Next level communicators understand the how is almost as important as the what.
Next level communicators understand the how is almost as important as the what.
Whenever I put a talk together there are two big boxes which contain all of my preparation. The first is what I call the content box, where I am consumed with what I am going to say. Questions like, “What is the message of this particular text? What does this specific word mean? Why is this theological theme important in light of the narrative,” and more, occupy about sixty percent of my preparation. But just because I’ve answered these questions, and have constructed rich content doesn’t mean I have finished preparing the message. In fact, over the years I have concluded that just because I have put together some good content doesn’t mean I’ve constructed a great message.
The second box is the communication box. Here I’m fixated on how I am going to articulate the content, and while the content box is the most important, it shouldn’t be the most important by much, because I don’t care how rich your message is, if your presentation is boring, lacks creativity, is poorly worded and doesn’t engage the imagination and hearts of the people, the chances of your content reaching them is slim. Over the years I have become so struck with this element of speaking, that I reserve forty percent of my preparation time just thinking through illustrations, introductions, conclusions, the right phrasing for my central theme and argument, and more.
As I sit down to put a message together, here are some of my thoughts with this second box of communication:
Are my illustrations good? Here’s the measuring stick for a good illustration: The people get the point before you give the point, and the point of the illustration always ties directly to the point you just made in your explanation.
Are my illustrations varied? Not everyone in the audience likes sports, and history. So I need to ask if I included illustrations that women will resonate with, along with people of different generations? Did I use props to engage people who are more visually oriented? Did I use an illustration which engaged the imagination? If you only illustrate from what you’re interested in, then don’t be surprised if you only attract people who are like you.
Did I use too many illustrations? Remember, creativity is to be used to enhance the content, never to replace the content. It’s like salt to steak. Too much ruins the meat; just the right amount enhances it.
Did I capture the central argument of my talk in a short, pithy statement? For example, some months ago I spoke about grief, and instead of saying grief is a feeling of hopelessness, I said, “Grief is love that has no place to go” (not original to me). That stuck with people. Or, the other week I talked about hope, and I said that hope is, “Earth’s uncertainties tied to heaven’s reality”. Both of those messages built around these organizing statements, and set the table for people to really grab a hold of the message.
Were my main points framed as application statements or questions? When I first began to communicate in what my kids like to refer to as the “Nineteens,” everything was about alliteration. If you had three points, they should all have the same letter. But culture has shifted now. Postmodernism created a dynamic where people no longer wanted the orator with flowery rhetoric. Now they want something more pragmatic, and one of the ways you can connect with your audience is to frame your points as application questions or statements.
Did I use a quote from a reputable secular source? As a preacher, I want to always be aware of people in the audience who are not followers of Jesus Christ. So getting them to connect with my message is especially challenging, and one of the ways I can build a bridge to them is to quote from secular sources they may find credible, like the New York Times, or some author, or entertainer. Paul did this when he was with the Greek philosophers on Mars Hill in Acts 17.
Have I thought through the pace of the message? Pace is the rate at which we talk, and the communicator's pace is like the score to a movie, it should be varied. Charles Spurgeon, one of the greatest communicators to ever live, said this about the importance of pace: “A very useful help in securing attention is a pause. Pull up short every now and then, and the passengers on your coach will wake up…Keep on, on, on, on, on with commonplace matter and monotonous tone, and you are rocking the cradle, and deeper slumbers will result; give the cradle a jerk, and sleep will flee” (Lectures to My Students, page 143).
Have I kept the message simple, not shallow? The way I try to achieve this is by using the explanation/illustration/application method, where every point in my outline I first spend time explaining the point, then an illustration, then applications. This little schematic allows me to obtain simplicity and depth all at once.
What I’m reading:
One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation, by Daniel Sillman (I see this being in my top 10 come the end of this year).
Next level communicators understand words are actions
Next level communicators understand words are actions.
