Whether online or in offline, digital or physical, communication is a skill that we can grow into and develop. These two insights might help you take your communication to the next level.

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At the Stronger conference in January, we invited a few people together who are experts at communicating effectively with their own audiences. I wanted to see what we could learn.

You can watch the whole session here, but the panel consisted of Emma Borquaye, the founder and director of Girl Got Faith, Paul Kerensa, Comedian, author and script writer, as well as Jemma Regis, entrepreneur and author.

There were two key insights from the conversation that could be useful to you as you seek to become more effective in your communication in whatever sphere of influence God has placed you. These principles will be useful to you no matter what context you are in.

1. Be Accessible

In the conversation, Emma Borquaye said this about being accessible:

Our core principle is to connect with our audience and meet them where they're at. So that means for us being on social media being present online. And that is where we get our message across. We don't often ask the girls to come away from the social media platform to engage with us elsewhere. We try not to insert too many links into everything that we do. We just want to make everything accessible in the moment, right where they're at just, scrolling through social media.

This is an important principle in communication on multiple levels. We need to be accessible through the content we choose to communicate about, we need to be accessible in terms of the platforms we’re on, and we need to be accessible in the sense that we’re not robots or perfect, we need to show our humanity and authenticity.

I was reading a book by Max Atkinson called ‘Lend me your ears’. It’s all about public speaking and the power of communication. In the book Atkinson takes us back to ancient Greece and says this:

‘School in the earliest days of ancient Greek civilisation would have taught little else than rhetoric, because schools of rhetoric were the first form of institutionalised education in classical Greece. To participate in small scale democracy, people had to be able to speak in public to argue a case and persuade others to agree with what they were saying.’

He notes that the techniques that were taught were marked by their ‘simplicity and accessibility’. When we’re communicating online or onsite, we need to be aware of how accessible and simple we are to make sure that our communication lands as effectively as possible.

Isn’t this how Jesus approached communication? The son of God walking around ancient near east in the first century. You could touch him, you could hear him. He made himself accessible. His teaching incorporated examples from the time. People were able to relate. Being accessible is how we need to be as communicators and both Paul and Jemma affirmed the need for accessibility in communication in their own spheres of influence too.

2.Be Authentic

Another key aspect of communication today, linked to being accessible, is being authentic. We can’t be accessible if we’re not being authentic. Authenticity in our communication leads to accessibility. Again, Emma shared some helpful thoughts on authenticity:

What I've discovered about teens, is that they are truth seekers, they want authenticity, and they've grown up with on the online world, they've grown up with social media, they've grown up with personalised ads. They can tell an advert from a mile off. They don't want something fake coming to them, they can just spot it. They want someone to be real. They want people to be accessible. They want to really see the reality of somebody's life, which is why reality TV is so huge. That's why vlogging is so popular and TikTok. Authenticity is a really important word… across all generations.

However, what is so strange is the pressure that people feel to post the best photos, and convey the perfect life. However, people are hungry for authenticity. This has been picked up in marketing circles too; and you know that marketing and communication are instrinsically linked.

It was marketing guru Yashaswini Chaparwal last summer at an event who said, ‘marketing is not selling the dream, It's selling the truth, without the gimmick. It's selling the genuine to the genuine. It's selling the emotion without sugar-coating the feeling. It's selling ugly with a beautiful story. It's selling the hard work, without hiding the struggle. It's selling authenticity without intimidation.’

There’s something about this authenticity thing that is hugely biblical too. We don’t need to hide anything. We don’t need to wear masks. We come as we are and communicate as we are because God meets us as we are and the people that you’re seeking to communicate with.

Heed the warning from Keith Miller quoted in David Watson’s book, Discipleship. He says this: ‘Our churches are filled with people who outwardly look contented and at peace but inwardly are crying out for someone to love them … just as they are - confused, frustrated, often frightened, guilty, and often unable to communicate even within their own families. But the other people in the church look so happy and contented that one seldom has the courage to admit his own deep needs before such a self-sufficient group as the average church meeting appears to be’.

What about communication in business, in our organisations, external and internal, in our preaching and social media posting that elicits freedom amongst our hearers to be more themselves, enabling them to put their masks down and help others do the same?