How are your communication skills? Do you merely inform your audience or are you able to inspire them and to move them to action?
I just finished reading the book “Communicate to influence – How to inspire your audience to action” by Ben Decker & Kelly Decker. What gave me a lot of thought is their “Communicator’s Road Map” (below).
It is a two by two grid with the vertical axis being “emotional connection”, and the horizontal axis being “the content of your talk”.
We all know how boring business presentations typically are. And from my own observation, often the higher the presenter is ranked in a company’s hierarchy, the more boring the presentation is. Most of these tedious talks fall in the lower left quadrant. The presenter doesn’t connect, because he is low in emotion, and he talks only about his own stuff.
Adding some emotional content, e.g. through stories or humor, brings you up to the left upper quadrant, the “entertain” quadrant. Since your content is still your own stuff, you are not in a position to influence the audience.
The right upper quadrant is “inspire”, and that’s where you should always try to be. If you are there, it means people feel connected to you. They trust and like you. And in this quadrant, the content of your talk applies to your audience. And that’s where you can influence them!
In the right lower “direct” quadrant, we just give instructions without any emotional connection, but the content is all about the audience.
What are the best ways to move on the axes? On the horizontal axis, it is simply to change your content from self-centered to audience-centered. Regarding the vertical axis, the Deckers state that it’s not our competence but our warmth, humility, genuineness, and generosity that people pick up on first when they are evaluating you. These are the qualities that engender trust and will move you right up the emotional connection axis. They recommend to add one or more of the following elements to your presentation: stories, humor, analogies, references, or pictures and visuals.
So when you attend next time a presentation, think about in which quadrant the speaker falls. And don’t forget to reflect about your own talks and in which category they typically fall.
Always aim to be in the right upper quadrant. Then you will reap great rewards: you will influence your listeners, and you will inspire them to action!
