A few weeks ago, when our “guest of horror”, COVID 19 was at a lower peak, I had the courage to attend a seminar in person. And, was privileged to hear two leaders speak on the same subject.
Yesterday, in my study, when I was reflecting back on my experience, I was able to recall the key messages from one of the leaders and the other one had completely faded away. I started pondering over the following questions:
1) How do leaders ensure that their messages are heard and remembered by people for whom the messages are meant?
2) How to shape and deliver those messages effectively?
In short, how to get their rhetoric right?
I have curated below a Five step approach that provides leaders a structure to successfully deliver their key messages and align people to their way of thinking:
Step 1 – Invention - Invent the message - Come up with what the leader wants to achieve through their message, understand their audience, what story they would like the audience to walk away with.
Step 2 – Arrangement - Arrange and structure their content into three areas – Introduction, Main Body and Conclusion. Structure the time that is required to be spent on each part keeping in mind the effectiveness.
Step 3 – Style – Choosing language and how they want to convey – emotions, humour.
Step 4 – Memory – Remember their message and deliver. Even when using PowerPoint slides, making sure that the message from the slide is delivered and not just read out from the slides. Making sure that the audience remembers what they need to from each slide.
Step 5 – Delivering – Actually delivering the message with emphasis, right tone of voice, dramatization as needed, effective use of body language.
When I look back and recalled my experience of the speeches, it was obvious that one leader had more or less used the above structure and the other one had just rambled through.
PS: Rhetoric is the art of persuading others to perceive and believe things the way we believe they should.
Source: Steps – Cicero’s 5 Canons of Rhetoric.