What’s your story? This is the only formula you need to deliver great presentations
and overcome anxiety in the process!
The secret to winning presentations, is clarity.
Whether it’s a manuscript, writing a great blog post, a client meeting, business speech or a TEDx talk, clarity is the key to influencing the audience and engaging the heart.
Some of the best leaders sabotage their presentations with clutter or confusion, by straying off topic or offering up too many themes or ideas to the audience. It doesn’t matter how brilliant you are if your target doesn’t receive your idea and take action on it. Communicating with clarity is a skill. It’s taken me 15 years as a professional writer, editor and communications consultant to brilliant minds, to sharpen it.
Without clarity the story becomes difficult to understand, no matter how unique or impressive it is.
Best selling books and award winning speeches all come down to one simple difference maker.
Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end.
Three very specific parts.
I’m often asked how to write a book, how to get a TED talk, or what the most effective way to deliver a speech is.
Even if it’s a simple internal request for a raise, or an external sales presentation with a prospect, this simple formula can transform your results. I call this formula “Chunking” and it involves dividing your talk (or book) into 3 sections; a beginning, middle and end.
When you begin to implement this process you won’t stray off topic, confuse the audience, or lose track of your outcome.
To prepare for any written or verbal presentation, it’s important to write out these 3 parts for yourself, to stay focused on communicating a clear and concise message. But the key to this difference maker begins with you. This process begins in your own mind! Delivering a great presentation is about getting your mind right, first. If you don’t clear the clutter and find comfort with what you’re about to say, you’ll experience nervousness and debilitating confusion and random thoughts.
When I delivered my TEDx talk which had a 18 minute time limit, my preparation note card looked like this:
Part 1: The Beginning
State your theme
Part 2: Middle
Talk about your theme/story authentically
Part 3: The end
Repeat the theme in part 1 and deliver a call to action
If you think in terms of creating in 3 parts you’ll begin to see a pattern in everything.
Chunking is the secret of great presenters.
Presentations, movies, relationship conversations, influential business talks and best selling books all have 3 parts, a beginning, middle and end.
In movies, there’s a beginning, middle and end.
At the theatre the movie always opens with a beginning that helps you understand what it’s about, and by the time you’re half way finished with your buttery popcorn, the movie has given you a specific plot, a story filled with action, adventure, and interesting characters. This middle section is the heartbeat of the story where everything happens.
But the middle is filled with uncertainty, because you’re never sure what’s going to happen next.
That’s what the middle section is for. To engage and entertain, to keep your reader or audience guessing, wondering, captivated, and seeking solutions.
Part 3 is very different. In this last section of the movie, the end, you know the result of the drama, and the resolution. You’ve got a feeling of satisfaction and completion. This is the feeling every audience craves because no one wants to waste their time. Time is currency.
The best books have a clear beginning, middle and end. In life on this planet it’s the same pattern. Every human being on earth has a beginning, a middle and an end.
Part 1: We are born
Part 2: We live an uncertain adventure with victories and losses and plot twists along the way,
Part 3: We die.
Beginning, middle, end.
It’s not quite as simple as that of course, because each one of us has the chance to create a lasting legacy that lives on for a thousand generations. But if you remember this concept of chunking a presentation, essay, or book into 3 parts it becomes much less intimidating.
Try it – and if you’re still second guessing your impact, reach out and let us help!
Contact me or one of our award winning writers who have been specifically trained on the concept of clarity at Tammy@onfirebooks.com
