As We Speak Read online

  Relevance: Why should the listener care? What’s in it for him?

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  POINT

  In our desire to give the audience everything we know, we quite often fail to clarify our point! In the absence of knowing what our point is, we can rattle on indefinitely. This can lead to the third core objection that people make to poor presentations—that there is no point.

  You may have spent four weeks building up to your big presentation. But the sad reality is that despite all your hard work, your audience will most likely forget 90 percent of what you say by the time their heads hit the pillow that night. So what’s the one thing that you want them to remember?

  Quite simply, your point is your message, boiled down to one memorable phrase or sentence. If everyone did this, we would all save hours every week. It’s not a matter of dumbing down your talk; it is simply a process of distilling and clarifying your thinking to a single sharp point, like an arrow designed to travel a long distance. It doesn’t need to be catchy—just clear. Couch it in your most straightforward, muscular language: “If we want to capture this opportunity, we must move in the next thirty days.” “We are taking full responsibility.” “We need to bring more discipline to spending.”

  It’s a good exercise to get in the habit of refining your point before you open your mouth in conversation as well. It’s not uncommon that someone will say, “What’s your point?” If you can’t answer that question, concisely and clearly, in that moment, your credibility will vanish.

  What’s your point, in one sentence?

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  PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

  You have just walked through a process that will help you prepare for any conversation, presentation, phone call, or e-mail. It’s rare that anyone actually stops to prepare before a phone call, but the few moments that it takes to define your outcome, find the relevance, and clarify your point will dramatically raise your level of influence. It will also save you time in the long run. One minute of preparation could transform a potentially painful, hour-long conversation into an efficient, ten-minute exchange. Try it and see.

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  MASTER TIP : Take three minutes to prepare before your next phone call. What do you want to accomplish?

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  On the following page is a communication outline that applies to any talk preparation. You can download a fresh copy from our website for future use. There are some additional elements in this outline that will be explained in the next session.

  Communication Outline

  WHO’S LISTENING?

  Example

  Imagine that you are the head of HR (human resources) for a large organization. You need to ask the senior management team for a budget to establish a leadership development program. The following page shows a sample of how you might create a preparation blueprint for your talk:

  Communication Outline

  WHO’S LISTENING?

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  ARCHITECTURE

  WHEW! GREAT WORK. You’ve completed the preparation stage, ensuring that your speech is outcome-focused, relevant, and on point. If you were building a house, you’ve now interviewed your client, surveyed the ground, and gotten your planning permissions in order. You’re ready to begin.

  But you can’t just start slapping the bricks together. First, you need to know where they go. You need a design. So now it’s time to put together the architecture of ideas. The good news is that the work you’ve already done on preparation will make crafting the architecture quick and easy.

  Like every book, movie, opera, or play ever written, your talk has three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Each part has a job to do. The job of the beginning is to capture the listener’s attention and give him a reason to listen. A successful beginning will dilate the listener’s brain and cause him to lean forward, intent on hearing what you have to say. The middle provides the meat and potatoes of the presentation; it’s there to supply the knowledge that the listener needs. And the function of the ending is to create a feeling. Because we make decisions based on our emotions, rather than our logic, it’s important to leave the listener with the emotions needed to move them to action.

  When we ask people in our trainings if they think beginnings, middles, or endings are the most important, we always get the same response. About half say they think the beginning is the most important. Half of them vote for endings. Hardly anyone ever thinks the middle is the most important section. And yet for the vast majority of us, the middle is where we spend most of our time.

  The truth, of course, is that beginnings, middles, and endings are all important. Like a triangle, if you remove one leg, the entire structure will collapse. But you neglect the beginning and ending at your own peril. Without an attention-grabbing opening, there is no presentation. Audiences decide almost immediately whether they are going to pay attention to what you have to say. If your opening isn’t dynamic, the audience will tune you out long before you ever reach the middle. And if the ending is disappointing, they will quickly forget all the good work that you put in earlier.

  So with those concerns in mind, here’s our suggestion for a quick and effective way to create the architecture of your talk:

  1. Ramp (the beginning).

  2. Discovery (the middle).

  3. Dessert (the end).

  as shown in the diagram below. We’ll walk through these sections one at a time.

  CONTENT

  RAMP

  Most speakers make their first mistake before they ever open their mouth. It’s a crucial one, and it will render everything you say meaningless. It is this: you assume that your listeners are listening to you. But they’re not.