Nowhere is this more true than on the evening of March 15th, 1965. By the time President Lyndon Johnson stood to speak, the issue of voting rights was front and center, brought to the fore by the tireless efforts of the civil rights movement, specifically in Selma, Alabama. Just beginning his first full term as president, and eligible to run again in 1968 (which he famously declined), the easy thing for Johnson would have been to delay, to put things off until his final term. Why risk his political future, especially when there were so many in the audience that evening who would be standing in his way? Obviously, Johnson felt otherwise; that the time was now. He knew if he was going to bring about the right kind of actions, he had to use the right words. Here are some of those words:
I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy…At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.
There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma…But there is cause for hope and for faith in our democracy in what is happening here tonight. For the cries of pain, the sound of clubs, the protests of oppressed people- like some great trumpet- have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this government of the greatest nation on the earth…
Rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, for our welfare or our security, but rather to the values, and the purposes, and the meaning of our beloved nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue…
There is no Negro problem. There is no southern problem. There is no northern problem. There is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans- not as Democrats or Republicans…we are met here as Americans to solve that problem…
Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument. Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote…
Wednesday I will send to Congress a law designed to eliminate illegal barriers to the right to vote…
There is no constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong- deadly wrong- to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights…
But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches in every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it’s not just Negroes, but really it’s all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice…
AND…WE…SHALL..OVERCOME.
Dr. King, watching from Alabama, cried. Five months later the voting rights bill was signed into law.
As growing communicators, I want to draw our attention to a few takeaways from President Johnson’s speech:
Clear. You’ve heard me say it again, and you’ll hear me say it many more times in future posts: Clarity is the best friend of the next level communicator, and LBJ models this. He is clear in calling out the problem, and he is clear as it relates to what he needs his audience to do in order to solve the problem. Next level communicators befriend clarity in every talk to bring their audience to a place of action.
Anticipatory. In the future, I will come back to this point, but please notice that exceptional communicators always anticipate their audience's objections to their argument, and answer them before they can raise their critiques. Johnson understands there are people in his audience who are from the north who would be tempted to look down on the southern representatives, and vice versa. Notice he calls this out when he says in essence that this isn’t a southern or a northern issue, but an American one. Brilliant! His ability to anticipate, helps him to unify and bring about his objective. Every time you put a message together, ask what the major objections to your points may be, and build into your talk, where appropriate, responses to those critiques.
Honest. Notice the line when President Johnson admits, “Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult”? See what he’s doing here? He’s keeping his audience focused on the task at hand. It would be so easy to allow the subject of voting rights to get held hostage by other important but complicated issues, that it becomes a distraction. LBJ honestly admits the complexities surrounding the civil rights movement, and uses his honesty to help keep his audience focused.
Courageous. I mean this is just throughout this whole speech, which puts it in the genre of the prophetic (not foretelling but forth or truth telling). He ends by quoting the anthem of the civil rights movement, “We shall overcome”. He also calls out the injustice of voter registration discrimination on the basis of color. Do the research and you’ll discover history’s most profound speeches share the common denominator of courage.
Hopeful. Courageous should never mean dour, sullen or gloomy, though. I mean think how easy it would have been to just get up and guilt people with the truth. If President Johnson had taken this approach he would not have accomplished his objective. Instead, if you both read and watch the speech, you will sense a hopefulness, a we-can-do-this posture, which I believe was the key to the bill getting signed into law. In the same way, if people don’t leave your talk feeling a sense of hope that the change you’re calling for can legitimately happen, then you’ve just weighed them down with a tremendous burden. Let’s take a page out of Johnson and be hopeful communicators.
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Next level speakers figure out a way to make their audience care
Next level speakers figure out a way to make their audience care.
When we get up to speak there always exists two agendas between the communicator and the listener. Our audience wants us to talk to them about what they care about, while we want them to listen to what we care about. Great communicators figure out a way to accomplish both at the same time. Speaking of these competing agendas, P.T. Forsyth once said in a series of lectures to young emerging communicators at Yale in 1907, “You are there not simply to speak what people care to hear, but also to make them care for what you must speak” (Preaching and the Modern Mind). And there it is. The onus is on us as communicators to inspire the listener to lean in, engage and truly care about our message. Fail to do this and the message may elicit a few laughs, and provide some momentary entertainment, but it will not persuade and truly move people. Figure out a way to bring the audience with you- to make them care about what you care about- and it will be a transformative experience.
