Enjoy! Please let me know your thoughts in the comments and share your own stories.

He can get away with jumping on a soap box, and that’s for one main reason: he’s a great communicator. Yup, we’re talking about Matt Damon. Sure he’s popular, a talented writer and performer, etc., but so are many actors. This guy knows how to use specific communication tools to rally an audience and most importantly, come across sincere.

So here he went again, hitting a homerun while speaking at the Save Our Schools March a few days ago, not only to support his mother (a teacher and fellow activist), but all teachers who are fighting standardized test score-based funding. Regardless of how you feel about the subject, anyone can appreciate Matt’s ability to pump up the crowd.

Check out this clip so you can see what I’m talking about (or see the whole thing here).

Matt artfully matches his behavior to his content to come across genuine. Here are my keepers and improvements (have to keep it balanced feedback!).

Keepers:

• Story (one of our SHARP principles) – he weaves the point of his speech around his experiences in public schools. This personalizes the message, gives him credibility, and is memorable. When listing out all the growth he experienced in school, he brought it back to the point by saying, “None of these qualities that have made me who I am can be tested.”
• Concise – he’s up there for about five minutes, but but still gives a memorable and meaningful talk. No need to go on and on if you can do it succinctly.
• Vocal variety – he speaks clearly, with plenty of variation to avoid the monotone. He also takes time to pause and pace himself, which is especially important when speaking over a mic to a large audience. He gives them time to hear the ends of his sentences, and ups the ante.

Improvements:

• A lot of I, I, I – common mistake in messaging is to talk a lot about yourself when you’re proving the value of your idea, product, or service. To be the most influential and affect change, take every opportunity to make the message about your listeners.
• Reading – at the end of the day, when you look down to read, you’re breaking connection with your audience. It’s best to organize yourself and speak off the cuff while using eye communication with your listeners (we need to get him a Decker Grid!).
• Nonwords – um’s and uh’s creep in there. They chip away at the experience you create when speaking. Better to pause instead of inserting a filler word.

High hopes for Matt as a communicator going forward, even a Top 10 spot! (Maybe not as high as Michael Moore suggesting he run for President in 2012, though.) Anything stick out to you, in terms of what went well, and what could be improved?

As you probably know, George Clooney plays a character who’s a consultant traveling around the nation to lay people off. He incorporates this brief pep talk into his repertoire:

Later, his protégée delivers the same line, but this time, it’s robotic and pointless.

The art of storytelling is in the telling. Maybe you’ve got a great story. A customer testimonial that will knock a prospect’s socks off. But if you don’t tell it well, who cares?

This is something I’ve been working at since I got married – my mother-in-law helped me realize it. My problem is that I tell a story once, and that’s it. I lose my gusto after that. I start skipping the details and deliver the punch line way too soon. But my mother-in-law… she can tell the same story 9, 13, or 27 times, and it loses nothing! If anything, she gains momentum each time. When she tells stories, she nails the behavioral skills around eye communication and energy – facial expression, vocal variety, and gestures (note an unfair advantage: she is Italian).

Whether it’s the first time or the tenth, deliver the story well. On the content side, don’t skimp on the details: describe the pain, celebrate the success. Then bring the content together with the behavior. Show and tell how the lead character (whether it’s you or someone else) felt at that moment.

As Hans demonstrates, telling a story can deliver your message almost effortlessly through the gatekeeper of the First Brain to the data processor of the New Brain. (More information on First Brain and New Brain is detailed in You’ve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard and a bit in my Compartmentalized Communicating post.)

Bert wrote an excellent post on The Power of Story. It’s spot on. I’d like to add value to it with this complementary post offering a few unique resources, each providing a different perspective on storytelling.

The Moth.  A non-profit organization dedicated to the art of storytelling.  With performances selling out in less than 48 hours with absolutely no advertising other than word of mouth, the demand for storytelling speaks volumes.

“One of the hottest events in town… The Moth is an evening of

unashamedly old-fashioned storytelling…

the performances are enthralling,

funny and moving, with a typical New York intensity.”

- The Times (London)

“The success of The Moth is one example of

the phenomenon of storytelling that is gaining momentum

nationwide. In The Moth’s case, these narrative

sessions are fast becoming an institution.”

- The New York Times

“We celebrate the ability of stories to honor the diversity and commonality of human experience, and to satisfy a vital human need for connection.” – from The Moth’s Mission Statement

Experience Project. The world’s largest living collection of shared experiences, with over 24 experience categories.  Launched in 2007, boasting nearly 3.5 million experiences shared, this is place where individuals share their stories in an anonymous, comfortable and supportive place.  A unique website revealing the human hunger to share and read stories, this website is also a useful tool for communicators to search for stories and ideas from categories such as Education, Entertainment, Politics, Business, Relationships, to name a few.  From confessions to inspirational stories, the Experience Project is an excellent resource for exploring the stories that connect human experience.

Problogger.net: Why Stories are an Effective Communication Tool for Your Blog. This popular blog by Darren Rowse (@problogger) highlights for the blogging community what Decker emphasizes for communicators.  In researching the historical data for his blog, Darren learned that story blog posts were among the most popular over the last five years.  His bullet point list of why stories are valuable for bloggers applies to all communicators, aligned with  Bert’s The Power of Story blog post earlier this year.