  You cannot assume that the presence of bodies in seats means that they are paying attention to you. Chances are, they’re thinking about what they’re going to do on the weekend, planning what they’re going to cook for supper, or worrying about something that happened at the office that day. Remember, the audience doesn’t care about your message until you give them a reason to listen. They care about themselves. Your opening needs to be compelling enough to make them look up from their smartphones. And they won’t look up unless you get them interested in what you’re about to say. What’s in it for them?

  Imagine that each person in your audience is sitting back, legs crossed, arms folded. There is no point in starting in on the information section of your speech until you have them sitting on the edge of their chair, eager and anxious to hear what you have to say. You have to make them care. And the way you do this is to construct what we call a ramp.

  A ramp is the first few sentences that come out of your mouth. It should immediately engage the listener’s attention, and set the stakes high enough that whatever comes next is of interest to him. Like a ski jump, a ramp alters the angle of attack and sends you to a higher level. It elevates the importance of what you’re going to say to a higher priority in the listener’s brain. Once your audience cares about what you’re going to say, then you can go on with the rest of your talk. Now they’re listening—they’re with you.

  How do you go about constructing a ramp? It’s very simple. Go back and reread the relevance section of your preparation. Why should they care? The answer to that question is a perfect opening to your talk.

  Let’s revisit the relevance section in our previous example, to see how this works. We decided that
the senior management team at your company cares about funding a leadership development program because: (1) If they don’t foster the next generation of leaders, the stability of the entire organization will be jeopardized; (2) They have a sense of pride in the organization and the legacy that they’ve created, and they want to do what’s best for the company; (3) The board has asked for a plan to foster the next generation of leaders, and senior management is accountable to the board—their jobs are on the line.

  Take the three reasons that the listener should care, and string them together like pearls on a necklace. This guarantees that you demonstrate to the listener, as soon as you open your mouth, that you care about his needs. So, you might construct an opening, or ramp, that goes like this:

  Each and every one of you has made profound contributions to the success of this organization. Many of you are founders. Together you’ve built this company up to become a leader in the industry. But, ladies and gentlemen, we are facing a challenge. Thirty-five percent of you will be retiring in the next seven years. And we do not have another group of leaders prepared to navigate into the future.

  It’s as if we’ve set out on a voyage with enough supplies to get us to the destination, but not enough to bring us home. The future success of this organization is at stake if we don’t take action now.

  Over the next forty-five minutes, I’m going to share with you some studies we’ve made that demonstrate where the gap is, what we need to do about it, and what it’s going to cost. By the end of this talk, I’d like your approval to proceed with phase one of the legacy project.

  You can see how relevance leads to the ramp in the outline on page 46.

  Contrast this example with the following opening, which is a more typical approach. Monitor your own reactions as you read:

  Good morning, everyone. I’m really excited about today’s presentation. I want to thank all of you for coming here today, as I know you’re all busy. Before I start, I’d like to specifically thank Mark Conti for his contribution to organizing today’s event. A few housekeeping details before we start. The bathrooms are down the hall to the left. I’ve asked Elaine to pass out handouts detailing the plan. She’ll be coming around in a minute.

  I’m pretty passionate about leadership, and I’ve prepared sixty-six slides that outline how the team and I have developed a clear plan and process for creating what I think is a great leadership development program. I’ll be walking through the slides over the next forty-five minutes, but feel free to interrupt me at any time with any questions, and I’ll be glad to answer them.

  Notice anything? What’s the most commonly used word in that opening? “I.” Who does the listener care about? Himself. This is mostly about the speaker, and not about the listener. How do we know? Because the word “I” shows up twelve times, while the word “you” appears only twice.

  Other problems? The speaker has wasted precious time on unnecessary housekeeping details, losing ground in the critical first few seconds of the talk. The person coming around to pass out handouts will pull focus away from the speaker. Asking to be interrupted immediately undermines your status and says to the listener that none of this is so important that it can’t be derailed. The real overall issue or challenge, which gives urgency to the talk, has not yet been mentioned. And the speaker has let us know that this is going to be a long, boring presentation. Watch the heads go down, and the smartphones come out.

  You need to shift your attention away from yourself, and focus it on your audience. Abraham Lincoln, one of the most accomplished speakers in history, said, “When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.”

  A simple technique to ensure that your focus is on the other person is the I:You ratio, as defined by executive speech coach Patricia Fripp. 1 How many times do you use the word “I,” and how many times do you use the word “you”?

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  MASTER TIP: Get the I:You ratio right. Use ten “You”s . for every “I”!

