When you’re the speaker, you’re trying to achieve an objective when you speak. You’re trying to convey a message, teach a concept, or inspire new ideas. You have a goal for speaking and you won’t achieve that goal without the audience reaching theirs. To help them reach their goal, you need to be crystal clear in your communication, not muddied!

That means giving them less when you speak might actually be better!

Clear Communication is Built With Less

We need to avoid muddying the water when we speak. What do I mean by that? Don’t use too many words when fewer words will actually work better. Be succinct! One executive Kevin worked with said he wanted people presenting to him to “be prepared, be brief, and be gone.”

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler" 
- Albert Einstein

3 Tools for Practicing Brevity

Here are three tools to help you simplify for message. Do these exercises after you’ve constructed the full message to help you crystalize your key points into fewer words.

100 Word Summary

For some of us 100 words may feel like a painful request for hours of devotion on the word processor, but you might be surprised at just how short 100 words really is. For example, the average speaker speaks at about 125 words per minute. At that rate, you have 48 seconds to speak your 100-word summary. That isn’t much time!

Write out the summary of your entire presentation in approximately 100 words. If you can’t read it in less than 1 minute, it’s too long! This is a great summary to give to the audience at the start or the end of your message.

6 Word Summary

This sounds ridiculous on the surface, but summarizing your entire message in a brief phrase or sentence is powerful. We do this exercise in our Message Builder workshop. Students usually push back at first, but once we put them into the exercise, they see the power and simplicity of the tool. Here are a few examples of what our students have created in the past:

Alpha project, under budget, on time.

Don’t submit change orders after Friday.

Question the customer. Listen for flags.

1 Word Summary – The Prompt

If you thought summarizing your presentation in 6 words was ridiculous, I bet you love this one! What is the one word that could serve as a mental prompt for your entire message? What is one word that causes the floodgates of the audience’s mind to open wide and let the message rush in?

In 2001 I was working with a managed IT services company as a business development manager. I had a good year because I was privileged to work with an amazing sales team that year. We closed one of the largest deals for the company and one of the biggest I’ve ever closed in my life, even to this day. As a result, our entire sales team made President’s Club that year and we all won a trip to the prestigious sales conference.

At the President’s Club event our team was asked to sit on stage in front of an audience of hundreds to explain how we managed to close such a large deal. I let the rest of the sales team offer their insights first. They all did an amazing job pointing out the engineering hurdles we overcame, the legal negotiations, and the financial plan for asset depreciation. Like I said, they were a great team and I was proud to serve as their BDM (Business Development Manager) on this deal.

Then they handed the microphone to me and only one word came to mind. So I shared it. Momentum.

I explained how the more we worked together as a sales team overcoming hurdles, we became a stronger team. We accelerated and hit our stride. We became efficient and more productive over our 8 months together. I ended with this. “I guess that’s how I’d sum up the key to the entire win. I’d sum it up in one word… Momentum. Help your team find it’s momentum and nothing will stop you.”

As I exited the ballroom that evening the CEO of our organization was shaking everyone’s hand. He stopped me by holding our hand shake with a tight grip and a longer hold. With a genuine smile on his face, he looked me in the eye and said, “Momentum… I like that. Keep up the momentum next year.” It wasn’t something I had planned to say. It just came to me as I listened to every member of my team offer their insights on teamwork.

The lesson I learned that evening was one of simplicity. To connect with an audience and give them something of value, a one-word summary can be your ticket. You give them a one word prompt and their brains will unlock everything they learned and felt from your message.

If you want to have a greater impact on your audience, don’t weigh them down with more unnecessary words. Give them something to remember!

I’ll close with my 6 words…

I will see you next week!

Russ

Let’s connect…

on Twitter if we haven’t already?

OR Let’s connect on LinkedIn.

OR Let’s connect via my Facebook page!

iSpeak teaches workshops on Professional Selling to help sales leaders gather the most important data and then use that information to create the right message. Are your sales presentations closing eyelids or deals?R

Russ Peterson Jr. is the co-founder and Managing Director of iSpeak, Inc. – An award-winning professional development training company. Russ is a speaker, international trainer, and published author on Professional Sales Communication and Business Communication. He delivers workshops, keynotes, and personal communication coaching services to business professionals in the US and around the world. His leadership blog assists leaders in giving voice to their vision. You can connect with Russ directly through Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you think you don’t have any good stories, maybe you’re not really looking or maybe you don’t really know where to look. Let’s help you with both.

