Bonseki is a Japanese art creating miniature landscapes, on a black tray using white sand, pebbles and small rocks. They are exquisite but temporary. The bonseki can’t be preserved and are an original, throw away art form. Speaking to audiences is like that, temporary. Once we down tools and go home, that is the end of it. Our reach can be transient like the bonseki art piece, that gets tossed away upon completed admiration, the lightest of touches that doesn’t linger long. Of course we hope that our sparkling witticisms, deeply pondered points and clear messages stay with the audience forever. We want to move them to action, making changes, altering lifetime habits and generally changing their world. In the case of a business audience, we are usually talking to a small group of individuals, so our scope of influence is rather minute. How can we extend the reach of our message?

Video is an obvious technology that allows us to capture our speech live and ourselves in full flight. How often though, do you see speakers videoing their talks? It is not like people are constantly giving public speeches in business. Apart from myself, I don’t recall seeing anyone else doing it. You need to tell the audience this is for your own purposes and they will not be in the shot, otherwise you have to get everyone to give you their written permission to be filmed. You may get criticism about being a narcistic lunatic for wanting to capture yourself on video, but the only people who make that type of comment are idiots, so ignore them.

With video, instead of a standard business audience of under fifty people, you can broadcast your message to thousands. The video is also an evergreen capture which allows you to keep using the content for many years. Video has the added benefit that you can cut it up and create snippets to take the content even further. You can have ten videos sprung from the original. This again extends the ways in which you can use the medium. People have different appetites for information, so some may want to feast on the whole speech, whereas others want the digest or just the part on a particular topic of most interest.

Video has two tracks – the video and audio components and these can be separated out. Very easily you can produce the audio record of the talk. Everyone is a firm multi-tasker these days. I sometimes hear people pontificating that you cannot multi-task, blah, blah, blah. What nonsense. Walking, exercising, shopping and listening to audio content are typical multitasking activities. Busy people love audio because it saves them time and allows two things to be done at once. Now your audio content can be accessed by even more people.

Did you know that back in August 2019 Google announced that in addition to text search they were employing AI to enable voice search too. This is taking a long while to roll out but audio books have recently overtaken e-book sales. The audio track can become a podcast episode and be on any of the major podcast platforms. Also we can produce a transcript of the talk. There are AI transcribing services that are very good today which substantially reduce the cost and time of this exercise. Now we have a text version, we can project the value of the content further. It may go out as an email, a social media post or be reworked into a magazine article, or it may become a blog on your website

Repurposing of content is the name of the game. The video and or the snippets can be sent out to your email list, put up on social media and always sit there on YouTube. The same can be done with the audio track. Now what was a simple, ephemeral interlude in a room of fifty punters, has developed a life of its own and is being pushed out far and wide. The same message and messenger, but a vastly different impact and duration. If our object is to influence, then we need to make sure we are supporting the effort to give the speech with the tools available to maximise the results.

This requires some planning and some expense. But as I mentioned, we are not leaping to our feet every month giving a public speech to a business audience. This is something we would be lucky to do two or three times a year. When you take that into account and consider how much we can leverage what we are doing, we get a lot more bang for our buck. We are going to give the talk anyway, so all the preparation is the same, yet the influence factor can be so much grander.

In Part One, we looked at the ideas of primacy (the first thing we remember) and recency (the last thing we remember) and what this means for speakers. Now in Part Two we will go deeper with our entry and exit points of the chapters within the talk and how to choreograph the big crescendo for our polemic’s sparkling conclusion.

We naturally have to pump a lot of energy into designing the opening stanza of our speech. On the surface of it, this would seem to be our one big chance to establish our theme, point of view and talk direction with the audience. The opening is a battering ram to smash into the brains of the assembled masses and launch a takeover of their every thought. This is easier said than done though, because any lapse of logistics or vocal quality and energy will see them scampering for the mental exists to get their internet fix mainlined through their phones.

Even if we do manage to hijack them at the start, we cannot presume we won’t lose them somewhere midstream. That is why when we do the planning for the talk we need to design distinct chapters into the talk. These chapters are constructed around the evidence that supports our central proposition. Now these chapters have a primacy and recency function as well. The opening of the chapter has to dislodge that last thing we told them and replace it with the new bauble.

Most speakers pay no attention to this chapter idea and just arrange their talk to move from one section to the next. The sections of the talk compete with each other for audience attention and we have to be aware of that. At each chapter start we need a mini-battering ram to blast the tunnel deeper into the listener’s mind. We have just told them some scintillating detail backing up our overall point and now we need to dislodge that, so we can ship in the next point.

Stories are good for this exercise as are questions, quotes, facts and statistics. We are wading deep in our evidence portion of the talk at this point, but the facts need to be arrayed before the audience in such a way that makes them irrefutable. In a forty minute speech each chapter will be about five minutes long, so taking out the blockbuster opening and the first stupendous close before the Q&A, we probably have time for six or seven chapters. So that means we need some variety with each opening. Starting each chapter with the same thing becomes predictable and boring. Predictability is the speaker’s nemesis, because it invites the audience to escape from us now that they know what is coming next.

