Communication Tip – Open with a leading sentence

The  leading sentence is a key tool to effective communication.
Whether you’re running a Galactic Empire (such as myself), or a small business – people are inundated with information. And the higher the position you are, the more information you get (daily reports, Emails, documents, status, blogs, etc…).

Look at me, I’m running a multi-galaxy organization, can you imagine the amount of Empire Mail (aka EMail) I get? So obviously keeping your communications succinct, simple, and clear is of extreme importance. There’s only so much brain time someone will dedicate to any given communication, so you need to deliver the entire message in as brief of a format as possible.

But what if you’re getting 500 of these succinct communications a day? That’s still a lot of information to deal with. To further improve the chances of your message being read use a leading sentence to summarize the message.

The message isn’t literally the word for word content – the message is what’s behind the words. A status report may have 200 words in it, but the message is that everything is on track.

Instinctually you earthlings feel you need to “build your case” by starting off with supporting data, disclaimers, and assumptions before making final statements and conclusions. That’s fine, but open with a simple one liner that’s about 5 to 15 words.

The leading sentence sets the stage with what the reader is about to absorb, learn, or discover.  It communicates the essence of the message so that even if the reader abandons the communication, they still know what you were trying to say. It’s also an opportunity to entice and engage the reader in the 2 seconds they’ll spend determining if your content is worth looking at (they’ll look at the title and the leading sentence in that 2 seconds before continuing).

This is a guest post from Darth Sidious, author of the Sith Sigma blog.