• First, HOW can you become better at looking for stories?
• Second, WHERE is the best place to find the seedling of your next story?

First, Become an Observer

Daniel Kahneman has studied how we all think for most of his career. In his book Thinking Fast and Slow he explains how we all have two systems operating in our minds. He calls them System 1 and System 2. (I can’t help but think of Dr. Seuss and The Cat in the Hat with Thing 1 and Thing 2 every time I read that.)

The world of System 1 is the automatic. It’s in charge of directing your attention and making snap judgements. For example, System 1 is great at driving on a straight and empty highway, noticing a surface is hot when you touch it, or knowing that 2 + 2 = 4. This is the part of our brain that’s always on and always monitoring. It takes care of our day-to-day, mundane habits so we don’t have to bother the big thinker… System 2.

System 2 takes care of the heavy lifting. It gets involved when System 1 has prompted it into action. When you hear a loud “bang!” your System 1 will whip your head around to look. It will also notify System 2 to figure out the source, assess any damage, and figure out what to do next!

When we go through our day on autopilot (System 1 is in the HOUSE!) our System 2 stays calm and relaxed. In fact Kanehman points out that deep down we’re all a bit lazy. It’s hard work to activate System 2 and we don’t like doing it. We tend to select our actions based on the paths of least resistance (“If System 1 can handle it, then just handle it!”).  Because of this, our System 2 tries to stay on the couch all day watching Netflix while System 1 is on the clock.

Second, The Unexpected Source

If you want to train your brain to notice more story sources, start taking notice of where System 1 draws your attention. Your best source for stories is something unexpected. By the way, that’s not a sentence meant to be a cliff-hanger before I tell you the unexpected source. THAT IS the source… the unexpected!

Any time you experience something unexpected, your System 2 will be required to pause BirdBox on Netflix and get off the couch. It’s required to look at the situation because System 1 doesn’t have this one in the playbook. It’s new. It’s different. It’s unexpected. This situation has never been encountered before, so System 1 doesn’t know what to do.

Don’t worry, you’ll do this naturally because we’re all wired this way. System 2 looks at the situation and attempts to make sense or rectify the situation. But it also develops a template for System 1’s future playbook. If System 2 can get the new play into the playbook for System 1… then maybe System 2 can spend more time with Sandra Bullock and Netflix!

This is our brain’s natural learning process. We experience a new situation. We reflect on the situation to learn from it. We file it away in the playbook for future reference.

These unexpected experiences happen all the time and they are the seedlings for your next great story!

Now,… Write it Down!

Here’s the problem… we all know how to handle many of life’s simple situations (filed away in the playbook for System 1’s future use), but if we’re asked, “Where did you learn that?” We might be at a loss because we’ve forgotten. We forgot the original learning experience. Once you experience the unexpected and learn from it, write it down!

A great suggestion from one of our Sr. Trainers, Todd Zwissler, is what he calls the Daily Homework. Each day write down one unexpected thing from your day. If you do this with a digital tool (Apple Notes, Evernote, OneNote), you can include key words or tags so you can easily search your story seedlings in the future.

For example, you might have the following experiences documented for the past three days:

• The VP asked EVERYONE on one side of the dinner table to slide down a little, so I had more room at the end of the table. #leadership #service #courtesy
• Visited Federal Hill in Providence and noticed the Italian colored stripe down the center of the road. #history #Italy #family
• Talked to flight attendant and found out best place for food in Taiwan #travel #cuisine

With these recorded in your Notes tool, you can easily search them later by keyword or tag to find the seedling for your next story.

Here’s my challenge for you… Write down one unexpected thing you experienced today and what you learned from it.

Here’s something you can expect… I’ll see you next week.
Russ

Let’s connect…

on Twitter if we haven’t already?

OR Let’s connect on LinkedIn.

OR Let’s connect via my Facebook page!

iSpeak teaches workshops on Professional Selling to help sales leaders gather the most important data and then use that information to create the right message. Are your sales presentations closing eyelids or deals?R

Russ Peterson Jr. is the co-founder and Managing Director of iSpeak, Inc. – An award-winning professional development training company. Russ is a speaker, international trainer, and published author on Professional Sales Communication and Business Communication. He delivers workshops, keynotes, and personal communication coaching services to business professionals in the US and around the world. His leadership blog assists leaders in giving voice to their vision. You can connect with Russ directly through Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you’re like me, as we enter the holiday season, I begin to think about the parties and family gatherings to come. We all enjoy seeing the friends and family but let’s be honest… sometimes our conversations could be improved and we’re the ones who might need to change! I began this year with a blog post on “How to have the best conversations in 2018.” It was based on a tool I learned from Michael Hyatt.

