One of my weaknesses as a senior manager was my tendency to repeat myself. One of my strengths as a senior manager was my tendency to repeat myself. In other words it was a strength and a weakness.
It was a weakness when I repeated over and over in the same team meeting why I thought this was important and why we needed to do it. It was a weakness because I assumed the silence around the table meant people weren’t convinced so I repeated my view using slightly different words. In fact if I had shut up and let them get a word in they would have talked around the issue, debated some of the points amongst themselves and come up with more reasons than I ever could for why it was the right thing to do. Maybe not quite in the way I would do it but then I wasn’t going to do it they were! I should have had more confidence in them. I should have had more confidence in myself and my ability to get the message across first time. Like many managers I needed to talk less and listen more.
It is also true than an effective communicator and that is what a manager needs to be should say the same few things over and over in lots of different ways. A consistent message, tailored to each individual audience. Different examples for different groups of staff, ones that mean something to them, stories they can relate to but always repeating the same key message.
This is not waffle where a manager keeps talking but you are not sure what the key message is. The trouble is lots of managers are rather vague about the key messages. Sometimes the key message comes in the first sentence but they feel they ought to speak for at least twenty minutes so they launch into a variety of different work topics, updates and general observations whilst their audience is wondering how does this relate to what was said at the start. The result is the audience think they have missed the point of the speech.
So the guidance is one key message per speech but half a dozen stories to illustrate the point. Subtly repeating the message by showing how it applies in different situations and circumstances. And of course having the confidence to speak less and listen more. Have I said that already?