What I am offering to you is not something nice to think about, but absolutely necessary. In every talk, we have to answer the question, “What is the felt need, or the human longing my message will address,” and this question must be answered within the first seven to ten minutes, or we risk talking to a disinterested, unengaged audience.
Recently, I was coaching a young communicator who asked me to help him get better. I listened to one of his messages and pretty much told him he has to make his audience care by addressing their felt need. After a few weeks he sent me a note letting me know how several people had mentioned how his speaking had vastly improved. While they may not be able to put their finger on what changed, their feedback indicates they were more engaged as listeners because he had figured out a way to make them care. I’m telling you, if you do this one thing you will improve instantly as a communicator.
Okay, but how? I have found the following tips to be helpful in making my audience care:
Awareness. For many communicators they do not even think to ask the question of felt need, or human longing. They are not even aware of the different agendas between them and the audience and how it is their duty to make the people care about what they are talking about. I recommend putting a checklist together of things you have to cover with every talk, and having the question, “Did I make the audience care by naming their specific felt need,” right at the top of your checklist. Refer to this checklist every time you put a message together.
Look for it, I promise you it’s there. As a pastor the content I use to speak is the Bible. One of the things which makes every passage in the Bible useful (II Timothy 3:16) is because every passage deals with some human longing. For example, this week I’m preaching on Israel, Egypt and the Red Sea- one of the most famous passages in the Bible. Now unless I figure out what the universal human longing is, it’s just a bit of history with maybe some moral lessons. So as I’m studying, I came across a verse where Israel wants to go back to Egypt because in their minds they had it so much better there. What’s their longing, their felt need? Comfort. Ease. I need to speak to that, and then show them how God’s way is better than our longing. I promise you, if you look for it, it’s there.
Live. In most other professions, the older a person gets, the worse they get at their jobs. Communicators, the older we get, the better we tend to get, and the reason for this is not only experience in speaking, but experience in life. We have a better understanding of the human condition, and are able to quickly connect to the felt needs of our audience.
Create and keep tension. Remember there are two agendas going on while you are speaking- the audiences and yours. By tapping into the felt need of your listeners, you are giving a head nod to what they care about. But your message should either offer the best path for them to express their longing, or a completely different (and better) path to their longing. For example, as I will talk about the life of ease we want, contrasted to the life God wants, I am naturally creating tension, but I also have to show them why God’s way is better. So throughout the talk you want to constantly go back and not only acknowledge their longing, but hold it up to the better way you are providing, and show them why and how it’s better. Nothing keeps an audience engaged like tension.
What I’m Reading:
An Unfinished Love Story, Doris Kearns Godwin
The Anti-Greed Gospel, Malcolm Foley
The One Thing Great Communicators do to get to the Heart
Great communicators understand in order to get to the heart they have to speak from the heart.
The Greeks- lovers of rhetoric- said that one of the essentials to transformative communication was the ability to speak with pathos. For the Greeks, pathos was not animation, but a kind of speaking that came from deep within…speaking which came from the heart.
In her novel, The Invention of Wings, award winning author Sue Monk Kidd, describes a scene where her character, Sarah Grimke, goes to church at a crossroads in her life. Sitting in the pew listening to the preacher, Sarah reflects, “I felt utterly spoken to, and in the most direct and supernatural way. How could he know what lay inside me? How did he know what I was only that moment able to see myself? These words ravished me. They seemed to break down some great artifice. I sat on the pew quietly shaken while Reverend Kollack looked at me now without focus or interest…He delivered me to the precipice where one’s only choice was between paralysis or abandon” (page 163). Sarah would leave this sermon forever changed.
What happened? Reverend Kollack spoke to her heart.
This all sounds well and good, and if you are like me, what communicator doesn’t want to get to the heart? So how exactly do we do this? Tim Keller, one of the most transformative communicators of his generation offers some help when he says we have no hope to get to the heart, “...unless you are consistently preaching from the heart. What you are calling people to experience you must be experiencing yourself. What the Holy Spirit is to do in the hearts of your listeners he will normally do first in and through you. You must be something like a clear glass through which people can see a broken but gospel-changed soul in such a way that they want it for themselves” (Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism, page 205).
