You're about to start lesson four in the mini-course. Again, I'm Alex Lyon and you
haven't yet subscribed, I encourage you to do so and check the rest of the
videos on the channel out. On this particular video, like the last one, some
people don't like a couple of the tips because, if you fall in this category, you
might feel like well that's a lot of structure and I don't normally
communicate that way.
Well, that's true. Not everybody communicates in a structure, orderly way.
But, it is one of the best ways to sound more concise, clear, and confident.
So give it a try.
Check your self-talk and motivation. Why is it that you don't want to communicate
this way? Because if you can get to the bottom of your inner thoughts, then
you're much more likely to succeed and communicate a clear fashion.
So, let's jump right in.
In our last lesson, we looked at concise statements. In lesson four, we'll
look at organized thoughts. Concise tip number four. Organize your thoughts into
clear points. This is, of course, one way to remain concise but it also adds an
incredible amount of clarity and confidence to your message. Messages
without a clear structure are very hard to follow for your listeners. And long
lists dilute each item's value. You've probably sat through presentations where
somebody had 20 items are on a list. And there's really no impact there when you
have that many items. Much better to create fewer clear points. A clear
organization shows clear, confident thinking. Here we have a messy desk and a
joke I pulled from a comic. If you think this is bad, you should see the inside of
my head. It's actually looks a little bit like my desk. And, I'm all for creativity.
However, once we're sharing our thoughts with somebody else, once we're
communicating, we really have to stay more structured so that they can follow
along with what we're saying in a clear and understandable way. Richard Fineman
said it like this. "If you can't explain it to a six-year-old, you really don't
understand it." And the idea here is that if you really understand something, you
can explain it in a very clear and structured way for your listeners.
They talk about being able to give a freshman lecture on a concept and if you
can't give a freshman level lecture, then you don't yourself understand it. So this
structure will help us clarify our own thoughts and help it land for other people.
Structure provides a schema or a mental framework that helps keeps thoughts
clear for you, helps your listeners follow your point. It gives your message
cohesion or an overarching arc and helps everybody remember. Strategy one is to
break messages into two to three chunks. For example, let's say you're having a
conversation about getting healthy and you want to share this information with
somebody else. Instead of just rambling, you want to break it down into clear
points. For example, you could talk about diet, exercise, and the importance of
working out with a friend. And underneath each of those themes, or some people call
them buckets, you would give your detail. So, if you're talking about diet, you
might talk about counting calories or weight watchers, etc. Under exercise, the
different options, and under working out with a friend how you would hold each
other a little accountable for staying on track. I was talking to a friend of mine and,
it's a real life example, and I talked about his retirement plan. He's retired
and he said, 401k, I have some rental income, and a little bit of Social Security.
Instead of giving a long-winded, disorganize, rambling answer, he was able
to give me clear themes and then we continue the discussion about each of
these three items. And he provided some nice detail. I was watching a movie about
a disabled man from Ghana many years ago. And he had one good leg and one disabled leg.
And he finally got a meeting with a community leader. And the leader said
what are your priorities? And he said, I want to help provide independence,
mobility, and sports for the disabled people in Ghana. He had just a moment to
break the ice with an extremely clear message, and to this day, I remember this
documentary film. He communicated in that clear and confident way. And I instantly
thought, Wow. This guy really knows what he's talking about. When we do this, we
want to organize our chunks, our main points, into some logical
pattern. A nice logical pattern is going to help people remember and it's going
to clarify our thoughts for ourselves. Before-after, problem-solution-benefit,
cause-and-effect, steps in a sequence or in other words chronological, etc. Lots of
different options here. You're not limited to this list but it's nice to
have a list handy. For example, let's practice with this stream of thought
example about somebody's day. I got up got ready a breakfast and worked out. I
did some shopping on the way home from the gym. I bumped into Katy at the store,
she wants to get together tonight. I actually got some work done during the
day, shot some videos, did some editing, and organized the tools in garage. I was
hoping to get together with Katy and John tonight but I also have some people
to get back to, some calls to make, at least a couple of texts to stay on top
of some things. So, this sounds a little bit like rambling but you can basically
follow it.
It's much more clear, however, if we structure this into main points. For
example, chronologically. Morning, afternoon, and evening. And each of those
items has a few details underneath it.
Those themes provide a really great way to clarify your message, make it much
more concise, and it'll sound very confident compared to a rambling
disorganized message. It's handy to have a list like this around when you're
preparing for meetings, important conversations, and certainly
presentations because you don't have to create this from scratch. You can invent
new ways but there are lots of great scheme is already available for
structuring your ideas.
Strategy number two is to then state your road map. So you have your structure
and now you want to forecast those points aloud with key words only. So a
physician might say to you,
"Let's talk about symptoms and then treatments." Now you have a roadmap for
how that conversation is going to go. And I recommend also calling out your points
along the way. So, let's say you start with symptoms. You talk about that for a
few minutes and if you are the physician then you might say, "Now let's turn to your
treatment options." And that'll be a really clear signal that you're shifting
gears and it again reminds people of that schema, reminds them of your buckets, and
helps your message state clear. So structure provides freedom even though
it seems like it boxes people in. We go back to mindset that we talked about in
the earlier lesson on long-windedness. Why are we long-winded? Sometimes people resist
applying structure because it feels too restrictive. It feels like it's robbing
them of something. But there are a lot of benefits and there are freedoms that
you can experience within a good structure. First of all it eliminates
tangents, which is good for your thinking, and it's good for listeners. They don't
want to hear tangents anymore than you want to get off on them. But it also
provides a place for more details. So if you have clear main points, then you can
find some nice details and sort them into the relevant place and then they'll
make sense. And it gives even long stories a sense of cohesion. So let's say
you tell a five-minute story that's disorganized. It's going to feel like it
lasts forever. If you tell a five-minute story with a clear beginning, middle, and
end, then everybody will be able to follow it and it won't feel long at all. So
structure is a tool to help you sort need-to-know information versus nice-to-
know information. We talked about this in an earlier lesson. If it doesn't fit into
your structure, either you have the wrong structure, the wrong main points, or it's
just not need-to-know information. It might be just something that's nice to
know, which is why it doesn't fit in. And that way when you communicate with
listeners, you're giving them high-value information with every sentence. So we
want to organize our thoughts into clear points. Our take-away strategies are to
break ideas into two to three chunks and then state your roadmap really clearly
before you share your message and then remind people of your points as you move
through them. So our task is to apply this in conversations, meetings, and
presentations that you have coming up in the coming days and I look forward to
seeing in the next lesson on effective pauses.