Telegraphing

Telegraphing is defined as "to divulge or indicate unwittingly (one's intention, next offensive move, etc.), as to an opponent or to an audience."

To effectively use telegraphing, one has to make a minimal investment in the following elements:

• Observation
• Language profile
• Inquiry and triggering

Observation is recognizing an individual or groups involvement represented by group dynamics and interactions in a topic or a subject of presentation. The key attributes to watch physical or tonal differentiation correlated with topics at hand. For example, if you were to talk to me about the importance of configuration management within a software organization, you would definitely be a part of a very animated conversation.

Language profile like the previous post is about understanding the language of the person you will be communicating with. If you are speaking to a physician about their business and your topic was insurance billing, you would need to know the background about medical coding for insurance forms, ICD coding, CPT coding, and the overhead related to managing insurance payments in a private practice. If you are unaware of the right terminology, you may not be projecting the appropriate responses. This learning will require some investment of time to learn the language, a prequisite for a rapport.

With inqury and triggering, you are trying to steer a conversation in a specific direction. You will need to ensure that you are not perceived as dominating (even though that may be what you are wanting to do). For if you do, you risk creating negative influence with all those in the audience. By structuring your statements as non-confrontational inquiries, you can effectively manage the interactions through precision questioning with neutral tones.

With a tactful use of language profile and topics, one can shape and direct a conversation in a direction you would like it to go. The precision questioning coupled with using the language profile and knowing what topics create animated behavior will allow you to trigger similar behaviors on-demand. This can be done in general conversation, through email, or in meetings.

While all of these are ways to influence directly and indirectly, I find it important to emphasize "the Mom sniff test" and recognizing the different between doing right versus being right. If you stray too far from either of these principles, you will find that you are steering this interaction into the toilet.