go shave half your head

Demosthenes was one of the greatest orators in Greek history. he was a legit communicator and still recognized today as one of the greats.

Cicero called him "the perfect orator who lacked nothing", and Quintilian called him "THE standard of oratory" and said that "he stands alone among all the orators". that is some pretty high praise!

but this speaking ability did NOT come naturally. His first speeches were embarrassing, miserable failures. awful. he sucked.
in fact, he probably had a speech impediment.

so, this is what he did to go from being awful to being one of the greatest communicators in history = he shaved half his head!

yep, that was the solution. he shaved half his head and went and hid in a cave.
During his day, a half-shaved head was a public no-no. So he intentionally quarantined himself in order to reflect on what he most desperately had to say. 

He searched his soul to find his passion, his sense of identity, and his reason to communicate. did you catch that? he had to find his PASSION. what what was his whole reason to communicate? [because without these things... you can never be an effective communicator]
He thought about what his Greek audience truly valued and the language that would speak most meaningfully to them. he desperately wanted to connect with them. in a relevant way. in a way that mattered & in a way that THEY thought mattered.

Then Demosthenes practiced speaking from his heart. practiced in the back of a cave, apparently, with half his head starting to look like a chia pet or something.

When he came back out into society he won the admiration of the toughest critics the world has ever known. His name has been married to speaking eloquence for more than 2,000 years. all from a guy with a speech impediment.

why?

all because he shaved half his head.

maybe you need to shave half your head?

then lock yourself away for a while until your hair grows back...
and until you find your voice. until you locate the burning passion deep inside you. what do you HAVE to say or else you feel like you'll explode? what is your reason to communicate? and how can you say it in such a way that people actually care? how can your PASSION and your REASON to communicate be RELEVANT to your audience? what do you most deeply have to say?

so do whatever it takes. shave half your head. do whatever you have to do.

i am.

because i'm not a great communicator, but i know that what i most deeply have to say is too important to not be heard and grasped and lived.

push them from the very bottom of your soul

when you think of James Earl Jones you think of that AMAZING voice. right? that's a God-given GIFT of speaking right there. too bad i wasn't BORN with that.

but James Earl Jones wasn't born with it either. His family moved from a farm in Mississippi to Detroit when he was only 6. (thanks to Boyd Clark for this story, btw.) 
this move was pretty traumatic for him & it prompted a stuttering crisis for him. a BIG stuttering crisis.

he hardly spoke a word for 8 years!

did you catch that? from 6 to about 14 this kid hardly spoke! that's pretty hard core. probably not the kid who's at the top of your list of kids who will grow up to become great orators.

In his high school English class they all had an assignment to write an original poem and then present it in front of the class. BUT James Earl's stuttering was SO BAD that his teacher was going to let him SLIDE on the reciting it to the class part! i never had an English teacher like that :)

but the teacher also called him out a little saying that the poem was SO GOOD, he wondered if James really wrote it, or just copied it from somewhere?

here's what Jones wrote about that:

"My honor was at stake. Plagiarism was bad business. I had written every word of this poem myself... I was shaking as I stood up, cursing myself. I strained to get the words out, pushing from the bottom of my soul. I opened my mouth--and to my astonishment, the words flowed out smoothly, every one of them.

My classmates were amazed, not so much by the poem as by the performance."

it's hard to think of a more important lesson for a communicator or a leader that communicates to learn...

Make sure the words are yours.

    
Push them from the very bottom of your soul.

         
The performance will take care of itself.

TED commandments - rules every speaker needs to know

(This was originally posted on June 15, 2009.)

Today I wanted to share with all of you the "TED Commandments" - similar to the TEN Commandments in that there are 10. But not really similar in any other way.

I LOVE checking out what's going down at TED ("TED" = technology, entertainment, design, but is also SO SO much more). I bet you are gonna wanna check them out too if you haven't already. Go HERE to see all the awesome talks!

They have some really really good stuff. This isn't just some little thing either... these peeps at TED are LEGIT! no doubt. they're making waves in the world and getting MANY peeps' attention.

