How Leaders Speak. Jim Gray
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that would get a reporter’s attention: “Our programs are valuable to the community for three reasons: one, they create employment; two, they save taxpayers money; and three, they benefit the environment.”
Employ that tight, bright media technique to arrange the body of your presentation in threes. If it’s essential that you cover off eight or ten points, organize them in categories or silos of three.
Of course, you can always choose to have only one or two points. Those options work as well.
But there’s nothing like three. It’s the power number.
The Conclusion
As a reporter, I covered a host of speeches that were quite successful up until the last few minutes, but then ended up as if they’d been accidentally dropped off a cliff.
A typical speaker would have concluded something like this, “Er, thank you for your attention. Ah, any questions?”
However you end, you need to do it with impact.
The conclusion is where you sum up, provide a resolution to the story you’ve just shared with the audience, and issue a specific call to action. What do you want your listeners to do after hearing your presentation? Buy your product? Sign up for your service? Invest in your company? Work together to make Canada a better place?
Unless you tell them, they won’t know.
The conclusion presents you with a final opportunity to speak like a leader.
Everyone wants to know what’s going to happen in the days, months, and years ahead. If you have an opinion about the future, a reasoned, thoughtful outlook, you can differentiate yourself from the many timid souls who disclose only what the audience already knows.
Write long, cut short
However you decide to tell your story at “Industry 2020,” use the versatile Power of Three as your template.
For your first draft, write as long as you can, working in every conceivable fact, observation, and anecdote about your subject matter. It’s a healthy, productive process that will get you thinking about the telling of your story in new ways, from different angles.
Now, edit ruthlessly. For every sentence, ask: “Do my listeners really need to know this? Will it be essential to their understanding of my story? Am I providing new, valuable, or insightful information?”
Those questions will help you quickly separate the narrative wheat from the chaff. After that, it’s just a matter of placing the grain in the appropriate silo under the Power of Three template.
Life is complicated. Communication need not be.
Organizing Your Presentation According to the Power of Three
Introduction
• Hook your listeners early; why is what you’re about to say important to them?
• State your theme.
• What context or background does the audience need to fully understand the information to come?
Body
• Arrange the core of your presentation here, in three or fewer points.
• Make it clear what point you’re on, where you’ve been, and where you’re going.
• Support each point (with one or more of the following: an anecdote, fact, example, quote, or insight).
Conclusion
• Provide resolution to your story.
• Issue a definitive call to action.
• End with impact — in content and delivery. Leave plenty of time between the conclusion of your formal remarks and your invitation for questions. Don’t rush your listeners; give them an opportunity to express their appreciation of your presentation.
The “list” option
I’m an enthusiastic fan of the Power of Three for several reasons — among them is that it provides new, inexperienced speakers with a simple, easy-to-deploy template for organizing their narratives. Indeed, it serves presenters of all levels of know-how and ability exceptionally well.
Given their acumen, though, accomplished speakers certainly have license to deviate from the Power of Three to organize and deliver presentations in lists of up to ten elements.
Comedian David Letterman has popularized the “Top Ten” list, which can work superbly if the points are clearly themed (for example, Letterman’s “Top Ten Text Messages Sent by Tiger Woods”) and delivered with substantial flair.
If you believe you have the wherewithal to manage a list successfully, don’t feel locked into the number ten. Lists from four to nine elements can work efficiently, too. But don’t go over ten; at eleven, your presentation will start to feel and sound like the recital of a catalogue.
I conduct several workshops that are organized according to lists, among them “The Seven Most Powerful Ways to Influence Up,” “The Seven Steps to An Effective Meeting,” and “The Ten Biggest Communication Mistakes Financial Advisors Make.”
If I were to speak on “The Communication Mistakes I’ve Made,” I’d organize the talk according to the Power of Three.
Why? Some lists are just too distressing, for listeners and presenters alike.
“OVERSPEAK” AT YOUR OWN RISK
As you begin creating your presentation, you have to promise me that under no circumstances will you include so much content that you’ll speak too long on your big day at “Industry 2020.”
Those who talk over their limit are guilty of one of the most serious offences in communication: overspeaking.
It’s abominable.
I once attended a conference where a succession of presenters crossed the line from mere self-absorption to lunacy.
Indifferent to the obvious distress of the audience, they each rambled interminably past their twenty-minute speaking times. One bore went on for forty-five minutes (yes, my friend, more than double the period apportioned) and asked for questions from the audience afterward. None were forthcoming.
By this time it was well past noon. The conference luncheon was delayed and served cold. The afternoon’s speakers didn’t get to eat much at all, because they were so busy hacking away at their presentations to comply with the edict of the now-desperate conference organizers to reduce the length of the talks to come. The proceedings ran late anyway. Flights were missed and delegates were apoplectic.
What overspeaking says
Here’s the bottom line: When you overspeak, you’re basically saying to your listeners, “Look, I know I’m over my time, and I know you’re aggravated, and I know that the speakers to follow will have to cut their remarks short. But frankly, I’m more important than any of them, or any of you for that matter, so just sit back and listen to the genius that is me.”
One might assume that less effective presenters would be more conscientious about delivering a presentation within the time assigned. In fact, the opposite is often true. Poor speakers, psychologically disconnected from their audience, can just plow on, struggling to get through a story that was absurdly long to begin with.
Whatever the reason — insensitivity or cluelessness — those who overspeak are paying a heavy price. Potential supporters and customers among an audience might reasonably wonder, “If this person can’t fulfill a simple obligation, such as speaking for twenty minutes, why should I trust him to honour any other undertaking, like delivering a product on time, or completing a project within budget?”
Overspeaking drains time, reputations, and an audience’s patience. So what can you do to avoid it? Plenty.
Make