I recently went one-on-one with Barri Rafferty, Chief Communications Officer of Anywhere Real Estate, the parent company of Century 21, Coldwell Banker, E.R.A. Real Estate, Sotheby’s International Realty, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, and Corcoran.
Adam: What are the keys to successfully communicating in today’s landscape?
Barri: Well, Adam, it is more crowded and noisy than ever today, but I often go back to the basics of being a good communicator. What are the skills you want to master, and how do you want to come across? I start with clarity, simplicity, and brevity. Being easy to understand helps you be more credible. I also think tone conveys character. You and I have both been in settings where people are empathetic, calm, and authentic, and others where people can be defensive or arrogant. So think about the tone you set in any setting you enter. The other piece that leaders and many people are struggling with today is what is authentic, what is transparent, and what is real. Coming across with integrity has become even more important. The last thing is that communications is a skill you can build. It is like going to the gym and building a muscle. People come into their careers and they are not great communicators. I say think of it as something you will work on and develop over time. You may not enter the workplace as a great communicator, but it is a skill that you can build.
Adam: How can you build that skill?
Barri: Practice. Communications takes practice, whether you are in a meeting or in front of a big crowd. Some people get stage fright, and you have to work at that and overcome it. There are channels today. People are on TikTok and on podcasts. Work through those. Work with people to rehearse before you go in. Think about your messaging. Tape yourself and listen back to your tone. Do you sound good? Is that how you want to come across in a meeting? Do you want to be more inspirational, and can you bring out that coaching voice, or do you want to be calmer and soothe the room in a crisis? For me, it is often the one that says, okay, let us take a step, take a breath. You can change the pattern of your communication to be more effective in different situations as well, but all of that takes practice.
Adam: Practice makes perfect. Feedback is invaluable. Anytime I give a talk, I actively seek feedback. Even if an audience tells me they really liked what I did, if someone says, you did this and I do not know about that, there is a good chance there is something I could do a little differently and a little better. No matter where you are, you can always get better.
Barri: Yeah, feedback is a great gift. I have worked with a lot of executives through the years, and many have different challenges. Some are in scientific fields and are talking to a mainstream audience, and they use acronyms and terms no one understands. That is about clarity and understanding your audience. If it is a scientific group, great, go with the high-level content. If not, boil it down to something more understandable. I also coach a lot of women. One thing women often do is apologize, and we talk about leaving the apologies behind. Instead of saying, I am sorry I am late, say, thanks for your patience, let us get into it. Men are more definitive at times, while women may defer with language like this might be the right approach. So, language that conveys confidence and how you project yourself is something to work on. I have worked with groups of women who mentor and coach each other, listen for those things in rooms, and give each other fast feedback to improve those skills.
Adam: You shared a key word that is essential when it comes to communication, and that is listening, which is at the heart of effective communication. What can anyone do to become an effective listener?
Barri: I think of communications as not transactional but relational. To build rapport, you have to be an active listener. I often talk about fearless listening because sometimes things are hard to hear. I have been in client service for much of my life, and you need to listen for the challenges and obstacles. If someone is upset, watch the emotional cues as much as the intellectual cues to understand how to respond. If people feel you are taking their feedback and putting it into your responses, you will build stronger relationships and trust over time.
Adam: You mentioned right off the bat that anyone focused on effectively communicating needs to be able to communicate clearly and with simplicity. How can anyone do that?
Barri: Brevity is hard. There is no doubt. I often believe simplicity takes more time. This is where AI can help you. Many times I am writing something and it becomes three paragraphs and not very simple, and I will go to Copilot and ask, how would you streamline this for this audience to be more clear. Getting assistance from technology is one way. The other way is to keep refining and editing, and take out extraneous language and words that do not add value. Working together, those things can streamline communications. In today’s world, most people think in microbursts. You are scrolling Instagram or TikTok, and within seconds, you decide whether to jump in or jump out. It is often eight to ten seconds. So think about your headline, your opener, and the visual that will engage someone and get them to want to listen to more.
