How to Start Any Conversation the Right Way | Chris Fenning | TED

I want to be long-winded and unclear. It's not a common opening line. Most people won't tell us when they're going to be long-winded, but we know. We can tell pretty quickly if someone’s going to get to the point or if we are in for a long and painful conversation. And this is especially true at work. Every year, poor communication costs businesses hundreds of billions of dollars in lost productivity. And I have to confess, [in] the early part of my career, I was responsible for at least some of that. But I'm not alone. Hands up if you work with someone who is long winded or unclear. That's a lot of hands. Now I’m sure we are all thinking about people outside this room, right? Except for those of you pointing at each other. But what would happen if we asked the people outside this room?

They might be thinking about us. And while our goal is to be clear and concise, do we really know how? Every time we communicate, we have an opportunity to create clarity or confusion. And clarity begins from the very first minute. If you get the first minute right, you set your conversation up for success. Get it wrong [and] your conversations will be longer, less effective and more frustrating. Now on the off chance we could all use a little more clarity, I'm going to share a tip with you today. A tip that will help each of you improve the success of your communication at work. A tip that has been tested by more than 75,000 people around the world. And a tip that will help each of you get the first minute right.

And here it is. There are three things we must include at the start of our work messages. And those three things begin with T, I and P. It's a TIP. Now the first part of the tip is the T, and T stands for topic. Every conversation at work needs a clear topic. When the topic is clear, everyone knows what we're talking about. Everyone's in sync. Everybody understands. Unfortunately, reality isn't always like this, is it? How often are you in a conversation and you find yourself thinking, what are you talking about? (Laughter) That happens when the topic is not clear. Now usually the consequences are pretty minor -- a little bit of wasted time, some minor frustration -- but sometimes, the consequences are more significant. In 2006, I was part of an engineering team writing a bid -- a proposal -- that was worth a lot of money to our company.

And a couple of days before the big meeting, my boss came up to me and said, "Hey, Chris, I need you to change the meeting from Tuesday to Thursday." So off I went and I changed the meeting. I typed an email, sent it to the client saying, "Something’s come up, we've got to change." And about a minute after I hit send, my phone rings. It's my boss. He had one question: "Why did you change the meeting?" You see, he was talking about our one-to-one, and I was thinking about the client meeting. The lack of a clear topic meant he and I were thinking about two very different things. Now that might be the single biggest contribution I’ve made to the cost of bad communication, but it also marks the moment at which I began to be interested in improving how we communicate at work. So all our messages have to begin with a clear topic. But how? How do we do this? It's really easy. Start your message with one sentence that names the topic you want to talk about, and the more specific, the better.

You could say, "I'd like to talk about July sales figures." "I want to talk about Project Everest's timeline." Or "Can I talk about our one-to-one this week?" One message, one sentence that lets your audience know what the topic is. They won't be thinking, "What are you talking about?" Now having a clear topic is a great start, but it's not enough. We need the second part of the tip, which is the I. And I stands for intent. Intent is what we want the other person to do with our message. Have you ever been in a conversation and a few minutes in thought, "Why are you telling me this?" That happens when the intent isn't clear, when the speaker hasn't told you what to do with the information that they are giving you. Now there’s a process in our brains called selective attention, and this filters incoming information and tells you what is important and what is not.

And if you don't know what to do with a message, your brain says, not important. And we stop listening. At the beginning of this talk, I told you I would give you a tip that would help improve the success of your communication at work. That told your brains what to do with this information. If I hadn't done that, I could be faced with a room full of people smiling politely while all thinking, "Why are you telling us this?" Now that is something we want to avoid at work. But there is another, and perhaps more important reason to make your intent clear. You want to avoid frustrating the people you're talking to. I'd had a particularly bad day, and I walked into my colleague Tina's office, and I sat down with my head in my hands, and I told her how I'd messed up on an important call with a senior leader. And when I finished talking, Tina very, very helpfully said, "Oh, why don't you try this and maybe we can avoid this next time." And she was giving me all sorts of advice.

The more she spoke, the more frustrated I became. I didn't want her help. And that must have been quite obvious because she just put up her hands and said, "You clearly don't want my help. So why are you here?" I said, "Tina, I'm really sorry. I just want to get this off my chest. Can I just talk for a minute?" And like a mother talking to a small child, she rolled her eyes and said, "Well, why didn't you start with that?" We need to tell our audience what to do with the information we're giving them. Tina was working hard from the moment I started talking. And all the way through, she was working hard to help me and I didn't want or need that. She was annoyed and rightly so. So when you start your message, after you've given a clear topic, tell your audience what to do with it. And again, you can do this with one line. Make your intent clear. If you have a question, say, "Can I ask you a question?" If you want someone to make a decision, say, "I'd like your help with this decision." If you want to get something off your chest, just say, "Is it OK if I vent for a minute?"

If you tell your audience what to do with your message, not only will their brains pay more attention, you will avoid frustrating them. That's kind of useful. So we've made our topic clear. We've told our audience what we intend for them to do. It's time to get down into the detail, right? Get into the message. Wrong. This is where we need the third part of the tip. The P. And P stands for point. Point is the most important part of our message. If you only had five seconds to speak, it's what you would say. And usually it's what your audience cares about the most. When I was a kid, my dad played a game with me. If we were going on a journey, I'd go, "Dad, where are we going?" And he'd say, "Well, first, we're going to the car and then we’ll get in the car, leave the driveway, turn left onto the main street until we get to the post office, and then turn right until we go to a big yellow building." I just wanted to scream, "Where are we going?"

I wanted the short version. I think he just wanted to wind me up a little bit. But fast forward a few years, I was doing the same thing at work. Someone would ask me a question, or I’d start a conversation, and I would give all the detail, step by step information. And every so often -- OK, quite often -- people would say, "Chris, just get to the point." And that's what we need. We need a point, we need a headline, something that tells us where this conversation is going. Now, of course, there's a lot more information we could include, but that comes later. That comes after we've set up the audience to understand what the conversation is about. And we can do this quite simply, as the military likes to say, “Put the bottom line up front.” In one sentence, deliver the most important piece of information. "I want to give a refund for a late delivery."

"Our project launch is going to be delayed by a month." Say the most important thing, and your audience will know where that conversation is going and they won't be thinking, "What is your point?" Now if you start your conversation with topic, intent and point, you are starting with a clear and concise introduction, an introduction that answers the three questions we all have: What are you talking about? Why are you telling me this? And what is your point? Because here's the truth. Every time we communicate, it is an opportunity to create clarity or confusion. And topic, intent and point is clarity. So I have a challenge for you. The next time you start a conversation at work, the next time you write a message, take a moment and think to yourself, what is my topic? What do I intend for the other person to do with this message? And what point do I want to deliver?

Imagine working somewhere where everybody did this. Imagine if everyone always knew what to do with the message you gave them, or understood what it was about. How much smoother, how much easier would our jobs be? That, ladies and gentlemen, is the power of the first minute. Thank you. (Applause)