How to resonate with strategic thinkers
While some people get a lot of comfort from knowing the detail, others need to understand more about the context and the ‘why’ to feel more certain. Neither is better or worse than the other, they’re just preferences. But to meet the needs of your audience and give your comms the best chance of cutting through, you need to adapt your communication style and content.
In this blog post, we’re sharing our top tips for how to adapt your communication to meet the needs of strategic thinkers. You can also find out more about tailoring your comms to different communication styles in this podcast episode.
Start with ‘why’
Strategic thinkers need to know why something is happening - they will get to the logistics eventually if they have to! But to reduce uncertainty and increase comfort, you need to provide the context first, before getting to the tactics. So prepare messages that talk about the overall purpose or outcomes you want to achieve, and how this particular piece of work fits in.
Use a roadmap
Because the ‘why’ is so important to our strategic thinkers, using a visual roadmap to show how everything fits together can be helpful. That way the strategy is very clear, and the particular topic you’re communicating about and why will make more sense. If they’re not a visual thinker, you’ll have to talk them through the roadmap - but avoid the temptation to get side-tracked by details along the way!
Avoid the detail
Strategic thinkers will tune out in the detail! So stick with high-level, strategic themes and provide the detail separately (eg, through FAQs) for those who then want to go through it at their own pace. This also means avoiding going straight to - or labouring on - tactics, and instead talking about the overall direction you’re taking.
Are you a strategic thinker or a detail thinker?
Find out that and more with our Communication Personality Type quiz! It’s quick, it’s free, and it’ll give you insights into your own communication preferences and others’ preferences!
