When others seek information from you, sometimes there are restrictions on you relative to the questions asked.  This could be because you don’t know or confidentiality or privacy considerations exist.

Whatever the circumstances, how YOU craft the message defines the outcome.  You have the ability to guide what the listner hears.  The message creates understanding, acceptance, confusion, fear, etc.

It is within your control, to some extent, how the information is recieved.  This is based on presentation.  How you craft your presentation benefits greatly from your own awareness of the recipients wants and needs.

For Example

Consider a truck stop.  At the entrance is a rack of reading material for the diners pleasure while eating.  The rack contains automotive magazines, girlie magazines and tabloid newspapers like the Sun.

Given the truck stops core audience the presentation of reading content on the rack is targeted based on assumptions of  the typical customer interests.

This presentation bias, giving the people what they want, is an important consideration when sharing information with others when your objective is to influence outcomes.

An Exaggeration

Lets say you are part of an organization that needs to reduce expenses.  You want the organizational stakeholders to have this information.

When you share the information you may choose to engender an environment of fear so some will be encouraged to leave, thus cutting employment costs and reducing expenses, but you don’t want to say it explicitly.

This message sholud be vaque and full of uncertainty.

On the other hand you want to retain people witin the organization to the full extent possible a d encourage a collaborative effort to resolve the cost challanges together.

In this case, the information should be shared clearly and openly, most importantly encouraging open feedback and discussion (after all those are key collaborative practices).

Consider, to achieve your objective, what is most important is not always the information itself, rather how it is sent.  In tbe above examples, first you need to determine what the goal is, then craft the message accordingly.