writing, speaking, and presenting skills, and to study new ways of sending across a message effectively.

Here are four tactics that leaders use, to communicate with their teams, according to the HBR report:

1. Use short words, especially when conveying something difficult

If you want people to lose their concentration and feel mentally fatigued, then long, complicated sentences would achieve this task. But short, coherent language always wins, in every context. In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman wrote: “If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do.” So, don’t think you’re dumbing down content when you simplify a message – it’s actually the smartest thing to do.

2. Choose sticky metaphors

Metaphors compare abstract concepts to familiar ideas, and in the business world, they are excellent tools to communicate complex information in snappy phrases. For instance, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield gave a TED Talk about his experience when rocketing into space – a concept that most of us find hard to imagine. His description was full of metaphors that instantly helped the audience connect: “Six seconds before launch, suddenly, this beast starts roaring like a dragon starting to breathe fire. You’re like a little leaf in a hurricane…As those engines light, you feel like you’re in the jaws of an enormous dog that is shaking you and physically pummeling you with power.”

3. Humanise data, add value

If you’re presenting a series of statistics, charts and numbers, you’ll soon find that it adds to cognitive weight, and drains people of their mental energy. With every number, think of ways to make it engaging and memorable, and even persuasive. American astrophysicist and science educator Neil deGrasse Tyson did this in 1997, when US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) announced the launch of the Cassini space probe to explore Saturn. People around the country were shocked by the project’s $3 billion (Dh11 billion) price tag, so when Tyson appeared on a TV talk show, he broke it down for viewers. He explained that the amount would be spread over eight years – and that Americans spent more money on lip balm every year than Nasa would spend on the Saturn mission over that entire period. Talk about perspective!

What do you think of these communication strategies? Play today’s Spell It and tell us at games@gulfnews.com.