Clarity Is Your Secret Power | The Speaker’s Edge

Hey guys, welcome back to The Speaker’s Edge podcast. The podcast dedicated to helping you learn from some of the world’s very best speakers and communicators so you can learn to master your message and inspire your audience every single time you speak.

I’m your host for this podcast, Roddy Galbraith. I’m thrilled you’ve chosen to join us today. I think we’ve got a great message for you today. If you’re celebrating Christmas, it’s getting a little Christmassy now, isn’t it? We’re almost at Christmas Day. And so I thought today’s message would be kind of reflecting the season a little bit with the content. So it’s a heartwarming message, but really it’s a message that helps you with your speaking because we’re talking about how you can have real power when you communicate. And that power comes from clarity—having clarity.

So keep your message simple. Don’t try and tell them everything you know. Focus in on the most important things. And that clarity gives your message real power. So we’re going to talk about that in just a moment.

But before we get to that, if you haven’t downloaded the companion guide for the show, simply go to maxwellleadership.com/thespeakersedge, download the companion guide, and if you enjoy the show, you enjoy the episode, we’d love it if you rate and review the show as well. Thank you.

All right then. So, clarity is power. One of the questions I get a great deal is people ask me, “How do I start my talk? How do I start my presentation? How do I start my message? I feel like I don’t even know where to start. It’s really overwhelming.”

So, you begin with the end in mind. What do you want the audience to get from this? What do you want them to do at the end of this presentation? That’s a great thing to think about. If there’s some specific action, if you’re speaking for influence and you want them to do something at the end or believe something at the end or think about something at the end, you want to think about what that is at the beginning.

So then you can reverse engineer your presentation so you’ve got a better chance of bringing that about. So begin with the end in mind. What do you want them to do? And then construct your presentation so that you give them the information they need so they can feel and think the things that are going to help them take that action. So begin with the end in mind.

And less is more. As I said, less is more. So you don’t want to tell them everything. You know, think about one big idea, maybe like a compass bearing, a north star that you’re following. You’re heading in one direction and you’re taking them on a journey. So one big idea, one theme for your talk or your presentation makes it easier to construct and then break it down into different pieces.

So break it down into components that are going to help take the audience on that journey.

Now it’s useful to think about your audience’s rate of consumption. A term I use to get you to think about how much information you can give them. How much can they consume? How much can they eat? They can’t eat everything you know on the topic. So you’ve got to be selective.

Keep in mind that the average human being apparently can hold in mind about seven bits of information plus or minus two. So that means if I give you—if you’re average—and I give you a list of seven things to remember, you can remember seven things. But if I give you another three, then you forget some of the ones that you’re already holding in mind.

We can’t cling on to endless amounts of data. So if you think about that, is there any point in telling them everything you know? Is there any point in you listing out loads of information for them that they’re not going to hold on to?

Because if you give them more than they can concentrate on, what happens? Well, they get nothing actually. In fact, they get overwhelmed and then they give up. They struggle trying to capture it all, to hold on to it all, and then they give up. So, they get nothing.

They might be looking at you. They might be nodding. They hear you. They appear to be listening. But they’re not taking any of it in because it’s too much. They’re overwhelmed and so they’ve given up.

So, less really is more. And a good rule of thumb here is one big idea about every 10 minutes. If you’re as good as John Maxwell, that might be one big idea every 15 or 20 minutes because he’s got more examples and more ways of bringing it together. But for most of us, one big idea every 10 minutes is a great rule of thumb.

Now, I want to give you a simple example because often this is the best way to get your head around it.

This was back in August 2012. It was 7:30 a.m. Eastern in the morning in Orlando. It was a Sunday and John was just about to start his Sunday message. Now, I’d never seen John preach, if you like. I’d never seen him give a spiritual message and so I was thinking, should I go down? Shall I watch this? And I decided I’d go and watch it.

And luckily, I took a little camera, a handheld camera that I had. I took that with me as well. And I sat there and watched John talking about unconditional love in this message, and it was absolutely life-changing for me. It really was. It was really, really powerful.

So, he spoke for about 40 minutes, just over. It was very, very powerful. But there was one big idea and there was three kind of sections to the story that brought this one big idea to life.

So the first big idea was John talks about how he knew that him and his brother Larry hit the parent jackpot because their parents loved them unconditionally. And so John said, “I know most people didn’t grow up like that, but I hit the parent jackpot. I won the parent lottery. And so I experienced what it was like to be loved unconditionally.” And so I always felt very confident, very self-assured because of that.

And so he said then that was the first kind of 10 minutes. And then the second big idea was when Margaret and I had kids, he said we tried to love our children unconditionally as well. And then he talks about the challenges of loving your children unconditionally and parenting.

And then the third big idea for the last kind of third of the presentation was God loves us all unconditionally. So he talked about how his parents loved him unconditionally, how he and Margaret tried to love their children unconditionally, and then he said, “God loves us all unconditionally.”

What does that mean to love unconditionally? He said, “Well, it means that there’s nothing you can do that is going to make God love you any less. You can’t mess up to the point where God gives up on you and says, ‘Well, that’s it. You know, you’re a no-hoper. I love you less.’” That’s not what unconditionally means, is it?

Unconditionally means no matter what the conditions, the love is still there. So loving unconditionally means there’s nothing you can do that’s going to make God love you any less.

