This week we look at 3 books that will make you a better communicator by making the useful usable.
Editing
How to Change Your Audience in a Short Presentation – EP073
Setting Clear Goals To get an audience to make a change in a short presentation you need to know where they already are. Instead of focusing so much on the time slot, we need to focus on the amount of change that is possible in our audience, given the time slot.
How to Make a Change More Actionable – EP071
Bloom’s Taxonomy Just because we understand something doesn’t mean that we’ll actually do it, which is a problem if we’re trying to get someone to make a change or take an action.
Why Telling a Complete Story Doesn’t Always Work – EP062
In Medias Res We talk a lot about telling stories with our messages, but a common mistake is to tell a story that’s already over.
What’s Your Speaker “Point of View” – Holmes, Watson, or Conan Doyle? – EP061
The Key to a Great Mystery Story Have you ever watched a detective movie and felt like you were just about to put it together right when the detective solves it? How do we get our audience to have that feeling when they’re listening to our message?
How to Make the Universal Individual – EP059
The Universal Running Cadence When I first started training for the Boston Marathon, I ended up injuring myself because I was new to running.
Focus on the TRUTH: The Difference Between “Understandable” and “Inevitable” – EP055
The Idea Behind the Idea Great ideas aren’t just found, they’re built piece by piece. To make that idea irresistible to someone else, we have to do the same thing: build that idea piece by piece in their mind.
Focus on the PROBLEM: Why Your Audience Needs Both Context and Contrast – EP054
Unlocking Perspective We want to put an intractable problem in front of an irresistible goal for our audience because it creates context. It makes the goal more valuable because the audience feels like they need to work harder for it, and it creates urgency because they really want to solve that problem.
TraPIT – An Easy Way to Keep Your Audience With You – EP051
Transition, Point, Illustration, and Takeaway We all need certain landmarks in our messages to help point our audience in the right direction, but are you telling your audience how those landmarks string together?
Why Your Messages Break When You Say Them Out Loud (And How to Fix Them) – EP050
Dialogic Processing Sometimes when we get up to give a big talk or presentation, the speech that sounded great on paper suddenly falls flat when we say it out loud. Why does this happen?