How are you doing?

What’s the status of your conversations in 2018? Have you improved as a conversationalist and as a friend? I know I’ve seen some improvement in myself but I’ve still got a ways to go. I’m working on it. As we enter the holidays, now is a great time to remind ourselves of the tools we can use to improve our conversations with others, but more importantly, improve our relationships with others.

Reminder 1: The One Conversation Rule

In a quick summary of “How to Have the Best Conversations in 2018” the one rule to try at the dinner table is the “One Conversation” rule. What this means is that when you have a table of 8 people, you have 1 speaker and 7 listeners. You have one conversation at the table. No side conversations are allowed.

I’ve tried this before and found that it is an incredibly powerful tool for building relationships between everyone.

Reminder 2: What should we AVOID in conversations?

Through research, observation, and my own personal experience I’ve found there are 7 things to avoid when in conversation with others. I call them the 7 deadly sins of poor conversations. I’m not calling any of these out in judgement because I’m willing to admit, I’m guilty of each one.

The road to improvement for anything begins with awareness because once you’re made aware of a situation, you’re faced with a decision. You are at a fork in the road and you can see the two paths clearly. Once you are at the fork and you can see the fork… you must make a choice. Awareness is the exposure to the fork in the road. We always begin change at the fork.

Are you guilty of these 7 deadly sins in your conversations?

Reminder 3: What should we DO in conversations?

Instead of the 7 deadly sins you could just strive to do the opposite, but is there more? Learning again from my own personal mistakes and failures, along with the coaching and research from others, I’ve discovered 5 tools to have the best conversations. I call these tools “virtues” because they seem to be the foundation of solid conversations and more importantly, solid relationships.

Virtue can be defined as “moral excellence.” In that sense, virtues are closely related to core values. They are the essence of truth and cannot be simplified to anything more foundational that itself. They stand alone as a truth.

You will notice how “The 5 virtues of great conversations” are all centered on questioning and listening. None of the virtues of conversation center on your speaking. It’s not about you speaking… it’s about what you’re doing when you’re NOT speaking!

“ It’s not about you speaking… it’s about what you’re doing when you’re NOT speaking!

I hope your Thanksgiving was filled with family, friends, and great conversations. As we move into a season of holiday parties and gatherings, my hope for us all is that we build stronger relationships with each other by leveraging some of these conversation tools.

Thankful for you all!

See you next week,
Russ

I thought he was wrapping up his message but then he said, “… and we could also start reviewing the project timelines weekly… and also, we really need to look at… also, there’s a new way we could…” I was starting to wonder how many “alsos” we were going to get!

Where is the Bus Going?

This is the FIRST element you need to give to your audience. Most of us has been taught or we have learned by watching others that when you start a presentation, you should tell the audience what you’re going to cover in your message. Every audience wants to know where you plan on taking them. Admit it… if you were about to go on a tourbus but there were 20 buses all lined up and going to different locations, you’d ask the driver “Where are you going?” before you got on any bus!

The audience we speak to is no different. I’ll admit, when they show up to hear you speak, they probably have a good idea of what you’re going to share with them already, otherwise… why would they show up in the first place?!

But by starting with a brief note on where your message is going, you reassure them they will get what they came for! Similar to you being on a plane and the captain comes on before you push back from the gate and she says, “Well folks, we are bound for Houston today so if Houston is not in your plans, I suggest you exit now.”

The captain’s message just reassures every passenger… You showed up here today to get to Houston and that’s where I’m going to take you. That is a reassuring start to the journey. Let’s do the same for our audiences.

The next two elements your audience wants… structure and flow.

The SECOND Element is the Structure

Going back to the metaphor of you on a tour bus, let’s assume you’ve been riding on the bus now for about 90 minutes and the bus driver tour guide hasn’t said a word. About 60 more minutes into it someone yells out to the bus driver, “Hey, when are we gonna get there?” The bus driver replies with, “Ummmm, I’ll have to look. I didn’t really plan out a route for us today and I’m not quite sure where we are right now.”

