How Leaders Speak. Jim Gray
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Absolutely not.
Will the members of your audience be interested in them? Absolutely.
Why? Because the findings will be all about them.
The right nugget can help you shoot the lights out at “Industry 2020.”
Are you getting a little more excited about your big presentation now?
Is Vegas a party town?
UTILIZING THE POWER OF THREE
You’ve learned about your audience, which will prove invaluable in your speech, the telling of your story.
But just what will that story be?
In these early days, you need to establish a theme for your talk, one that your boss endorses (the more enthusiastically, the better), the organizers approve, and you love.
You’re going to be spending a lot of time with your theme. It’s the core of your presentation and you should be able to express it in a single, concise statement that anyone can understand. If you don’t have a theme, you won’t have a speech. All you’ll have is verbiage, disconnected and ineffectual.
Once you’ve established your approved theme, it’s time to start creating your presentation, your story.
Most speakers make this process far too complicated, when all they really need to do is employ a simple but unerringly effective template known as the Power of Three.
A remarkable number
There’s something quite special about the number three. From an early age, we organize, explain, and retain information best when it’s arranged in threes.
Children instinctively “get” the number three. Indeed, kids are often better communicators than adults because they’re invariably sure about what they want, and they think and speak in threes. Free of all the complexities that mark adult lives, they haven’t matured to the point where they fear simplicity. They embrace it.
Great speakers of the adult variety welcome simplicity as well.
It can set you apart.
It’s been said that never have we known more and understood less. We live in a world flooded with information, yet executives generally speak less effectively than ever. Swimming in data, they try to cut through the dross to deliver relevant content that hits the mark.
Much of the time they fail. Why?
They’re insecure about their content.
The reason so many presentations and pitches go over their allotted time these days — an appalling breach of professional etiquette called “overspeaking” — is that speakers are often uncertain about what should comprise a story, so they pile in every piece of even tenuously related information in order to support it.
It’s little wonder they go long.
Great communication starts with making the right decisions about what material needs to go into your presentation and what needs to stay out, given the time available.
The Power of Three helps you make the right decisions. It’s an elementary formula that facilitates the organization of material, however complex, within three main categories: Introduction, Body, and Conclusion.
Let’s examine each category and determine how to best employ it.
The Introduction
The introduction easily qualifies as the most critical part of your presentation. It’s here where you either hook your listeners, or let them know they’re going to be in for a banal or disagreeable experience.
Or both.
Presentations often go off the rails right out of the gate because the speaker never lets the audience members know what’s in it for them. At the outset, a presenter needs to state, “This is why what I’m about to tell you is important to you.”
I often ask clients, “What’s everyone’s favourite radio station?”
Why, it’s WIIFM, of course: What’s in It for Me?
It’s how every audience member thinks. It’s the way we all think, for the most part, just about all of the time.
Hit your listeners right off the top with how they’ll benefit from your talk, how it will help their careers, their organizations, or both. Be as specific as possible.
Audiences, for the most part, are remarkably keen on having you succeed, if only for self-interest. They know that if the talk tanks, it’s bound to be an unsettling occasion for all concerned.
If you don’t engage your listeners early — within the first ninety seconds — you won’t get them at all. Some will continue to try to make a connection between your topic and their lives, but most will tune out, their heads bowed before their PDAs.
Make sure you hook them right out of the gate.
Context is key
The introduction is where you state your theme, and do what so few speakers do (at least well): provide context.
Context is the most valuable and under-utilized ingredient of modern day communication. Just as a building needs a solid foundation to remain upright, so presentations require the underpinning of context or background to stand firm and soar.
With context, you can speak like a leader by setting the groundwork for the information to come, while supplying listeners with an account that reflects your perspective.
Often, speakers wrongly assume that listeners have the most current information on the issue at hand (or already share the speakers’ views on it). As a result, presenters will begin their story at, say, point D, when the audience doesn’t know, understand, or fully appreciate the consequences of A, B, or C. If you don’t lay down the back story, your listeners will be struggling to catch up with you for the duration of your presentation.
When you fail to supply adequate background you shortchange your listeners, since it’s unlikely everyone will have updated, comprehensive knowledge of a subject or issue.
Ensuring everyone is up to speed
Unless you know for certain that the audience already shares your level of knowledge or experience, you have to lay down context. If some listeners are fully up to speed on a subject and others aren’t, you need to serve the ones who aren’t by reviewing the issue (quickly and efficiently) from the beginning. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing them.
As for those who already know the latest score, well, they’ll just have to sit through your review. It’s no big deal. Usually, no one minds hearing the same information more than once; it can actually be reassuring in this manic world.
There are other important reasons for providing clarifying context in the introduction. If done well, with at least a modicum of objectivity, you can start influencing an audience’s perception of an issue. Listeners will begin to see the matter from your standpoint because, through your discourse, they’ve shared your experience.
Finally, laying down lean, well-structured context makes you look smart and self-assured. It means that you care enough about your listeners to ensure they have all the information they require to fully understand your story. It means you’ve taken the time to bring about understanding. It means you’re speaking like a leader.
The Body
At the heart of the Power of Three, the body is where you expand on your theme, and make your major points. But if it becomes overloaded, the body is also where presentations can fall apart.
Your listeners always need to know where you are — and where you’re going — in the telling of your story. An efficient way to keep them on track is, again, through the magic number three.
Too often the body becomes a repository for a laundry list of observations and initiatives. As a longtime media trainer I can tell you that journalists’ attention drops way off after three points;