TJ Walker explains how to make presentations both clear and memorable. He argues clarity and conciseness are distinct: avoid overwhelming audiences with too many data points, narrow your key messages, and use concrete examples and stories to make ideas stick; when time is short, prioritize the top ideas and tell a story for each.
Chapters
So what can you do to improve the clarity and the conciseness of your communication? Well, stop for one second, Realize those two things seem like they're related, but they really aren't. You can be concise, you can stand up, speak for 30 seconds. Nobody remembers anything you said and it just sounded like mush, just generic, abstract, mushroom. So you do want to be clear, you want people to understand you. And if it's a choice between being really long winded or short and concise, sure, being concise is better. But realize your main goal every time you present is to make an idea come alive that was in your head, into the head of your audience. Make sure that they understand you and that they remember your messages so they can take some action. So let's first look at the issue of clarity. There are two things that really get most presenters, most communicators, most business people in trouble when it comes to clarity. The first is they're just overwhelming their audience with too many data points. Fact, fact number, number. Look at this slide here with 29 different rows. Look at this slide here with complex graphs with eight different color coded lines. They're overwhelming people with too much data. It's easy for you to understand because that's the world you live in. You work in this data all day long. It's easy for you to understand a complex graph with lots of lines because you worked on that slide for two hours and now you expect somebody done and now you expect somebody to understand it. Looking at it for 10 seconds or while you're speaking and going to the next slide, that's crazy. So that's what messes up clarity. Too many data points. If everything is important, guess what? Nothing is important. What will give clarity to every presentation you give is first of all in your own mind having a clear cut sense of what is it I want this audience to do next. Narrowing all the messages down to just a handful, that will create much more clarity in your presentation. But if you really want clarity, isn't it for something, it's because you want them to not just have a clear understanding of your message, you want them to remember it so they can act upon it. And that leads us to the next part. You've got to make your messages clear by making them memorable. The way to do that is by illustrating with stories with specific examples that is what is going to make your message really clear to them. And this is where we're kind of in a fight with conciseness. People come to me all the time. Clients say, well TJ I love what you're saying about stories. I love stories. My favorite speakers tell stories. The best speakers in our industry tell stories. But I don't have any time. I gotta go through all the data, I have to go through all the numbers, I have to show all the slides. There's no time for stories. And besides, the stories will add extra time and then I won't be concise. I want to be concise. I want to stand up, speak for three minutes, sit down, and no one can accuse me of going on too long. No one can pick apart anything. That's a very defensive mess mentality. If you want to be concise, the secret is not scratching off stories. The secret is reducing the number of messages you are trying to convey. This requires judgment. This requires your intellect. It can't just be, well, somebody gave me all these slide decks that our marketing team put together two months ago and I'm just going to go through the whole slide deck. That doesn't work. It doesn't create clarity. It also won't make you concise. If, for example, you're told, okay, you've got 20 minutes for this speech and at the last second the organizer pulls you aside and says, hey, we're running late. You've only got five minutes. Wrap this up in five minutes. The secret is not to stand up. Speak very quickly. I'm sorry, I don't have a lot of time, so I'm not going to be able to talk about much. And I'm not. Can't show you every slide, but let me show you these slides quickly. Big mistake. You can be concise. That way you don't communicate anything. The secret is you've got to know your material. I don't mean memorize, but you've got to know your content to the point of knowing what's really important. What's the priority list? If you had five major ideas prepared for your 20 minute speech and now you only have five minutes, focus on at most two ideas and tell a story for each one and let people know if they want more. You're happy to email them a deck or give them a handout, or talk to them after. In the back of the room next to the coffee pot, you can make yourself available. But the time you have to speak to everyone, whether it's in person or online, you need to use it for maximum impact. And the only way to be clear is by narrowing the focus, giving examples and telling stories. Why do you need examples and stories? Because if you just use abstract concepts, we're More profitable in 27 stores in the Northeast. People can understand it, they don't visualize it. It's much more effective if you paint a picture that people can actually see. So don't just say same sale. Stores are up 27%. You can say the candy canes for the week before Christmas sold 10,000. We normally only sell 5, and that's why our profits went up by $20 million. Be really, really specific so someone can see what is behind any one number or any one trend or any one abstract concept like growth. You say the word growth, people can understand it. They know the meaning of the word, but it doesn't show up in the brain. The real secret is to put a picture in the audience member's mind where they can see an actual image. They're running a movie along in their brain as you are speaking. That is what is going to create clarity in your presentation. If you do that, the conciseness will take care of itself. If you've actually narrowed the messages down to the most important, you have interesting, compelling stories. No one's going to complain that you went too long. I've seen speakers speak for 10 hours. The audience wanted more because the speaker was interested. I've seen speakers talk for 60 seconds and everyone was complaining about how boring they are. Be interesting and no one will notice or care how concise you are.
