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The creation of your own unique Narrative is critical to your
ability to persuade your audience.
Spring 2003
Volume I, Issue 2
The Latimer Group is solely focused on helping
executives and sales
professionals develop powerful and persuasive communication skills.
Our programs are customized and specifically designed to create
authentic presentations delivered in the voice of the speaker.
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Translating Your Ideas into Performance
Mere words are cheap and plenty enough, But ideas that rouse and set multitudes thinking come as gold from the mines.
- A. Owen Penny
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We are bombarded by information, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The
Internet, television and print news sources, tell us everything we need to
know, and more. Business, politics, culture. you name it and we can hear
about it anytime, any place. We can even get news sent to us on our mobile
phones. And, we are not only bombarded by information, we are assaulted by
those who interpret everything for us. We are spoken at, all day, every
day. It is always so refreshing, therefore, when someone - a company
president, a manager, or a sales representative - speaks to us, rather
than at us, in ways that we can understand and identify with.
This is the challenge of effective communication - to deliver important
information, share ideas and persuade in a way that engages your audience.
Ronald Reagan's fundamental rule of public speaking is timeless: "Always
speak TO your audience, as you would a group of friends in a familiar
setting."
In the last issue of The Beacon we discussed the power and importance of
speaking in your own voice and with your own style. To be truly effective
as a speaker and a communicator, one needs to be authentic. And to be
truly authentic, one needs to be confident. Confidence is borne out of
being well-informed and well-practiced.
Clients of The Latimer Group often hear me discuss effective communication
in terms of what we call the entire communication equation. There are
three parts to this equation and taken together they form The Latimer
Group Model, »Develop
»Deliver »Secure. Effective communication requires
working on each piece of the equation, and then integrating them together
to achieve a powerful, seamless presentation that closes the sale or
influences the audience.
In this issue we will discuss a corollary to The Latimer Group Model, with
the focus almost entirely on the Development of your message.
When asked to discuss their own public speaking abilities, most clients of
TLG immediately mention delivery problems - fear and lack of confidence
almost always top the list. But in reality the biggest problem often does
not begin with delivery skills. It begins with the content and the
creation of your script. Regardless of your forum, be it a formal
presentation in a crowded room or a face-to-face sales call, your ability
to persuade will be dependent first on the organization of your message.
We use a preparation framework to help our clients transform their ideas,
words or data into a presentation that will ultimately give them the
greatest chance to influence or persuade their audience. We call this
framework Content » Narrative » Performance.
Every good speech or presentation begins with raw material: business data,
an important idea, a political platform, a product or service, or perhaps
just a good story.
This is your Content. Within this raw material exists what you
need and want to share with your audience. But the Content needs to be
sculpted into something that can be transmitted to your audience in a
manner that is accessible for them. In other words, you need them to
understand and remember what you are saying. You need to narrate.
From your Content, you then begin to form your Narrative. This
is the point where you turn your ideas or data into a format that you work
from during the performance of your presentation. This is your script.
During the creation of your Narrative you will do several things:
examine your audience to ensure that you are speaking to them and their
needs; organize the data so that it is clear, simple and appropriate for
the forum in which you will be speaking; and work to be true to your own
voice and style. Your Narrative is the way you organize and present your
idea or data, and it is the words you will use to communicate with your
audience.
Your Narrative is also the point where you begin to establish your own
voice. Starting from the same raw material, each individual should begin
to tell the story in their own way. Only when doing so do you begin to
achieve the authenticity we at TLG discuss so often.
The final piece of this framework is your Performance. Working
from the script of your Narrative, this is the actual delivery of your
speech or presentation - your body language, voice, gesture, and the
integration of all the verbal and non-verbal tools at your disposal.
Any speech or presentation begins with your Content, and ends with your
Performance, but your Narrative is your foundation, because it is where
your ideas are filtered and translated into a form that will allow your
audience to easily understand and remember your message. Only when your
message can be understood and remembered do you have the possibility to
persuade. And the goal of all speeches and presentations is, on some
level, persuasion. Your Performance will be variable: some days you will
perform better than others. But a strong Narrative will never desert you.
When we work with our clients on a presentation, we rarely focus on the
Content. Our clients know far more about their business, their products or
their services than we do. Our work is about framing and organizing the
Content to make it compelling, easily accessible and understandable. Our
work on the construction of their message is focused on the creation of
their Narrative. We help our clients identify who will be receiving the
information, which will then begin to dictate how to construct the
Narrative and shape the Performance.
I have submitted to you previously that to be truly effective you need
to focus on the entire communication equation of
Developing,
Delivering, and
Securing your message. Taking this same concept even
deeper, truly effective communication requires that you integrate your
Content, Narrative and Performance so that the transmission of your
ideas does not get lost between you and your audience.
Only when you have taken the time to correctly craft your Narrative, do
you maximize your opportunity for a strong performance.
Dean M. Brenner
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© 2003 The Latimer Group. All Rights Reserved.
Dean M. Brenner -
The Latimer Group: 203.265.4344.
Feedback or comments: dmbrenner@thelatimergroup.com.
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