by Cam Barber
Myth 2. Smokers choose to smoke: He explains that after the experimental cigarettes it’s the nicotine addiction that traps you. If you’ve ever once tried to stop smoking, you realise it’s not a choice to continue.
Myth 3. Smokers will suffer terrible physical nicotine withdrawal if they quit: He argues that withdrawal is minor, but the belief that you’ll suffer is the main cause of the pain and frustration. The withdrawal symptoms are actually created by doubt and fear (uncertainty), and therefore that stopping smoking is not as traumatic as is commonly assumed, if that doubt and fear can be removed.
With these explanations, people understand his core message that ‘smoking a cigarette will create agitation’, and they just stop! The message is embedded in their brain and drives their new-found positive behaviour.
Steve Waugh - Leadership for a new audience
Steve Waugh is a legendary cricketer who captained the Australian Cricket Team from 1999 – 2004. He has shown great leadership off the field as well, particularly in philanthropy and publishing. He’s written 13 books.
I worked with Steve recently, helping to structure his leadership ideas for a full-day corporate event.
It’s one thing for a leader to respond instinctively and execute leadership wisdom in their chosen field. It’s another thing to repackage that wisdom for a business audience and deliver it from the stage in bite-sized chunks.
To share his knowledge, he first had to isolate the messages and examples his audience could relate to. This is the skill that makes you a great speaker. What’s the point of the story? What’s the learning from the event? What’s the message from the coaching session? This is what audiences crave.
When he first sat down to prepare for the event, he found it difficult to know where to start. However, after isolating his messages, it was wonderful to see Steve easily access a range of examples to support each point.
From his sporting success, to breaking new ground in publishing, to a whole range of philanthropic events and organisations in Australia, Europe and the Subcontinent. Steve seems to be living many lives.
Here are some of his key messages and the examples that flowed from them:
“Assume nothing.”
“Winning leads to complacency. It’s just human nature. It can be a trap. You can’t rely on past success and so you must go forward facing the truth head-on. What I mean by this is that sometimes it’s necessary to make hard or unpopular decisions that ultimately benefit the team (or the organisation). Even when these truths are things that you don’t want to hear, that you don’t want to believe. Like cutting a popular player from the next Test series. Assuming nothing also means that you don’t have to continue to follow a path or direction that’s no longer working. It’s never too late to review and refocus.”
“If I’m going to make a mistake, it will be an original one, not
somebody else’s.”
“A leader ultimately has to trust his gut and have a personal vision for the success of the team. This involves going out on a limb, but it’s something a leader must do. You should expect to make mistakes, but at least if they’re your mistakes you’ll learn from them.
Early on as captain of the Australian Cricket team, I followed the advice of the team manager. It turned out to be a mistake. Of course, everybody makes mistakes, but I thought at the time; ‘How dumb was that! Not only was it a mistake, but it wasn’t my judgment, so I didn’t learn the lesson and integrate that into my thinking.’
Another example is in publishing. My most recent book was self-published. A lot of people said it was a mistake but we looked at it closely and took the risk. That book, The Meaning of Luck, retailed for half the price of similar books, sold a huge number of copies and made a greater profit than if we’d signed to a publisher. The decision could quite easily have been a mistake, but the end-result was a great success.”
“Why can’t we win every game?”
“I’m a big believer in having realistic leadership expectations. If people don’t believe the goal is achievable, then energy dissipates. In fact, personally, as a batsman, I would set the smallest goal to ensure I was focused on the ball in front of me. For example, in my first game for Australia, my goal was not to get 100, it was simply ‘don’t get a duck’. That was the goal. It was a realistic expectation to build from.
But a leader also sets the vision, and one day, after looking at our form I posed the question to the team: ‘Why can’t we win every game on this tour?
Let’s think about this for a minute. Here’s how good we are, here’s our strategy and here’s our opposition. Why can’t we win every game?’ And we did. This question crystallised in every player’s mind that it was possible. It focused us on achieving a previously unheard of goal. And it led to a World record of 16 consecutive Test victories.”
“Don’t get bitter, get better.”
“You get better results when you focus your energies correctly. You don’t want to waste energy on things that don’t move you or the team forward. I’m competitive and have a drive to beat the other team, but when I see people getting bitter or angry, I always ask whether it’s focused energy or wasted energy.
So in cricket, when frustrating things happened or when there was heated rivalry between teams, I liked to refocus the team on getting better (not bitter).”
Politician - How much water to grow an orange?
There has been plenty of debate in desert-filled Australia about the best use of water. There are regular arguments between farmers, politicians and environmentalist about the diverting of water from rivers, like the Murray, to grow fruit.
This debate has been heated and aggressive and often included the fact that much of our produce was exported to other countries. One day, a simple message was thrown into the debate that changed everyone’s perspective.
