"If there is a mist in the pulpit, it's a fog in the pew."
Theologian Howard Hendricks
The idea of communications is to share a thought or a message from one person to another. Sometimes we do this one on one in a conversation; sometimes the message gets amplified through media or circumstance and becomes one to many communication. Sometimes the message is delivered TO the audience, other times it is part of a dialogue.
Regardless of the size of the audience, the media used, the goal of the communications (making a sale, presenting a point of view, finding out if you should pick up milk or orange juice) clarity of the message is the key. If your message is clear, you stand a better chance of your audience receiving it as you intended.
The thing about message clarity is that it is ALL in the eye, or ears, of the beholder. Just like customer service, it is the perception of the receiver that matters. Good intentions don't score points in football or in communications. Your message has to be clear to the receiver of the message for it to be a clear message.
This is where Mr. Hendricks' quote becomes relevant. One of the things that speakers CAN do is to be clear about the message they want to deliver. If there is confusion in the mind of the speaker as to what the message is, you can be guaranteed that confusion will be multiplied by the time it gets to the listener. Think of the children's game of Operator. As a message gets passed from child to child, it becomes more and more divorced from the reality of the original message.
There are many other things that a communicator can do to improve the chances that his or her message will be received with clarity. Those will be topics of future blog posts. For today, for the purposes of clarity, I am focusing on just one piece of advise: Be clear about the message you want to deliver and you increase the chances that you actually will!
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