The Hidden Key

to Communication Success

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THE HIDDEN KEY
TO COMMUNICATION SUCCESS
ON FEBRUARY 1, 2003, as the space shuttle
Columbia was descending over Texas for its
scheduled landing in Florida, the friction of the
descent heated the atmosphere around it to
thousands of degrees. This is a routine part of
shuttle re-entry, and it is the reason the
underside of the spacecraft is covered with
heat-resistant ceramic tiles. On this occasion,
however, some of the heated air entered a hole
in the leading edge of the left wing, destroying
its internal structure and setting in motion a
series of events that eventually caused the
craft to disintegrate, killing all the crew mem-
bers aboard.
The fatal hole in the edge of the wing was
caused by a chunk of foam debris that fell off
the shuttle's large external fuel tank during
launch and struck the wing at about 500 miles
per hour. Video cameras observed the strike
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but not the hole in the wing. A few engineers
in NASA, however, thought it could be serious.
While the shuttle orbited for 15 days, the engi-
neers who were concerned about the risk tried
to bring it to managers who could have made a
decision to cancel re-entry and stage a rescue.
But the danger was never effectively communi-
cated. In a sense, the loss of Columbia was a
failure of organizational communication.
We Are Awash in Communication Failure
But the only thing special about this particular
communication failure was its tragic result.
Communication failures only rarely cause the
loss of expensive spacecraft and precious lives.
But these failures are a common feature of
everyday business life. The truth is, we are
awash in communication failure. Every busi-
ness has stories (or secrets!) about them.
Shipments sent to the wrong city, out-of-spec
products delivered, deadlines missed, and even
interdepartmental feuds are common conse-
quences of miscommunication.
Partly because people actively cover them up,
the total cost of communication failure is
unknown. But that doesn't mean businesses
don't understand its magnitude. When was the
last time you saw a “help wanted” notice that
did not say, “excellent communication skills
required”? The Job Outlook 2005 survey of the
National Association of Colleges and
Employers (NACE) found communication skills
to be the highest-rated quality in job candi-
dates. According to the NACE, “written and
verbal communication skills” has topped the
list of desirable qualities in their employer sur-
vey since 1999.
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 This understanding has produced a significant
demand for communication training. A Google
search on “communication training” yields over
54 million hits. “Communication training com-
panies” yields over 13 million. Most business
schools offer courses in oral and written com-
munication as part of their core curricula.
The Nature of Human Communication
Human communication, of course, is the func-
tion of language. Studies on the origin of lan-
guage have been, unfortunately, among the
least productive studies of any area of science.
Human language is based on speech, and
speech by definition leaves no artifacts.
Language was spoken for countless genera-
tions before it was ever written down and
became capable of leaving evidence behind.
So there are no explanations for the origins of
speech other than a collection of speculations:
•the onomatopoeia hypothesis—the first
words mimicked the sounds of the envi-
ronment
•the animal-sounds hypothesis—the first
words were imitations of animal sounds
•the exclamatory hypothesis—the first
words were modifications of involuntary
cries and exclamations
•the gesture hypothesis—the first words
were an effort to render communicative
gestures in another medium
•the code hypothesis—the first words were
arbitrary symbols adopted by agreement
in human groups
•the song hypothesis—the first words arose
from the natural human inclination to
vocalize while working together
•the deception hypothesis—the first words
were intended to disguise the speaker's
mental or emotional state.
Comprehension as the Key to Language
These hypotheses, however, look primarily at
how people produce speech, when the key to
understanding language and communication
lies in how we comprehend it. In the past ten
4 The Hidden Key to Communication Success
years, studies of gorillas and chimpanzees have
shown that, although apes cannot produce
speech, some of them can certainly learn to
understand it.
Duane Rumbaugh, psychologist then at
Georgia State University (now at the Great
Ape Trust of Iowa), reported in 1995 on a
chimpanzee named Kanzi who understood the
syntax of human speech to a level slightly bet-
ter than the understanding of a 21⁄2-year-old
human child. Kanzi demonstrated an under-
standing of over 600 sentences.
“Apes are capable,” wrote Rumbaugh, “of learn-
ing the meanings and representational use of
arbitrary symbols that for them have all the
functional properties of words. The symbols
stand for things that are not necessarily pres-
ent in time and space, for activities, for the
properties of things (that is, temperatures of
drinks, ambient noise levels), for the individ-
ual's state (that is, hunger, thirst, sleepiness),
for other animates (either ape or human or
canine), for places to which they would go, for
making comments on activities and recent hap-
penings in the laboratory, and so on.”
(“Primate Language and Cognition: Common
Ground,” Social Research, September 22, 1995.)
Rumbaugh's interest is in the capabilities and
emotions of apes, but his research has taken
him into linguistics. “Research with apes,” he
wrote, “has made it very clear that the basis
for language is comprehension, not speech.”
His research is slowly revolutionizing our
understanding of human communication, how
it's acquired and used.
Comprehension's Place in Business
Communication
Does this have any implications for ordinary
everyday communications? When you look at
communication from the point of view of com-
prehension rather than speech, it suggests that
perhaps the primary emphasis in communica-
tion training should be on listening skills.
That's certainly not where the emphasis is
now. A Google search on “listening skills train-
ing” gets only 3.8 million hits against the 54
million for “communication training.”
A standard text on business communication
(Mary Munter, Guide to Managerial
Communication) devotes three out of 198
pages to the topic of listening. That seems to
be pretty standard for textbooks on business
communication. And virtually all books and
courses on listening offer the same three skills:

