This is what the ancient Greeks had in mind when they said great speakers didn’t just possess ethos and pathos, but also logos. While ethos has to do with the way a person lives and pathos is passion, logos is the idea of content. What the Greeks meant by this is you always left a great communicator feeling as if you had learned something. Presidential speech writer, Peggy Noonan, points this out in her book, On Speaking Well, when she says, “The most moving thing in a speech is always the logic. It’s never flowery words and flourishes, it’s not sentimental exhortations, it’s never the faux poetry we’re all subjected to these days. It’s the logic, the thinking behind your case.” Noonan goes on to underscore her point with the example of President Reagan: “He was so often moving and so often successful in his speeches that he came to set the standard. But Reagan as a speaker has been misunderstood. He was often moving, but he was moving not because of the way he said things, he was moving because of what he said.” 

What we say as communicators is the most important part of our job. If you are an educator trying to persuade your audience to embrace or avoid artificial intelligence, then you better know your subject. If you are a preacher pointing people to a text and the gospel, then you have to know that text and the gospel message like the back of your hand. And if you are a politician running for office trying to convince people why economic reform is necessary, then you need to be clear on the current state of things, and why your ideas are worth people’s vote. Our content doesn’t just matter, it is the matter. 

In my years of being around some of the best communicators, I have found they use these universal principles in developing their content:

1. Time. HB Charles Jr., says if we as communicators sweat in the study we can relax on the stage. Or as my college communications professor said, “Less scared when prepared.” There’s just no getting around it, we have to put in the time. Whenever I put a message together I spend about forty-percent of my time focused on how I will say things, and sixty- percent on what I will say (the content). I won’t give you an exact amount of time, or even a range of time, because we all have various capacities. But the principle remains- by the time you get up to speak you should be a master, because you have immersed yourself in the subject.

2. Thought. Content development requires deep thought, but in this digital age we are posed with a significant challenge along these lines. One communicator has pointed out that the internet is the friend of information and the enemy of thought. I agree. We have to be careful with choosing a subject and running to YouTube to see what the experts say, and then just regurgitating their thoughts. I’m not saying there’s not a place to listen to other experts, but you have to wrestle with the subject for yourself. To help me with this, I read widely on the subject I’m speaking on. All the time. What I mean by this is content development shouldn’t just be something you do the week of, but is a constant. When people ask me how long do I take to put a message together, I honestly tell them that’s an impossible question to answer. Every time I pick up a book to read, even on vacation, is message preparation. 

3. Discernment. Here’s the paradox. On one hand we as communicators need to read widely in an effort to master our content. On the other hand, we don’t have enough time to download all of our thoughts to the audience. So we have to discern what is essential versus what is important, and choose the essential. I want you to think of yourself as a director of a movie. When a movie is shot, they always film more material than what is needed. The director and her team have to decide what stays and what is left out. People will tell you the difference between a good  movie and a great movie is what they choose to leave on the editing room floor. While this is a skill developed over time, one of the things that helps me discern if the point(s) I have learned in my study makes it into the message or not is to ask the question, “If I left this out would it strengthen or dilute the message? Or would it even matter?” Unless it strengthens it, leave it out. 

What I’m reading:

We Who Wrestle with God, Jordan B. Peterson

John Newton’s Letters

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