There certainly is a plethora of material—and for that matter, good, informative material—on effective communications. This information comes in the form of books, academic articles and internet blogs. The goal of this article is more modest: it is designed to give a short, complete, half-page checklist for effective communications that you can tape on your desktop, laptop or cabinet to review before you hit the Send button on an email or speak to subordinate staff. Moreover, the checklist is operational. To review the difference between operational and non-operational, consider the following two pieces of advice:
- Effective communications should be concise and brief. A bulleted or enumerated list is preferable to a long narrative paragraph.
- Effective communications should be focused on future fixes rather than on past blames. If something wasn’t done, then asking again that it be redone is more effective in accomplishing results and maintaining good relationships than inquiring why it wasn’t done originally.
Item 1, while sound advice that frequently appears in the literature is, nevertheless, not operational. You are not told how to be brief and concise. You are not told how to bullet a long narrative paragraph. Moreover, you are not even told the underlying theory: why bulleted lists or enumerations are preferable to long paragraphs. In short, you would not know how to implement this advice. If you are about to send out an email or speak to a subordinate, this ignorance of how to fix it would create an inertia against any corrections, leading to ignoring problems.
Contrastively, item 2 is operational. You know exactly what has to be done. True, you may not like the advice; you may be upset or angry that your previous request was not done and may indeed want to, if not place blame, then at least inquire what happened. But the advice is clear, unambiguous and most importantly immediately implementable without further thinking; in other words, item 2 is operational while item 1 is not.
This contrast succinctly illustrates the goals of this article: to provide a complete checklist, with each item immediately implementable, that can be consulted quickly before sending any email or communicating with subordinates. The checklist should allow you to fix challenges to make communications effective, leading to superior goal accomplishment and better interpersonal relationships.
Previous Literature
This article builds on five previous pieces of literature with related goals.
The idea of a communication checklist first appeared in a 2024 article on the principles of biblical exegesis.[1] That article in turn built on two previous attempts at checklists. First, a beautiful but short article by Melanie Dunn on email etiquette.[2] Although it had the usual brevity of SOA newsletter articles, it succeeded in enunciating basic principles and, moreover, giving several case studies to enable the more ambitious reader to test their knowledge. The second source was the checklist originating in Jewish law governing required speech behavior in its adherents.[3]
Not surprisingly, it turns out that the two disparate checklists provided by Jewish speech law and Dunn’s recommendations have a great deal in common, and this commonality formed the basis for the proposed 2024 checklist. However, that checklist was buried in a huge 40-page article on biblical exegesis whose primary focus was not effective communication.
A fourth article summarized the 2024 checklist in the form of a table.[4] However, the table, while compact, was too terse. It did not carefully review implementation of its items. Moreover, the checklist was incomplete; the important principle of conciseness or the use of bullet points or enumeration versus narrative was neither mentioned nor explained.
To fully explain both the how and the why of conciseness and skillful use of bulleted lists or enumeration, we need the principles of optimal goal-setting.[5] By way of background, it is well known that if you give two managers with two equally effective teams the same project goal, one might succeed and one might fail, the difference between them lying in how the project is broken up into subgoals, a technique called goal-setting. Goal-setting is an important topic with a huge literature on it since its principles seriously impact business successes in projects, with projects occurring quite frequently in the business world. Thus, goal-setting is well understood; it provides the keys to why conciseness and brevity are needed and, more importantly, shows us how to implement it.
Effective Communication Not Related to Goal-Setting
We’ll break up the checklist into two parts: one dealing with non-goal-setting and one dealing with goal-setting principles. The mnemonic for non-goal-setting communications is H.O.T. FI.RE, standing for Holistic (versus item) focused; Operational (method versus outcome); Tentative tone; FIx (versus blame); REal-world (versus person) focused. We next elaborate on each of these separately with nuances and simple case studies. The more ambitious reader is invited to read the references in their entirety for further details.