Now I understand full well it’s beyond our capacity to get inside the hearts of our hearers. At the same time, we can unnecessarily get in the way of the greater work that needs to be done in the hearts of people who come to hear us. All we as communicators can do is to create pathways to the heart, and I have found the following essential in reaching the hearts of people:
Prepare yourself way more than your message. Is my heart regularly warmed and stirred by the truths I’m proclaiming? Am I praying regularly and richly, or are my prayers last minute, “Hail Mary’s,” where I ask God to bless my speaking, detached from the daily rhythm of communing with God?
Speak from the margins. Dr. Richard Swenson, in his book, Margin, defines margin as the space between our loads and our limits. The idea here is one of comprehensive rest- physically, emotionally and spiritually. If you’re a parent, you know impatience and harsh communication with your children is almost always connected to a margin-less life. On the other hand, the road to life altering, heart reaching communication happens when we do so from the margins of a well rested life.
Know your content. If you don’t know your material well, you will be more focused on remembering the message, than reaching the hearer. Knowing your content well allows you the space to actually feel what you are saying, while you are saying it, and this only serves to connect us to the hearts of our audience.
Believe your content. It’s one thing to know your material, it’s quite another to believe it, and trust me, your audience can discern whether or not you are actually all in on what you are trying to persuade them to do. While nothing runs people away more than inauthenticity, on the other hand, nothing draws people in like a speaker who actually believes what they’re saying.
Note: I realize I missed last week, and for that I’m not sorry:). I was on vacation with my wife.
What I’m reading:
The Weight of Glory (re-read), C.S. Lewis
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Next level communicators always internalize their content before they deliver their content.
Next level communicators always internalize their content before they deliver their content.
When I approach the preparation process for a message I always have in mind two big buckets. The first is the content bucket, and it occupies around sixty percent of my overall preparation time. Developing content has to do with what I’m reading, the passage I’m studying, exegetical work, the whole nine (we will dive deeper into this in future posts). The second bucket is focused on communication, and it takes up about forty percent of my prep time. While the first steps to assembling the talk center around what I am going to say, the second has to do with how I am going to say things, and one of the key steps in the communicating phase of my preparation is when I manuscript the talk. That’s right, every time I get up to speak I would have gone through the process of writing my message out word for word. However, and this is really important, I don’t memorize it word for word. In fact, a fun thing I have done over the years is giving some people my manuscript ahead of time and asking them to have it with them while I speak. Afterwards I will ask them what percentage of my message was actually on the page, and they always respond anywhere between fifty to seventy percent.
So what’s the purpose of my manuscript, you may ask, and why should you consider doing the same? Because manuscripts help us get the message into our hearts, and great communicators always internalize their content. Dr. Robert Smith, Jr., one of my all time favorite communicators, said that the ink of the manuscript must be turned into the blood of the sermon. Do you see what he is pushing for? Internalization. When you stand to speak you have to know your content like the back of your hand, and one of the great ways to get there is manuscripting.
I have found writing my messages out have given me these three irreplaceable benefits:
Clarity. I think the worst thing anyone could ever say to a communicator is not that they were wrong, but they were misunderstood. I really do believe I’d rather be wrong and clear, than right and nobody knows it. Clarity is the best friend of the communicator, and manuscripting the message and internalizing it helps me get there. As my friend HB Charles, Jr. says, “We need to write ourselves clear.”
Confidence. Less scared when prepared is a fact of life, and exponentially true for the communicator. Going through the process of writing out the message and getting it into my bones gives me great confidence when I stand to speak.
Freedom. The key to great communication is always knowing your next thought. When you know what’s coming up, you are even more free to veer off the page. It’s counterintuitive right? We are prone to think manuscripts confine us, when actually they unleash us.
Note: It should be said I am talking about manuscripts and not transcripts. The difference between the two is manuscripts are not necessarily taken with us (I never take mine), transcripts are.