In the planning stage investigate the point you are making to support your overall argument and see what type of opening the evidence lends itself to. There may be some doubling up with opening gambits, but try for as much variety as possible to keep audience attention on you the speaker. The end of each chapter is mini-close as well. That means we have to come up with a zinger one sentence finisher that really makes your key argument sing. This is all a matter of planning and that is the rub. Most speakers do a poor job of planning because they are waist deep in slide assembly and logistics. This is what they call planning but that is delusionary.

We have used each chapter to make our case and each chapter ending to summarise the facts and evidence of that section. At the first close, before the Q&A, we need to bring the whole juggernaut to a crescendo. Again, this is all about our design creativity and communication expertise. Naturally the vocal delivery is a rise at the end of the final sentence that barks credibility, power, conviction and belief.

We finish strongly, implant a pregnant pause that invites the audience to recognise we have finished and that they may now unleash their frenzied applause. We then glide straight into the Q&A, following which we add another powerful close. It can mimic the first one, it could be different, it is all in the planning and what type of impact you want. Nevertheless, the vocal delivery will again be triumphant, strong and commanding. Many speakers end with a whimper, their voice quietly falling away. Don’t be one of them. Go out powerfully, with energy, verve and supreme confidence. Deliver an ending they won’t forget, because we know the power of recency and we want our message to stick.

Primacy refers to the beginning of something, as it enters our brain. This new entity has a powerful impact on our memory and our concentration. To muscle itself into our existing brain thought stream, takes a lot of mental energy. If successful, the new direction grabs us more powerfully than continuing with the same existing thought pattern. Recency is focused on the last thing we have heard. One of the narky criticisms of some people is that the thoughts we share with you are the result of our most recent conversation. We tend to remember the last thing we heard. That makes a lot of sense doesn’t it, but what does this mean for speakers?

Are we only able to have our audience remember our openings and closings of our speechs? Yes, the audience will certainly most easily recall the first and last pieces of information. They will also strike an impression of us, on the basis of our first and last visual and vocal touches. Obviously, we need to plan for and control the delivery of all of this opening and closing business, but we can go beyond that. There will also be numerous other opens and closings going on during the audiences’ busy day. How do we shove all of those completely aside and dominate the minds of our audience. We want them to absorb our message and to exclude all other competing thoughts?

Why do we have only one opening and one closing? Could we break the talk up into chapters? Each chapter is given a gangbuster opening and closing for that particular thought or point we want to convey. Could we bring some physical action to the fore to differentiate the chapters and lift the audiences’ engagement with us? This is only possible if we switch up our thinking about what is achievable with a talk. The speaker’s normal fare is the same as everyone else’s normal fare. We are immediately at a disadvantage to stand out from the crowd. Sadly, we are at one with the speaker push, fitting in with standard operating procedures and methodologies. We become another grey automaton lined up with all the other robot speakers. Let’s stop doing that.

In a forty minute talk, there will be room for around seven to eight chapters, an opening and the first close before the Q&A, then the final close. Let’s change up the opening at both the mental and physical levels. We want an opening statement, question, quote, testimonial or story that rocks the audience back into the folds of their seat and makes them take note that they are strapping in for a major ride here today. This shatters everything that came before for them up until that point. We must extinguish their previous thoughts and proclivities. This is especially so, if you are one of a number of speakers tumbling along one after another, launching forth on some worthy topic.

Let’s organise some crew, instead of always going solo. If there is a switch between you and the MC or the previous speaker, there is always some dithering around with the tech to get the laptops exchanged and your slides up. This drains the lifeblood of your first impression and the energy in the room simply tanks. The MC roars, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the incomparable, the amazing, the stupendous Dr. Greg Story. Please welcome him to the stage, because he is going to totally rock our world today”. You scramble up on stage and are immediately bent over like an old, old man, head down, trying to get the laptop hooked up to the projector. This unwanted intrusion into the opening segment continues while you are zipping around with your mouse, looking to boot that slide show up. This lull in proceedings has cratered the impact of that powerhouse MC introduction. It has now effectively been driven down to a pathetic whimper. People have whipped into scrolling through their Facebook, LinkedIn or email, ignoring you while you get your act together. The opening’s marvellous, magical momentum has melted away.

Why not get someone else to handle the logistics, so that you can get straight into your talk? They set it all up while you are already speaking to the audience. At the right moment they leave the slide advancer for you on top of the laptop, gracefully glide off stage and leave you to continue solo. This way we float directly onto the power stream of the MC and then take the audience even higher with our own energy. Yes, we need to have a lot of energy at the start, because remember there are two bodies on stage. We want to monopolise the audience’s attention for ourselves. We purposely stand on the far side of the stage, to draw everyone’s looking line away from the tech God and have the audience focus on us instead.

In Part Two, we will go deeper with our entry and exit points of the chapters and then how to choreograph the big crescendo for our polemic’s sparkling conclusion.