Professionally Speaking...

THE POWER OF LANGUAGE, PART I

"Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides."

Rita Mae Brown, American writer

 

Language...something we use everyday; something we take for granted; yet something that has enormous power in helping us effectively and persuasively communicate our ideas.

According to the dictionary publisher, Merriam-Webster, there are roughly one million words in the English language and we have access to pretty well all of them when we create a presentation. Too often, however, we use the same tired phrases repeatedly, not truly tapping into the abundance of options available to express our thoughts and ideas.

Impact does not necessarily come from how "big" or complicated the words are but rather how they're organized and how descriptive they are. Choosing words that evoke a picture or a sensation or an emotional response in the listener will resonate strongly and make your message more memorable.

Consider one of Winston Churchill's famous declarations:

"You ask what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."

He could have said, "We need to win or we won't survive." But contrast that factual, concise statement with the eloquence of Churchill's words. Which one do you find more spine-tingling and persuasive?

WHAT MADE IT SO GOOD?

• There are only two words in Churchill's statement (victory and survival) that have more than two syllables.
• "Victory" is a much stronger word than "win". 
• He repeats victory five times, for emphasis, in four sentences. 
• He asks and answers his own question.
• In the three phrases, all starting with the word "victory", he employs the rhetorical device, "the rule of threes", to create impact through repetition.

Churchill was a powerful orator who developed his skills through the study of rhetoric and many long hours of practice. He has much to teach us about the power language has to persuade, soothe, incite and inspire.  

Here are some resources for increasing your vocabulary and your exposure to the breadth and depth of the English language:

• Thesaurus.com
• Dictionary.com
• World Wide Words
• American Rhetoric

PRESENTATION TIP: THE CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE

Are you afflicted by the curse of knowledge?

No, this isn't the latest bit of Harry Potter wizardry. It's a phenomenon that many presenters suffer from, to the detriment of their audiences.

Popularized in Chip and Dan Heath's book, Made to Stick, the curse of knowledge is when you can't remember what it was like not to know the things you now know.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOUR AUDIENCE?

It means that:

• You may cover your material from a more advanced perspective than your audience can process because they don't have the necessary foundation.

• You may use terminology, acronymns or jargon your audience doesn't comprehend.

• You may not recognize that the audience has concerns or issues that will make it difficult for them to understand or buy into your message.

The best antidote to the curse of knowledge is forcing yourself, while you are preparing your presentation, to focus on how much the audience knows.

• Discover what your audience understands about your topic by asking some of your prospective audience members or a representative of that group who could give you insight.

• If you're presenting a topic on which you had to do research, make a note of 5 things you didn't know when you started and then address those points in your presentation.

• Make liberal use of metaphors and stories to bring your topic into the audience's sphere of familiarity.

• Use concrete, descriptive, unambiguous language.

Being conscious of the curse of knowledge will help you make your presentation more relevant to the audience. It will also greatly enhance your chances of having your message understood and acted upon.

THE DON'T MISS THIS LIST, EDITION 3

A pot pourri of posts this time ranging from inspiration...to PowerPoint...to advice from Confucius.

• Garr Reynolds offers some interesting thoughts on inspiration, something every presenter should always be on the lookout for. If you need to hear inspiration, one of my previous posts has a video compilation of inspirational speeches of the 20th century.

• The PowerPoint Ninja gives terrific advice in Ten Commandments of PowerPoint, suggesting that one of the biggest problems with bad PowerPoint presentations is lack of good time management. 

• Seth Godin, uber marketing guru, reinforces one of my mantras when he describes the two key elements that are critical to being a great presenter (hint: it's not about you, it's all about them).  

• Speak To Lead's advice from Confucius for presenting in troubled times is worth embracing in any circumstances.

POWERPOINT FIRST AID: A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

In many presentations, a thousand words is what it feels like as slide after bullet point-laden slide goes by. When I teach and consult on how to use PowerPoint effectively, I always encourage people to ditch the bullet points wherever feasible and replace them with visual images... graphs, charts, pictures.

I recently came across a couple of very cool tools that help with this.

WORDLE

Wordle produces word "clouds" from text you provide, giving greater prominence to words that are used more frequently. You can manipulate fonts, layouts and colors to achieve customized outputs.

Wordle is the brainchild of Jonathan Feinberg, a senior software engineer at an IBM research lab. Offered under a Creative Commons Attribution license, it's available to anyone to use, at no cost.

This technique could be used to graphically display a particular theme in a presentation or to make a point about (for example) the content of a marketing brochure, customer service letter or the CEO's speech.

MANY EYES

From another research lab at IBM comes Many Eyes, a project to "create information visualizations that help people collectively make sense of data." At this site, you can upload your data and then choose from a large selection of graphic representations to display the data. Types of visualizations include: bar charts, line graphs, maps, bubble charts, pie charts, treemaps, scatterplots and more.

STRETCH YOUR IMAGINATION

Beyond providing you with some awesome graphic images for your next presentation, these two tools help you stretch your imagination to consider the endless possibilities of information display and which technique will best crystallize your message for your audience.