Nonverbal communication: signposts, transitions and summaries

Signposts, transitions and summaries

In two previous articles (nonverbal communication structure 01 and nonverbal communication structure 02) I discussed how an organised pattern to your presentation is a powerful nonverbal tool to aid your audience’s comprehension and your message’s delivery.

And much like route signs and mileage markers help the traveller, so to can you help the listener or reader of your communication.

Three devices you can use are:

signposts
transitional statements, and
summaries.

Let’s look at each in turn.

Signposts

Signposts alert your audience to key ideas. It could be a spoken or written phrase such as “this is important”, or “the second major reason we are doing this is…”.

Signposts help break up the flow of your presentation and let those members of your audience who may be experiencing an attention slip know that they need to ‘come back’.

They also help your audience remember what needs to be ‘taken away’ from the communication — what needs to be remembered later, perhaps actioned upon, and why.

Transitional Statements

Transitional statements bridge ideas, often helping to explain a previous statement.

It could be a statement such as “The reason we need to embrace the [previous sentence] is because…”.

Transitional statements help keep the presentation flowing. A communication that didn’t use them would be extremely abrupt and ‘matter of fact’, yet as communicators we know that our messages are best received when they are delivered as part of a story, a story that flows and encourages the listener or reader to come along for the ride.

Transition statements are effective when they seamlessly link two ideas together and quietly signal that you are moving to a new idea.

Whilst some communicators are naturally gifted at such transitions, the majority of we communicators need to plan and rehearse our transitions to make them appear smooth and ‘invisible’.

Summaries

Summaries that appear at various stages of your communication can, I guess, be called ‘mini-summaries’, or ‘internal summaries’.

These internal summaries help to remind the receiver of what ideas you’ve discussed so far and what outcomes or actions you have already mentioned that you’d like to see happen.

The basic idea behind a internal summary is to continue to remind the receivers of your communication of the flow of ideas and the significance of the major points you’ve made.

Don’t forget that everyone’s attention span is short, so internal summaries are extremely valuable tools for assuring that your message is received, understood and remembered.