What I’m reading:
The Familiar Stranger, Tyler Staton
Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
Next level communicators work with a checklist when putting any message together.
Next level communicators work with a checklist when putting any message together.
In October of 1935, on a field in Dayton, Ohio, a group of people gathered to watch one of the most skilled aviators take the Boeing Flying Air Fortress out for her maiden flight. About three hundred feet in the air tragedy struck, as the plane jerked downward and crashed killing the crew. An investigation ensued, and what Boeing discovered was that the crash was not due to mechanical error, but to pilot error. How could this be when its pilot was one of the most skilled and capable in the industry? Well, prior to the Boeing Flying Air Fortress, the controls were really simple. This plane introduced a level of complexity previously unseen. Boeing realized that when something becomes really complex they have to make it really simple. So for the first time in aviation history, Boeing came up with a pre-flight checklist for all the pilots, and it worked. The Boeing Flying Air Fortress would be used in WW2 and fly over 1.8 million miles without a single accident from pilot error. Checklists would be used in the medical field, and so many others to reduce the complex all the way down to the simple.
Any communicator will tell you that putting messages together and presenting them effectively can be a pretty overwhelming and complex process. That’s why checklists are the communicator's best friend, because they help us stay focused on what’s important, and drive us into simplicity.
Whenever I put content together for a message (and here I’m solely focused on what I will say, and not how I will say things- the how will come in other posts), I always refer to this checklist…in order:
Did my introduction grab the audience’s attention, and connect to either the first point of the presentation, or the overall point of the message?
Did I spend significant time, after my introduction, showing the relevance of my message by connecting to the felt need of the audience?
Did I explain my point with clarity?
Did my illustration help my audience see the point I was making, and did they get the point of my illustration before I gave the point of my illustration?
Did I ask questions, leaving room for the audience to apply the point in specific ways to their lives?
Did I explain, illustrate and apply the point for every point of my talk?
Did I overwhelm them with law and rescue them with grace?
Did I point them to Someone beyond themselves as their only hope for seeing the power of the message unleashed in their lives?
Did my outfit distract from the message?
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What I’m Reading:
Knowing God, by J.I. Packer (reread).
Next level communicators don’t just speak to their audience, they listen to them as well.
It’s a Tuesday evening in 2001. The Pulitzer Prize winning trumpeter Whynton Marsalis is playing the Village Vanguard, holding his audience in the palm of his hand as they are captivated by his sheer genius. As Marsalis is working his magic, someone’s cell phone rings, distracting the crowd. Wynton pauses, arches his eyebrows, as the offender shuffles quickly out of the room to answer the call. The writer, David Hadju, scribbled on a sheet of paper, “Magic, Ruined.” And then it happened…Marsalis played the silly cell phone ring note for note. Then again, and again, improvising along the way. The audience leaned in, enjoying the moment. After several minutes of improvisation, Wynton Marsalis made his way back to the ballad he was playing before he was interrupted (Taken from, The Jazz of Preaching, Kirk Byron Jones). A potential disaster was repurposed into something beautiful, all because Wynton Marsalis listened to his audience.
Live communication doesn’t happen in a sterile, lifeless environment. We speakers contend with crying babies, boredom, applause, silence, talking, ringing cell phones and so much more. And many times, these moments are opportunities not for frustration, but for beauty, for real transformation, if we would only listen. A few examples come to mind:
Jesus was speaking once, when this happened: “As he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!’ But he said, ‘Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!’”- Luke 11:27-28.
I was preaching once in Oklahoma City, when about a third of the way through my prepared message, I felt strongly that God wanted me to stop and extend an opportunity for people to come to a relationship with Him. I couldn’t shake this feeling, so I stopped, gave the invitation, and scores of people became followers of Jesus.
As I have noted in a previous post, King’s famous, I Have a Dream speech, only happened because he listened to the gospel artist, Mahalia Jackson say to him, “Tell them about the dream, Martin,” and the rest really is history.
