Whether you have to motivate the team or talk about the company’s current financial situation at a meeting next week, here are four tips that’ll help get your point across — and they’ll remember what you said.
Getting people motivated about something can be hard work, especially in the dog days of summer when they’d rather count the grains of sand on the nearest beach than talk about Receivables.
But there are things you can work into talks to keep them interested, get them motivated and get them to remember at least most of what you say.
Here are three tricks you can use to give your talks more impact:
- Try to keep it down to three points. Studies have shown that people who listen to a talk only retain two or three items. So try to keep your message down to three or fewer points, and don’t be afraid to restate them at the end of the talk. Keeping it short will also help with retention since after a certain amount of time minds will start to wander and employees will struggle to stay focused.
- Use repetition — it’s the speaking version of bold. Take a cue from Ronald Reagan and Martin Luther King Jr. Repeating a phrase will make it stand out to your listeners, and they’ll remember that phrase and what it means. For example: King’s famous “I have a dream” speech restated the phrase “I have a dream” continually throughout the speech. You could use a phrase such as: “Our _______ is down. We can do better. “Our ______ is too high. We can do better.” Repeating a phrase will drive the point home and make it memorable to staffers.
- Make the situation relatable. Similes, metaphors and analogies help people relate to ideas. It makes the situation personal and important to them. Similes help explain a situation and make it more vivid: “This company is like a mountain — unshakable.” Sports metaphors are very popular today and help stimulate employee imaginations: A manager may tell a new employee that they’re “pitching for the winning team now.” And analogies help people understand foreign concepts: “The computer chip is the brain of a computer.” If you find an analogy that works, stick with it.
