As We Speak

by Peter Meyers

  Still, you get up every day and communicate things that you hope people will remember. If you’re a leader, or somebody who must create influence with your board, your children or your team, you have to figure out how to make your message stick in people’s memory. The shorthand we use for this quality is stickiness, a term popularized by Chip and Dan Heath in their great book on the topic, Made to Stick. 2

  So, what makes something sticky?

  It should be:

  1. Simple.

  2. Emotional.

  3. Vivid.

  Sounds straightforward, right? But simplicity has to do with mastery. Watch a master do anything, and it looks easy. That’s because they’re literally using fewer muscles than a beginner. Beginners are tense; if you look at a scan of their brain when they’re doing something for the first time, every neural pathway is lit up. They’re sticking out their tongue and hunching their shoulders, in an effort to move their leg. Mastery is a process of subtraction—the better you get at something, the fewer neurons you require to make the movement, and the easier it looks.

  So we’d like to share with you some techniques that will help move you down the road toward mastery. We’ve chosen what we believe to be the key elements of good communication. And like a good carpenter with sharp tools, you should have them available to you whenever you need them.

  These are classical techniques, based on good old common sense, and used by great speakers, writers, and thinkers since the time of Cicero.

  Stories put a human face on your data. Metaphors make things memorable. Active language is more compelling than business jargon. A refrain becomes a way of reinforcing your key point. Sharpening your Q&A skills will give you a chance to engage with your listeners.

  Like any technique, the goal is that once you master it, it will ultimately disappear. The ultimate focus will be on your audience, and the connection you have with them.

  STORIES

  Your listeners may not remember a string of numbers. But they will remember a story. Because of the way that our brains are wired, we will listen with absorbed attention to almost any story, no matter how strange it seems. It can be quite minimal: “I had a colleague named Ralph, who discovered one day that his computer had crashed, right before an important meeting. And suddenly, he had an idea . ” We will sit forward and listen with rapt attention to what comes next, because that’s the way our brains are wired.

  Use it. Tell stories.

  Principles of Storytelling

  A story can be used in any part of your speech, from the ramp to the dessert. A story shows cause and effect over time. It puts flesh on an idea, relates the idea back to the listener, and shows how it affects him with real opportunities and costs. A story is the ideal place to illustrate your values, without listing them up front. Stories create a bond; they produce a sense of identification that causes the listener to say, “Me, too!” Stories accelerate understanding, because a story shows, instead of tells. Stories have been used to teach since the beginning of time. A story also demonstrates empathy and allows you to evoke emotion, without becoming sentimental.

  A good story starts with three coordinates: (1) Where; (2) When; (3) Who.

  Thus the classical formation “Once upon a time, there was a handsome prince who lived in a castle all alone . ” can be easily adapted: “Last summer, I took my nine-year-old son up the Amazon in a canoe . ” Now we’re in the movie. Every listener has visual images of a father, a son, and a rain forest. The stage is set, and the story can begin.

  A successful story starts with a platform, according to international improvisation expert Keith Johnstone, founder of Theatersports. 3 The platform is a stable, ordinary circumstance. Then you tilt the platform. The tilt is the unexpected element that throws the main character into a struggle to regain balance. It can be as simple as a clown whose umbrella turns inside out, or as complex as Hamlet. (Note: the story of The Lion King is the same story as Hamlet. Classical story formulations appear over and over.)

  The struggle is what defines the story. No struggle, no story. The struggle is what makes it exciting, funny, inspiring, and emotional. It’s what makes us cheer when the hero overcomes an obstacle.

  There comes a point in the story where the main character has to make a decision; a fork in the road. Again, the more difficult the decision, the more interesting the story. Work in an element of mystery; create surprise and delight your audience by doing something unexpected. Use reincorporation —allow elements to appear in the story, and then reappear. If there’s a surprise, it’s satisfying when it is linked to something that appeared earlier. When the prince meets the old hag in the forest, she hands him a goblet; later in the story, the goblet will fit in nicely when he needs to drink the magic potion.

  Show, don’t tell. Listeners are naturally rebellious; if you tell them what to feel, they’ll do the opposite. If you say to a kid, “I’m going to tell you a scary story,” nine times out of ten, they will say afterward, “That wasn’t scary.” Tell an audience that you’re about to say something funny, and watch them sit back and fold their arms with a scowl on their faces, determined not to laugh. So, don’t tell the listener what to feel. Just describe the scene, and let him draw his own conclusions. Instead of saying, “He was nervous,” say, “His palms were sweaty.” Instead of “It was a beautiful day,” say, “The sun was shining through the palm trees, and there was a soft breeze.” Instead of “The mother felt really sad as she watched her son drive off to join the army,” say, “As she watched her son drive away, she turned her face away, and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.” Imagine that you’re creating a movie for the listener to watch. Allow people to experience their own emotions, based on the story you’re telling.

  Where can you find a good story? Consider these sources:

  1. History —either the history of your organization, or world history.

  2. Your own life, or the lives of people you know, particularly in difficult situations where obstacles have been overcome.

