How to hook your audience
Knowing where to start can be the hardest part of a communication.
Today I want to share tactics to help you grab your audience’s attention from the outset.
It seems to me we have a choice: to warm them up or wake them up.
Your situation and your personality will no doubt help you decide which approach suits your situation best.
Warm them up to lure them into your message
This is what I think of as the classic approach. You can do this two ways:
Remind them of your topic. You might say something like:
Last month we indicated that we need to reframe our product strategy to address emerging AI risks to software products like ours. Today we bring you our reframe strategy.
This helps them recall your most recent conversation on today’s topic and why you are discussing it today.
Inspire them with a memory. Perhaps there was a significant campaign that the organisation waged successfully or a program that ran really well. You could use that to engage them, perhaps like this:
Think back to how strategy X worked so well to lift our customer base. We all pulled together and supported the campaign. We have an opportunity to win like that again.
Wake them up to quickly get their attention
There are lots of ways to do this, some of them potentially outlandish. Today I’ll share three that I hope are easy to employ without having to become someone you are not.
Be positive. You might inspire them by helping them imagine a positive future, perhaps by saying something like this:
We see our team cutting expenses by 10% each year for the next three years without culling headcount and despite inflation risks.
Be negative. Sometimes it helps to begin with a problem that makes them sit up straight. You might explain how a problem they know about is now at a critical point, e.g.
Project X continues to miss its targets despite pumping extra revenue into it over the past six months. We must today decide if we cut our losses and run or truly commit to making it work.
Be provocative. Save this for do-or-die situations only, lest you be seen to cry wolf.
Think back to how we rallied together to fix last year’s cyber attack. We drew out the best from everyone in the face of that do-or-die challenge. We need to pull together again with that intensity to face challenge X.
I hope that helps. More soon.
Davina
Whenever you're ready, here are five other ways I can help you:
Elevate, the book – helps leaders set their teams up to set up a new dynamic across their team that will elevate everyone’s skills, helping the team get better, faster decisions.
Engage, the book – helps individual contributors prepare papers and presentations that leaders can approve without reworking.
Engage, the self-paced course – supports both individuals and leaders prepare more insightful papers and presentations for senior leaders and boards.
Extreme Clarity, the 2-hour workshop – introduces techniques for structuring your messaging.
Board Paper Bootcamp, the 2-week program – helps you clarify and convey complex ideas to senior leaders and boards.
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About AUTHOR: DAVINA STANLEY
I love what I do.
I help senior leaders and their teams prepare high-quality papers and presentations in a fraction of the time.
This involves ‘nailing' the message that will quickly engage decision makers in the required outcome.
I leverage 25+ years' experience including
- learning structured thinking techniques at McKinsey in Hong Kong in the mid 1990s before coaching and training their teams globally as a freelancer for a further 15 years
- being approved to teach the Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto in 2009
- helping CEOs, C-suite leaders and their reports deeply understand their stakeholder needs and communicate accordingly
- seeing leaders cut the number of times they review major papers by ~30% and teams cut the amount of time they take to prepare major papers by ~20%*
- watching senior meetings focus on substantive discussions and better decisions rather than trying to clarify the issue
My approach helps anyone who needs to engage senior leaders and Boards.
Recent clients include 7Eleven, KPMG, Mercer, Meta, Woolworths.
Learn more at www.clarityfirstprogram.com
(*) Numbers are based on 2023 client benchmarking results.