‘When we export fruit, we are exporting water.’
This message quickly prompted questions like: What is the physical cost of the water? What is the opportunity cost of the water? What price are we getting for our water in exports?
This led to a much more balanced debate.
Doctor - Convincing people to support a new idea
Ok. Vagina. There, I’ve said it. It made me feel awkward, but it needed to be said to outline an example of one doctor’s attempt to convince surgeons to change their behaviour.
A few years ago, I worked with Dr Marcus Carey, a Melbourne-based uro-gynaecologist to help him ‘sell’ a new idea. He had developed a groundbreaking medical procedure to treat vaginal prolapse and he needed to refine his persuasive skills so he could change the behaviours of surgeons around the world.
Working with Johnson and Johnson, Dr Carey had developed a new operation but still had to personally convince people to change what they were currently doing.
Great ideas do not always sell themselves. This doctor was doing what all leaders have to do – persuade people to change their thinking. However, people resist change because it involves effort and uncertainty.
Even great ideas can fail without persuasion
Someone has to get the word out to convince people to change behaviour. Dr Carey had the right idea; he was scheduled to speak at medical conferences around the world.
And there is a global need for his idea. Consider: The current operation required tremendous skill by the surgeon and there weren’t enough trained surgeons to meet the demand. The current operation took 3 hours, versus less than 1 hour for the new one. With an ageing population, there is a 45% increase in the demand for prolapse surgery. 1 in 8 women experience a variation of this condition.
Dr Carey’s surgical procedure was more effective in a number of ways. But his initial explanation was way too long and technical. We refined the message to:
“This new operation has 4 benefits over the existing method:
1, it’s quicker – reducing surgical risk,
2, it’s less aggressive – providing faster healing,
3, it r
educes the chances of later complications, and, it’s much easier to explain to patients.”
His earlier communications included many of these points, but they were lost in the details. After we defined his 4-point message, he had a flexible, memorable and transferable summary, that could be conveyed in less than 20 seconds. The fact that it’s short makes it more likely that people will repeat it.
So, this story is about an idea/technique/procedure that is much better than the existing one. If you want your ideas heard, you can learn from this example. Unfortunately, many great ideas do fail because they’re not communicated well enough to convince people.
MESSAGING BUILDS YOUR PERSONAL BRAND
Packaging your knowledge into messages, presentations or focused conversations helps build your personal brand and increases the value of your ideas.
Jules Lund - Finding the message changed everything, effortlessly
Jules Lund was already a well-known TV and radio presenter when we met a couple of years ago. However, he was a little anxious about his upcoming speech to 1,000 people at the Australian Radio Conference. He hadn’t done many ‘business presentations’ like this. And he wanted to use this opportunity to brand himself as an expert on social media.
Jules asked me a range of questions; what’s the best way to structure his ideas? How much detail to include? What are the best delivery techniques to engage the audience? Etc.
However, one simple thing we did at the start of our session answered all those questions automatically. We changed the title from;
‘How to leverage Social Media’
to,
‘Your Digital Portfolio’.
Why did that make such a difference?
His first title seemed accurate and informative, but it positioned him on the same footing as 100 other experts on social media. And he was missing an opportunity. Because, after chatting with Jules it became clear that he was not just saying ‘you need to be good at social media and here’s how to do it’, he was saying that social media is as important as your radio show. So we changed the title to ‘Your digital portfolio’.
Radio stations now have a ‘digital portfolio’
In other words, the radio network with the studios, expensive radio licence and the broadcasting tower on top of the hill - the thing assumed to have the most value - was only 1 part of their business now. They needed to stop thinking of having a radio station and then adding some social media. They needed to focus their resources differently, because, they were now an entertainment company that had a ‘digital portfolio’ that included 3 things:
1. Their existing radio station
2. Their website
3. Their social media audience.
All 3 were now equal in value and importance. This was a dramatic shattering of radio management’s current perception. And a difficult one to face up to for Jules’ audience. It ultimately meant big balance-sheet write-downs of the value of a radio licence.
This change occurred so quickly that no-one had really seen it this way.
Jules’ presentation explaining this change (and what to do about it) blew the audience away. It convinced owners and managers of the largest networks in Australia and Asia to rethink their strategy and their resource allocation based on this new view of a digital portfolio. And it positioned Jules as a thought leader in entertainment.
How can changing a title make such a difference?
Why did changing the title (and the ultimate message) change all the other important elements of a speech or presentation? Three reasons.
Firstly, clarity. We changed the title because we had found the real message. This gave Jules laser-like focus, making it clear what details to include and what was no longer needed in his presentation. The structuring of his ideas was now easy. For example, as we went through the chunk structure, Jules could see that 20 slides on how social media works were no longer necessary.