  3. Newspapers —current events provide a gold mine of topical stories.

  4. Literature or the arts—classic stories lend great power and dignity to a talk.

  5. Your children —kids are always a great source of stories that everyone can understand.

  There are different types of stories. Two of the most useful are cautionary tales, which warn us of danger ahead, and inspirational tales, which talk about someone overcoming an obstacle. There is a simple mathematical formula to building an inspirational tale: the bigger the dragon, and the smaller the hero, the more compelling the story will be. When an ordinary person perseveres through great difficulty and comes out the other side, we feel inspired. To add more inspiration, create more difficulty and a longer path in order for the person to succeed. If Superman breaks down a door, it’s no big deal. But if he’s encased in kryptonite, it suddenly becomes more interesting.

  The best stories are true ones. Authenticity has a ring that you simply can’t fake. Sometimes if you look more closely, your personal experience may furnish a perfect story for your topic.

  * * *

  PETER

  We were working with a senior executive, a charismatic Asian American man named Stan, at a global technology firm that was hosting a conference on collaboration. We kept rehearsing and rewriting his keynote address, but it felt uninspired—he could talk endlessly about collaboration, but only in the abstract. There was something missing—his presentation lacked soul.

  I prodded him for a personal story that might breathe some life into his talk. I remembered him mentioning that he was a marathon runner and then saying something cryptic about the fact that he hadn’t always been able to run. When I pressed him, he said he’d actually had polio as a child and was confined to a wheelchair until he was twelve. It sounded like a potentially very powerful personal story about overcoming tremendous odds.

  “But it’s got nothing to do with collaboration,” Stan said. “And besides, I don’t want t
o talk about myself.”

  I pressed further. It turns out that Stan’s parents and his five siblings refused to accept the prognosis that polio would prevent him from walking. They worked tirelessly with him and with a team of physical therapists. Finally, one day, at age twelve, Stan stood up from the wheelchair and walked on his own.

  After that, he ran. And today, he’s an accomplished marathoner.

  I convinced Stan that he had an inspiring story about collaboration—his doctors, therapists, and family had all worked together toward a common goal. But Stan was still uneasy about sharing his plight. It went against his cultural upbringing, he said, to put the spotlight on himself.

  It’s true, the story was about Stan—but only on the surface. In fact, it was because of the heroic efforts of the team around him that he was able to leave that wheelchair behind. This was really a story about collaboration, not about isolated, individual effort. Stan was telling a story about himself, but he was giving all the credit to others.

  On the day of the conference, when Stan started talking about his journey from the wheelchair to the marathon, the audience was rapt. Five years later, people who heard that story still remember it, and Stan’s message about the value of collaboration.

  * * *

  METAPHOR

  Using a metaphor is like shining a spotlight on a darkened stage. It focuses your listener’s attention where you want it.

  As you think about that, notice what happens in your brain—you can see the picture of a spotlight in your head, making the idea easier to grasp and remember than a lot of words that jostle around meaninglessly.

  This is the power of a metaphor; it creates a word picture. It makes you able to see the idea. It makes your words concrete. The brain processes images sixty thousand times faster than words alone. 4 So a picture is really worth sixty thousand words. Imagine how much time you save by bringing up a picture in your listener’s mind.

  Remember the quote from Dwight D. Eisenhower’s sergeant, when asked to provide an instant assessment of the battlefield? “Sir, imagine a doughnut. We’re the hole.” Chances are that you do remember that metaphor, even though you’ve read a lot of words in the meantime.

  Because of their power, metaphors are one of the oldest literary devices known to mankind. 5 Why? Well, metaphors make your language sticky, because they’re processed on the right side of the brain, along with color, stories, and emotion. In a time when brevity is a virtue, metaphors accelerate the speed of understanding. Metaphors also create feeling, and can simplify complex ideas.

  We use metaphors all the time: “My computer crashed.” “We had runaway inflation.” “I hit the jackpot.” “We’re holding our ground.” “We’re losing altitude.” “She’s in a bumpy period.” “We’re coming up to the finish line.” “He knocked it out of the park.”

  Every time you say the words “e-mail” or “in-box,” you’re using a metaphor. We’ve made a complex, hard-to-grasp idea comprehensible by giving it a physical shape that we understand.

  If you’re trying to describe a complicated new delivery system to someone who doesn’t understand it, you might say, “We’re like the veins of the body; we carry vital components from the brain out to the arms and legs, so the work can get done.”

  To create a metaphor, write down the thing you’re trying to describe. For example, let’s use the delivery system. Write a list of qualities describing that object. Example: it moves things from place to place, connects pieces together, it provides a critical function without which everything breaks down.

  Now, pick one of those descriptors. Example: moves objects from place to place. What else moves objects from place to place? Make a list: plumbing pipes, roads, veins, train tracks. Look at the list and evaluate the possibilities of each one as a usable metaphor. Plumbing pipes may not be a good choice, for example, because the connotations are sewage, rats, and waste. Not associations that you want to create in the listener’s mind. Roads have potential as a metaphor in this case; without roadways, transportation locks down and commerce is crippled.