•reflect feeling

•paraphrase information

•take notes.
We now know there is more to listening than
these three skills. The study of comprehension
is key to developing effective business commu-
nications.

Comprehension and Presentations

Comprehension is distinguished by its absence
from most presentation training. Open the so-
called “Autocontent Wizard” of Microsoft
PowerPoint to get help in preparing a presen-
tation, and it says not a word about compre-
hension and only considers the audience as an
afterthought. The Autocontent Wizard invites
you first to enter your name, the name of your
presentation, the name of your company, and
whatever you want in the footer of each slide.
It then gives you an outline advising you to
state your purpose, introduce yourself, and
announce the topics to be covered. It provides
this structure for each topic:
Topic One
•Details about this topic
•Supporting information and examples
•How it relates to your audience
In other words, “how it relates to your audi-
ence” is the last thing to think about, where a
comprehension-based approach would suggest
it should be first. It makes you wonder how
many eager presenters skip that step altogeth-
er. Anyone who has sat through an appreciable
number of business presentations would be for-
given for thinking that most topics do not
relate to their audiences at all.
After you have handled all your topics in this
way, the Autocontent Wizard recommends you
touch on “real life”:
Real Life
•Give an example or real life anecdote
•Sympathize with the audience's situation
if appropriate
“Sympathize with the audience's situation if
appropriate” suggests sympathy might some-
times be inappropriate. This is probably where
many communication failures take place.
Imagine this audience, listening to a speaker
armed with fancy PowerPoint slides but no
sympathy, because the speaker has decided it's
not appropriate. But a presenter should always
have sympathy for an audience!
Sympathy for the audience is the essence of a
great presentation, but most presenters put
their PowerPoint files together on the theory
that a presentation is based on “content,
design, and delivery.”
Does this mean that we are arguing for fewer
presentations in business? Not at all. But a
presentation that is developed from the point of
view of the audience rather than the presenter

