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The 4 Virtues – 1. WISDOM – Yours!
Translating Ideas into Wisdom
Your audience are craving wisdom in the next talk of yours that they listen to, and in this world of ours, wisdom is a commodity in diminishing supply. They want something they can believe in. And they want you to tell it to them straight. With today’s competing and polar opposite ideologies popping everywhere we look, the Post Modern fad for abandoning logic, science and fact for feelings, we can easily feel we are drowning in anti-Wisdom, noise and we can get the sense of being surrounded by a cloud of nonsense.
Adults
The adults in the room that make up the useful part of your audience, the ones that make decisions, spend money, or can bring about change, are not the ones with flags on marches, are not the keyboard bashing worriers, or the aggressive high-profile activists causing trouble.
They are rational, balanced operatives, existing within sensible organisations and they are hungry to know what is good, bad or indifferent. What is real, grounded and reliable. They have a desire to be informed about what is going to help them and that they can reliably use, that you are sharing with them, knowing that it will stand up to robust scrutiny and dissection. They want you to load them up with the truth and not popular opinion or a biased, made-up story, masquerading as evidence.
Authority
Dale Carnegie told us that a Global Authority on a specific topic will be able to present 40 X what they actually speak about! So Mrs A gives a one-hour talk on topic B. The Carnegie multiplier means that Mrs A would be able to go on for another 39 hours on the SAME topic…
You and your wisdom
Where do you get your claims to wisdom from? Have you had at least 7 years in your topic area? Have you achieved qualifications in the subject? Or, have you spent some time at the coalface and picked up some earthy stories that are relevant and applicable?
The last one is sometimes the most powerful.
Vulnerable
We are all put off by a know-it-all. Real experience comes with mistakes, and admitting to these can super boost your credibility. “I don’t know about A” means the weight your audience puts on what you do know, B, becomes much more believable. They love that they can take what you are sharing to the bank.
Applicable wisdom
Your audience’s world has two elements in it – what they can control, and what they cannot. When you focus on what they can control, you can affect action, and change to facilitate useful outcomes. When you overdo your references to the doom and gloom that is in their “out of my control” part, you create detachment, stress and distance.
Action
When you prepare and rev up for your next talk, be honest with yourself. Do you know enough about the topic? Are you confident enough to let go and be vulnerable, sharing a disaster story or two to boost your credibility? And have you boiled the content down from opinion, to fact, and truth, and are now ready to present a robust description of reality?
When you have honed your talk to be useful, reliable and fact backed, you will be doing the world a favour. You are now a broadcaster of wisdom. You have ordered the chaos, removed the nonsense and shared a succinct version of what remains. What you are doing is so necessary, especially in these uncertain times.
About the Author
Matthew Hill is a Presentation Skills coach, working with corporate executives to uncover their presentation strengths, skills and potential. He does this so that the executive (you) can become maximally effective in bringing about much needed change, growth and the exchange of value.
Happy to talk…
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