Okay… how do you feel now? I’m guessing several emotions are flooding in and none of them are good. Just like you’d never want your tour guide bus driver to be unprepared with a route or lost, you’d never want your speaker to be unprepared with a structure to the message or lost in their own data.

Remember, what you bring to the stage is contagious. If you are nervous and anxious because you’re lost… your audience will soon feel the same.

A simple structure to a message is to give them 3 key points. There is some kind of magic in threes where humans like hearing it and it’s easy to remember. Just give them a structure you both can follow. One simple structure Kevin Karschnik teaches often is the “Past, Present, Future” structure.

The THIRD Element is the Flow

If flow is done poorly, you might get the never-ending story. Have you ever been in one of these presentations before? You’re not quite sure what the destination is and even if you did, you’re also not sure how far along the path you’ve already traveled! The two questions to start weighing on everyones’ minds are:

• Where are we exactly?
• Is this ever going to end?

When your audience can’t track with your message, they get lost. Now they have to make a decision… “Do I attempt to figure out where he is right now with this content or… do I give up and check my email on my phone?”

One of the simplest ways to create flow in your message is to deliver transitions between your key points. You can even recap the previous message, point them to the structure of what you told said you were going to give them, then transition into your next point.

Transitions serve as signs along the highway. If the bus were cruising down the road and you thought, “Huh… I wonder where we are right now. I was reading a message on my phone and I just  started listening to the tour guide again. I wonder where we are in the tour?” and just then, we pass a sign on the side of the road and it tells you exactly what town we are leaving and which town we are entering.

You are transitioning from one city to the next. Now you know where you are located and neither you or the tour guide is lost. Simple transitions might sound like this, “So now that I’ve shared my past experience with you, let’s move on to what I’m doing now…”

It doesn’t take much to give the audience the structure and flow they crave, but it will take a little planning. Take the time to plan out a good route with transitions along the way.

Your audiences will thank you!

See you next week,
Russ

I asked my workshop students what they wanted to gain from the class. The first student responded with,  “I want to be a more engaging speaker!” My initial response was delivered with a smile and a wink, “Don’t we all!” Of course, we certainly covered that topic in our class. To many peoples’ surprise, it’s not as difficult as you might think… but it does take some planning.

Here are three simple ways you can engage any audience with your messages.

Engage with Solid Arguments

Whatever you propose to your audience needs to make sense. If your recommendation is not backed by experience or research, the audience may find your proposal illogical. If it doesn’t make sense, they won’t agree to it.

Creating solid arguments just means you provide the answer first (executives love this) and then the supporting data; or you provide your thought process which logically leads to your conclusion (answer last.) Either way, there needs to be agreement with you on how you came to your conclusion and your proposed solution.

One simple tool used by speakers is the “What-Why-How” tool to construct the body of their message.

WHAT – is the situation you’re currently facing. Make certain you can paint this picture as less than ideal.

WHY – should we make a change? This should include the costs of not doing anything. Just leaving things as the status quo is going to be unacceptable. What is there to gain by changing the current situation? It’s important to get their emotional buy in here.

HOW – can we get it done? This is where you need to offer the logical solution to the situation.

Engage their Imagination

You know this is true, you love when a speaker paints pictures in your mind. It’s so attractive to an audience we will sometimes get caught up in the imagery and time seems to slip by. Building a tapestry of elements attractive to the mind’s eye can take a skilled orator and years of practice… or you can use this one short cut:

Just tell your audience to “Imagine if…” or “picture this for me…” and you are on your way. I know it sounds to simple, but it actually works. When you tell someone to picture something or imagine something, they will.

We relate to ideas and concepts we can picture. If we can’t picture the concept of your proposal itself, get us to picture the outcomes of your proposal. What would it look like if we succeeded? Help them create a future in their minds and you just became more engaging!

Engage their feelings

It’s true you’ll remember how someone made you feel even more than what someone said to you. Feelings are always a part of any decision we make. In fact, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio made an interesting discovery while working with people who had damaged brains. The area of their brain which was damaged controlled emotions. They could not feel any emotions. Here is something interesting about the group. They were unable to make decisions.

If you want to move your audience toward a decision, you will need to engage their feelings! One of the best ways to do that is with a story. You’ve seen plenty of speakers use stories to entertain and engage audiences. Stories are one fo the best ways we engage feelings because we can all relate to the story being told. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that stories require us to use our imaginations too!