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 will be more persuasive and will communicate
more than a presentation that only sympa-
thizes with the audience “if appropriate.”
How do you develop a presentation from the
point of view of the audience? There are few, if
any, situations in business in which you are
called upon to give a presentation to an audi-
ence whose needs and interests you don't know
or cannot identify through research.
Audience Analysis
Mapping out the audience's needs and inter-
ests before you create your presentation is
called audience analysis. You start off with
what you know (or can easily find out), such as
how many people will be in the audience and
why they are attending. What relationship do
audience members have to the meeting? Are
they stakeholders, members, employees? Do
they know each other? What organization(s) do
they come from?
Then you move on to characteristics that are
less apparent and may require more in-depth
research, such as their job functions and their
“rank” in relation to yours, their ages, and the
gender mix. Consider their cultural diversity
and their primary language.
Once you have this basic profile, you can begin
informed speculation about them that will
establish the sympathy we've been talking
about. What do the members of this audience
have in common with you? How are they likely
to feel about the points you might bring up?
Finally, if you have answered those profile
questions, you have information you need to
understand the audience. It is in this phase of
the analysis that you figure out the audience's
needs, which is the only way to understand
how to communicate with them successfully:
•What do they need?
•What are their aspirations?
•What are their fears?
If you can fill their needs, show them how to
meet their aspirations, and allay their fears or
give them what they need to neutralize them,
there is very little chance of a communication
6 The Hidden Key to Communication Success
failure resulting from misunderstanding. The
one thing that people always understand is
their own needs.
An analysis like this is almost always possible
for any business presentation. Doing it should
be second nature for people in companies that
care about communication excellence. It's one
thing to suffer a failure in casual communica-
tion. There's no excuse to fail when you are
preparing remarks in advance.
Communication Failure Revisited
This brings us back to the destruction of the
space shuttle Columbia. It turns out that engi-
neers from Boeing were concerned about the
possible damage to the orbiter during the
launch. They prepared three reports for top
NASA managers on the subject. At least one of
these reports was a PowerPoint presentation.
Edward Tufte, the dean of visual communica-
tion, has analyzed the principal slide from this
report at www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-
a?topic_id=1 (search for “ET on Columbia
Evidence”), where he has posted both the slide
and analyses of its layout and wording.
The slide states that it is possible for a foam
particle of sufficient mass and velocity to pene-
trate the tiles covering the edge of the wing
and that if that happened, it could cause sig-
nificant damage. But the information is buried
in a 125-word slide. Not only is the information
difficult to separate out of the story being told
on the slide, but the slide itself is labeled
“Review of Test Data Indicates Conservatism
for Tile Penetration.” Unfortunately, the man-
agers who attended the presentation did not
understand that the risk of damage to the
shuttle was great enough to warrant the
expense and effort of further investigation into
the problem before the shuttle returned home.
It's easy to second-guess the participants in a
disaster, so we won't do that. But the engi-
neers had a better idea of the risk than the
managers. Imagine if they had been able to do
an audience analysis before presenting to
them. They might have determined that the
managers' interest in cost savings might cause
them to cut off further investigation. That
understanding might have led to communicat-
ing with the managers differently in order to
persuade them of the seriousness of the danger.
We don't know, but we would guess that most
communication failures result from people
thinking only about what they are saying (or
writing) rather than what the audience is hear-
ing (or reading). By conditioning ourselves and
training our employees to communicate by
thinking of the comprehension of the audience
first, rather than last, we can go a long way
toward excellence in communication.
About Communispond
Communispond was founded in 1969. Today, it
is the resource of choice when there's a lot rid-
ing on how well you communicate.
At Communispond, we believe that improving
communication skills improves business. And
we've proved it over and over again with thou-
sands of clients in the U.S. and around the
world. Our services have been sought out by
hundreds of board chairmen and company pres-
idents and tens of thousands of sales execu-
tives, not to mention world champion athletes,
media figures, and candidates for high office.
Communispond has helped clients prepare for
many different types of communication situa-
tions, such as corporate merger and reorgani-
zation announcements, new sales pitches, cru-
cial new product launches, liability and recall
disclosures, appeals to government regulatory
bodies, communication with Wall Street and
shareholders, press conferences and media
interviews, announcements affecting employee
benefits and job security, and efforts to unite
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employees around a common mission. And of
course, we work with companies on their daily
communication issues, helping intact teams
work better, fostering communication between
managers and subordinates, and improving
performance appraisal and other coaching dis-
cussions.
We're known worldwide for our Executive
Presentation Skills program, but we've expand-
ed beyond presentation skills to offer a broad
range of solutions addressing virtually every
communications discipline: business writing
skills, facilitation skills, listening skills, even
how to master today's new virtual communica-
tions channels. What's more, you may now tap
Communispond for any population that must
hold their own in high stakes communications
situations, including:
• Sales forces battling to beat quota and
increase market share
• Marketing departments launching new
products and services
• Technical teams managing mission-critical
projects
• Leaders instigating change.
Today, after more than 35 years of research and
field trials, Communispond offers a comprehen-
sive suite of solutions to help your key people
deliver the right message to the right audience
in the right way. Our clients include over 350 of
the Fortune 500 and Communispond “gradu-
ates” number more than 500,000 individuals,
representing industry leaders all over the globe.
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website: www.communispond.com email address: info@communispond.com phone: 1-800-529-5925