Weekly briefing on how exceptional leaders communicate when the message has to land. Plus exclusive backstage reports on “What the Best Leaders Say” (requires a backstage pass).
Boring or not? What your audience thinks about repeating your core message
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THIS MOMENT COUNTS · 22 Think about “We Will Rock You” by Queen. But what about verse two? Can you sing it? Most people can’t. No wonder. A refrain consists of only a few words that allow everyone to join in. And it’s repeated over and over again. While verses are usually much longer and hardly ever repeated. Let’s put it this way: The verses give you something new. Now think about the last strategy presentation you sat through (or gave yourself). Chances are, there were plenty of verses. The market has changed. Here are the numbers. Here’s what we’ve done. Here’s what we’re going to do. And here’s how each department contributes. All important things. But what was the refrain? The line the team could have come back to after the announcement? Quite often, there isn’t one. Just more verses. Worse. Even when we’ve found a line that captures the idea, we seem strangely reluctant to repeat it. We’ve said that already. We don’t want to bore them. Surely they got it. We have higher standards for our talks. Noble. But. Imagine Queen deciding they’d sung the refrain once and that should probably be enough. No one would sing their songs today. Here’s what the noble take completely misses: In between the refrain come the verses. With new material. And so, each time you come back to your line, it can mean more. In We Will Rock You, the meaning changes with every verse. It becomes more nuanced. So, while you use the same words repeatedly, they have more meaning attached every time you say them. Even though you use the same words twice, you don't say the same thing twice. After the numbers, they understand why it matters. After the story, they feel what’s at stake. When you get to the decision, they see what it asks them to do. It becomes more nuanced, richer, and ultimately more meaningful. So, if someone says they have a high standard and never want to say the same thing twice, I say the higher standard is that the audience gets more from it each time you say it. That’s what a great talk does: it gives your audience a line they can come back to and pass along, filled with meaning. What’s the line you want people to come back to? Keep lighting the path, PS: If you want my help crafting a talk that has a strong line people can come back to, consider a 1:1 Talk Lab. |
This Moment Counts
Weekly briefing on how exceptional leaders communicate when the message has to land. Plus exclusive backstage reports on “What the Best Leaders Say” (requires a backstage pass).
THIS MOMENT COUNTS · 28 A quick note: Today, I’m hosting a public Talk Lab. Join me if you need a yes from your audience they actually mean. It’s free and you can ask me anything. Ok, back to today’s insight … Imagine driving a car on an icy road. You press the accelerator. The engine roars. The wheels spin. But the car barely moves. You give it more power. The wheels spin faster. Still, you’re going nowhere. The problem, of course, isn’t lack of power. It’s the lack of friction between the...
What the Best Leaders Say Issue 25 Very often, when someone prepares for a big moment with me, a very similar concern comes up. There’s this one point they’re nervous about because they’re unsure how it will land. Maybe it’s a little provocative, or maybe it simply challenges a common belief. And the question they ask me is how to make it go down easier. “I don’t want to lose the room.” I get that. But before you sand down that point, I would love for you to read this Backstage Report about...
THIS MOMENT COUNTS · 27 At the last public Talk Lab, someone said they loved the idea of “Don’t persuade harder, resonate stronger,” but found it incredibly hard to embrace in practice. They had a pitch coming up and really needed the client to say yes. This gets right at the heart of what I love about the idea of resonance. Here’s roughly what I said: You're treating resonance as the gentle option, the thing you’d try if the stakes were lower. As if there’s a nice way and an effective way,...