Just do this one thing…

You can really boil down all of this advice into one simple tip. If you want to be an engaging speaker, just give the audience what they came for! When the audience gets what they want, they will love you. It will require a little more work on your part, but it will pay huge dividends in results and your audience will love you for your preparation!

Always give the audience what they came for!

See you next week,
Russ

You’ve heard it plenty of times, “It’s not WHAT you say that’s most important, it’s HOW you say it.” I disagree with that statement. I don’t think the WHAT or the HOW is most important. What’s most important is “what they HEAR!”

Too often I feel like the emphasis we put on speaking skills is on the speaker without putting too much thought into the WHY behind everything we coach into a speaker. Why would we coach a speaker to do the following:

• slow down when you say this line
• give a pause immediately after you ask this question
• make sure your eye contact lands on other eyeballs
• step toward the audience when you transition to this content

Why should we care?

As a coach, why do I care if the speaker does any of these things? Why is it important? Why do I think it would be good for the speaker to implement some of these things? Why…??

If we can’t answer the why question then we shouldn’t be coaching these things into people. I think sometimes we all lose sight of this “why” and it starts to hurt our own coaching and communication. There is an answer to the why question and it’s extremely important. But we may have to ask the why question several times to get to the real answer.

Why do you want the speaker to pause after that question?

Because… it will go the audience time to think about it.

Why do you want them to think about it?

Because… it will be more engaging to the audience.

Why do you want it to be engaging to the audience?

Because… I want them to really listen to the message.

Why do you want them to listen to the message?

Because… they will need to understand this to get their work done effectively.

There it is!

There is the real benefit to the audience. The speaker speaks for the audience… always! I know the speaker showed up that day for a reason. The speaker has a goal to accomplish by speaking. But sometimes we forget the audience showed up for a reason too. Sometimes they have their own goals for attending the session.

Even if the audience doesn’t know why they showed up, they will assume they will gain something by being there. There is a benefit to them attending and you (the speaker) needs to make sure they get it. Do you want to know the secret to being one of the greatest communicators ever? It’s actually quite simple. Always give the audience what they came for!

“ Always give the audience what they came for!

You see it’s not WHAT you say that’s most important, and it’s not HOW you say it that’s most important. What’s most important is what the audience HEARS. The audience shows up for a reason.

So when it comes to you coaching yourself or others, it doesn’t take a masters degree in Neuro-Linguistic Programming to offer the best coaching. You just need to make sure you’ve answered the one question everyone in the audience has… “Why should I listen?”

Still trying to give them what they came for…

See you next week,
Russ

“Our executives don’t want us to tell stories.” After the student made the comment another jumped in, “No way! He’s right! You don’t ever want to tell a story to our executives. They hate stories.” I found the response a little sad and the worst part… this wasn’t the first time I’d heard something like this.

These types of comments tell me something about the company and the executives. It tells me they’re creating a culture of mis-led communicators and unfortunately, it’s only going to get worse for the executives.

The Demands of an Executive

I’ve sold to executives and I’ve coached them. I’ve had the distinct honor and privilege to meat some amazing ones! Why do I think they’re amazing? Because they understand how to change a situation permanently by fixing a problem instead of a symptom.

When you’re presenting to your executives, have they put rules in place? You know what I mean. Have the executives outlawed certain types of presentations or certain tools? I’ve heard plenty of these rules from students over the past 20 years.

• Never tell stories to the executives when presenting. It’s a waste of their time.
• Never use animations in a powerpoint presentation. It’s childish and demeaning to executives.
• Never use more than 4 slides for your presentation. You’ll end up taking too much time.
• Put everything you want to say on one slide. This will prevent you from wasting executive time.
• Always give the executive summary at the start. This way the executive can drill down on their personal areas of interest.

I guess what bothers me with wet-blanket rules like this is two-fold:  Number one, they’re just solving a symptom at best. Number two, the executives actually think they’re solving the problem but they’re actually perpetuating the problem by creating an army of presentation foot-soldiers who only know how to present a message one way.  They’re not being taught to think for themselves on how best to construct a message for any audience in any situation for any reason!

The Problem with the Quick-Fix

In reality, when executives are dissatisfied with the presentations being given to them, instead of focusing on how to develop the communication skills of the presenters, they go for the quick fix based on what they personally like and don’t like.

