This topic is covered in Season 2 Episode 3 of The Meaningful Communication Show podcast.

Tonight is game five of the men’s professional basketball finals here in America. This is not a discussion about basketball. It is about using fundamental skills for success. In this series, the Denver Nuggets are up three games to one over the Miami Heat. If they win tonight, they win the series.

How has Denver pulled out in front of the Miami team by so much? It comes down to fundamental skills and consistency. One of the basic basketball plays Denver uses a lot is called the pick and roll. The use of this play was even noted by the Wall Street Journal. This is a play that allows one player to protect another player with the ball in for them to get into a better position to score. That's the end of baseball basketball talk.

The important practice they are showing to the audience is the mastery of fundamental skills. The pick and roll is a pretty basic play that most every player uses at some point. How well they can do it? This is the question. Denver has been able to do this very well. How does this relate to you and communication?

When you engage in a communication activity, there are fundamental practices that will help you succeed. Perhaps you know a number of these already. Do you practice them and use them in the real world? Knowing them is one thing and doing them is another.

This past weekend I helped facilitate a crisis communication simulation in my graduate communication program at Northwestern University as an alum. One of the core activities of the simulation was for the student teams to do press conferences. These teams often struggled when it was time to end these events.

Ending a press conference has two basic parts. Tell the audience it’s over and leave the room. Yes, there are ways you elegantly and respectfully end the event. But before you start doing that, embracing the concept of ending it and leaving the room is essential.

Sounds simple. It should be. But people make this unnecessarily complicated because they lose sight of those two simple components.Instead of ending the press conference, people keep talking and taking questions. This can result in sharing protected information and making promises that shouldn’t be made or cannot be kept.

For this example of doing a press conference, people need to practice ending it and leaving the room. Once that is done, they can enhance how they end it and set the stage for future communication. Get the simple part down first. When you don’t understand a technique (a basketball play) and cannot execute it (score a basket), your odds of failing outweigh those of achieving success.

Keep things simple. Practice the simple things. This will grow your confidence and that of your team. Do the simple things right on a consistent basis. The Denver Nuggets are displaying this as they are leading the championship series.