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Dr. Bryan Loritts is the founder and president of The Kainos Movement, and the author of several books including his newest release, The Offensive Church.

Three Things Next Level Communicators Listen to While they Talk

Three Things Next Level Communicators Listen to While they Talk

Next level communicators leave room for improvisation. They understand a great talk holds the tension between science and art, structure and spontaneity. Because of this, the truly great speakers “play a little jazz” when they communicate


When you played with Miles Davis, the famed trumpeter, he was known to give you little scraps of paper which outlined a minimal structure to follow. This was necessary because it provided a sense of direction and cohesiveness to his band. But the “minimal structure,” also encouraged great freedom for musicians to express their art through the distinctive feature of jazz- improvisation. Miles understood for jazz to be truly jazz an artist needed both direction and freedom. In fact, the more one was secure in the struction, the more free they were to drift away from the structure, because they always knew how to get back.


Like any musician, when you get up to speak as a communicator there are three key things happening all at once:

  1. The communicator. There is you, the communicator. When you are presenting you are bringing all of your gifts, passions, experiences, lack of experiences, good days and bad days into the moment. 

  2. The content. Like a musician with his “scrap of paper,” you are also standing with some sort of content you have memorized, or brought with you. This content represents the direction you are trying to persuade your audience.

  3. The context. At the same time, you are presenting your content in a very real context. What I mean by this is you are talking to a specific group of people, in a specific place, who all have specific needs and things going on in their lives at that very moment.


The content is the science of your talk. But the fluidity of your context necessitates the art dimension of your message. The best communicators are aware of all three of these things at once, and utilize the improvisational gift of jazz to tweak their content to fit the needs of their context in the moment. And the best communicators have mastered the skill of listening to themselves, their content and context all at once.


And why do great communicators do this? Because they understand that at its core, communication is all about connection. If you fail to hold all three in tension (you the communicator, the content and the context), you will not connect with your audience, guaranteeing your message will fall flat. 


Here’s a couple of tips to help you “play jazz” better in your talks:


  1. Leave a little dirt under your fingers. The great jazz composer and musician, Duke Ellington, was known to say this. What he meant was to make room for improvisation (ironic, coming from a composer). This is important because we cannot manufacture improvisation, we can only make room for it. So leave some space in your talks which allow for it to happen. 

  2. Internalize your content. The irony of jazz musicians is what emboldens them to drift off the page is they know their content so well they know how to get back. The best communicators always know their next thought, so in the moment of speaking when they sense an opportunity to drift off the page they’re not frightened, because they always know how to get back.

  3. What works once does not mean it will work again. Some of you are pastors who speak at multiple services, and you probably know the feeling of an improvisational moment that killed in the first service, but fell flat at the second (or vice versa). Why? Your context is different. People are different. So be careful of forcing an improvisational moment. 

  4. Listen while you talk. Now this takes seasoning, but the main way you will know to improvise is to listen to your context, because they will always tell you where they are and what is required of you as a communicator. You’ve heard this already, but MLK’s famous, I Have a Dream speech was a dud at first; that is until a woman behind him told Martin to tell the people about his dream (she had heard a version of this some months before in Detroit). King listened, played a little jazz, and the rest is history. If your audience is leaning in on a particular point, jazz may require you lingering longer there. If they’re checked out, jazz may mean go to your next point quicker than you anticipated. But learn to listen to your audience while you talk. 

  5. Prepare your spirit. It’s not just the audience who talks to you, it’s your spirit as well. I know this sounds mystical to some of you, but it really is something I’ve experienced. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve changed my message at the last minute, or ended a message early and moved to a response time, because I just sensed this is what needed to happen. Keeping my heart pure, and preparing my spirit, only gives me the confidence in those moments.



I just gave a talk on grief, as part of our series, When it Doesn’t Feel Like Christmas. You can listen here


And I just finished the final round of edits for my new book, which you can preorder here


What I’m reading:


3 Shades of Blue, James Kaplan (And I’m pretty sure it will make my next top 10 books list).

Communicating Well During Advent

Communicating Well During Advent