The Central Message

0:04 now that you've chosen your target 0:06 audience and you've selected a goal 0:08 that's aligned with their interests it's 0:10 time to start thinking about what it is 0:12 that you want to say but unfortunately 0:14 there's a hitch most people's attention 0:17 fans are really pretty short and 0:19 unfortunately in the digital age they 0:21 seem to be getting shorter so from 0:23 personal experience I can say that my 0:25 world is crowded with all kinds of 0:27 things it's crowded with the news and 0:29 what's going on in the world it's 0:31 crowded with my very busy work schedule 0:33 it's crowded with personal obligations 0:35 with my family and friends and bluntly 0:37 it's crowded by all the distractions 0:39 that I get on my phone so there are lots 0:42 of different things that distract people 0:44 and you have to as a communicator think 0:47 about how you want to cut through all of 0:49 those distractions and focus people's 0:51 attention and just solve this problem 0:54 you you as a communicator really need to 0:57 think about how to focus your audience's 0:59 attention and how to do it deliberately 1:01 and so in other words you need to focus 1:04 on what you want your audience to 1:06 remember after your conversation ends 1:08 and then design your communication 1:10 effort around that idea so that you can 1:13 effectively deliver that message in our 1:16 experience it relate it's most effective 1:18 to focus attention on one takeaway idea 1:21 just one and just to be really clear 1:24 here by saying a single takeaway idea we 1:26 are not saying that this idea is boring 1:29 we are not saying that it's simple and 1:30 we're not saying it's intuitive rather 1:33 what we're saying is that this single 1:36 idea art is rich and it's complex and 1:38 it's built on key supporting ideas that 1:40 you can use to start shaping the 1:42 narrative but the key here is that for 1:45 the key here is that it's just one idea 1:47 and for the purposes of this teach out 1:50 we're going to refer to this as a 1:52 central message and I want to come back 1:54 to this this idea of why it's important 1:57 to focus on one central message just for 1:59 another second in an ideal world the 2:02 number of ideas that you would include 2:04 in any given communication effort which 2:05 we plotted on the x axis of this plot 2:08 would be proportional to the number of 2:10 ideas that your audience would 2:11 understand and remember which is on the 2:13 y axis and so that blue line represents 2:15 what the ideal circumstance 2:17 beez you could deliver five or six 2:19 different ideas and your audience would 2:21 walk away understanding and remembering 2:23 all of them but that's not what happens 2:26 in reality in reality if you don't focus 2:29 what you want to say around one maybe 2:31 two specific ideas and really sharpen 2:35 the way that you talk about those ideas 2:37 in specific ways your audience's 2:40 attention is going to drop off pretty 2:41 dramatically and so this is why we give 2:43 the very very very strong recommendation 2:46 that you focus on one central message at 2:49 a time and so a central message just to 2:52 reiterate again is a conscious 2:54 deliberate attempt on your part adds the 2:57 speaker to focus your audience's 2:59 attention on a single takeaway idea and 3:01 I would argue that some chill messages 3:04 serve different purposes for both sides 3:06 of the communication effort so let's 3:08 break it up let's start with the speaker 3:10 first speaker a central message is an 3:13 organizing principle it's an organizing 3:16 principle that you use to base your 3:17 communication effort around a central 3:20 focus it is never ever going to be the 3:23 only thing that you say so think about 3:25 it this way if you took the stage and 3:27 just repeated the same sentra sentence 3:29 your central message over and over and 3:31 over again people wouldn't stay to 3:33 listen to the rest of your talk they 3:34 would walk away so it's not that your 3:36 central message is the chorus is the 3:38 only thing that you're going to say it's 3:40 just that it's the core of what you want 3:41 to say and we also want to acknowledge 3:44 that the central message itself will 3:46 probably oversimplify a lot of the 3:48 nuance that you want to convey with the 3:49 entirety of your talk but since it's an 3:53 organizing principle what you can use it 3:55 for is to define which ideas fit within 3:57 the scope of that central message and 3:59 which ideas need to be cut out so before 4:02 I move on from this from a speaker's 4:04 perspective I want to sort of take a 4:05 very quick side tangent and say that you 4:08 can be explicit about a central message 4:10 by stating it as a key point in some at 4:13 some point your communication effort and 4:14 for most people's purposes this is 4:16 either the beginning or the end but it 4:19 in and of itself is not the basis of a 4:21 talk and if you decide to state your 4:23 central message explicitly it's really 4:26 important that you do your best to 4:27 wordsmith it to make it memorable and 4:29 for some great recommendations 4:31 how to do this we really strongly 4:33 recommend the book need to stick so go 4:36 ahead and read that if you're interested 4:37 in stating your central message 4:38 explicitly in any kind of a 4:40 communication effort so now that we've 4:43 talked a little bit about what central 4:45 messages do for the speaker let's focus 4:47 a little bit on what a central message 4:48 does for an audience from an audience's 4:51 perspective a central message should be 4:53 the idea that emerges from everything 4:55 that you say in other words in a 4:58 well-designed talk or a written piece a 5:00 central message should would be your 5:01 audience's response if you ask them to 5:04 summarize your communication effort in 5:05 one sentence and I also want to come 5:08 back to this idea about how your central 5:11 message is going to shift with different 5:13 audiences since different audiences have 5:16 different needs for their messages you 5:18 need to be thoughtful and worked to 5:20 adapt your central message to resonate 5:22 with your audience you're not going to 5:24 have the same central message for a 5:25 legislator as you would for a child in a 5:28 science museum and if you shape your 5:30 central message with your audience in 5:32 mind it won't be much more memorable for 5:34 them and therefore your communication 5:36 effort will be much more effective so 5:39 how do you go about developing a central 5:42 message and I would argue that triage or 5:45 the act of cutting out absolutely 5:47 everything that isn't necessary to being 5:49 there is key to finding and developing a 5:51 central message and at relate we like to 5:54 use an improv exercise that we have 5:56 adapted called half life so head over to 5:59 the next segment you can see a 6:00 demonstration of this