All these examples and more point to the timeless principle that speaking involves so much more than our content, it also involves the community- the people who we are speaking to. And oftentimes, the difference between a good presentation and a next level presentation is listening to your audience. Here’s some specific ways I have found audiences speaking to me:
I don’t get it. Sometimes our audiences communicate to us by their body language that they are not really tracking with a particular point we are making. Instead of rushing to the next point, this is our cue to maybe repeat, slow down and reach for an analogy or illustration to help make things clearer.
Stop. There have been many times when I have given a message where an eerie silence hovered over the audience. No, this wasn’t the silence of, “I don’t get it,” but the silence of deep resonation. Many times I have made the decision to stop at this point, unpack a little and then end my message, because anything else would be anticlimactic.
Accelerate. Then there are moments when the audience wants you to step on the gas. What I mean by this is they are cheering a particular point, and their excitement is my cue to take my excitement up another notch.
Take a turn. Sometimes, in the course of speaking, communicators will hear something that wasn’t in their notes that the audience grabs a hold of. This is our cue to take a turn and keep venturing down that road because it is connecting with the people.
In all of these instances and more, great communicators are willing to take the risk of listening and letting their audience guide them because they have so internalized their material so well, they always know how to get back. This is what gave Marsalis the freedom to riff on the cell phone ring- he knew how to get back. Want to be free enough to listen to your audience? Know your material like the back of your hand.
Next level communicators don’t just say things in a big way, they say big things.
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:
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.
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.
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
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Great communicators understand the transformative power of words.
Great communicators understand that while musicians play notes, we play words, and those words, played the right way, at the right time, hold a transformative power.
With MLK weekend coming up, I thought I’d share with you this true story about the power of words:
In February of 1960, Clarence Jones was living in a great home in Altadena, California, with a palm tree right in the middle of it. Clarence was far away from the orphanage he was forced into as a child, not because his parents didn’t want him, but as domestic servants to a wealthy family, their bosses would not allow them to take the time off they needed to raise their son. But in the kindness of God, Clarence not only made it out of the orphanage, but would go on to earn an ivy league degree, followed by a degree in law. Now, he thought, it was time for him to reap the fruit of his years of struggle. It was at this moment in his life that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., knocked on his door, asking him for his legal assistance because he was in the trial of his life down in Montgomery, Alabama. Clarence Jones listened patiently, and then told Dr. King no. King made more appeals, but to no avail. For Clarence, he had worked too hard, and life was too good, to do pro bono work on a trial where King would likely be found guilty. As King turned to leave, he invited Clarence to come hear him preach that coming Sunday at the Baldwin Hills Baptist Church in Los Angeles. Clarence agreed.
Not long after taking his seat, Dr. King began his message by saying, “Brothers and sisters, the text of my sermon today concerns the role and responsibility of the Negro professional to the masses of our brothers and sisters who are struggling for Civil Rights in the South.” Clarence Jones began to have an ominous feeling he was in the crosshairs of Dr. King’s sermon. He was. Dr. King would talk about a young lawyer he had recently visited who was living in a fine home with a palm tree right in the center of it. I can see Clarence sinking in his seat. He talked about this young professionals upbringing, how he came from struggling parents who served as domestics, and even had to put their precious son in an orphanage. King called attention to his mother who scrubbed floors so her child could have a better life. And then these words, “I can’t help but wonder if this man’s mother could speak to him right now, might she share the immortal words of Langston Hughes: ‘Well son, I’ll tell you, life for me ain’t been no crystal stair, but all the time I’se been a-climbin’ on. So, boy, don’t turn your back. Don’t you set down on the steps (From, Life Ain’t No Crystal Stair, by Langston Hughes).
Writing of this moment years later, Clarence would remember, “I realized that I’d never heard anyone so thoroughly capable of transforming a listener. It was like the magic Frank Sinatra was renowned for having with his singing voice. That same quality was something that somehow Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. alone had in his speaking voice. His phrasing was immaculate…the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.”
