SIMPLICITY

This tip is a simple one.  At first glance, it may seem overly simple.  It's about how important it is to SIMPLIFY.  

It's not that most of us don't already know how valuable simplicity is (we instinctively look for it when trying to understand something).  The problem is that we tend to assume our stories and explanations are simple to begin with (after all, we know the subject, we know where the talk is going).  But what seems simple to the speaker is not always simple from the point of view of the listener.  

Remember, listening is hard.  Our ears reside on the side of our head and our brains tend to disregard much of the information coming in from them as peripheral noise unless it knows specifically what it needs to be listening for.

I often forget this obvious (and, yes, simple) fact when I'm having a casual conversation with someone, perhaps over lunch.  The other party will ask a question like where I'm going after our meeting and that will make me think of the appointment I have with the person whose agreed to adopt the stray kitten I found two nights ago and I'll suddenly remember all the exciting stories of how I heard the meowing and how I climbed the tree to rescue it and how I nursed it with milk and an eyedropper.  

A few sentences in to my adventures, I'll notice from the look on my luncheon companion's face that I neglected to set up where this all is leading and my listener has no idea how the story of me climbing the tree two days ago relates to where I'm off to when we leave our restaurant.

I'll have to backtrack and give my listener a one-sentence summary.  Otherwise, he won't really be appreciating the yarns I'm now spinning (even though he's nodding intently) because he doesn't yet know how or where to process them.  Fortunately, I'm less inclined to make that goof when delivering a prepared speech because I've thought through my points ahead of time.  But even if I were to err similarly in front of an audience, the same remedy would apply--read that the crowd is confused, go back and simplify, then move forward.

To be a better communicator, practice being able to codify things in one sentence.  If you're going to give a talk, you should be able to describe what the talk is about in a single sentence.  Each of the sections or subtopics or examples or proofs should also be reducible to one sentence.  You will be a much more powerful and confident speaker if you have one-line summaries at your command.

What I've described the difference between walking up to the podium carrying 20 odd objects in your arms vs. a single bag which contains those 20 objects.  Without the bag, you're vulnerable and clumsy, likely to drop or lose something.  With the bag, you're more collected and better prepared.

Next time you finish a movie or put down a book, be able to explain what it was about in one sentence.  That sentence doesn't have to contain all the details and, if you've piqued the other person's interest, it doesn't have to be the last.

There's strength in simplicity and possessing an instinctive ability to simplify.  And in the interest of keeping this tip simple, let's stop here.

Dr. Daniel Papia is a former journalist and screenwriter who coaches writers and speakers at Diplomatt.

SPEED

In this installment, let's talk about SPEED.  Most beginners don't realize this, but when you speak in front of an audience, time speeds up.  In other words, you perceive that time is passing more quickly than it actually is for your listeners, and many speakers adjust by talking too fast.

My own theory as to why this happens is that your brain steps up its conscious awareness of your surroundings and thereby goes into overdrive.  I believe it's the same phenomenon as when someone witnesses an accident and later says that the whole thing felt like it was going in slow motion.  When something critical is happening, your mind takes note of details it would normally let slip into the background and so you have a lot more information to process.  

If you're in a conference room but just talking to one or two people, you have a heightened awareness of the facial responses and gestures coming from those one or two people, but the others around are of less importance.  When you're speaking to the whole room, EVERYONE's subtle reactions and nuances are suddenly high priority.

The obvious way of addressing this problem is to make a point of slowing down.  You may think you're talking too slowly, but try recording a talk in front of a group of people and then listening to it played back.  Of all the speakers that I've coached that have fretted that they were over-adjusting, no one ever wound up speaking too slowly.  (Your audience will let you know if that happens--though it probably never will--and you can then adjust the other way.)

Interpreters may have a case for talking more quickly than the speaker does.  If you're doing consecutive interpreting, your speaker should be the focus and it might feel more appropriate for you to insert the translation as quick parentheticals rather than steal the spotlight.  But remember: an interpreter that rushes through the text too quickly could sabotage the timing of the speaker.

Also, you won't want to go too fast because there's a limit to how quickly listeners can take data in.  I'll talk about that another time.  For now, try slowing down (and record yourself).  See if it doesn't make you a better speaker and/or interpreter.

Dr. Daniel Papia is a former journalist and screenwriter who coaches writers and speakers at Diplomatt.