A few days
ago I have been lucky enough to discover a video of a lecture Carmine Gallo
gave to some students at the Stanford University. Carmine Gallo is the
communication coach for the world’s most admired brands and author of the
best-selling book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. In this lecture he
pointed out three secrets all inspiring messages share. Whether you
are an entrepreneur, an employee, a student or even a professor, I do recommend you to watch this video, there is so much you can learn from it. However, for those who
are too busy I summarised his ideas here.
According
to Carmine Gallo, there is always a story to tell and everyone has the ability
to tell a better story to inspire people. He says that a message is inspiring if it is:
- Understandable
- Memorable
- Emotional
(1) UNDERSTANDABLE
There are
many techniques you can use to make your message understandable. The one
Carmine Gallo shares with the Stanford students is: Creating Twitter-friendly
headlines.
You all
know that the longest tweet you can share is 140 characters. Creating
Twitter-friendly headlines means that you should be able to explain what you do in
140 characters or less. If you cannot describe what you do in a sentence, think about it until you can.
Why should
you create Twitter-friendly headlines? Because “the brain craves meaning before
details”. The brain wants to see the big picture first. Therefore, before going
into details you need to make it easy for people to understand what your purpose is. Many
companies have created a mantra—a one-sentence vision—telling the world what
they do:
- Nike: “Authentic athletic performance”
- Target: “Democratize design”
- Mary Kay: “Enriching women’s lives”
Ask
yourself: “How can I explain my idea in 140 characters or less?” I asked myself
this question and the answer I came up with is “Echo Presentations help people
tell their stories trough a presentation that rock.”
(2) MEMORABLE
After you
have created your one-sentence vision, you need to make sure this is memorable.
Again there is more than one way to make your message memorable, but I
particularly like one technique Gallo explained. This is something he considers “one of the
most powerful techniques in communication”: the Rule of Three. The Rule of
Three means that in short-term memory we are only able to process about 3 pieces
of information, not more. So next time you make a presentation, don't overload your audience with 10 points, just give them 3 reasons why they
should care about your idea or your work.
It is
interesting to see how the Rule of Three is embedded in our society, even if we
do not pay attention to it. Carmine Gallo gives some examples:
- Nike: “Just do it”
- Obama: “Yes we can”
- The colours of most flags are three
- The three musketeers
- Many companies have three letters in their logos (DHL, IBM, SAP and many more)
This is the
way our mind works. Our mind likes to see groups of three.
(3) EMOTIONAL
Making a
message understandable and memorable is not enough. Great communicators make it
emotional too. John Medina—Professor of Bioengineering at the University of
Washington—says that “the brain does not pay attention to boring things”.
Let’s say
in a few days you have to give a presentation to your boss, customer or
professor. I am sure you don't want to make a boring presentation. One way to
avoid this is to make it emotional. How do you make a presentation emotional?
Well, tell stories! Tell stories about your product, tell personal stories or
stories about your customers. A case study is
a story. When you tell stories you are making an emotional connection with
people. Great communicators tell stories. And when you tell stories, think
visually. Carmine Gallo explains what the Picture Superiority Effect is. When
you deliver information verbally, people remember 10% of it. If you add a
picture, people remember up to 65% of what you say.
To my
astonishment he reveals a sad figure: the average PowerPoint slide has 40
words. This is way too much. People cannot read and listen to you at the same
time. If you want people to listen to you, you need to include as fewer text as
possible. Seth Godin—a great public speaker—says that you should never use
more than 6 words on a slide, no matter how difficult your concept is. Thinking
visually takes work. It is hard to do but it is worth it.
Next
time you'll make a presentation, make sure you articulate your idea in a way
that's understandable, memorable and emotional. If you do that, you will
win people over.
