How do you know your communications is working? Or the time I almost spit on a Pastor.

"How do you know communication is working?"

I was at a restaurant recently, helping a church communications team develop a communications strategy. One of the church's pastors asked an excellent question that nearly caused a spit-take from me.

"How do you know communication is working?"

It's a basic question, with profound implications. How does one know if they've effectively communicated something? As communicators, how are we successful? I stammered, "Well, in context of social media you measure your effectiveness by engagement... clicks, like, comments, responses... that's your win."

The Pastor continued on, pressing for a much different answer: "Don't just think social media. In general, how do you know when you've succeeded communicating something?"

I replied, with due respect (making sure I swallowed the Sprite I was drinking): " In communication, you've succeeded when the person you're communicating to can tell you what you communicated. "

This probably isn't an earth-shattering concept for us as communicators. When we communicate does our audience understand what we are communicating enough to say it back? Does it stick in their psyche? Do they understand the concepts as well as the details enough to champion this idea? Did we succeed in planting the idea into their mind? Does the audience understand the why?

If your audience understands, then you've succeeded. Congratulations.

If the audience doesn't understand, then there's a problem.

Remember, it's rarely just one of the above problems. More likely it's a little bit of multiple pieces.

Our job as communicators is to separate our communication from the other noise out there. Are we succeeding?

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