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The biggest mistake we make in communication, says leadership coach Joel Schwartzberg, is not knowing our point. We meander, getting caught up in seemingly important themes and thoughts but never focus on the essence that other people need to act in the way we intend.
“Whether you’re giving a keynote speech or a Zoom pitch, talking to your manager or your mother-in-law, composing an email or creating a PowerPoint presentation, having a real point is critical to making your audience not just listen but feel, think and act,” he writes in Get to the Point!.
A point tells you what happens, how it happens and why it matters. It should be instantly clear. You can illustrate, prove and defend it.
He offers this example from an executive: “This investment in [research and development] will ensure our company stays profitable well into the future.”
In a job interview, the point you must stress: “My skills and experience will help your department succeed.”
He shares a three-part guide to developing and refining your own points:
- It should fit into the following phrase to form a complete sentence: “I believe that…” If you end up with just a fragment, not a complete sentence, you actually don’t have a workable point. For example, if you believe your upcoming talk is on innovations in IT, you will wind up with a non-sentence: “I believe that innovations in IT.” The actual point might be: “I believe that innovations in IT will make us more efficient.”
- Next comes the XY Test, a simple template in the form of an equation to ensure your point has two crucial elements – a valuable impact and a means to achieve that impact. It goes: If we do X, Y will result. His example is proposing a celebrity-hosted podcast to expose your brand to more podcast-loving millennial consumers. “We should create a celebrity-hosted podcast,” covers the X but is missing the impact. On the other hand, “We should reach out to millennial consumers” handles the impact but lacks how you will do it. The most intriguing Xs, he stresses, are specific, not generic. You are not “exploring new content channels,” which is vague, but “creating a podcast.”
- Finally, you need to make sure you are not offering a statement so obvious or commonly said that you are not really offering anything of value to your audience – in effect, pointless. He calls it The Truism Buster Test. It requires you to answer yes to at least one of these two questions. Could someone raise a reasonable counterpoint? Do I need to prove this contention?
Once you have a point, he urges you to sharpen it to penetrate your audience. That involves taking out adjectives that are too broad, such as important or wonderful. They require explanation to have any power, so give the explanation instead of the pointless adjective. Avoid trying to sneak extra points into your main statement, which results in too many ideas fighting for the audience’s attention, confusing or even baffling them. “One idea is the most important, based on your organization’s mission and your audience’s interests,” he says.
He adds that after several years of enhancing other people’s points in his coaching work he spotted an interesting pattern: The most powerful and memorable points typically described impacts on living things, not non-living things. Living things include people, families, patients, customers, communities and animals. Non-living things commonly cited are companies, facilities, money, brands, reputations, abilities and data. Humans are more powerfully affected by the experiences of other humans so make sure you are indicating who – not what – the impact you are seeking will help.
One more tip: Don’t just share a point, sell it. One of his clients touched on the many features of her product in her pitch but never said: “If you use my products and services you will be more successful.” He holds up a sign saying SELL when his students are merely sharing in their presentations and they instantly change their tone, speed, volume, body language and vocabulary, and the audience feels a stronger impact.
They are making their point.
Quick hits
- To start your work day with more than email, productivity author Laura Vanderkam recommends the evening before picking a coffee project that you will complete before your morning coffee. This quick win should take about half an hour and be something that you know you will have the energy and resources to do right away.
- Shepa Learning Company’s Gayle Hallgren and Judy Thomson say we are open to collaboration but few of us say it on our LinkedIn pages. In their newsletter, they cite this example from the participant in one of their recent courses: “I’m always open to collaborations, new ideas and conversations with fellow engineers and creators!”
- Consultant Roy H. Williams says experience is the name you are allowed to give to your mistakes, but only if you have learned from them.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.