Jarred Consulting

Are you missing opportunities through misunderstandings, crossed wires and misinterpreted intentions? Are decisions held up through miscommunication? Tighten your board-level content and message sharing so that everyone feels included, heard and aligned.

6 ways to improve your board-level communications

Writing comms for board consumption and action is a pivotal skill. How well you do it will have a major impact on business decisions, investments and performance. After all, one of McKinsey’s four elements of a strong board is ‘creating trust by investing in board dynamics’.  This involves:

• Understanding your executive-level writing capability and areas for development.
• Absorbing the most effective business writing best practices, tools, tips and techniques – as well as opportunities to learn from peers.
• Recognising that great business writing stems from a thorough understanding of the business context. By this, we mean the perspectives, expectations and preconceptions of readers.
• Learning how best to influence decisions at executive level using the written word.
• Developing specific skills like:
  • How to structure and strategise communications.
  • Anticipating objections and reactions.
  • Reviewing and editing.
  • Deploying writing technology and deciding when this is useful.
• Building confidence through encouragement, feedback and skill updates.

Don’t forget that communication is one of the top power skills leaders need right now – it sits at the heart of how to build a strong board.

Those who can, teach

Through our Business Skills Writing Programme, we’ve helped our people up their game with executive-level communications. We balance teaching tools and tips with opportunities to practice and develop through feedback and encouragement. Every organisation is unique, so each course we deliver is tailored to fit. We consult with you and your board beforehand to identify exactly what your members need (and what they don’t want) from your team’s contributions. We also incorporate your real-life board documents to ensure the content is relevant to what your team needs to write.

How to build a strong board – engage everyone

We can draw everyone together, no matter where they are by delivering sessions online or in person (or both), either bite-sized or fuller and more in-depth courses. We’ve found that blending the sessions with our coaching and mentoring helps the learning to embed. What are the next steps if you think you need help? Get in touch for an informal chat about what you’re struggling with. Have a great day!