When consulting behemoth, McKinsey, teaches structured communication, they teach it using a 3-step framework called the pyramid principle.
Say someone asks you a question or for advice. To respond, you:
- Start with an answer. Be bold, and be ready to support it. It’s more persuasive and it’ll put the audience into listening mode.
- Group and summarize your supporting arguments. You know, like a pyramid. So any idea represents a summary of a group of information supporting it. Ideally, each idea breaks into 3 ideas, with 3 supporting data points.
- Logically order these supporting ideas. Think in terms of understanding and impact to the person across the table from you.
There’s a reason it works. Write these down somewhere and give it a try.
h/t @thealexbanks