When you watch a play or a movie or a TV show, someone has made a decision about everything you see and hear. The color of the sofa cushions, the angles at which the furniture sits, the scuff marks on the shoes, a pause before a line, characters interrupting each other…every one of those decisions has been consciously made, accepted, sometimes discarded and come back to. Actors, designers, directors, and endless other staff are all working together to create a seamless experience that conveys a story. It’s a facsimile of reality, and it only works because, unlike reality, we put intention and deliberate choice into every moment.
Great speakers do this, too. They create and curate the speech they are going to give so that it will have maximum impact. They think deeply about their choice of words, how to structure and pace a speech, when to speed up or get louder. All of this is in service of an outcome—making you, the audience, feel or think or do something. They want to make a change.
What would happen if we thought about our day-in/day-out meetings and presentations this way? If instead of, “I don’t really have time to do this, I’ll just wing it,” we prioritized curating the experience for our audience? A good way to start is by simply asking: what is this for? Why am I talking to this group of people?