Holistic (Versus Item) Focused
We must always bear in mind that requests are made to people, not machines. Sensitivity to the implications of our requests should therefore always be on our minds. If we requested multiple tasks from someone who performed all but one, then acknowledgment of the tasks completed should be made prior to re-asking for the uncompleted task. If we only requested one task, we might look back at other tasks asked of this person. If the person has typically completed past requests, then acknowledgment of their past behavior should be stated up front prior to re-asking for the uncompleted task. Finally, if nothing positive can be said about the person’s past, then conversation should ensue on whether the requests made are reasonable relative to the person’s time needs and training; for example, if the person needs refresher training, then requests should not continue until that training is received.
Operational (Method Versus Outcome)
In a series of beautifully designed experiments focusing on teaching high-school girls how to throw darts, several interventions were tested for efficacy. “Do your best”/“Hit the target and score the maximum” was second to the bottom of the list; true, it achieved better results than saying nothing, but there are more effective ways to increase a player’s score.[6]
A key point made in the study of dart-throwing is that method is superior to outcome in achieving results. When students’ task (hitting the bull’s-eye) was broken down into five component skills—grip, position, sight, throw, follow-through—scores improved significantly. In other words, stating how to achieve the outcome (first grip the dart properly, then position yourself, etc.) leads to better results than merely focusing on the outcome (hitting the bull’s-eye). Interestingly, the emphasis on method versus outcome relates closely to goal-setting, which will be discussed later.
Dunn gives the following contrasting statements to illustrate method versus outcome:
- Outcome: “The colors in these slides look terrible.” (Or, “The colors on these slides does not meet our company’s standards.”)
- Method: “I suggest using our company’s color palette for more attractive slides.”[7]
Many critical communications can easily be fixed by simply adding a few phrases on how to achieve the desired result.
Tentative Tone
Tone, distinct from content, is important in maintaining good personal relationships. The tone should project a shared undertaking rather than a superior-subordinate relationship. There are numerous ways to implement this, such as the following:
- “It was my understanding that this was due today. Do you have a different understanding?”
- “We originally planned for this to be completed today. Has something come up? Do you need more time? More help?”
- “I think I omitted to mention that the reason I set a deadline for today is because my boss is in need of the completed report for a meeting with the board. Now that you are aware of this, could you suggest a realistic completion time?”
Tentative tone is also assisted by the skillful use of modal words such as could, might, may and possibly.
The key to tentative tone is avoiding finality since that prevents a shared dialogue. If it is really necessary to assert this finality, at least formulate it in terms of a past dialogue and inquire if new obstacles have emerged.
Fix (Versus Blame)
Another way to look at this concept is to focus on the future rather than the past. Notice that this is rather an easy goal to achieve. Emotionally, however, there is a desire to blame, to complain about an unmet expectation. This emotional challenge can be met in a variety of ways. Perhaps this is a simple omission from a list of requests; if so, it is better not mentioned and forgotten. Similarly, perhaps this is an exception to otherwise outstanding past performance. Again, it is better not mentioned and forgotten. On the other hand, if it is repetition of a persistent or emerging pattern, perhaps the request should be dropped until the reasons for bad performance are identified. The reasons need not be with the performer! Perhaps too little time is allocated to accomplish something. Or perhaps the performer never received adequate training (or was trained a while back). By hosting a variety of options when dealing with an unmet expectation, the natural emotional impulse to blame, or even to question, can be ameliorated or otherwise averted.
Real-World (Versus Person) Focused
Just to clarify our terminology, there is a real difference between “Why didn’t you do this?” and “Why was it not done?” The key here is to realize that every reference to a person is potentially confrontational; if your goal is something in the real world, then it is best to formulate your objectives in terms of reality rather than people.
Optimal Goal-Setting
People normally do not consider goal-setting to be a communication issue. But as we saw in connection with dart-throwing, goal-setting can be at the heart of communication. Asking for something for which the method of accomplishment is not immediately known is abusive, since the request implicitly supposes that the person asked is knowledgeable enough to accomplish the task. Therefore, the best request asks for something accomplishable with minimum effort or without the need for the person to request further clarification.