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  In most talks, it’s the other way around. The first word out of most people’s mouths is “I.” It’s generally the first word of any sentence, and the most frequently used pronoun after “that.” People generally use the word “I” roughly ten times for every time they use the word “you.” Doubt it? Open your e-mail in-box and check any e-mail—either the ones you’ve received or the ones you’ve sent! Unless you’re a movie star or telling a compelling personal story (more on this technique later), limit your use of the word “I.” Who does the listener care about? Herself. Open with the word “you,” and you’re off to a good start; you’re talking about her favorite subject.

  When you design your opening, make it sharp, clean, and fast. Hit the ground running. There is no time to waste. You make conscious and unconscious decisions all day long about how much focus you choose to give anything—and so does your listener. It takes incredible discipline and a strong will to pull someone’s focus, and get his exclusive attention. When you get up in front of a group of people to speak, how much time do you think they give you before they make their first decision about you? One minute? Two? Studies tell us that you have seven seconds before a listener forms his first crucial decision about whether or not he’s going to listen to you. 2

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  MASTER TIP : The Seven Second Rule: You have only seven seconds in which the audience decides whether or not they’re going to pay attention.

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  Here’s what’s really unfair: most of the time, your seven seconds are up before you get to your second sentence. Half of it is used just by walking up to the podium. If you’ve got just one sentence left before those seven seconds are up, don’t waste it saying good morning for the fifth time, or thanking everyone again for coming. Demonstrate immediately that you’re there to bring value. Open with something meaningful and nourishing: something that shows the listener that (1) you understand their situation, and (2) you’re there to help.

  If you need to do housekeeping, introduce yourself, or go through the agenda, do it after the opening. An agenda is not an opening. “Good morning, thank you all for coming” is not an opening. Telling people how happy you are to be there is not an opening. It’s noncaloric blab. And when people hear it, they immediately get a signal that nothing important is going on.

  Most speakers do quite well after the first five or ten minutes, once they get warmed up. The problem is that they’re warming up on the audience’s time. After five or ten minutes, when you’ve hit your stride, your audience is long gone. They may still be sitting there, but they’re not listening to you. You’ve lost them. And now, it’s either too late to get them back, or you’re going to have to work doubly hard.

  Go for what we call “the clean open.” No names, no introductions, no greetings. Go straight in, and get straight to the point.

  Have another look at our sample open:

  Each and every one of you has made profound contributions to the success of this organization. Many of you are founders. Together you’ve built this company up to become a leader in the industry. But, ladies and gentlemen, we are facing a challenge. Thirty-five percent of you will be retiring in the next seven years. And we do not have another group of leaders prepared to navigate into the future.

  It’s as if we’ve set out on a voyage with enough supplies to get us to the destination, but not enough to bring us home. The future success of this organization is at stake if we don’t take action now.

  Notice: no “good morning,” no “thank you for coming.” Instead of being polite by mouthing meaningless pleasantries, show respect for your listeners by not wasting their time, and immediately engaging their attention.

  If you need to introduce yourself, do it later on, after you’ve already captured their attention:

  I’m Jane Green, head of HR. Over the next forty-five minutes, I’m going to share with you some st
udies we’ve made that demonstrate where the gap is, what we need to do about it, and what it’s going to cost. By the end of this talk, I’d like your approval to proceed with phase one of the legacy project.

  And for goodness’ sake, don’t waste your first precious seven seconds talking about the location of the bathrooms!

  The traditional advice says always open with a joke. We say be wary of opening with a joke, unless (1) you know you’re funny— really funny; (2) the joke is fresh and new; and (3) most important, it’s relevant to your topic.

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  MASTER TIP: Beware of opening with a joke.

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  If the joke’s not funny, and you open with a thud, you might as well pack up and go home. You’re going to have to spend the next thirty minutes trying to get your credibility back, and what’s worse, the audience now feels sorry for you. If the joke’s not fresh or original, and they’ve already heard it two weeks ago, they’re going to suspect that everything else you have to say is yesterday’s news as well. And if the joke’s not relevant to your topic, especially in a formal environment, it signals the audience that the rest of your talk may be equally irrelevant.

  Sometimes people say, “I want to save my best bit for the end.” Don’t bother. If you haven’t put your best stuff up front and hooked the audience, they won’t be listening by the end anyway. In journalism, we call the opening the “lede.” “Never bury the lede” is what they teach in journalism school. This is because journalists understand that very few readers will actually read all the way to the end of a newspaper story. Give them your best stuff first.