Be concrete!

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From the course by National Research Tomsk State University

Presentation skills: Speechwriting and Storytelling

65 ratings

National Research Tomsk State University

Presentation skills: Speechwriting and Storytelling

65 ratings

Course 1 of 4 in the Specialization Presentation Skills: Speechwriting, Slides and Delivery

“99% presentations suck!”, — said Apple former evangelist Guy Kawasaki in 2005. Up to now the situation hasn’t improved yet. Why? Most public speaking courses focus on “how” instead of “what & why”. How to stand, walk and talk during delivery with little attention paid to “what” — the quality of storytelling itself. Thereby a usual result is a looking slightly confident speaker with mesmerizing voice delivering an obscure mess of facts, figures and claims. In this course we take a more systematic approach, focusing on the content. How to structure your ideas, facts and data into a logical convincing story using a narrative structure. This course covers fundamentals of scriptwriting, packing, argumentation and language. This course is not about how to fabricate a catching tale, but rather how to structure your ideas, facts and data into an interesting story you are going to tell during your presentation.

From the lesson

Part 5: The language of the presentation

This week is about language you speak or write slides with. Concrete vs abstract words. Common everyday words vs jargon. Active voice vs passive voice. Short sentences vs long sentences. One mistake often made — to speak as you write. Such approach leads to vague, long and unclear messages. We are going to fix this.

Written and spoken language10:08

Plain language7:35

Everyday words8:38

Be concrete!5:46

Shorter sentences3:40

Powerless and powerful language7:29

Meet the Instructors

Alexei Kapterev
Lomonosov MSU BS

So, if you allow me to get back to our example,

we must quickly mobilize etc.

etc. etc. the whole paragraph of abstract things.

And then, there's another paragraph of abstract things and another and another

until finally we get to a concrete example of Mahatma Gandhi.

So, as much as possible, please be concrete.

Describe things you can see in real life and provide real life examples.

This, I think, is one of the cardinal rules of public speaking.

Try to be concrete.

Secondly, that thing about being probably way too concrete than necessary.

This is a thing that plagues engineering expert presentations, right?

And I know, people listening to the presentation are supposed to understand what you say,

but truth is they often don't.

I once read a research paper that analyzed a feedback forums from

specialized medical conferences and in 59 percent of those feedback forums,

comments on clarity were found.

There were comments on clarity.

This is the single most commented subject in, you know,

those feedback forums and a major don't from that feedback was

identified - Don't use jargon and

difficult to pronounce words because people in the audience,

even though they are technical experts they are medical doctors,

they are having hard times to understand those words.

This is the single most frequent complaint at specialized conferences, jargon.

Don't be too specific.

Don't be more specific when it is necessary.

A bunch of climate scientists put together this nice little list of words

which have different meanings for the scientists and for the general public.

And when the scientist says positive trend,

for him or her,

it means just any upward trend.

But for the general public that would mean a good trend, right?

When the scientist says aerosol,

for most people that would mean an aerosol can,

but for the scientists, of course,

that would mean a tiny atmospheric particle.

So, as much as possible,

try to communicate in the language that your audience can understand.

I know many people trying to be precise because this is the way they are

trying to protect themselves from being escorted for example,

or may be misunderstood.

But actually, if you're trying to protect yourself,

this is not a cooperative communication;

that means that you and the audience are not on the same side.

And perhaps difficult to understand language is not the problem in your presentation,

probably, something else as you probably need to work on

your goals and the whole structure of your presentation.

So, don't be too specific.

Another life hack would be to compare things to everyday objects.

I think we all know how Steve Jobs used to do that

five gigabytes equals 1000 songs in your pocket, right?

Very easy to understand.

Of course, it's imprecise.

Of course, 1000 songs could mean many amount of gigabytes,

but this is a way to trying to be more understandable.

And you might say both five gigabytes and 1000 songs.

He had to use two different packs of gum because,

what is a pack of gum?

It's a bit imprecise,

still an effort to make what he talks about more understandable.

And one final word,

please limit the amount of acronyms.

I don't know if you know what all those things mean,

I'm a finance guy, I do.

And this is what I hear like 33 percent of all the presentation of those words - EBITDA,

ROI, ROE - Compound Aggregate Growth Rate,

in case you're wondering what it is.

So, please don't use acronyms for infrequent phrases.

If this is just one time you use that word,

try to pronounce the whole sequence.

Don't use more than two acronyms per sentence.

And I, this is my discipline,

I try not to use more than four frequent acronyms for the whole presentation.

If you are creating acronyms,

try to make them pronounceable like STARS or FSDO.

And finally, if you're a company, an agency,

or a department that has a common abbreviation like for example,

I used to work for a department called the

ICU which doesn't stand for Intensive Care Unit;

in case you don't know, the means Internal Control Unit.

Don't say ICU all the time, use we.

We as ICU, you know,

think they saw that.

So, don't try to be too precise.

Use everyday words, compare things to everyday objects,

and don't go crazy with acronyms.

They are often the enemy.

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