Teaching communication clarity: a free session plan for team leaders and business communication classes

Pre-work (optional, 10 minutes)

Dead Words and Live Words

Dead Words are phrases that sound like leadership and produce nothing. They feel polite and safe, the listener nods, and the request never actually lands. Test one sentence: "We should probably take a look at the onboarding emails at some point." We, should, probably, take a look at, at some point: five places where the owner, the date and the finished result went missing. A Dead Word inside a request turns it into a Ghost Task. The cure is a swap habit: for each Dead Word there is a Live Word version that carries the same intent and gets a different result. The principle underneath, and the reply to anyone afraid of sounding bossy: unclear is the unkind option, because it leaves people guessing.

Ownership Killers: no who

Examples: "someone should", "let's", "we need to", "the team will". Say "we need to" to a room of eight and each of the eight assumes it is one of the other seven. Put a name in front of the request: "Priya, this one is yours." If saying the name feels a little awkward, that is the sign it is doing its job.

Deadline Ghosts: no when

Examples: "ASAP", "no rush", "later this month", and "by end of week" with no day or hour. A task with no date never makes it onto anybody's calendar. Give a date and a time. When it genuinely is not urgent, say that and still set the date: "This is not urgent. I need it on the 14th, so plan it in."

Clarity Dodgers: no picture of done

Examples: "improve", "look into", "explore", "keep me posted". "Look into" could mean investigate it, fix it or just form a view. Name the result instead: "Show me where most users drop off and bring two options by Thursday." "Keep me posted" turns into "Send me one status line each Thursday at 4: on track, at risk or off track, plus the single thing I need to know. If it slips off track before then, call me."

Ghost Tasks and Ghost Signals

A Ghost Task is an assignment only the leader knows about: in the leader's head it was handed over, in the listener's head it was a remark. Your team reports Ghost Tasks back to you as Ghost Signals. "I assumed that was someone else's": you said we, not a name. "I didn't know what you were after": you named an activity, not a result. "I didn't know it was a priority": you said no rush. "I didn't think I could sign off on it": you never set their authority. "It sounded like an idea, not a request": you hedged. "It slipped": no date and nobody checking. Treat each one as feedback on your own wording before you treat it as an excuse.

Live Word delegation

Five elements, or it was a hint and not a handover. A name, never the team. An outcome: the finished result, described tightly enough that two different people would hand in roughly the same thing. A deadline: a day and an hour. Context: why it matters, so the person can make judgment calls without you. Authority: what they decide alone and what comes back to you. Writing all five takes about a minute. Then swap the closing "any questions?" for "play back to me what you think I am asking for".

The One Meeting Rule

Nobody leaves a meeting until each person can say three things: the decision we made, my action on it, and my date. Test it with a quick round before people stand up, one takeaway and one action each. If someone cannot say all three, the meeting did not work, however good it felt. While you are at it, replace open verbs on the agenda with decision verbs: approve, assign, stop, choose. And instead of asking the room for concerns, ask every person to name one risk before you commit.

SCQA and the communication ladder

Build a message as Situation, Complication, Question, Answer, so the reader gets the setup before the ask; most leaders jump straight to the ask and are surprised when it comes back wrong. Then climb the ladder: said, heard, understood, accepted or rejected, but always committed. Most leaders stop at said. Ask the other person to score their understanding from 0 to 10 out loud, and keep asking questions until it is honestly a 10. Rejected is a legitimate rung. Committed is not optional.

SCQA comes from Barbara Minto's Pyramid Principle. Dead Words, Ghost Tasks, Ghost Signals, Live Word delegation, the One Meeting Rule, the communication ladder, the Dead Words Audit and the Directness Gap check (from his Words That Matter workshop) are Andreas Pettersson's.

Session plans

Pick the length that fits your slot. Every version uses the same test, framework and worksheet.

The free test participants take

Participants take the free communication test on their own phone or laptop. It takes a few minutes. It asks for a name and email to send the full result, so tell participants that in advance. Results go only to the person who took it, so nobody has to share a score unless they choose to.

The case: the Monday meeting that produced nothing

Discussion questions

1. Trace each of Lena's three misses back to the Dead Word that most likely caused it. Which category is each one?
2. Count the Dead Words in Lena's message to the team channel. Rewrite it so a named person knows what to do, what done looks like and by when.
3. Would a new project management tool fix Lena's problem? What exactly would her team type into it?
4. Lena avoids specific language so she does not sound bossy. Is she being kind? Who pays for the vagueness?
5. On the ladder of said, heard, understood, accepted or rejected, committed: where did each of the three misses stop?
6. In your own audit, which category dominated? What habit or belief do you think sits underneath it?
7. AI lab: where did the AI's count differ from yours, and who was right? Which of its rewrites would sound wrong coming from you?

Facilitator notes

• Privacy first. Participants audit their own messages silently and never show the originals. In pairs, they swap rewrites only, with real names changed. In the AI lab, use the invented transcript, never a real meeting or a colleague's messages.
• Expect the bossy objection in the first ten minutes. Answer it with the principle: unclear is the unkind option, because it leaves people guessing. Specific is not aggressive. It takes the guesswork out of someone else's day.
• First counts come in low. When someone reports zero or one, ask them to reread their first message slowly and look only for Clarity Dodgers. That is why the lowest band on the sheet says look again.
• Yes, the rewrites run longer. Say it before someone else does: the short vague message only looks efficient, and the longer clear one is cheaper because nobody has to come back and ask what it meant. The Directness Gap usually proves it in the room: writers score themselves two or three points higher than their readers do.
• Students without a team audit messages to a group project, a club or a part time job. Group project chats are rich in Deadline Ghosts.
• In the AI lab, insist on the hand count before the AI runs. Without it, groups accept whatever the tool says. AI tools vary and tend to overcount; ask each group to argue with at least two of its findings.