9.4 Communication Methods and Tailoring the Message
Key Takeaways
- Communication methods trade richness — nuance and immediate clarification — against reach and cost per person.
- Match richness to the difficulty and sensitivity of the message rather than to the sender’s convenience: bad news by email is a characteristic failure.
- Pairing channels works well — hold the rich conversation to manage the relationship, then confirm in writing to manage ambiguity.
- Tailoring adjusts depth, language, framing, and channel for the audience; it never means giving different stakeholders different versions of the facts.
- Accessibility and cultural or language context are tailoring requirements, not optional extras, and are inclusion issues as well as communication ones.
Outcome 10e has two joined halves: know the range of communication methods available and understand the importance of tailoring messaging to meet stakeholder requirements. The syllabus links them because choosing a method is itself a tailoring decision — the channel carries meaning as much as the words do.
Range of communication methods
Methods are often grouped by how information flows:
| Method type | Meaning | Examples | Best used when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Push | Information is sent to recipients | Email updates, newsletters, directed reports, SMS alerts | Audience needs awareness or a specific instruction; feedback not required immediately |
| Pull | Recipients access information when they need it | Intranet portal, project wiki, dashboard, document repository | Large audiences, reference material, self-service status |
| Interactive | Real-time exchange between parties | Workshops, meetings, calls, demos, co-design sessions, stand-ups | Decisions, sensitive issues, complex content, relationship building, resistance |
Further practical distinctions:
- Formal vs informal — board papers and contracts vs corridor conversations and chat; both matter, but formal decisions need formal records.
- Written vs verbal vs visual — policies and baselines favour written; nuance and conflict often need verbal; dashboards and prototypes favour visual.
- Synchronous vs asynchronous — live meetings vs recorded briefings and comment threads for distributed teams.
No single method is always best. Critical decisions usually need interactive confirmation even if a push summary follows. Large user populations often need pull hubs plus targeted push headlines.
Tailoring messaging to stakeholder requirements
Tailoring means adjusting content, tone, detail, frequency, channel, language, and messenger to the audience’s needs and the project’s purpose for communicating with them.
| Stakeholder need | Tailoring choice |
|---|---|
| Board / sponsor | Exception-based: variance, options, recommendation, residual risk |
| Delivery team | Task-level clarity: priorities, dependencies, Definition of Done |
| End users | Impact on daily work, training, support, “what stays the same” |
| Regulators | Evidence, compliance mapping, formal correspondence trails |
| Suppliers | Contractual milestones, acceptance criteria, interface dates |
| Public / media | Simple facts, single spokesperson, no speculative promises |
Tailoring also respects diversity and inclusion: accessibility (captions, plain language, screen-reader friendly docs), cultural norms, literacy, and time-zone fairness. A technically perfect message that the audience cannot access is failed communication.
Scenario C — one size fails
A senior stakeholder wants a one-page exception report monthly; operational users need weekly “what to do this week” notes before a process change. A single generic email satisfies neither: the senior ignores detail, users miss actions. The communication plan splits audiences, channels, and owners. Complaints about “too many emails” fall because volume is replaced by relevance.
Choosing a method: richness against reach
Communication methods trade off against each other on two axes. Richness is how much nuance, tone, and immediate clarification a channel carries; reach is how many people it serves at what cost. High-richness channels are expensive per person; high-reach channels lose nuance.
| Method | Richness | Reach | Best used for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Face-to-face / video, one-to-one | Highest | Lowest | Bad news, conflict, negotiation, sensitive personal matters |
| Workshop / group session | High | Low–medium | Requirements, options appraisal, building shared understanding |
| Video or telephone call | Medium–high | Low | Time-critical clarification, remote relationship building |
| Presentation / town hall | Medium | High | Announcing change, building momentum, Q&A at scale |
| Written report / board pack | Medium | Medium | Formal decisions requiring an audit trail |
| Low–medium | High | Confirming what was agreed, routine notification | |
| Dashboard / portal / newsletter | Low | Highest | Ongoing status, self-service information |
The examinable judgement: match richness to the difficulty and sensitivity of the message, not to the convenience of the sender. Delivering redundancy news, a rejected change, or a serious escalation by email is a classic scenario failure — it is efficient for the sender and damaging to the relationship. Conversely, calling forty stakeholders individually to announce a routine date change wastes the project's scarcest resource.
A common professional pattern is to pair channels: hold the rich conversation first, then confirm in writing. The conversation manages the relationship; the written record manages the ambiguity.
Tailoring without changing the facts
Tailoring means adjusting content depth, language, framing, and channel for the audience. It does not mean telling different stakeholders different versions of the truth. That distinction is examinable and is a professional-conduct point as much as a communication one.
| Audience | Tailoring move | What must not change |
|---|---|---|
| Board / sponsor | Exceptions, forecast, decision required, business-case impact | The forecast itself |
| Operational users | What changes for them, when, what support exists | The go-live date |
| Technical team | Detail, dependencies, interfaces, acceptance criteria | The quality standard |
| Regulator | Evidence, compliance position, formal record | The compliance facts |
| Community / public | Plain language, impact on them, how to raise concerns | The nature of the impact |
Two further tailoring factors matter in real projects and appear in scenarios: accessibility — captions, plain English, alternative formats, screen-reader-compatible documents — and language and cultural context in international or multi-partner projects, where directness, hierarchy, and written-versus-verbal norms differ. Both are inclusion issues as well as communication ones.
A senior stakeholder wants concise exception reports, while operational users need practical readiness updates. What should the communication plan do?
A project must tell a supplier that its contract will be terminated for poor performance. The project manager plans to send a detailed email late on Friday. What is the most appropriate critique?