“An idea is just a seed, to bring it to life, you need great communication matched with action”— Namita Tiwari
More often than not, we all get ideas that we are excited to share with others. How often do we succeed in converting it into a success? To succeed in building your ideas from strategy and execution, one needs to present it impressively, and influence others to follow your vision to achieve the desired impact. And that’s what makes communication one of the primary skills to master for a leader. To be a true achiever in leadership and marketing, a professional needs to study the art of communication in all its forms— writing, speaking, presenting — and continuously strive to excel in them.
Namita Tiwari, an accomplished woman, in her twenty years of experience has worked on building global brands, campaigns and communications across multiple platforms — empowering companies to succeed in a changing world. A celebrated marketer, visionary & TEDx Speaker, Namita has successfully enjoyed leadership roles at companies like Wipro, Accenture, HCL Tech and Infosys. To know more about her career journey, visit her website.
In this article, Namita Tiwari shares her thoughts and tips on impactful communication and how it plays a key role for leaders to achieve business goals.
- Begin with the bigger picture — Namita feels it is always more effective to share the larger business outcome or the goal to be achieved first to set the context right for your idea. While we may think that , the conclusion can fall towards the end of the pitch or presentation slides, but it is very unlikely that audience will have patience till then. So make them engage with the bigger picture first.
- Simplify complex topics, turn hard into soft — While Namita was moving from mid to senior level in her career journey, one of her skills that got her success and appreciation was her ability to study complex problems and communicate them succinctly and clearly bringing out the challenges and possible solutions for decision making. She was able to cut through the noise, set priorities, and translate complexity into actionable insights. In Namita’s words “ To be an effective communicator, you need to simplify the message and express it compellingly for your audience to easily understand”.
Namita also recalls how during her course on Accelerated Marketing Leadership from Kellogg’s, she went through a communication test and had an incredible learning experience on adapting “inductive thinking” instead of “deductive thinking”. To explain this, deductive approach is laying out facts and figures and then reaching conclusion, while inductive is to first state the outcome and then follow it with reasoning and data.
- Leverage metaphors to convey critical concepts — In Namita’s words “A metaphor is a powerful tool to make your abstract ideas relatable to the audience using familiar concepts or stories”. In business, metaphors are used to convert complex concepts in short, snappy phrases. An interesting metaphor which Warren Buffet introduced in 1995 is “moats and castles” for companies that dominated their industry space.
Another interesting example here can be how Namita used the “Alice in Wonderland” story as a metaphor to express her thoughts on marketing in the metaverse. To watch her engaging and popular TEDx Talk, click here.
- Decode data to create value — As you move up the corporate ladder, your decisions and communications will be data-driven. However presenting data can be boring and draining on the mind. Communication experts have suggested that data points can be made interesting by humanizing them, by placing the number in perspective. Whenever you introduce numbers, make an effort to turn them engaging, memorable, and persuasive.
- Transformational leaders overcommunicate — If you want a certain message or mission to be inculcated across the organization internally or across the industry externally, use over communication. While driving a brand repositioning, or CSR initiative where you want to ensure that everyone understands and follows the message, repetitive communication can work like a mantra.
- Make limited number of statements — Namita is a popular writer and thought leader who keeps sharing her ideas on various publications. She is also a prolific speaker at many prestigious industry forums. Those who follow her work and read her columns know that she believes in “less is more” and “less words create more impact”. The human mind has limited memory which will pick on top few ideas , even with the best public speakers and writers. Namita is aware of this and usually follows “ the rule of thirds or fives” in her communication tactics.
- Good communicators inspire teams — Accomplishing a great idea from strategy to execution takes the work of a group of people dedicated to the passionate pursuit of a dream, a common vision. There will be team members who will execute for leaders due to the title they hold, but the more successful teams will be the ones who were truly inspired by their leaders to do so.
To conclude, inspirational communication and leadership skills are critical to succeed in today’s increasingly competitive business world.
In Namita’s opinion “It’s a sign of genius to express big ideas in simple words, communicate effectively to inspire teams to execute it”. To know more about her work, click here.
Connect with our Marketing Expert, Namita Tiwari on her Instagram and LinkedIn channels for more insights on marketing and leadership.