Strategic Preparing – Why Commas Trigger Troubles
In September, I gave a speech to a bunch of skilled speakers in Arizona. 1 of the initial things I asked the audience to do was write a record of the topics they talk on. When they were completed, I asked how many of the speakers had commas in their answer. For illustration, it truly is not uncommon to have a speaker say “inspiration, crew constructing, modify management and leadership”. I believe every comma in their solutions represents a focus problem that’s fairly acute for a great deal of speakers. And when I talked to audience members after that, I was taken with how many of their organization concerns were wrapped up in this emphasis issue.
One of the speakers who agreed to be interviewed on stage had a significant “comma problem” – she was performing a “fluffy” subject – worker motivation – and a “tough” subject – IT. I convinced her to both get rid of 1 – or think about combining the two into anything like “motivating IT workers” (which I liked a lot a lot more). Final week, I heard that she did this and has much more than doubled her income for next 12 months. Why? I suspect it is due to the fact she can now stop expending all of her energy switching hats and explaining the two quite distinct providers she was promoting – and she can target all of her power on being the quite very best in the planet at the a single point she does.
Concentrate is a serious, serious problem for a professional speaker for two factors. Very first, when you communicate you are definitely marketing your expertise, skills and polish. These enhance drastically with repetition, and a speaker who gives the exact same speech twenty occasions is far far better than one who gives twenty speeches as soon as. Secondly, it is so quite extremely effortless to get rid of emphasis as a speaker. In manufacturing, you have to develop new items or markets, employ new individuals, and often acquire new amenities or tools to lose target. For a speaker to wander off concentrate, all he or she has to do is read through a couple of books and agree to speak on a topic that is outside of his or her target.
Do you have commas in your checklist? Why are they there? And can you imagine how much greater you would be if they weren’t?
Copyright 2007 by Center for Simplified Strategic Preparing, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan – Reprint permission granted with total attribution.