If the executives get burned a few times by presenters using too many animations for the wrong reasons, they will ban all animations.

If the executives get burned by someone using 47 jam-packed slides full of text for a 10-minute presentation, they ban anything more than 3 slides for a 10-minute presentation.

If they’ve been burned by one presenter telling a funny story to kick off a presentation because he read somewhere you should start with a joke, they ban all stories from future presentations.

These all fix a symptom, not the problem.

Let me ask you something…

If a chef puts way too much salt in your food and it tastes awful, would you ban the chef from ever using salt again when cooking for you?

Or would you tell the chef they can only use one teaspoon of salt no matter what he’s cooking?

Or would you tell the chef she could only put the salt in first, but never again after that?

Or…

The Proper Solution

Would you train up the chef to know the best times to use salt in a recipe and how much salt to use depending on the meal being prepared?

If you really care about fixing the issue then… solve the problem not the symptom!

Have a great week,
Russ

The audience began to shift in their seats at the 5 minute mark of the presentation. So far the presenter had successfully bored the audience with 6 slides of solid text and a mouthful of insincere pleasantries. After 10 more minutes of words on slides and a presenter reading the slides, two people walked out and several others were jumping on their phones checking email or facebook!

Have you been in this presentation before? The sad truth is that we can all relate because we’ve all been there. And… if we’re all willing to admit it… we’ve probably all been this presenter at some point in our career too.

The Problem

Most presenters claim they don’t have time to create effective presentations so they just do a brain dump of data and information on each slide, never construct an appropriate message, and proceed to read the slides to the audience because there was no rehearsal either.

Audiences check out very quickly and they have every right because it’s obvious the presenter does not respect their time. Our most precious resource is our time. When a speaker delivers a poor presentation like this it becomes obvious she invested none of her own time to make the message more engaging or succinct. She’s too busy and didn’t want to waste her own time, so instead she’s going to waste ours. Nothing could be more rude.

Three-Step Solution

Now maybe the presenter has the time but just doesn’t know what to do. That is fair. Let’s take care of that right now by giving you three simple steps you can implement to create more engaging presentations for your audience.

Audience’s know when the speaker is unprepared. It sends a strong signal to each person in the audience, and most of the time it’s not a good one. Here are three simple tasks you can do to improve your messages.

1. Engage them from the Start

“Hi, my name is Claude Miller. I’m your ABC Sales Rep and today I’m going to tell you about our firm’s history and our service capabilities.” While I’m not going to say this opening to a presentation is absolutely wrong, I will say it could be much improved! This opening gave the audience two things (but not very well). The two items the speaker just offered is a credibility statement (he’s a sales rep) and a preview of the tour he’s about to deliver (history and capabilities.)

The two pieces most business presenters leave out are the two pieces the audience most wants. We call them the Attention and the Audience Benefit.

Attention

There are many ways to gain attention. In a sales presentation you could ask a thought-provoking question you know is on their minds or quote someone in the audience.

“If you had to scale up your distribution in 3 months without increasing costs, where would you start?”

“I was speaking to Jeremy before we started today and he told me…”

Audience Benefit

Deep down we all know our time is our most valuable resource. So when a speaker expects us to sit and listen, we are investing our time. We all want to know what our return on this investment is going to be. As a presenter, offer the benefit (“What’s In It For Me” WIIFM) at the start of your presentation.

“Today you’ll learn more about the finance tools we offer so the next time you need to scale your production lines, you can implement faster.” 

2. Build a Structured Message

When the audience cannot follow your message they will get annoyed (because you’re wasting their time) and they will get tired or bored. Either way, each person will begin to check out and focus on something else. The message must have a structure and a flow to it. While there are many ways of structuring different types of messages, one of the most powerful and widely used structures we have found is called What-Why-How.

WHAT – Is the issue? What is the Problem? What is the focus? What is the situation?

WHY – Why did this happen? Why is it happening? Why is it important? Why do we need action now?

HOW – How are we going to move forward? How are we going to correct? How are we going to implement?

3. Build Graphical Slides

The use of pictures is more than just dropping a photo of a smiling customer on a slide with 8 bullets of text. Pictures and graphics with animations can create both focus and simplicity for the audience. The problem with so many slides is the sheer amount of information placed on each slide. The first thing the audience does when they see a new slide is they begin to explore with their eyes.

