Be A Standout Communicator: Five Lessons From a Design Guru

Ever wondered how interior design tricks can amp up your communication style? In this blog, I take a look at the home styling guru Dr. Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen (LLB) and derive five lessons from his approach to transform the way business communicators engage their audiences.

Today personal distinction isn't a luxury; it's a strategic necessity.  Digital overload pushes us to rethink our communication to find innovative ways to capture precious attention and truly stand out.

So where can we turn for guidance?

Meet the maestro of home styling Dr. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen (LLB). While you might not have considered swiping tricks from interior design stylists to improve your communication a wealth of insights are waiting for you.

Why LLB? As many of you will know, his distinctive touch has left an indelible mark on iconic TV shows like ‘Changing Rooms’. While Laurence's style may not be everyone's cup of tea, he becomes your muse when the goal is to break free from the Sea of Sameness. Magnolia is not in his palette. Within LLB's aesthetic lies a treasure trove of potent pointers for infusing more colour, flair, and impact into your business communication. These principles are your guide to becoming an authentic, consistent and distinctive communicator - one whose impact has the power to, quite literally, change the room! 

Here are my five lessons to release your distinctive advantage:

Lesson One: 🟣 Embrace Bold Expression 

Break free from the mundane. Ever found yourself enduring countless bland presentations that sap your energy instead of stoking it, leaving you yearning for something different?LLB's lesson is clear: our rooms and our communication style don’t have to be dull. The antidote to blandness, according to Laurence, is planning for impact and fearlessly embracing colour and pattern. He demonstrates that we can be bold and expressive without losing our audience. Just as the colour of our rooms doesn't have to be magnolia, our communication can break free from monotony. Infusing our messages (and personal style) with boldness and vibrancy captures attention, helps us stand out, and makes our messages pack more of a punch.

Takeaways:

📌 Don't be timid with content or style.

📌 Don't shy away from colour.

📌 Plan for impact and execute with boldness.

Lesson Two: 🟣 Pay Attention to Detail 

Curate the details. In LLB's world, every element in interior design is meticulously considered to craft a cohesive whole. The best designers are masters at curation: discarding a cushion for its texture, furniture for its size, or a rug for being one adornment too many. Similarly, exceptional communicators curate ideas, structures, words, phrases and sentences. A word is swapped for one that has the right sound or 'ring to it' - its sound better tugs at the heart strings. It’s this meticulous attention to detail that leaves a polished, professional, and memorable impression on our audience.

Takeaways:

📌 Pay attention; every detail matters.

📌 Meticulously curate; place each element perfectly.

Lesson Three: 🟣 Learn the Art of Eclectic Storytelling 

Master the blend. LLB’s prowess in merging different styles exemplifies the art of good storytelling. In his designs, Laurence expertly intertwines thematic elements, novelty, and surprise to craft a coherent narrative, offering an engaging, multi-faceted 'designed' experience. A skilled communicator is a designer of experiences too. A successful business narrative skilfully weaves together themes, enhances comprehension, builds anticipation, directs audience attention, sustains engagement, and ties all the threads into a resolution that leaves the audience thoroughly satisfied.

Takeaways:

📌 Craft a compelling story.

📌 Make it impactful.

📌 Tell it with finesse.

Lesson Four: 🟣 Be Open to Opulence: 

A touch of opulence works. LLB's unabashed love for opulence is his signature, his calling card.(We all need one). It's what we anticipate from him. Faced with diverse design challenges, we eagerly await how Laurence employs his creative flair and design flourishes to solve them - there's always a touch of opulence.

As communicators, the lesson is clear: embrace a bit of grandeur in your expression. While not every message calls for elaboration, infusing richness into your communication can add a layer of linguistic sophistication. It helps convey meaning in captivating ways, sparking curiosity, and igniting our audience's imagination. If you revel in words, imagery, and rhythm, you posses the design elements to infuse your communication with some stylistic touches that elevate its impact (without venturing into verbosity).

In a world saturated with business cliches and jargon liberating your language can make you distinctive and give you an edge.

Takeaways:

📌 Unleash your inner poet; be expressive linguistically, and add some flourishes. 

📌 Design your language to give your audience a unique experience - a luxurious escape rather than a mundane one.

Lesson Five: 🟣 Personalisation Matters 👠🎩

Be an original. An interior designer needs to meet the client brief, as does our communication. Both need tailoring to meet needs, aspirations, and expectations. In this process, personalisation is critical. LLB's clients don't just seek their design needs resolved; they want them resolved in a particular way - the way only Laurence can deliver.  They want his style, his brand. 

Adopting a one-size-fits all approach to business communication or personal branding yields a bland, ubiquitous effect, and, leads to a rapid loss of appeal. Laurence’s style prompts us to not only embrace our creativity and our individuality but to continuously strive for excellence in expressing it. Laurence is prepared to show his personality. He embraces professional vulnerability - he pushes the boundaries; it could so easily go wrong and sometimes it does, but it's rare. Laurence's approach is to be daring but with skill. 

Laurence’s bold, flamboyant style, skill in execution, courage and authenticity, sets him apart, transforming him into a global brand. Similarly, as communicators we need to nurture these attributes.  We need to work on strengthening our distinctive voice. We need to embrace our individuality, creativity, and use novel approaches to master a standout communication style and distinctive personal brand.

Takeaway:

📌 Be courageous; put your authentic style out there and do it with skill.

📌 Work to find your voice and finesse it; you never know what impact it might have.

There we have it, my take on what we can learn from embracing LLB's design approaches to help us transform into more engaging, impactful, expressive communicators with a distinctive brand.

If you think your communication or personal brand could benefit from a makeover inspired by the design mastery of Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen, I hope this article has sparked fresh motivation and ideas for you to get out there and change the room!

Always interested to hear your insights.

#CommunicationMastery #DistinctiveVoices #ChangeTheRoom #ExpressYourStyle #InspiredByLLB

Copyright 2024 Veronica Allardice