Adam: You bring up a really important topic: the utilization of AI and, more broadly, technology in communication. We have so much at our disposal. We have so many tools that can allow us to become more effective communicators, but in some ways, they can also impair our ability to communicate. What tips do you have on how to most effectively leverage technology to communicate?
Barri: Well, Adam, as a communicator, I rely on AI daily. ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, whatever choice you make, it has become a partner. It can create first drafts and provide research and information. It can shorten communications for brevity and help you target diverse audiences. You can put in your content and say, tailor this for our investors or shareholders versus our employees. It can also create visuals. I may ask for an infographic or a slide to accompany a presentation, even caricatures at times. It can analyze sentiment and engagement and give feedback. There are many ways to leverage technology and AI to help you communicate more effectively and measure engagement and reach on emails and posts, from open rates to likes and comments. We use technology with our employees inside the company and with external stakeholders all over the world.
Adam: I really like how you frame thinking about AI as a partner. I had a conversation with someone who said she views AI as a really smart coworker she can bounce ideas off. She works remotely and does not have a water cooler. That person is not a person anymore. It is AI. When she said that, it resonated. That is how I think we should think about AI, and it sounds like that is how you think about AI in your role as a communicator.
Barri: One hundred percent. I love the term coworker. I have heard assistant and partner. One speaker we had in-house at Anywhere was Jeff Woods, and he teaches the CRIT method for creating context for AI. What is the role you want AI to play? The third piece is the interview. Ask AI to interview you with clarifying questions before you give the assignment. That was a light bulb for me. I always thought of it as one way. Stopping and asking, what else do you need, makes it a two-way dialog and a very different way to get to outcomes and strategy using technology.
Adam: Do you have any other tips on how to leverage AI and technology more broadly to communicate effectively?
Barri: Let us talk about the don’t. If you become too dependent on AI, you can over-automate. Things become robotic. They do not sound authentic. The tone may not be right. There are privacy concerns. You must be careful about whether you are in your company’s private environment or on the external web. To me, it is always the human interface, your tone, empathy, and creative overlays, with AI as the assistant, not the final output without oversight. That oversight is critical to great communication. I cannot imagine doing my job without technology. I also cannot imagine the technology doing my job without me.
Adam: Great minds think alike. I wanted to explore the pitfalls around using AI because there are many, and you shared perhaps the biggest one. Most people are savvy enough to see through communication that is AI-generated. People can tell when someone uses AI to replace a human being versus using AI to augment a human being. AI should be a partner. It should be a tool to help you. You should not use AI to outsource your thinking. You should not use AI to outsource you.
Barri: What is interesting is people are training AI to have your voice. If you work with AI over time and put in a lot of an executive’s content, it can start to get the tone and intonation, which is a little eerie. It does learn, but you still need clear direction and oversight. Be sure it is right for the audience. If an executive is talking to internal employees versus an external group, like students, agents, or brokers, the tone, words, and jargon matter. Technology gets better and better, but human judgment still matters.
Adam: Do you have any specific tips on a granular level on how to use AI most effectively?
Barri Rafferty: First, experiment. Try things different ways. Do not be one-dimensional. Provide context. Be clear about the audience and the outcome you want. What do you want them to take away? Define the level of expertise. How technical or not are they? Give a persona at times. I might say I want this in the role of a fifth-grade teacher and see what it comes up with. Different personas produce different outcomes. You can also use creative prompts. We recently launched an intranet called The Neighborhood. We were launching it in a town hall, and I thought, would it be fun to create a video? I asked AI to take the assets of our intranet and create a song to the tune of the Mister Rogers theme song. It was fun. Our creative team made a video. We had our executive team in sweaters, and they animated a train going around our headquarters. By the time they pulled up the intranet everyone was smiling. It created a whole tone, and it all started with asking AI for a song. Think out of the box for creative ways to engage.
Adam: What are the keys to authenticity in communication?