They are trying to make a discovery. In other words, what am I supposed to look at here and what am I supposed to see? If we cannot get to our first discovery within 3 seconds, we start to get frustrated. You may have been in an audience with a  senior executive who felt this frustration and she just shouts out to the presenter, “What am I looking at here?” or “Where am I supposed to be looking?”

Creating a visual representation of your message does not have to be Hollywood production. It doesn’t have to take 3 weeks to create either. There are simple techniques you can implement using builds and animations to guide the audiences focus through the storyline.

You can also engage a company like BrightCarbon to assist in the development of your slide deck or to teach you better design techniques you can do yourself in PowerPoint. I’ve had the pleasure of working with this company before and they are absolutely amazing at what they can create and teach to you.

Don’t let your audience down and don’t waste their time!

Thinking about my next storyline…

Have a great week,
Russ

After the conference one of your friends poses the question, “Which keynote speaker did you like the best?” As soon as one person answers everyone else immediately jumps in and says, “YES! Me too! She was so good. Why do you suppose we all loved her so much more than the others?”

I can tell you one thing she probably did… She engaged your brain!

What exactly does “engage their brains” mean? It simply means this… keep their minds working with things they love to do. Now there are different ways to keep their minds busy. Remember, there’s a reason why reading a dictionary vs. watching the next Mission Impossible movie feels different. One of these would be difficult to do for even 10 minutes while the other can be done for over 2 hours and it seemed like 10 minutes!

So there’s got to be more to it than just keeping their brains busy. We have to look at how you’re keeping their brains busy. What are you asking their brains to do? Pick the right tasks and you can be more engaging too!

How can we engage their brains?

The best way to do this is to make the entire experience engaging! We do this by engaging different regions of their brains. Remember, don’t make these into huge engagements like the grand finale of a fireworks show. Most of these techniques are extremely subtle, but they’re still quite effective.

Here are 5 techniques you can use to engage your audience’s brains throughout your message.

1. Say the words “imagine…” or “picture this…”

I know, I know… this one sounds too simple! It’s crazy how effective this technique is with an audience. But just picture this… a speaker is on the stage. You’re in the audience listening. She pauses for a moment of silence as she looks down and away. Then her gaze comes back up to the audience and she says, “Will you all do me a favor? I want you to imagine something. Think about…”

When someone tells us to imagine, we immediately warm up our imagination to picture whatever she is about to tell us to imagine. That creative, imaginative part of our brain is quickly put to work. Creating scenery in our minds is something we’re good at and it’s something we love to do. By the way… did you see how I started this explanation by asking you to picture the speaker on stage? Engaging right?  

2. Offer one line of dialogue

My manager popped his head in my office and asked me, “Hey Dave, would you have any additional headcount to support the Alpha project this quarter?”

This is an example of dialogue. When the speaker is actually quoting someone else, but they deliver it to the audience as if we’re all (audience included) hearing this line delivered for the very first time. It’s as if it’s being performed LIVE for us to relive the actual moment with the speaker. Our imaginations will create a scene in our minds as we watch the scene unfold. We construct that scene so quickly we don’t even know we’re doing it. It’s fun. It’s easy. We love doing it. It’s engaging!

3. Propose a tough question

But what happens if we invest in this upgrade and 18 months later, the software is obsolete? Is it worth the risk to save thousands next year?

Our brains love to solve problems. We love doing it on our own because we gain a sense of accomplishment, but if we can’t solve the problem on our own, we want someone to help solve it with us to remove the internal tension. Think about it. You know this is true. When someone proposes a really tough trivia question and you don’t know the answer, it can drive you crazy if you don’t know the answer. Luckily today we just turn to Google or Siri for the answer. Wa-LAH! Tension is gone! Give your audience a tough question to wrestle with to engage their problem-solving brain. Then lead them with your message to your proposed solution.

4. Generate a feeling

I’m sure you’ve heard it before. This quote is credited to Maya Angelou, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I can prove this is true. Think about the 5 most memorable experiences in your life. I certainly hope there were more than 5, but we don’t have all day. Just pick five. Now… can you recall a feeling from each one?

Sharing stories or experiences can help generate both positive and negative feelings in your audience. They will remember how they felt when you finish speaking. As you saw in last week’s blog, we use feelings from memorable moments to reconstruct each memory. Engage them with a feeling you want them to have walking away… excitement, anxiety, fear, pride, confidence.

