Jonathan Poisner Strategic Consulting

Lesson 7 of Why Organizations Thrive is to become a very good public speaker.

Here’s one public speaking tip that I’ve found useful over the years: make the audience physically move.

Rather than being a distraction, this almost always will increase their mental and emotional connection to the speech.

When giving my annual presentations at the Oregon League of Conservation Voters Gala, more than once I determined that movement was going to be a powerful way of increasing the audience’s excitement about the dinner that was unfolding.  I felt that the motion of their standing up en mass with others would help generate excitement and make them feel “part” of the speech and not just listeners.

So I asked a series of questions (another way to increase audience engagement) that I knew would over the course of 30 seconds get the entire audience standing up and feeling good about their collective power.

The two times I used this trick (several years apart), the sense of increased excitement in the room was palpable.

Of course, if you’re giving an annual presentation, you can’t use this “trick” every year or it will start to feel stale.

But in putting together your presentations, think about what you’re trying to accomplish and whether some movement can increase the audience’s engagement.  In addition to standing up, movement could mean raising their hands, having them introduce themselves to the person next to them, having them stand up and turn once around and sit back down, etc.

If you’ve used this technique or seen it used with real success, let me know what worked as I’m always trying to add to my own toolbox.

Readers of Why Organizations Thrive know that I’m a big believer in nonprofit leaders becoming excellent public speakers and organizations knowing and telling their stories.

When giving a speech, which comes first: developing your point or your story?

I recently stumbled across a blog by Rich Hopkins that convincingly made the point that the point comes first.

Stories are only as valuable as the point they are trying to convey.

When crafting a speech, start with your point and then figure out what stories help illustrate it.  Don’t start with the story.

Hopkins writes:

“…no matter how great your story is, if it doesn’t match the point you’re trying to get across, it’s nothing more than a diversion, and in the worst cases, can completely derail your speech.

…

Building a speech for the real world means having a real point to share. Granted, it may start with a story you want to tell – surviving abuse, climbing Everest, passing the 400th level of Candy Crush – but ultimately it must have a takeaway point – a spine on which the muscle of your stories can always attach.”

Read Hopkins full blog entry and let me know if you agree or disagree.   

Because I try to stay in close touch with both current and former clients, I subscribe to a large volume of e-newsletters from nonprofit organizations.

There are a lot of great ones.  But I also see clients repeatedly issue newsletters that violate some of what I believe are best practices.

Here’s five examples of mistakes I see being made on a regular basis.

1. Writing with a neutral tone.

Your donors/volunteers should be superheros.   Unfortunately, many e-newsletter writers received graduate training in public policy or other fields that train you to write neutrally.  Neutrality is not your friend in enlisting others to support your cause.

2. Writing to be read, not scanned.

The vast majority of your readers will scan your content, not read it.  Think Huffington Post, not New York Times.  Someone scanning your e-newsletter should get the essential story from the headlines/photos without having to read the full text.   Before issuing the e-newsletter, look at it without the text and ask: what would my reader come away with?  If nothing valuable, then work harder on your headlines and photos/captions.

3. Writing about process, not the ultimate goal of the organization.

Particularly with advocacy nonprofits, fights over process tend to absorb significant time.  Those in the middle of those fights often become passionate about them and falsely assume their donors/supporters will share that passion.  In reality, donors/supporters are almost always focused on the end goal/mission the nonprofit is trying to achieve.  Avoid process stories.

4. Pictures that don’t connect

Pictures are good, but not all pictures help.  Given how people are reading e-newsletters (many on mobile devices), focus on pictures where you have just one or two people and you should be able to see their eyes (and hopefully they’re smiles if appropriate).  Pictures of large groups where you can’t see anyone aren’t as effective in my opinion.

5.  Long sentences with parenthetical clauses

Many of us in college learned to write complex sentences that embody multiple ideas and show the relationship between those ideas.  These are almost always a bad idea in an e-newsletter.  My rule of thumb: if it can be broken into two separate short sentences, do it.

Let me know what other mistakes you see and think should be avoided?  I’ll cover them in a future blog entry.