Barri: We all have a sense of what is comfortable for us. When we are in front of a group and speaking words that are not in our language, we become stiff. So take your notes, understand what you want to communicate, then put it in your own words. For me, handwriting helps me remember and use my tone. Others can use bullet points and go impromptu. Find what works for you. You have to make it your own. When you do that, you become more authentic. When delivering something controversial, many of us become stiff. It is hard to deliver news that people will not like. One of the most important things I learned as a leader is that it is better to be trusted than to be liked. When people understand why you are doing something, they may not like it, but if you can explain it, that creates trust, integrity, and authenticity.
Adam: Speaking authentically and not being afraid to deliver the hard news goes hand in hand with your first tip, which is to focus on clarity and simplicity. When there is a message you do not want to share, you often make it confusing. When there is a message you do want to share, it is easier to be clear. If you can get to a place where all of your communication is communication you are comfortable delivering, whether good or bad news, it will be easier to speak clearly and simply.
Barri: Engaging your audience in those times is even more critical. When we deliver tough news, we want to deliver it fast, be authoritative, and get off the stage. Those are the times to pause and ask for questions and feedback. People may need to hear things in different ways before they are comfortable. We talked about EQ. When it is a more emotional topic, give time for the news to marinate in the room, speak about it, and go through different permutations until it is clear.
Adam: You mentioned the importance of tone. Do you have tips on how to learn the right tone or how to know when to use the right tone for the situation?
Barri Rafferty: Tone is important. When people are in front of big groups, they think their tone must be authoritative rather than empathetic. You can be empathetic in a big room. Remember kindness. Small gestures matter. Show appreciation. Be human. Be vulnerable at times. If you have made a mistake, apologize or explain why it happened. Those moments often earn the most respect. They are tough for leaders who feel they must be perfect, but people today look for some vulnerability. If people tell you that you are being offensive, arrogant, or not genuine or calm, work on it. When we coach executives for media, the media can be relentless. Take a breath. Do not respond immediately. Do not get combative. There are techniques to keep yourself calm when others escalate.
Adam: Do you have any other best practices everyone should follow to become more effective at communicating, or any pitfalls to avoid?
Barri Rafferty: Be present and do not multitask. People join meetings and multitask, then hear something and pop in, which can be jarring and less effective than if they had been engaged listeners. As a good communicator, if you want to show up well in a meeting, be present. Put your camera on. Even in virtual meetings, think about eye contact. Many of us have treated virtual as not a real meeting. How you show up virtually is just as important as how you show up in person. Younger generations may have been in the office less, so presence on screen matters. Your posture, lighting, how you lean in, and your engagement are critical to how you are perceived day in and day out. People know when you are in the room and when you are not. You think you are hiding it while typing, but it is not the same. The energy and presence are not the same, and the communication and interaction are not the same.
One thing you learn as a kid is to make eye contact when you shake someone’s hand. Engage with your eyes. Your face shows emotion. If you are interested or excited, it shows, and if you are shocked, that shows too. Think about what you are portraying, even as a participant. We also talk about breathing and posture. Some people power pose for two minutes before they present to get energy. For a big presentation, think about getting your energy up, hydrating, how you eat that day, and sleep. Be a corporate athlete. If you are on a big stage, make sure you are physically ready to project energy. In smaller rooms or on a screen, show up in a way that says you are professional and ready to communicate. Sometimes I will be dressed nice on top with sweatpants on the bottom, but show up in a way that comes across as confident. That comes from language and speech and from how you show up. Think about your audience. Who do you need to show up for, and how do you treat them with the respect they deserve? We all vote with our time. If you decide to be there, be present. Be a strong communicator and contributor. There is so much to learn in those rooms, and you can also deliver. That exchange is relational and leads to more relationships and a better career.
I often tell my team it is not about the outputs but about the outcomes. We put out communication every day. The question is, what are we creating? What is the outcome? What is the engagement, understanding, and excitement we create at the other end? The more you think about the recipient and what you want them to feel or do, the more effective you can be. It starts with you and it ends with them.
