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Getting Your Point Across
By Dr. Carol Fleming

You wait for the speaker to “get to the point” with mounting irritation. You are a busy person with much on your mind. You have only so much attention span to devote to this waiting. But, why should you have to wait at all? Unless there’s a joke punch line coming up, listeners have every right to understand the point – the core message – as soon as possible. Let me remind you how irritating the unorganized presentation is by showing you how Jim started his report.

“Like I was just telling Larry when we met in the hall before the meeting, cuz you know we usually try to get here about the same time and he knows that I’ve been working on that deal that Mike mentioned at the last meeting so he was asking about the headway that was being made and if there was going to be any problem in the budget department, so I brought those figures with me…..”

You would be thinking, “What are you talking about, Jim?” “Please get to the point, Jim!” and, probably, “Please sit down, Jim!”.

You don’t want to be the “Jim” in your company so let’s consider two ways of organizing materials that has the listeners in mind.

One of these ways you already know, I’ll bet (but don’t often actually use), and the other you probably don’t know.

The one you know: Tell’m what you’re going to tell’m

Tell’m

Tell’m what you told’m

As the old saying starts, “Tell’m what you’re going to tell’m” and don’t make them sit there guessing. This means, of course, that you had better be sure exactly what your core message is yourself! If you had to summarize your message in just one statement, what would it be? (e.g. “You can expect a reshuffling of management”. “Company X has become competitive”. “We’re going to have to look for new leadership for this club”. “The SPCA is looking for your support.”) You will be helping people process your information by the early ‘head’s up!’ statement.

It is a really good idea to figure out just why your listeners would want to listen to you in the first place and to tell them what this benefit might be. (“I know many people here have pets in their homes and would like to know that there is a protective service for them in the event of a personal emergency. The SPCA provides this caring protection. They do, of course, depend upon the community to support this service.”)

►Tell’m…and not just once, either. Be prepared to repeat the most important message several times in the course of your remarks. Because this core message is embedded in language context, your listeners can’t be expected to automatically identify the important features. By repeating the core message several times, slightly varied, the listener is confident they have found “the point”. You are probably concerned that the audience will be offended by the repetition. I doubt that they will actually notice it consciously. But, when someone asks them later what you said, they will most likely answer with your core message. In which case, you have made your point.

►Tell’m what you’ve told them. Have a summary statement ready, some applications or ramifications of your information, a review of the major points. You’re giving them the chance to confirm their understanding and you are staying in control of your message.

Yes, I know that you already knew this material, but do you actually do it? That’s what I thought.

The One you (Probably) Don’t Know:

Jim was going to have to address the top leaders of his company so we knew he had to have an even more sophisticated approach to giving information. Let’s call them the Big Dogs. What works with your average presentation does not work for the powerful people at the top who are glancing at their watches, and who can interrupt you at will.

They liked getting to the “bottom line” as soon as possible, so that’s where Jim started. And he started with no handouts, and no slide ware. Just Jim and the bottom line. You’ll have to imagine this ‘bottom line’ as actually the tip of a pyramid, ‘bottom’ meaning final summarizing idea.

This single idea is actually a comprehensive statement that summarizes supporting information in a logically constructed pyramid. Let’s say we lead with a statement such as “We need to choose a new supplier of office paper”. Big Dog may say, “So do it!” or may say, “What are our options?”

You now go down to a level of information that supports your “bottom line” statement, and you say, “That would be the smaller Asian nations, or a company down in Milpitas”.

The Big Dog can cut you off at anytime, depending on how much time s/he wants to put into this. Let’s say there are more questions. “What do we know about time and cost comparison?” But you foresaw this question and are ready to supply exactly this information for Taiwan and Milpitas. The pyramid of information looks like this:

Notice how this simple idea of logical organization is entirely respectful of the listeners need for clear sequence and of their time. It is completely listener oriented. You are never giving them more information that they want, or any unrelated information.

But, hold on! One of the older Big Dogs says, “Why are we spending our time talking about paper, for heaven’s sake!” Like so many speakers, we’ve plowed right into an ‘answer’ without any explanation. There is a narrative introductory structure that provides the necessary history of the issue. Use the following format:

Situation: We have always bought all our paper supplies from Crown Company.

Complication: They just had a huge fire and are going to close down.

Question: Where are we going to get our paper?

Answer: Here is where your information is appropriate.

With this format you are getting everybody nodding their heads in recognition and ready to receive your answer now that they know the relevance to the question in their minds.

Note that the question is not at all obvious. There are a number of questions that could be asked. (“Should we send a condolence card?) The answer should contain only the information that bears upon the question in the logical order suggested.

Do this and your particular Big Dogs will love it. Promise! But this thoughtful organization is harder to do than it sounds. You have a habitual way of organizing (or not) information that seems right to you and this may be a stretch. Many people like to give information in the order that they personally experienced it.(Who cares?!) Give people the information in the order that works best.

►Look at some news stories in the paper and try to apply the SCQA and pyramid structure to the information. Many stories start with the complication; figure out the statement that should precede it. They can contain extraneous and irrelevant information. Apply organizational logic. This makes for excellent reports, written or spoken. Make your Big Dog happy.

(From The Pyramid Principle, Barbara Minto)

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