• Stories engage the imagination of readers [listeners]
• Stories go beyond facts and theories
• Stories reveal something about yourself as a blogger [communicator] (they’re personal)
• Stories trigger emotions and the senses
• Stories are conversational - they stimulate others to react and tell their stories [to you, to others and in their own communications experiences]
• Stories provide hooks for readers [listeners ] to latch onto your blogging [message] (they’re relatable)
• Stories grab and hold the attention of readers [listeners]
• Stories are memorable – while people don’t always latch onto facts and figures – a good story can be remembered for years
• Stories illustrate your points in ways that can be much more convincing (and convicting) than other types of information

The common thread of these three sites is clear.  People love stories; stories connect them to each other in the most basic human way. Stories are bridges between our humanity and the objective of our presentations. Something so significant should be shared.

Photo credit:  zinkwazi

This came from a client in a recent Platinum Session, referring to the commonly-held belief that engaging emotions is an effort we make only for those presentations intended to motivate and inspire. For this client, he viewed the majority of his presentations as just providing information.

It’s human tendency to compartmentalize. We segment ourselves in all sorts of ways, including ideas about how we should communicate. It seems natural to separate motivational and inspirational focused speeches from data delivery presentations. However, what’s “natural” is not always best. A fragmented mindset can backfire when it comes to communication.

I asked this client a couple of questions:

• Do you ever give a presentation in which you’re not presenting data?
• Do you ever give a presentation in which you have no intention of impacting your audience?

By definition, a presentation intends to make an impact by conveying information. You can’t make an impact if your data doesn’t reach its destination (the receptive minds of your listeners). Though we might categorize presentations into different types, communication – by definition – involves both emotion and information.

The key to successful communicating is realizing that all communication is an opportunity to motivate and inspire, and all communication requires emotional connection to make an impact.

Bert wrote about this in You’ve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard. People buy on emotion and justify with fact. You can’t connect with the mind – the New Brain (Cerebral Cortex) – without first getting past the gatekeeper – the First Brain (Brain Stem and Limbic System). The First Brain is the seat of emotion and emotional response. Data destined for the New Brain travels through the filter of the First Brain. The First Brain is where the human connection (likability, credibility and trust) is measured. Without getting past the First Brain, the information intended to reach the New Brain hits a brick wall. No matter what type of presentation you are giving, if you want to produce results, you need to be human.  You need to incorporate your emotions.  You need to connect with the hearts and minds of your audience.

Hans Rosling is a master at bridging the gap between data delivery and human connection. On his Presentation Zen blog, Garr Reynolds wrote an excellent post detailing how Hans does this. You need only watch a minute or two of Hans in action to understand why he’s so esteemed.

Hans takes data, statistics and trends (information that could easily be a “just presenting data/data dump” presentation) and engages the hearts and minds of his listeners, delivering the data right through the heart and into the mind. Through storytelling, humor and an uncanny ability to perceive and respond to the emotional pulse of his audience, Hans glides right through the First Brain and lands extensive amounts of statistical data into the New Brain, making a memorable impact.

It’s easy to get buried in data and compartmentalize communication into different categories – some requiring emotional connection; others not. But when we do this, we fail to recognize the significance of connecting with our listeners. This is when we need to step back and remind ourselves: Communication without emotion is just data dump. It’s disconnected; it doesn’t effect change; it doesn’t make an impact. The data has no value if it doesn’t reach its destination. Successful communication incorporates the whole self – heart and mind – to connect with others in a basic human way. The human connection is the communications experience – not the data.

Photo credits: Café psicologico

An interview with Chip will follow shortly, but in the meantime, here are some highlights from Chip "live:"

• Make the stories that sell your ideas portable. Tell them simply so that other people can tell them as well, and then you will leverage your influence.
• The great duct tape on the cover of the book was resisted by the publishers. "Too difficult," they said, and they preferred using Post-it notes on the cover – which of course don’t stick. (Which is WHY we use them in the Decker Creating Process by the way – you can move them around.) Duct Tape is sticky, and of course Chip and Dan won the argument.
• Reminder of the SUCCES principles ("Repeating good ideas is worth repeating.")

                Simple
                Unexpected
                Concrete
                Credible
                Emotional
                Stories

• Chip said the most important of these is Simple. Keep it simple, get to the basic premise. (Corresponds directly to our concept of always having a "Point Of View" in any message.)
• Most important after that, I think, is Stories. And stories that contain the other parts of the SUCCES principles are the most powerful.
• And I loved "The Curse Of Knowledge," around which Chip told several stories. What stops most business presenters is they know too much, and

1. assume their audience understands as much as they do about their subject, and
2. that they have to present all they know.

• And Chip had interesting PowerPoints as support – they were spare, using little text and only ideas, but something I hadn’t seen before that worked: All text was in white on black background, in courier news type. Made it seem journalistic and authentic. Effective.

Well, I can’t really do service to a great presentation in print, and it wasn’t videotaped. Best to see Chip when you can, or read, and re-read the book "Made To Stick." It will help make you a storyteller.