Making the effortful seem effortless
Sep 07, 2016On one of my mentorship calls today, Cornelia asked a question about how you can tie together multiple personal stories into one, homogenous ‘keynote’ presentation. It’s a great question that comes up frequently.
‘One really neat way to do that is to have one central theme, or one big idea that everything is united behind’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
One of the many significant benefits of working so closely with John Maxwell, is that he is a limitless resource of first class examples of how to speak. So I used of one of John’s keynotes as an example.
‘His presentation was 40 minutes long and the theme was unconditional love’ I said. ‘He told about 3 or 4 different stories, all related to the main theme. Each story lead neatly into the next and the whole experience unfolded as he took the audience on a journey for the whole 40 minutes. Everyone arriving at the key point at the end.'
‘He talked about how his mother loved him unconditionally as a boy. Then he talked about how he was determined to love his children unconditionally. Then he talked about a real challenge to this. Then a success.'
‘At the end, he talked about how God loves all of us unconditionally, and there’s nothing we can do to make him love us more; and there’s nothing we can do to make him love us less. That’s what unconditional love is.’
‘That’s very helpful, thank you!’ Cornelia said.
As I thought back to that keynote, I remember asking John about how he had written it on one of our 1-to-1 mentoring calls. ‘How do you write a story that powerful, that clever, that intricate?’ I asked him.
‘You don’t write a story like that’ he said. ‘At least, I can’t write a story like that .. it evolves! It evolves over time. The more you use the original story, the more you tell it, the more it evolves and the better it gets.’
Isn’t that nice to know? Even someone like John Maxwell, undoubtedly one of the very best speakers in the world, even HE doesn’t just sit down and write a masterpiece .. it evolves over time.
John is good, very good. But he’s worked extraordinarily hard over a very long period of time to get as good as he is. Bill Gove said 'you'll be surprised how hard I look to make it look this easy' - making the effortful seem effortless is certainly a skill!
I always say: the more stories you work on, the better your best stories will be.
Let’s add to that: and if you keep sharing and working on your best stories, they’ll keep getting better!
(Ooh, by the way, I will be sharing this story as part of my teaching on this Saturday’s certification call for those of you in the John Maxwell Team.)
‘One really neat way to do that is to have one central theme, or one big idea that everything is united behind’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
One of the many significant benefits of working so closely with John Maxwell, is that he is a limitless resource of first class examples of how to speak. So I used of one of John’s keynotes as an example.
‘His presentation was 40 minutes long and the theme was unconditional love’ I said. ‘He told about 3 or 4 different stories, all related to the main theme. Each story lead neatly into the next and the whole experience unfolded as he took the audience on a journey for the whole 40 minutes. Everyone arriving at the key point at the end.'
‘He talked about how his mother loved him unconditionally as a boy. Then he talked about how he was determined to love his children unconditionally. Then he talked about a real challenge to this. Then a success.'
‘At the end, he talked about how God loves all of us unconditionally, and there’s nothing we can do to make him love us more; and there’s nothing we can do to make him love us less. That’s what unconditional love is.’
‘That’s very helpful, thank you!’ Cornelia said.
As I thought back to that keynote, I remember asking John about how he had written it on one of our 1-to-1 mentoring calls. ‘How do you write a story that powerful, that clever, that intricate?’ I asked him.
‘You don’t write a story like that’ he said. ‘At least, I can’t write a story like that .. it evolves! It evolves over time. The more you use the original story, the more you tell it, the more it evolves and the better it gets.’
Isn’t that nice to know? Even someone like John Maxwell, undoubtedly one of the very best speakers in the world, even HE doesn’t just sit down and write a masterpiece .. it evolves over time.
John is good, very good. But he’s worked extraordinarily hard over a very long period of time to get as good as he is. Bill Gove said 'you'll be surprised how hard I look to make it look this easy' - making the effortful seem effortless is certainly a skill!
I always say: the more stories you work on, the better your best stories will be.
Let’s add to that: and if you keep sharing and working on your best stories, they’ll keep getting better!
(Ooh, by the way, I will be sharing this story as part of my teaching on this Saturday’s certification call for those of you in the John Maxwell Team.)
Until next time ..
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Communicating is not just about words. We need to think about our body language, tone, and pacing. How we feel impacts the way we speak. Struggling to find the right content makes us ineffective. Great speakers know that becoming an exceptional speaker isn't just an art - it's a process with many essential elements.
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