When King was finished, Clarence Jones went up to him and said, “‘Dr. King, when do you want me in Montgomery?’ And from that point on, I was a Martin Luther King, Jr. disciple. From that moment until the assassination on April 4th, 1968, I served as Dr. King’s personal lawyer, political advisor, and draft speechwriter (Yep, Clarence would write the draft of King’s, “I Have a Dream Speech”.). It was the most important relationship I’ve ever had…My relationship with Martin King, like the color of my skin, is the defining aspect of my time here” (These quotes taken from, Last of the Lions: An African American Journey in Memoir, pages 70-73).
While we should always be careful about taking people’s personal stories and backgrounds and wielding it against them when we speak, let’s not miss the broader point- the transformative power of the right words at just the right time. What moved Clarence Jones from a life of selfish complacency to sacrifice, was one message. Words really can move people. Let’s keep working on our craft.
What I’m Reading:
The Last of the Lions, Clarence B. Jones
As we go into MLK weekend, here’s a resource I edited and contributed to with some of my all time favorite communicators.
The best communicators love what they are talking about more than they love talking about it.
In his creative short book on communication, Kirk Byron Jones observes, “With all due respect to my affection for preaching, it is the story as opposed to the act of preaching that keeps me preaching. If I ever get over the story, I think I will stop preaching, maybe” (The Jazz of Preaching). Think about it, history’s most compelling communicators moved people not so much by their words, but by the sheer love which fueled their words. Who could forget Sojourner Truth’s classic, “Ain’t I a Woman,” where her love for women’s rights and freedom urged her to rail against the abuses of misogyny and racism; or President Franklin Roosevelt’s love for America when he reminded his nation they had nothing to fear but fear itself? You couldn’t listen to Winston Churchill talk for more than five minutes without being struck by his deep affection for England. It’s not so much what these communicators are saying, as much as it is the love they have for what they are saying that drives us to action.
The Greeks understood this principle that the best communicators love what they are talking about more than they love talking about it. These ancient lovers of oratory said all great speakers possess a quality they called pathos. In a nutshell, pathos is passion, but remember these are the Greeks who are talking, so they cannot mean animation- you know the kind of energetic, sweat inducing presentation where the speaker is in a frenzy (though there certainly is more than enough room for that). I mean, how could the Greeks mean animation when they were the nation which gave us the Stoics? Instead, when they spoke of pathos, what they meant was speaking from one’s gut, and not just from one’s mind. When you listen to a compelling communicator there’s this sense they really feel and love their subject. And you can also tell when they don’t.
You want to grow as a communicator? Love what you are talking about more than talking about it. Keep throwing wood on the flames of your passion.
Here’s some helpful tips:
Take inventory of your pain, because many times it is our pain which will feed our passion which drives our communication. Frederick Douglass and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., knew the pain of being discriminated against, and they harnessed this energy in their communication. Used positively, wounds can turn into words which ultimately turn people for the good.
Spend time with people. Sometimes we struggle with pathos because we spend more time with content than the people we are communicating to. Yes, communicators deal with content on some level, but that content is useless unless it’s connected to people. Coming out from behind the computer and immersing yourself in the lives of others is essential for nurturing passion. If you are an educator, when you speak it should be obvious you love students. If you are a pastor who spends significant time with the people you serve, you should not only be able to see faces as you prepare your weekly messages, but your love for these people will leak through in your communication.
Guard your heart. There’s an ancient proverb which says, “Above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23, NLT). As communicators we bring more than our minds to the presentation, we bring our hearts as well. Nothing kills pathos more than a distracted or divided heart. On the way to a presentation I don’t need to hear the air conditioning just went out, bats have been discovered in our attic (really did happen once, by the way) and my wife wants a fourth kid (never will happen by the way- her words). The hours before a talk are prime moments for me to get focused, and do the work of getting whatever junk out of my heart that needs to be removed.
Find something else to do. If you just can’t get to a place where you love what you are talking about; if you are only doing it for the money or notoriety, then find something else to do. People’s time is too precious for them to listen to a speaker whose not all in on what they are attempting to get you to do. I know that’s a bit abrupt, but…Happy new year!
What I’m reading:
Be on the lookout for a resource I am going to give free to you, as my way of saying thanks for subscribing to this weekly newsletter. And as always, help me get the word out by encouraging people to subscribe here.