Next level communicators play with dirt.
Next level communicators play with dirt.
Some years ago, gosh, maybe fifteen or twenty, I was speaking at a seminary where in the audience was one of my favorite communicators. To say I was nervous is an understatement, but I powered through, and a few hours later I found myself on a flight right next to this hero of mine. Never one to pass up a good opportunity, I asked him to give me some feedback on my message. He thought for a few seconds and then asked me if I liked jazz? “Of course,” I said. He then responded, “The great jazz musicians play with what they called, ‘a little dirt under their fingernails’. You could use a little more ‘dirt,’” he said with a smile. What he meant by this was I came across as too staged…too polished.
Got me.
I couldn’t argue at all with him because his critique was spot on. Up until that point my manuscript was about nine pages, and I would read it over and over and then practice it so many times that when I stood on stage it was like someone took out a remote, pressed play and I started talking. Every pause was planned, word carefully curated and moment choreographed. I had more than prepared…I over prepared. I was, again, too polished.
When I was a little boy my dad taught me to polish my shoes. When I asked him why I needed to polish my shoes, he said it was for two reasons: 1. So they look good; and 2. Polish protects the leather by serving as a buffer. While polish is great for shoes, polish can be bad for messages, because an over rehearsed talk can serve as a buffer, a barrier between the communicator and the audience, when the goal is to remove barriers and connect. I know it’s counterintuitive, but when we speak with some dirt under our nails- when we improvise and even make mistakes- we can actually leverage our imperfections to do something polish never can and that is forge deeper connections with our audience. Communication guru, Scott Berkun says, “If you’d like to be good at something, the first thing to go out the window is the notion of perfection. Every time I get up to the front of the room, I know I will make mistakes. And this is OK…Barbara Walters, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, and even Moses had stutters, lisps, or other speech issues, but that didn’t end their careers, because they had interesting messages to share with people. As superficial as public speaking can seem, history bears out that people with clear ideas and strong points are the ones we remember” (Confessions of a Public Speaker, pages 4-5).
After the flight with my communication guru I decided it was time to add some dirt to my talks, and boy am I glad I did, because that was a real turning point in helping me get better. I made these following changes:
I cut my manuscript almost in half. Prior to our conversation, my messages ran nine pages long, since our plane ride I have cut them down to five pages, and I did this to give me time to riff and run off the page. When my messages were nine pages my mindset was to memorize and deliver the message word for stinking word. I wasn’t free to follow the leading of the Spirit, or chase a thought. I was chained to words on a page, thinking I was the only one who really knew that. Come to find out my confinement was evident to a lot of others in the room. Cutting the message in half transitioned me from memorization to internalization and freed me to do what great jazz musicians do- improvise.
I stopped expecting things of myself my audience never expects. Perfection should never be a communicator's goal because it is just impossible. Researchers say we make a verbal mistake every ten words. Think about that- ten percent of what we will say in a message will be a mistake (in speech primarily, but seldom in content). We may stutter, forget words, switch to sounds, and so on. What we don’t realize is audiences not only notice these things, but are beyond forgiving, because they know what we are trying to say. This isn’t the case when we read something. When it’s on the page we expect perfection in grammar and words and content. But when we hear it, we overlook it.
Relax. I used to be so consumed with not making mistakes, for fear of what the audience may think. But then I learned that when it comes to mistakes, my response will be theirs. Playing with “dirt” leaves the door open for mistakes, and as communicators we can’t ever forget the audience will follow our lead in how we respond. If you spill water during your talk and act like it’s a huge deal, then your audience will follow suit. But if you are self-deprecating, laugh and make a joke of it, your audience will also tag along. Next level communicators have a way of seeing their mistakes as opportunities to connect to their audience, which is what it’s all about.
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