The 15% Rule
John Lord Couper, Ph.D.
As a journalist, scholar, researcher, and teacher I’ve analysed ineffective communication. It almost always results in frustration, mistrust, wasted time and effort, conflict and resentment… even when the other person is well-meaning
Small pebbles of misunderstanding or missing detail are often at the center of an avalanche of problems. Even the people we are closest to need help to truly understand what we mean. And vice-versa.
A sense of time pressure encourages us to minimize our words. That’s why we rarely provide enough information and explanation to ensure the impact we want.
There are simple, effective ways to improve communication that will improve your social connections, collaboration, results, and satisfaction. I’ll focus in this article on the verbal side and save nonverbals — such as pace, tone, and “music” — for another story.
What’s the Problem?
Almost everybody is hungry for good communication — so why is it so elusive?
Of course, you know that your words transfer information that facilitates action: the fuller the information, the better the action. Unfortunately, not everyone has the skills to make the best use of this truism.
Communication is both blessed and cursed by the diversity of our ideas, experiences, knowledge, etc. The blessing is that this enriches our understanding and options. The curse is that these differences can weaken even close personal and professional relationships.
It’s inevitable that everything we say mismatches slightly what the other person wants and expects. After all, each of us is unique. This problem becomes far greater when it’s compounded with other factors such as culture, experience, priorities, state of mind, and so on.
When several of these barriers happen together, It’s a miracle that we ever communicate effectively at all!
One problem is direct: without the information we need, effective action is much more difficult. Indirectly, misunderstandings subconsciously undermine our faith in the other person and the relationship. For example, the more a conversation makes us uncomfortable, the less we will want to communicate in future.
These three proven, simple principles will make your communication even more effective.
* “Appreciate.” Prepare by asking yourself what’s important to the other person. It’s easy to be too wrapped up in our own agenda, which always works against good communication. Even briefly acknowledging their expertise and effort adds a positive charge to the interaction.
* “Listen actively.” after communication has begun, take full advantage of the most underrated communication skill: listening. Not only to the words, but also to the tone, phrasing, and so on. This will strengthen your insights from the first step. At first, this seems like too much work — but after you do it deliberately once or twice, your mind will do this automatically. It also implies respect and openness, which supplies many benefits in itself.
- “Respect where they are.” Even when we truly admire someone else’s abilities, we often skip overexpressing this admiration as we barrel ahead with our own goals. It helps to express respect directly, but even better to mention one of their accomplishments or skills, and admit you need their help.
The 15% Rule
Beyond these communication stanchions, this little-known principle dramatically improves the information dimension.
Here’s the rule: “Communication improves when we provide 15% more than we believe is needed.”
When you add 15% of the information, you’ll find that your communication aligns much better and gets the results you want. Most misunderstandings and barriers are the result of over-trimmed information.
An Example
Say you’re talking to an IT specialist named Emily to set up a new webinar, and start to talk about including graphics. Even though you both agree that this is a good idea, your understanding and Emily’s can be misaligned just enough to risk communication tension or even breakdown.
You assume that Emily realises you hope to include images, text, and video — but she doesn’t. Meanwhile, Emily assumes you know how to insert a shared image — which you don’t. You can straighten out these assumptions, but that will gobble up the time you have, while piling up frustrations.
In this situation, just mention “image, text or video” and that you don’t know how to do this. Emily might mention the ease of setting up the “insert” function in advance, and that the process is slightly different for each kind of graphic. Boom — the conversation works on an entirely new level.
Such comments can and should be quick, not trying to convey the full information. Their value is opening small doors of collegiality, communication and understanding. Why? Because in a few seconds both you and Emily added the 15% of information that will prevent the waste of much more time created by misunderstanding and annoyance.
Two Related Techniques
Consider using these two “bonus” techniques:
1. Encourage attention. Give the other person a few seconds to orient toward the topic, which science shows takes us about 3 seconds. We’ve thought long and hard about a topic, so it’s easy to forget that — for the other person — the topic can be new, or even a distraction. So start your statement with a kind of verbal summary headline: this will help the other person understand the topic, its context and significance, while letting their brains change focus to your topic.
2. Add emphasis. Instead of assuming the other person understands what you consider important, add an occasional phrase such as “what matters most is…” or use a stronger tone of voice. This helps the other person understand what, to you, seems obvious and top-of-mind.
So…
In which ways have you improved your communication by adding a little more, and more relevant, information?
Of course, if we pile one additional 15% onto another, we can restate the obvious or repeat something that is already understood. Even worse, we can fall into the “overthinking” trap. To tame these problems, follow the first and second steps mentioned above (Appreciate and Listen). They will tell you what the other person knows, and wants or needs to know….the key to effective communication
“TMI” (too much information) can be annoying. But I bet you find that “TLI” (Too little information) creates much bigger, longer-lasting problems.
Try applying the 15% Rule, or remember times that TLI degraded your communication, and please post your related experiences below.