As with effective communication, the literature on goal-setting is immense, partly due to the fact of its importance in the business world where projects are executed daily. While books, academic articles and internet blogs abound in advice for good goal-setting, not all the advice is immediately implementable. For example, a popular goal-setting technique, S.M.A.R.T, says that subgoals should specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. But as Hendel shows, terms such as specific are not well defined.[8] Moreover, good subgoals need not be measurable.
After discussion and analysis, Hendel lists the following attributes of optimal goal-setting with a mnemonic: A.I.M For R.A.T. Subgoals should be Atomic (that is, broken down into the smallest units as illustrated with the five components of the dart-throwing example where each of the five components is very specific and can’t be broken down further). They should allow occasional Impossible challenges, but only after a mastery of performance basics has been achieved and only if given occasionally. They should emphasize Methods over outcomes, as seen in the dart-throwing example. To the extent mentors are available, frequent Feedback, preferably after each attempt, should be given. Subgoals should have clearly Recognizable terminal states of achievement and be so unAmbiguous that they can be “Timely achievable,” that is, completed in a reasonable amount of time.
Our main purpose in bringing in goal-setting is to show how it explains and drives the effective-communication requirement of brevity and enumeration, say through bullets in written communication. If you can break a task into four or five subparts, then atomicity requires that you enumerate or list four or five items rather than deliver one narrative. In other words, the brevity is not the end in itself; rather it is an attribute that naturally arises when subgoals are atomic and unambiguous. Returning to the dart example, a long narrative asking dart throwers to do their best and get as many bull’s-eyes as possible should be replaced by an enumerated list requesting that when practicing students focus on grip, position and so on.
Conclusion
This article has presented a modest checklist of about a dozen items, half devoted to goal-setting and half devoted to other areas of effective communication. The checklist can be taped to your cabinet, desktop screen or laptop and consulted prior to hitting the Send button or speaking to subordinates. The checklist items are all specific and easily implementable. Moreover, the article has explored ways to fix items that do not meet the checklist standards. Hopefully you will use this checklist to improve your communications.
This article is provided for informational and educational purposes only. Neither the Society of Actuaries nor the respective authors’ employers make any endorsement, representation or guarantee with regard to any content, and disclaim any liability in connection with the use or misuse of any information provided herein. This article should not be construed as professional or financial advice. Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries or the respective authors’ employers.
Russell Jay Hendel, Ph.D., ASA, is a member of the Career Development Community advisory board. He is adjunct faculty III at Towson University, where he assists with the Actuarial Science and Research Methods program. Russell can be reached at RHendel@Towson.edu.
Endnotes
[1] Russell Jay Hendel, “Enhancing Pedagogy and Biblical Exegesis with Emotional Intelligence,” Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics 22, no. 6 (2024): 78–112, https://doi.org/10.54808/JSCI.22.06.78.
[2] Melanie Dunn, “Email Strategies,” Actuary of the Future, January 2020, https://www.soa.org/globalassets/assets/library/newsletters/actuary-of-the-future/2020/january/aof-2020-iss-01-31-dunn.pdf.
[3] Chofetz Chaim, Sefer Chafetz Chayim, trans. Yedidya Levy, 4 vols. (Mazal Elul Congregation c/o Mazal Press, 2008.
[4] Russell Jay Hendel, “Negative Leadership,” The Stepping Stone, June 2025, https://www.soa.org/sections/leadership-development/leadership-development-newsletter/2025/june/ss-2025-06-hendel/.
[5] Russell Jay Hendel, “Optimal (Sub) Goal Setting for Superior Project Outcomes,” The Stepping Stone, March 2024, https://www.soa.org/sections/leadership-development/leadership-development-newsletter/2024/march/ss-2024-03-hendel/.
[6] Hendel, “Optimal (Sub) Goal Setting.”
[8] Hendel, “Optimal (Sub) Goal Setting.”