75% of Communication Is Psychological: Here’s What Every BRM Needs to Know

In a world flooded with notifications, emails, Slack pings, and back-to-back meetings, effective communication has never been more critical or more neglected. For Business Relationship Managers (BRMs), the ability to communicate with clarity, empathy, and purpose is not just a soft skill. It is the very engine of value creation.

In Episode 43 of the BRM Brown Bag podcast series, host Suresh GP, MBRM, sits down with Victoria Harness, Manager of Customer Demand at Virginia IT Agency (VITA) and a standout keynote speaker at BRMConnect, for a candid, insight-packed conversation on why communication is the make-or-break skill for every BRM.

Victoria brings over two decades of real-world experience across government IT, SaaS, and large-scale service delivery to the table. Her perspective is refreshingly honest, deeply practical, and immediately actionable. Here is what every new or seasoned BRM needs to hear.

Suresh GP puts it bluntly in the episode: IT professionals have historically been poor communicators. They talk past stakeholders, overwhelm executives with technical detail, and fail to tailor their message to their audience. Victoria agrees, and she identifies two root causes.

• Linear thinking without audience awareness: People communicate from what they know, not what their audience needs to hear. The message becomes about the sender, not the receiver.
• Laziness: The habit of forwarding a seven-email thread with just “FYA” (For Your Awareness) and no context is a perfect example. The reader is left with no clarity on what was said, why it matters, or what action is needed.

Victoria’s antidote is a structured, audience-first approach she has refined over years of practice, one she calls the 5W1H framework.

Drawing from her experience managing ADHD, which she credits as a superpower, not a limitation, Victoria developed a personal communication template that ensures focus, clarity, and action-orientation in every message she sends. The framework is simple but transformative:

• What – What is the core message or situation?
• Why – Why does it matter to this specific audience?
• Who – Who is affected or needs to act?
• When – When is this relevant or time-sensitive?
• Where – Where can more information be found?
• How – How does the reader get more, or what is the required action?

Victoria also adds a powerful practical tip: bold the word “ASK” at the end of any communication where you need action. “Lots of people will jump right to that and then see the summary, and that gives that executive summary,” she explains. It signals to busy stakeholders that their time is valued while still ensuring the ask is unmissable.

Perhaps the most profound insight Victoria shares in this episode is the psychological dimension of communication and why most professionals completely underestimate it.

She cites a model from a short course she took early in her career: effective communication is only 25% about solving the problem. The remaining 75% is psychological, addressing the emotional needs of the person you are communicating with.

She illustrates this with a striking example: a customer whose problem was not resolved but who walked away satisfied because they felt heard, understood, and assured of follow-through, versus a customer whose problem was technically solved but who felt dismissed and rated the experience poorly as a result.

This resonates strongly with the BRM discipline’s core philosophy. As Suresh GP frames it, every business partner has rational expectations (the product or service delivered) and emotional expectations (feeling valued, understood, and partnered with). Only when both are met do you achieve the “wow factor,” the hallmark of a truly strategic BRM relationship.

Victoria brings the theory to life with a current example from her work at VITA. She was asked by leadership to assess demand for the Canva design application across state agencies. Rather than simply compiling a report, she started by asking the foundational BRM question: Why?

She discovered that VITA already used Adobe as an approved, full-featured alternative. She found that users reported gaining more capability from Adobe than they had previously with Canva. And when she asked for the data behind the supposed demand, she uncovered that the entire business case rested on a single email from a Canva salesperson claiming 1,000 users with no verified list, no agency breakdown, and no alignment to VITA’s supported agency scope.

Her response to leadership was methodical and transparent: here is the ask, here is what the data actually shows, here is the approved alternative, and here are the gaps. Tell me more about what you are truly trying to solve for.

This is BRM communication at its finest, not just delivering an answer but ensuring the right question was being asked in the first place.

Victoria offers clear, no-nonsense guidance on which channels to use and when:

• Text: Reserved strictly for logistical, time-sensitive nudges: “I’m in the lobby” or “Are you here for lunch?” Nothing of substance.
• Teams/Chat: Good for quick exchanges, but be aware of retention policies. If you need an artifact or audit trail, do not rely on chat.
• Email: The default for anything that needs to be referenced, reported on, or acted upon. Include a summary up top, an ASK in bold, and backup detail beneath.
• Phone/Meeting: When an email thread goes beyond two exchanges or when tone is being misread, pick up the phone. And when you do schedule a meeting, keep it under 30 minutes, always have an agenda, and make the purpose explicit.