  But veins provide an even more fertile image. It’s organic, everyone instinctively understands it, and without veins the organism will obviously die. Healthy veins mean a healthy organization. They take things from the central intelligence system, the brain, out to the limbs where work is accomplished.

  A good metaphor will spin out even more implications than you originally spotted; an excellent metaphor will actually supercharge your presentation by suggesting additional possibilities.

  Two cautions when dealing with metaphor: be careful to avoid dead metaphors, or clichés. “Like apples and oranges” is not a metaphor, but a cliché. This will hurt you instead of helping you. (For more on avoiding clichés, see the section on active language.) Also beware of mixing your metaphors or packing more than one into your presentation. Ideally you should have one overarching metaphor that creates a memorable visual picture, and then you can tease it out through the rest of your presentation. “If the delivery system components are the veins of the company, the people in the depots are the hands and feet. To keep them working well, we need to . ”

  Metaphors can be used as a powerful tool in the workplace. For example: Sylvia was a manager in a large organization. She was happily doing her job until her boss added another manager to her region, doing the exact same job.

  Sylvia complained that there was too much duplication going on. Her boss responded that by putting more resources in the region, they would gain a greater market share. They were in deadlock.

  Finally, Sylvia used this metaphor to clinch her business case: “Imagine we’re in a race. It’s a race we can win. We’re ahead. But at the moment we’ve got a racecar with two steering wheels, and two drivers.” Her boss, who was a big NASCAR fan, laughed. The next day Sylvia got an e-mail that said, “The region is all yours.”

  * * *

  SHANN

  I was once in a situation where my boss wasn’t giving me the resources I needed to do my job. I sent him an e-mail that read, “Hey, Cap’n—Quick dispatch from your foot soldier on the front lines. It’s getting a little scary out here under fire, and we’re undersupplied—how about sending us some ammunition?” My metaphor essentially created a story line for my boss to enter, like a little movie. In this minidrama, my boss was cast as the captain—and a good captain would never send his foot soldiers out onto the front lines without equipping them with the necessary supplies. There is only one happy ending to this story—the captain gives the foot soldier what’s needed. And that’s exactly what my boss did.

  * * *

  ACTIVE LANGUAGE

  Words have power.

  High Performance Communication is all about saying the right words, in the right way, when the pressure is on. There are infinite ways of saying things, and your choice of words can have far-reaching consequences. The most powerful language is fresh, concrete, and set at the appropriate level of intensity.

  * * *

  PETER

  About five years ago, I was asked to give a speech to raise money for a theater company, at an evening event in San Francisco.

  At about 11:30 p.m., I got a call from my wife, Marcia. She said, “Don’t forget the cat food.”

  I said, “Honey, I’m in the middle of a fund-raiser.”

  She said, “That’s fine. Just don’t come home without the cat food.”

  Turns out the cat had just had kittens, and Marcia couldn’t leave the house because our son was asleep. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll get the cat food.”

  The event finished at one o’clock in the morning. Now, San Francisco is a pretty nice place, except for one area. It’s called the Tenderloin, and it happens to be the one place where the shops stay open all night. So I got on my motorcycle and drove into the Tenderloin, where I found a twenty-four-hour liquor store that also sold groceries.

  As I pulled my motorcycle up onto its center stand, I looked around. On one corner there were prostit
utes. Across the street were a couple of shady-looking guys wearing big hooded coats and sunglasses, staring at me and whispering to each other. I thought, Hey, I’m from New York. They’re not going to mess with me. But I took my helmet and keys in with me, just in case.

  I bought the cat food, along with some eggs and juice for the morning. As I walked out of the shop, I saw one of the shady-looking guys point two fingers straight at my eyes, like he was marking me. Then they both started to move toward me, fast. My first instinct was to run—but I knew they would catch me. My second instinct was to fight—but there were two of them, and only one of me. I just stood there, completely paralyzed. The next second, they were on me.

  The first guy hit me in the face, and my bag of groceries went flying. Then the second guy hit me in the stomach, and I bent double. I could feel someone punching me in the ribs, and other hands in my pocket, trying to get my wallet.

  I had a sudden vision of myself lying in the gutter unconscious, blood trickling out of my mouth. I thought of my wife and my son waiting for me at home, and knew I had to do something. Without thinking I grabbed the inside lapel of my coat, as if it had a microphone in it, and started yelling at the top of my lungs, “VECTOR FIVE, VECTOR FIVE, ALL UNITS MOVE IN. RED ALERT, RED ALERT, TARGETS AT MISSION AND 13th. DEPLOY ALL UNITS, I NEED FULL BACKUP NOW, MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!”

  There was a long pause. I looked up. The guys who had been attacking me were gone. The hookers were gone. In fact, the entire street was empty. I picked up my juice, and the cat food. The eggs were past rescuing. As I raced my bike out of there, as fast as I could go, it occurred to me that the right words, spoken in the right way, at the right time, had probably just saved my life.