Four factors for better communication.
This was originally a draft of a speech meant to continue the article series started by “Talking Down, At, To, With”. It has been revised and expanded. In it, you’ll learn a few skills for connecting better to just about any audience.
This was originally done for project #1 of the Humorous Speeches advanced manual.
Back in Ancient Greece, oration was considered a high art, and effective speakers were held in high regard. There’s an old story that goes “When Cicero finished speaking, people nodded their heads and said ‘How well he spoke!’ However, when Demosthenes finished speaking, people said ‘Let us march!’” I had a friend say after hearing this, “Yeah, and half the time when Bush goes speakin’, we all go, ‘huh?’”
No matter what political affiliation you have or how much you like or dislike our current commander-in-chief, we can all agree that being an effective speaker in an important skill. I want to help you all become just that, and today I’ll give you some pointers for making better connections with your audience.
If you’ve been in Toastmasters for at least a month or two, you’ve probably heard of the CODE evaluation method. This acronym stands for Content, Organization, Delivery, and Effectiveness. While most of the time we think of these in terms of evaluation, the speaker should be considering these factors even more. Content, organization, delivery, and effectiveness are four major pillars of any speech, and by planning these aspects well, you have a much better chance of establishing that high level connection I wrote about in my previous article. I’m going to review each letter and give you some suggestions for each area. Let’s get started.
Our first letter is C, and it stands for Content. Any speech has some content, but a great speech has Compelling Content. The quickest definition of this is “stuff people want to hear”. In Toastmasters there’s the perennial turn-of-phrase: people are tuned into WII-FM all the time — that is, “What’s In It For Me”. This is a great guiding principle for considering content, but it’s rather easily satisfied. Visit a library or bookstore of your choice to see the wide variety of content that can appeal to you.
You can go a step further, catering to your audience’s wants. Most of us don’t visit every section of the library or the bookstore — we have our favorites. Sometimes this means doing some audience research. Sometimes this means catering to a pre-set agenda. It usually doesn’t take too much effort, but knowing what your audience and their wants can be a huge advantage in tailoring your content to be Compelling.
What kind of material is going to make Compelling Content though? Data points? PowerPoint slides? Jokes? Props? Other people’s stories? Your stories?
I’ve made the point in the past (as have others) that your own stories are usually your best bet regardless of audience. However, successful integration of other content types with stories is even more effective. Let’s say I want to give credit to a VP PR for improving membership count with her PR campaigns. Here’s a data only approach:
Based on surveys taken by our 10 new members, 80% found out about the club due to her flyer campaign.
A decent data point (though it makes the audience pause to think of what that 80% figure translate to). Here’s a story about it:
Our VP PR labored for many hours designing and posting flyers around HP campus to attract more new members for our club, and look at all these new faces!
There’s an okay story, but no specifics. Let’s try combining them:
Our VP PR spent hours of eye-straining work designing the flyers that are posted around the campus, then she had to walk the two or more miles around the spine to post them. Our club has had a surge in membership because of the awareness this has raised – 8 out of the 10 members that have joined recently have said they found the club because of these flyers.
There we go! Data plus stories equals better stories.
After you have your Compelling Content in mind, it’s time to put it in order. The O in CODE is for Organization, and a great speech has Obvious Organization. It can also be Outstanding Organization, but I both wanted to emphasize that keeping your speech as easy to follow as possible was by making where you were going with it as obvious as possible. The benefit of Obvious Organization is that the easier it is to follow a speaker’s thoughts, the more likely the audience is to keep up with the speaker and grasp what is being communicated. There are plenty of ways to make your speech more obvious.
The basic TM manual (Competent Communication) has a good set of basic principles for good organization: select a main point, pick three or so supporting points, and organize them in some order (e.g. chronological, topical, etc.). This is all good and I highly encourage everyone to keep these basics in mind. There are a couple additional suggestions I have.
The first, and my favorite, is the roadmap. This is talked about more extensively in Michael Klepper’s book, I’d Rather Die Than Give a Speech! A roadmap is like a mini-agenda a speaker uses to cue up the audience, usually right at the end of their opening. “I’m going to talk about…” is a lead in to a roadmap. Think of the roadmap as a brief “teaser trailer” for the content of your speech. It let’s the audience know where they’re going and what they should see along the way.
The second suggestion is to use transitions liberally (yes, transitions are covered in the basic manual, but remain very important). These are guideposts for your audience that tell them “this point is done with, and leads into my next one”. It’s a little way to wake up your audience and alert them that your next point is coming up, and they should pay attention.
At this point, you have your Compelling Content and your Obvious Organization – our speech is written out and edited. What about actually giving this speech? Delivery is our next letter. A great speech has Damn Good Delivery. (Sorry folks, ‘dynamic delivery’ was taken several times over) We may have some of the best material in the world, with crystal-clear organization, but if it comes off in a monotone, our audience will not care.
We think a lot of vocal variety and good vocabulary when delivery comes to mind, and those are certainly necessary skills to master to be a better speaker. One crucial skill here is the pause. A lot of speakers run non stop when they talk and never give you a chance to laugh at their jokes or answer the rhetorical questions they ask as they think to themselves I HAVE TO GET THIS DONE HURRY HURRY HURRY. Stop. Slow down. Let your audience catch up. Trim material rather than let people get lost in it.
By far though, the biggest part of Damn Good Delivery rests with the confidence of the speaker. If a speaker believes 300% in what they’re saying, technical flaws will probably not stop them from making their connection. Case in point: Penn Jillette has a certain gesture he’s used for over a decade. Watch him on YouTube once with the volume turned down, just noting what he does, then with it on. He believes so hard in what he says that the force of his personality makes the gesturing he does, which would usually be picked on by an evaluator, work!
Alright. We have Compelling Content. We have Obvious Organization. We have Damn Good Delivery. Coming into the final stretch of the CODE acronym, we have effectiveness, and a great speech has Exceptional Effectiveness.
Think back to my opening joke. Both Cicero and Demosthenes were considered great speakers. I bet they both had Compelling Content, Obvious Organization, and Damn Good Delivery. Demosthenes had one thing Cicero didn’t though; the ability to motivate people to take action after he spoke. If you’ve gotten your COD right, here’s a secret: your E almost always comes from asking people to take the next step, whatever that may be. Even if your speech is just to inform, there’s almost always more material you had to trim to get it to fit within the time limits. A simple “I hope you found this material interesting, check out this book/site/CD/movie for more” will make your speech more Exceptionally Effective versus simply saying “That was my material, hope you liked it.”
There you have it – some ways to improve your speeches and audience connections according to the CODE method. There is a lot more to it; these are simply some highlights to get you started and interested in finding what other skills will help you connect to your audiences better. I hope you’ll take what’s here and continue to find your own additions as you improve your own CODE Connections.
