Crystal Clear Communications Blog

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place,” said the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw.

Leaders, presenters and managers often find this to be true: what you meant to say is not what the audience took away.

For your message to land with audiences, it must be:

• Clear, even to nonexperts who don’t know your industry jargon.
• Consistent, to build the credibility and trust that lead to relationships.
• Compelling, connecting emotionally since people make decisions in their hearts.

But communications depend on establishing trust between you and your audience, and that job has never been harder than now.

Who do you trust?

2024 is an election year in the U.S. and many other countries. For voters, it’s hard to know which sources of information to trust because abundant crops of information, misinformation and disinformation get all mixed together.

Trust in American institutions is dangerously low. Gallup polls find that only three institutions are trusted by half or more of the U.S. public:

• 68% of Americans trust small business.
• 61% of Americans trust the military.
• 51% of Americans trust the police.

More than half of Americans distrust all other U.S. institutions. That lack of trust is at the root of  today’s misinformation and disinformation.

Only about one in three Americans, 36%, trust the medical system and higher education.

Fewer than one in three Americans trust:

• Organized religion: 32%.
• The Supreme Court: 30%.
• Public schools: 29%.
• Organized labor: 28%.
• Large technology companies: 27%.
• Banks: 27%.
• The presidency: 26%.
• The criminal justice system: 21%.
• Newspapers: 18%.
• Big businesses: 16%.
• TV news: 12%.
• Congress: 9%.

Misinformation and disinformation pour gasoline on the fire of distrust.

When you step back from politics, it’s fascinating to hear how messages get mangled, dismantled and misrepresented as they pass from person to person.

People add their messes to your message

Because people are human, many of us tend to get messages mixed up, mangled, misconstrued, misinterpreted, miscommunicated, and misunderstood.

All this reminds me of playing the game of telephone in grade school. You know the game: one student whispers the original message to the next student in line, who whispers it to the next student, and so forth.

As the message gets shared person to person, it morphs into a different message. At the end of the game, when the final message is announced out loud, it’s compared with the original message, often to hilarious effect.

Cultural researchers call this method of communications by a fancy name, “transmission chaining.”

A global game of telephone started in Australia with the phrase “Life must be lived as play,” then it traveled through China, India, Belarus, Uganda, and South Africa. The final message that came out in Romania was, “At my station don’t work.”

For leaders, marketers and communicators, word-of-mouth is a great way to transmit messages to an extended audience. To succeed, you need an absolutely clear, concise message that’s easy to transmit accurately.

Leaders, founders, managers, marketers, communicators and employees may sense that they’re playing telephone every day as they communicate up and down an organization’s chain of command.

By the time a message reaches an employee in a big company, she may be rolling her eyes – with good reason. Messages that make no sense get ignored or ridiculed. It’s hard to imagine what employees at the end of a long game of telephone are saying to customers.

If you see signs of this in your organization, we help you communicate with a clear message that lands with your audience. Get your story heard, understood and remembered  accurately. So you can move your whole team forward as one.

Have questions about marketing and communications? Get answers weekly or email me at george@crystalclearcomms.com.