If you look up business communication tips, you’ll find a lot of information about what we might call outgoing communication: how we present ourselves, how we deliver our information, our gestures and tone of voice, etc.

But you’ll find much less written about how our listeners receive our message. This is called understandability. We like to think of it as customer-centered communication: it's shifting the focus away from ourselves and towards our audience’s interpretation of our communication.

Interestingly, if you look for tips in understandability, you’ll often find articles aimed at the finance and accounting sectors. That’s because understandability in that context relates to ensuring people understand complex (and sometimes specialized) financial details. You’ll also find the term in UX and web design, where it refers to how quickly and easily users can understand an interface.

Every business depends on clear communication with their employees, partners, and customers. So how can we make sure our audiences really understand our message?

Tips to Improve Understandability …

… With your customers, partners, and suppliers: Check your baseline

A major barrier to effective communication is to assume everyone has the same knowledge as you do. Unless we actively think about the differences between our baseline knowledge and that of our audience, we naturally forge ahead based on our own level of expertise.

The problem is that suppliers, partners, and customers may not have the same level of experience or the same background as we do. By making assumptions about what everyone knows, wants, or believes, we risk:

1. Alienating those who have a different belief or want.

2. Confusing those who don’t have the same level of knowledge.

3. Creating a solution based on a need or want that isn’t there.

The first step to checking your baseline is to understand how much your perspective differs from that of your client, partner, or supplier. Try to map their needs, beliefs, and subject knowledge – and know that the outcome will probably be unique to each group. By focusing on where they are, you’ve removed one barrier to understandability.

… With your colleagues: Practice active listening

When you work with a group of people regularly, you get a pretty good idea of their baseline around your core concepts. But are you still tuned into their communication? Or has familiarity made you take a few mental shortcuts? In other words, do you really listen when they express themselves? Or do you just make assumptions based on your expectations?

The truth is that our brains are designed to take shortcuts. And failing to examine this tendency is its own shortcut to communication difficulties.

The solution is something we talk about all the time: active listening. Check out our article Active Listening: A Practical Introduction for some helpful tips.

… Within your organization: Have a shared language

This is another setting where assumptions will come back to haunt you. Having two (or more) definitions for the same concept can cause huge difficulties in a business setting. This is especially true when you’re dealing with a cross-functional team or any project with multiple stakeholders from different areas.

The solution is a shared language. And we don’t mean sharing the same spoken language. A shared language means coming together and discussing accepted definitions and terms that every person in the company (or project) will use.

If you’re interested in learning more about developing a shared language, Lis tackled this in her earlier article Why Your Business Needs a Shared, Customer-First Language.

In conclusion, understandability is key to good communication. And it ultimately rests on two things: opening up to the other parties’ perspectives and adapting your approach accordingly.