If you prefer video content over text, I explain this material with fun, musical examples in my YouTube video.
As public speakers, here’s the truth: our audiences are busy and distracted. They won’t listen unless we get to the point.
In this article, I break down the secret to being exceptionally concise.
What Not To Do
Pretend someone asks: “What skill should modern leaders have?”
You say:
“You need to understand employee needs: they might need more hand holding, or you need to back off cause they know what they’re doing. You need to key into individual needs and provide it”
Great answer. You don’t ramble, waffle, or go off into tangents. You give clear examples, and even a call to action.
But the bar is high in the modern workplace. If you want people to remember what you said, you need something extra…
What To Do
Check out how Angela Cheng-Cimini, global leader in HR, answers the same question. You only need to watch about 30 seconds from the video below to get a sense of Angela’s technique.
After being asked, “What skill should modern leaders have?”, Angela responds:
“Empathy.
You need to understand employee needs: they might need more hand holding, or you need to back off cause they know what they’re doing.
You need to key into individual needs and provide it”
Notice how your perspective completely shifted after the opening word, putting everything else into focus.
Psychologically, this is what happened: your brain has a bias known as the serial position effect, priming you to recall the first and last thing you hear:1
- You remember the first thing easily because your cognitive capacity is highest at the beginning of a response.
- As the response proceeds, processing power is expanded on all the subsequent information, making it more difficult to remember.
- By that reasoning, the last thing you hear should be the hardest to remember, no? Well, here’s the nuance: the last thing you hear is also the freshest in your memory buffer, making it easier to pick out.
Angela’s guiding word “empathy” and her ending call to action are therefore the easiest things to remember.
Summary
Put your most important words, phrases, or sentences at the beginning of your response to set the stage, and at the end to make your message resonate. That’s how you cut through the noise and get people to listen.
If you’re looking for further guidance on how to differentiate your communication skills and stand out in the workplace, take my free self-assessment.
I’m writing a book on thinking quickly, speaking clearly, presenting convincingly, and supercharging your executive presence. My current focus: a section on editing and revising a presentation. This will be a deep-dive into knowing what to keep and cut: how to fine-tune a presentation for a smooth, impactful delivery.
Follow me on LinkedIn for more updates on the book and its release!
