You've Got 8 Seconds: Communication Secrets for a Distracted World

by Paul Hellman

Detail is like salt. You can always add more. (If others want more, they’ll ask questions.) But once in, you can’t take it out.

But here’s the question, and it’s the same one your audience has: why do we need all this info?

In one-to-one conversations, talk less than the other person. Instead of rambling on and on, ask at least one thought-provoking question per conversation.

In meetings, speak in 30–60 second bites. Provide the headline news first, with details later, and only give details if asked. You’ll be surprised by how much you can say in 30 seconds.

When presenting, slim down to 10 PowerPoint slides or less. And occasionally, lose the entire deck (PowerPoint tips, page 102).

Practice speaking nonstop for 60 seconds on a random topic.

The goal: loosen your editor, spark your spontaneity. You’ll never change your personality—why would you want to?—just your range.

So be flexible. And observe your audience. They’ll give you clues about appropriate detail. When you’re talking to someone and she starts tapping a pencil, or a foot, or the side of your head, that’s a clue.

Stress-test a risky disclosure with two questions about your audience: 1. Upside: What does your audience gain by knowing? 2. Downside: How likely are they to want to jump off the plane?

Be the audience.

1. Why should I listen (or read this)? 2. What exactly are you saying? 3. What should I do with this info?

A strong purpose statement says what you’re going to talk about and, more importantly, why. Why is the value, from the

audience’s perspective. Why answers the audience’s question: “Why should we listen?”

To figure out your purpose statement, take a few minutes to stop being you. Be the audience. What are their concerns?

Try opening your presentation with a picture: prison. “Our purpose today,” you could say, “is to avoid going there.”

A purpose statement is not an agenda. Almost every executive I work with has an agenda—that’s good—but a purpose statement is more important.

Your agenda is the what. It says, “Here’s what I’m going to talk about.” But it doesn’t give the why.

Before you tell them the what, tell them the why.

Example: “Our purpose is to help you sell more beer. How? By inspiring your employees to sell more beer. By leadership.”

You need to figure out what’s most important, the main message, versus what’s secondary, the key points.

Your discovery process might go like this: first, you brainstorm everything you want to say, on a whiteboard or Post-it notes, without even thinking about how it’s organized. Then, you review your ideas, and sort them. What goes with what? What’s most important? Do you see a main theme or a big idea?

Experiment with different arrangements. You might tag one of your ideas as the main message, then later decide, no, that idea is more secondary—it’s a key point. Eventually, a pattern will emerge. Once you’ve sorted and structured your information, you can visualize it like: 1. A solar system: picture the sun in the middle (your main message), then the planets (key points) around the sun, then a few moons (sub-...

each key point in a smaller circle off to the side. (This is called a mind map.) 2. A tree: imagine the trunk is the main message; branches, the key points; twigs, the sub-points. 3. An organizational chart: display the hierarchy of your info with the main message on top, then ...

If you don’t know the main message, your audience won’t either, and by the time you get to slide #27 and say, “Hey, look at this pie chart,” they’ll be daydreaming. Probably about pastry.

How? Be the audience. Imagine, in this case, that you’re a manager. What are your concerns about employee development? Possible concerns: You have no promotions or salary increases to offer, and that’s what your employees really want. You have no advice to offer either. How can you tell someone what to do with his

life when, most days, you can barely decide what clothing to wear? You have no time.

But although your concerns are valid, your conclusion—I’ve got nothing to offer—is not. The main message should illuminate how to develop employees, despite constraints.

Main message: Find coachable moments. This message needs to be developed, of course, into something that makes sense to your audience and is actionable. (More on coachable moments, page 76.)

You build the main message with key points. One key point could be about assignments—every t...

that’s a coachable moment. And you could expand this point with sub-points, what to do before, duri...

FIND COACHABLE MOMENTS Assignments Before assignment During assignment After assignment You know your main message, and that gives you power. Because you can make it stick, with or without the slides.

Sequence Your Key Points so They’re Memorable Suppose you want people to remember the warning signs of a stroke. There are five symptoms, according to the Berkeley Wellness Letter: difficulty speaking; numbness of face, arm, or leg; trouble seeing; trouble walking; severe headache. Ok. Close your eyes and try to remember those symptoms. It’s tough. But suppose you sequenced the symptoms differently? This time, let’s try a spatial sequence that moves down the body, head-to-toe: 1. Bad headache 2. Trouble seeing 3. Trouble speaking

4. Numbness of face, arm, or leg 5. Trouble walking Suddenly, it’s more memorable. Effective sequences often use time or space: 1. Time: Chronological—For example, what to do before, during, and after your next job interview. 2. Time: Today, yesterday, tomorrow—For example, our problem right now (today); how it began (yesterday); what we’re going to do (tomorrow). 3. Space: Large to small (or vice versa)...

“Work on your impact,” an executive recently told me, “because, right now, you’re not having any.”

Good, now we’ve got a main message. Notice how, in a few drafts, we’ve gone from vague to specific. With feedback, your main message needs to be specific, otherwise it’s likely to be misunderstood.

Reminder to Myself: Use Simple Words One day, I was leading a workshop on executive communication when someone asked a simple question: “Should we do A or B?” I was neutral. But instead of saying that, I said, “I’m agnostic.”

Later, after the workshop was over, a participant walked over to ask what I’d meant by agnostic. Apparently, he didn’t know the word, or didn’t get my usage. Or else he wanted to convert me to a religion where they speak simply. Do you ever overcomplicate things? Sometimes I’ll read an article where the author—as if suddenly possessed—starts inserting German words like doppelganger or schadenfreude. These words should all be verboten. Whoops, I meant forbidden. Let’s stick to simple German words like hamburger.

The basic rule with foreign words: if you can’t eat it, don’t say it. Speaking of food, here’s a simple message about nutrition from author Michael Pollan: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”3 Actually that’s three messages. The first, “eat food,” means to avoid processed products. Still, the whole thing is seven words—and six are one syllable. Try this: Use wor...

1. Talk like a regular person. “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight,” promised FedEx.

2. Focus on one thing. Compare these two slogans from Wal-Mart:

3. Be concise. The best slogans from the past 100 years are under 10 words. Consider:

When Your Message Matters, Repeat It Multiple Times and Multiple Ways

A call to action spells out the next step. It’s usually about doing something. But if that doesn’t fit, the next step could be to think something or feel something.

What to think: “If you only remember one thing, remember this: our legal department is the best in the business.” What to feel: “Feel proud about all of our products that are not, currently, in class action lawsuits.” What to do: “Buy more stock—the price can’t drop any lower.”

Suppose you’re giving a talk about the importance of setting ground rules before starting a project, or a meeting, or a challenging conversation. Compare these two endings: 1. Ground rules are good. 2. Use ground rules. Number 1 is an observation. Ground rules are good, but so are lots of other things. Goals are good, a To Do list is good, and drinking milk is good too. Number 1 is basically a greeting card. Number 2 is a directive. It’s got power.

Key principle: Be the audience.

Most messages and presentations are designed from the speaker’s point of view. That’s upside down. Imagine you’re sitting in the audience. What would capture your attention?

Every audience has three questions To answer the questions, use these tools: 1. Why should we listen? (What’s in it for us?)

1. Purpose statement

2. What exactly are you saying? 2. Main message 3. What should we do with this info?