The other day, I was talking with a coaching client and they mentioned they were having difficulty engaging their staff with the strategic messages of the organisation. After a short conversation, I discovered that the manager was failing to make his message relevant.

Relevance is one of the key characteristics in engaging your staff and having them take action. I’ve noticed that many managers forget to change corporate, strategic lingo into casual conversation. In other words, take all the strategic language and make it real for the frontline managers and workers.

An important question to ask before you relay a message to your staff is: how is this relevant for them?

Your staff, like you, are listening to answer the question “So what?” In other words, what does this mean for me?

Ways that you can make your message relevant are the following:

1. Ask this question: How is this relevant for my staff?
2. Share a story of how this could be relevant.
3. Give them specific actions on how this needs to be relevant.
4. Remove corporate lingo and make it a casual conversation about what it means for them.

Make your message relevant and become an influential leader. As Tom Peters says, “Managers must understand that their first and foremost job is to be a professional communicator.” The quicker we understand that we are professional communicators, the more impactful we will be in our leadership.