Breaking through...

In a quick survey I conduct at the beginning of my presentation skills clinics, I ask for a show of hands to these questions:

How many of you watched television in the past 24 hours?

How many watched the news?

Watched a sports report?

An entertainment program?

Saw a documentary?

An advertisement?

How many read a newspaper?

Listened to a radio?

Saw a billboard?

Received an e-mail?

Received a fax?

A letter?

A bill?

Now, if I were to ask you to take a blank sheet of paper and write down — in any number of words necessary — the essential message of each of those media you said you encountered, could you do it?

What did the billboard say? What were the top four stories on the evening news? How much was the product advertised on the radio?

More often than not, most people taking this survey end up smiling and shaking their heads. No, they really can’t remember much detail. One or two items, perhaps. But the rest is just a memory blur.

And that’s precisely the point of the exercise, you see. It’s a demonstration of a process called filtering. It’s what allows us to remember a select number of messages but not others.

It may be what keeps us sane.

Each day, we are exposed to some 3,000 distinct messages.

Do this.

Go here.

Buy that.

Join us.

Act now.

A lot of very clever and dedicated folks invest a lot of effort and capital trying to get us to pay attention to them and their message.

The smart ones frame their message in a way that makes it more meaningful to us, thereby improving the odds that we’ll notice.

Much as we scan the headlines of a newspaper or contents of a magazine to choose which articles to read (or, at least, review more closely), our brain is continually scanning the hundreds and thousands of messages bombarding it and choosing where to focus its attention.

We filter. We screen for the most important or relevant or desired. We remember the things that matter to us in some way. And we ignore or discard those things that don’t.

When you are preparing to step in front of an audience — any audience, be it a general assembly at the national conference, or a staff meeting of six of your cohorts — remember their brains are in a filtering mode, too.

How can you say what you need to say in a manner that will penetrate those filters?

How can you give your message the necessary context, timeliness and relevance so people will spend a moment with it?

What can you do to make your message matter?

The fact that you may be the only speaker in the room isn’t enough. From where the audience sits, you still are competing with the day’s other 2,999 messages.

It can be done. But the responsibility is not with the audience to remember what you say. The responsibility remains with you to be memorable.