Secondly, energy. The excitement Jules had for the presentation once the message was clear was amazing to see. His posture changed. From weighed down by a busy schedule, trying to find time to put a great presentation together in his spare hours, to absolute certainty he had a valuable message to share with his industry.
Thirdly, delivery. The clarity and energy that was manifest effortlessly from finding the real message, was evident in every word and move Jules made while delivering the presentation. Anxiety and uncertainty dissolved as his clarity and certainty took over.
His presentation was fantastic. The audience raved. And Jules Lund built a profitable and influential brand as an expert.
Janine Allis - Messaging allows natural style
The wildly successful marketing of Boost Juice is synonymous with its founder, Janine Allis. Janine is a genius at promoting herself and her business, which means she is a genius at delivering memorable messages. Her key branding message is an oft-repeated story.
‘A mom with 3 kids, who left school at 16, started Boost Juice in her family kitchen, and has grown to 200 stores.’
This is the sort of message that gets passed on at dinner parties and in general conversation. For example, at the shopping centre, “Let’s get a Boost Juice. Hey, did you know the woman who started it left school at 16?”
One of the memorable things about Janine’s story is that her formal qualifications from Knox Technical School didn’t include Business Administration, they included typing and welding! How do I know this? Because Janine has repeated the ‘typing and welding’ story in support of her core message many times. It’s part of Boost Juice folklore.
‘Solving problems and keeping things simple’
Janine is also very good at ‘speaking in messages’ to the media. For example, when asked ‘How did you grow such a successful business with little schooling and no formal training Janine?’
“I’m not good at everything, but what I am good at is solving problems and keeping things simple.”
Great. ‘Solving problems and keeping things simple’. That’s the kind of message that will make a magazine headline. And it did! By speaking in messages, you have greater control of your brand.
I had the pleasure of working with Janine as her early success led to public speaking opportunities. As she became more famous and the audiences got bigger, she found it a challenge to relax and be herself on stage. For example, Janine didn’t like to wear suits, but needed to speak to 500 people dressed in suits.
She had questions about her brand, her natural style and what these new audiences expected. As long as these questions remained unresolved they created uncertainty, and uncertainty saps energy levels and feeds anxiety when speaking.
Should I follow a script?
She wondered: Should I follow a script? Should I change my style and my approach for different audiences? And, if I do, how much? And if I do that, will I lose myself and my ability to think clearly and speak naturally when attempting to satisfy these varied audiences?
All normal and important questions in this situation.
One of the specific challenges Janine had in grappling with these questions was that she didn’t like to follow a script, however, she would often get lost as she went off on (interesting) tangents. This made her feel uncomfortable and uncertain about how to get back on track during a speech.
For someone who was very good at controlling her environment, with a beautifully practical mind, Janine found the uncertainty unpleasant and wanted to improve.
We talked about the fact that people loved her unconventional approach and natural style. It was Janine’s genuineness, even with rough edges, that attracted people to her story.
She said, ‘Great! I don’t want to change my style. But how can I master public speaking?’
The question now was; How could Janine create an environment where she felt comfortable on stage - no matter how large the audience? Following a script was not the answer. Rarely does following a script help a speaker connect to an audience.
The answer was to id
entify key messages for her stories, so even if she went off on a tangent or went a bit longer on a story, she knew how to end each story.
The messages were her anchors throughout a speech, presentation or media interview. This approach worked beautifully. It reduced her uncertainty, renewed her energy levels and dissolved the anxiety associated with larger presentations.
Raw and unpolished but able to capture an audience
In his 2005 biography of Janine called Business secrets of the woman behind Boost Juice, business journalist James Kirby described her public speaking as ‘raw and unpolished but able to capture the audience with her natural style’.
Brilliant. The word unpolished is now a compliment! It’s clarity around key messages that allows her to relax and speak naturally. Janine Allis has now told her story to hundreds of thousands of people at events all over the world, and it has helped drive Boost Juice’s success.
Senior Manager - Leveraging his knowledge
I’ve worked with many managers to codify their knowledge into vivid messages and supporting explanations, including authors, scientists, school principals, creative directors, sales managers and CEOs. Here’s an example of how it works with the Head of Content at a radio network.
The Head of Content oversees multiple radio stations and literally 100s of breakfast teams, drive shows and the personalities who connect with millions of listeners every day. Whatever you think of commercial radio, the quantity of new ideas they create is staggering.
How many TV stations produce live content 24 hours a day? None. Putting a breakfast show together that will entertain, connect with audiences and help decode the world is not easy. There are playful and silly segments, controversial segments and analyses of politics, sport and local current affairs. These shows and the teams that run them do not come together by accident.