She also addresses the real danger of overcommunication, a trap that VITA itself has fallen into, given its scale. The solution is consolidation, repositories, and smart summaries that let recipients self-serve rather than drowning in a daily flood of communications.

Whether you are brand-new to the BRM role or a decade in, Victoria’s advice is worth returning to often:

• Master the executive summary: Victoria traces this skill all the way back to fifth-grade comprehension exercises, reading, and then summarizing. That ability to distil complex information into a concise, clear narrative is foundational for every BRM.
• Invest in relationships before you communicate: You cannot tailor a message to someone you do not know. Spending time to understand your stakeholders’ motivations, preferences, and emotional drivers is non-negotiable.
• Anticipate gaps and questions: Before any communication goes out, ask yourself what the recipient will wonder about. Address those gaps proactively or tell them explicitly when and how you will follow up.
• Practice deliberately: Communication fluency is earned through repetition. Use LinkedIn Learning, short courses, and real-world feedback to build the muscle.
• Find a mentor and invite criticism: Constructive feedback from a trusted mentor is infinitely more valuable than finding out from a dissatisfied customer. Seek it actively.

Episode 43 of the BRM Brown Bag is a masterclass in something that should be obvious but rarely is: communication is not a support function for the BRM role. It is the role.

Victoria Harness’s 20-plus-year journey from instinctively naming a role she had never heard of to managing IT demand for the Commonwealth of Virginia is a testament to what happens when a BRM bets on curiosity, relationships, and authentic communication over titles and hierarchy.

As Suresh GP closes the episode, “The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.” If you want to be trusted as a strategic partner, you have to show up that way in every email, every meeting, and every conversation, short or long, urgent or routine.

Watch the full Episode 43 of BRM Brown Bag on YouTube, connect with Victoria Harness on LinkedIn, and subscribe to the BRM Brown Bag channel for more practitioner wisdom from the front lines of Business Relationship Management.

Victoria’s journey into BRM is one of the most compelling origin stories in the field. She entered the Virginia IT landscape through Northrop Grumman, which had secured a state contract to consolidate and modernize Virginia’s IT infrastructure. Coming in as a project manager, she quickly realized that her true strength lay elsewhere.

“I named the BRM role without even knowing what it was,” she recalls. “I liked connecting people together, bridging the gap. I liked coordinating and pulling people together, and I liked really asking a lot of questions.”

That instinct to ask questions, to dig beneath the surface to find the real problem, is what defined her 12-year tenure at Northrop Grumman and has continued to drive her career ever since. Today, at VITA, a service provider to 67 executive branch agencies, supporting 55,000 users across Virginia, Victoria manages customer demand, facilitates strategic and voice-of-the-customer meetings, and regularly hosts large-scale IT forums with up to 180 participants.

One of the most powerful moments in her story is the deliberate choice not to pursue a director title when the opportunity arose. Instead, she stepped into a demand management role that preserved the work she loved most. As Suresh GP notes in the episode, this is the hallmark of authentic leadership, trusting your instincts over conventional career trajectories.

“You don’t have to chase a title. You can be extremely influential without a title. It’s based on how you present yourself, what you know, the questions you ask, and how you commit and follow through.”

Victoria’s story is proof that the BRM role can be a career-defining force when you have the right skills, the right mindset, and the right foundation. If this episode has inspired you to level up your communication, deepen your stakeholder relationships, and position yourself as a true strategic partner, the next step is earning your BRMP® certification.

TaUB Solutions, led by Suresh GP, MBRM, host of the BRM Brown Bag, offers the globally recognized BRMP® (Business Relationship Management Professional) certification course. This 3-day, instructor-led virtual training gives you:

• A thorough grounding in BRM concepts, frameworks, and best practices
• Practical tools: BRM Capability Workbook, Impact Report, and Strategic Relationship Plan
• Real-world examples and interactive sessions from a globally recognised BRM expert
• Full preparation for the BRMP® certification exam, taken at the end of the course

Seats are limited. Secure your place today and take the first step toward becoming the strategic BRM partner your organization needs.