But then the flip side of that is there’s nothing you can do that’s going to make God love you any more. That’s what unconditional love is. It’s unconditional.

It doesn’t matter whether you mess up or whether you try and curry favor and make sure that you’re his favorite. There’s nothing you can do that’s going to make God love you any more or any less.

It was so powerful for me and my wife Susan because we then went home and tried to love our children unconditionally. And it’s not easy. It’s not easy, of course, but we did our best.

And so, one thing that we decided we would do is we knew we were going to mess up as parents. We knew that we were going to make mistakes, but the one thing they were never going to be any doubt in is whether or not we love them.

Because we were going to tell them every night when we put them to bed that we love them unconditionally. And that means there’s nothing they can do that’s going to make us love them any less. And there’s nothing they can do that’s going to make us love them any more because we love them unconditionally. We always will and that will never change.

And we told them that every night and they got sick of hearing it. And then we’d say, “Do you know that mommy and daddy love you?” And they’re like, “I know. Oh, I know. And that means there’s nothing we can do that’s going to make you love us any less. And there’s nothing we can do that makes—We get it. We get it.” They got sick of hearing it.

But at least they were never in doubt that we loved them unconditionally. Even though we were still, you know, trying to get better at it.

Now, unconditional love—if you think about it—we’re talking about unconditional love. I mean, it’s a great topic. And you see the way that John kind of put those three parts together to create that one big idea: God loves us all unconditionally.

But unconditional love, if you think about it, it means that it has to incorporate forgiveness for humans, for us mere mortals, as parents or as people really interacting with other people because we’re all imperfect, aren’t we? We make mistakes.

And that means that if we’re going to love our children unconditionally and we know they’re going to make mistakes, then we have to incorporate forgiveness. Love is easy if no one ever makes any mistakes or does anything that displeases us. Love is easy then, isn’t it?

But unconditional love means that they’re going to do those things. We’re going to do those things and we make allowances for that. We forgive people. So forgiveness has to go with love to make unconditional love.

So in relationships, we are going to let people down and we hope that they’re going to make allowances for us. They’re going to forgive us. And people are going to let us down and we ought to get better at making allowances for them.

So unconditional love, not just conditional. As long as you do everything I say and you’re easy to love, then I’m going to love you. Unconditional love is no matter what, I’m going to love you.

So as parents, this is something that perhaps at this time of year we could think about, isn’t it? Loving our children unconditionally, loving our spouse unconditionally, loving our friends unconditionally.

What about people? People like us, our kind of people. We can start with them. But what about people not like us? Just because they’ve got different views or different perspectives on life, does that mean that we shouldn’t learn to love them unconditionally?

What about people who don’t perhaps have that level of awareness and they’re just selfish people or they’re doing things or they do things to harm us? Should we love them unconditionally as well? What about people who steal from us? It’s not easy, is it? Of course, it’s not.

And I’m not pretending that I’m good at this or I can do this, but it’s nice to think about it. And I think at this time of year, which is why I thought it would be fun for us to talk about it today, maybe we should just start at Christmas with our family, including our in-laws. Should we include our in-laws or is that too much of a challenge?

Maybe we should include our in-laws as well. Maybe we should include our in-laws and then we can practice because they give us a great deal of opportunity to practice, don’t they?

If we can love unconditionally, if we can accept, make allowances for our in-laws, that’s good training. Now, don’t forget, we’re giving them good training too because it’s just as difficult for them to love us unconditionally.

So, we’re helping each other grow by being there and giving a little bit of grace. So, that’s something fun for us to think about this Christmas.

Whether you’re celebrating Christmas or not, whether you’re a person of faith or not, can we get better at accepting one another and loving one another unconditionally, even though that we’re imperfect and we’re going to make mistakes?

And don’t forget when you’re speaking, this is a very simple but powerful example of clarity and less is more. If you’re speaking for 40 minutes and you just have these three big ideas as part of this one big theme, that doesn’t seem like a lot to include, does it?

When you just think about the information, but when it’s brought together with examples, it can make a lasting impact. Like I said, John changed my life in those 40 minutes when I heard him talk about unconditional love.

I look forward to seeing you next week for the last Speaker’s Edge episode of 2025 and we’ll be talking a little bit about goals and what we’re going to achieve in 2026.

Don’t forget to download the companion guide. Go to maxwellleadership.com/thespeakersedge. And remember, communication is a learnable skill. It’s one of the most important skills you can develop and it is a learnable skill. So, keep learning and learn to master your message so that you can inspire your audience—every audience—every single time you speak.

Thanks for listening today. I’ll see you next week. Take care. Lots of love. Bye-bye. God bless.

Ep. 043 — Communication Skills: Why Clarity Is Your Secret Power

Hosted by Roddy Galbraith

A Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production

Weekly highlights from The Speaker’s Edge — a Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production hosted by Roddy Galbraith. Learn how to communicate with clarity, confidence, and impact — in business, on stage, and in life.

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The Speakers Edge

Weekly highlights from The Speaker’s Edge, a Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production hosted by Roddy Galbraith. Learn how to communiate with clarity, confidence, and impact — in business, on stage, and in life.

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Full Transcript (Ep. 043 — Communication Skills: Why Clarity Is Your Secret Power)
Released: December 22, 2025