5. Give them candy for their 5 senses

We don’t like to just hear a story… we want to experience it! The way we experience a story in our mind is with our mind’s senses. When we hear someone talk about a loud clang or a bright flash of light, we use our mind’s ear and our mind’s eye, respectively, to internally recreate the sound or the sight. The regions of our brain that handle actual sound and sight are stimulated even when we are just imagining them through a recreation in our mind!

If you want to engage the audience’s brain, then describe parts of your story with words that will stimulate their senses.

• The sandpaper feel of grandpa’s hands.
• The warm sweet aroma of apples and cinnamon.
• The loud tinging clash of the metal frame falling.
• The salty taste of the ocean.
• The yellow-orange haze of dawn over the meadow.

I’m not asking you to turn your next business presentation into story time, but I am challenging and encouraging you to stimulate their brains. The audience wants a logical presentation but they also want to love the journey.

Engage their brains!

Have a great week,
Russ

“So how was the new restaurant you tried?” As soon as I ask you the question you immediately begin to access the memory of the experience. For some reason, before you recall anything from the experience you feel agitated and disturbed. Then one side of your mouth tightens while one eye brow is lifted with a gaze back at me. Then, you give me two words, “Not good.”

How do we store memories?

I found this research from Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, absolutely fascinating. But, I’ll admit I’m a little nerdy when it comes to our brains and psychology.

According to Gilbert, our brains don’t store every bit of information from a memory. Instead, we store important chunks of information. Your experience at the restaurant is stored as a series of words or short phrases.

• Rude waiter
• Steak was over done
• Decent wine
• Overall too pricey

In other words, we store our memories in headlines and feelings.

What we personally define as important is dependent on many internal filters we use to create our personal perceptions of the world around us. Most of us have heard this described as our personal biases. They’re impossible to completely remove, but in my opinion (bias included and acknowledged), I wouldn’t really want to have everyone remove their biases! I personally believe that our different opinions create more variety and better solutions in the world.

How do we recall memories?

Did you know our memories are always under construction? Gilbert points out how we recall information from our memories in those small chunks. Then, we fill in the blanks using the feeling we experienced during the creation of the memory and other elements from our present situation.

In other words, we recall the key elements and the feeling to quickly reconstruct the entire memory… Wow.  Now that is pretty cool. (Sorry… was my neuroscience nerd showing again?)

Why is this important to a Public Speaker?

When you speak to an audience, understand what their brain is doing… it ‘s looking for the headlines. It has to decide what’s important and what’s not important. This is hard work for an audience!

Our brains are busy and just like many things in life that require us to work, we look for the path of least resistance! In other words, what’s the easiest way to get this done? If your audience is listening to you speak and you’re giving them tons of data, they will be working hard to find the most important pieces to remember… and they’re looking for an easy way to do that.

The longer you talk and the harder you make it for them to pick out the important pieces, the more tired they get. And when your audience gets tired of working so hard… they’ll quit! Remember, we’re all looking for an easy way to do our work. I’m sure you can picture this… can you tell me what an audience full of listening quitters looks like in today’s day and age? You guessed it! They’re all on their smartphones!

How can you make it easy on your audience?

We all love the speaker who makes it easy to be in the audience. When you’re the speaker, you can do your audience and yourself a favor by giving them the headlines while you’re speaking. Don’t make them work hard to create their own headlines. You just need to give them the headlines they’re already looking for.

Here are some of the ways you can give your audience a headline:

• Repeated phrases
• Anything that sounds different (think emphasis, volume, pauses, inflections)
• 6-Word headlines
• Something that generates a feeling (think stories, passion, questions, illustrations)

Your audience is busy constructing a memory of your presentation. How are you going to help them remember your message? When you’re constructing your message, always identify the key elements (headlines) for the audience. Then, make sure you call attention to those headlines when you deliver the message to the audience. In other words… do the work for them!

Don’t make them distill your entire message down to a few simple ideas on their own. Do the work for them!

When they recall the memory of your message, they’ll pull up the headlines you provided, then instantly remember the feeling they experienced at that time (gratitude and appreciation for you doing the work for them!), and finally they’ll fill in the blank spots with related material to recreate the full memory.

Congratulations! You did the work for them!

Give the audience a headline because that’s what their brains really want… It’s the path of least resistance they’ve been waiting for and they’re going to remember you for doing the work for them!

Have a great week,
Russ