TJ Walker, who has worked with over 10,000 clients in 30 years, says most audiences don't need every detail. Instead, identify your top five core ideas and stick to them. He warns against overloading slides and assigns listeners to write five ideas of 10 words or less.
Questions this video answers
June 4, 2018.
More than 10,000 clients (over the last ~30 years).
Pick your top five ideas, each 10 words or less, and post them in the course discussion.
Chapters
Now that you've figured out exactly what your audience should do after you've communicated what you really want them to do, now is the time to go in the research mode. Brainstorm, dig, look everywhere, look under rocks for messages, facts, numbers that will motivate your audience to do what you want. It can't be just to educate them on everything you do. Unless you're an academic or a professor giving a college lecture, the people you're speaking to in the business world, the nonprofit, the government world, the adult, non academic world, they're not there to learn every single thing about what you do. You've got to restrict yourself and limit yourself to what is truly most important. So you can brainstorm on 50, 100, a thousand different messages, numbers, facts, data points. But then you've got to do something crucial, and that is apply your judgment. So much of being a great communicator, of having strong communication skills, has nothing to do with the tone of your voice or the clothes you're wearing or what you do with your hands. It has to do with your judgment. Too many people who are bad communicators are bad communicators because they use no judgment. So they just try to tell their audience everything. Remember, if your audience had to know everything you know, they'd already have your job. So you've got to look at all the facts, all the data points, and look at it through the screen of which facts, which messages, which numbers does my audience have to know, especially in order to take the actions I want, which messages are going to motivate them to do what I want them to do? And if you do that, you're finding you'll find it's very easy to eliminate the vast majority of the messages, facts and numbers. You've then got to put them all in priority. You may come up with still 15 messages that are important would possibly motivate them to do what you want. You've got to put them in priority and you've got to narrow it down. You got to narrow it down to your top five. Why do I say five? Well, based on my own empirical evidence of working with more than 10,000 clients over the last 30 years, I ask people, I ask them, think of the best presenter you've seen in the last year in your business, or last five years, or maybe your whole career. Now, tell me every message you remember from the best speaker, the best presenter, the best communicator you've ever seen. Quite often the answer is TJ Nothing. Everyone in our industry is boring. Sometimes it's one message. Sometimes it's two. Occasionally three. Every three months or so, somebody will remember four messages from a great speaker. Every six months, roughly, somebody will remember five messages from the best, best speaker, the best communicator they've seen possibly in their whole life. In all the years I've asked that question, I've never had anyone remember more than five ideas. So don't be greedy. Don't try to communicate every single fact. Don't have one of those PowerPoint slides with 27 bullet points. It's not going to work. You want to be a successful communicator. You. You want to be seen as someone who has strong communication skills. Remember, it's not communication if it comes out of your mouth. It's not communication if it's up on a slide, it's communication if it comes out of your mouth in the ear of an audience member and they understand it and they remember it so they can act on it. If you want to do that, you need to show judgment. Mark Twain once said, I'm sorry I wrote you a long letter. I didn't have time to write you a short letter. It takes more thought to narrow your messages down to just the top five. So that's your assignment right now. Go back and look at all the ideas you thought of and narrow it down to just five. Write those five ideas, and each one should be 10 words or less. Write it down in the discussion section of this course right now.