Here's the list... in case you ever get to speak at a TED conference (or just for you to apply elsewhere)...
[Oh and it probably is worth mentioning that I think it's kind of funny that anyone who makes a 10 commandments list thinks it has to be written in king james english... haha]

Ok, for real this time - the list:
1. Thou Shalt Not Simply Trot Out thy Usual Shtick
2. Thou Shalt Dream a Great Dream, or Show Forth a Wondrous New Thing, Or Share Something Thou Hast Never Shared Before
3. Thou Shalt Reveal thy Curiosity and Thy Passion
4. Thou Shalt Tell a Story
5. Thou Shalt Freely Comment on the Utterances of Other Speakers for the Sake of Blessed Connection and Exquisite Controversy
6. Thou Shalt Not Flaunt thine Ego. Be Thou Vulnerable. Speak of thy Failure as well as thy Success
7. Thou Shalt Not Sell from the Stage: Neither thy Company, thy Goods, thy Writings, nor thy Desparate need for Funding; Lest Thou be Cast Aside into Outer Darkness
8. Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Laughter is Good
9. Thou Shalt Not Read thy Speech
10. Thou Shalt Not Steal the Time of Them that Follow Thee

*great great stuff. love to hear some of you interact with it!
obviously I don't think it's all stuff we've gotta follow like certain other commandments, BUT I think following many of these will make me and all of us better communicators. I'm diggin the list.

I'd love to hear what you think of the TED commandments! share your thoughts...

made to stick

yesterday i wrote about this awesome book called Made to Stick HERE.
below are my extremely summarized notes on the made to stick model that i am working hard to implement in every possible avenue.

a great paradigm/framework for communicating and creating sticky ideas.
Simple

Unexpected

Concrete

Credible

Emotional

Stories

1            Simplicity – find the essential core of the idea. [the bottom line]

I need to be a MASTER OF EXCLUSION. Because if I present 10 ideas they won’t remember any.

I must RELENTLESSLY PRIORITIZE!

Proverbs are the ideal [like Rick Warren & Andy Stanley] Example = the Golden Rule – a statement so profound that you can spend a lifetime trying to follow it.

2            Unexpectedness – this is how we get peeps to PAY ATTENTION! We violate their expectations. Be counter-intuitive.

Use surprise = an emotion whose function is to increase alertness and cause focus!

Generate interest and curiosity. & open gaps in their knowledge.

3            Concreteness – [CLEAR]. Explain in terms of human actions & sensory info.

(Most mission statements are ambiguous to the point of being meaningless.)

sticky ideas = full of concrete images because our brains are wired to remember concrete data.

“Speaking concretely is the only way to ensure that our idea will mean the same thing to everyone in our audience.”

[even down to the nitty gritty of “he was eating a green sour apple airhead” instead of “he was eating candy”]

4            CREDIBILITY – make peeps believe. Ideas carry their own credentials.

Help peeps test our ideas for themselves = “try before you buy” [like andy with sex talk & Reagan with 2^nd election]

(stats are usually no good. We connect better with 1 person’s story than a stat)

5            EMOTIONS – make peeps FEEL something. Gottado this!

[“Stories not Stats” = my sticky phrase] peeps “are more likely to make a charitable gift to a single needy individual than to an entire impoverished region.”

6            STORIES – telling stories gets people to ACTon our ideas.

Stories help us really do it in real life

*So, tell a simple, unexpected, concrete, credentialed, emotional, story!

sticky ideas

i have spent the last 7 years of my life and plan to spend the rest of my life sharing some really really important ideas. not my ideas, but Jesus' ideas. ideas about love, about joy for all peoples of all nationalities, ideas about social justice, ideas about this Kingdom/Revolution that's coming to fix what's broken and making all things new.

but, if the ideas i share don't stick in peoples heads & hearts and CHANGE how they live... it's a waste.

i have GOT to spend MORE time on making the ideas that i present STICKY instead of spending time on just the content itself.

best book i read last year (2010) was Made to Stick by brothers Chip & Dan Heath.

so much great, practical stuff in this book, but here is just a small sampling/intro:
- The truth that there are tons of great ideas that simply NEVER stick. that's a problem. [just think about that one]
- The curse of knowledge - the authors brilliantly point out that "the curse of knowledge" works against us in trying to communicate effectively. we have so much knowledge in an area that it makes it impossible for us to imagine what it's like for someone who lacks that knowledge.
- if you have to tell someone the same thing 10 times, then the idea was NOT very well designed. [wow! how many times do we talk about this in church world!? that we have to say stuff 10 times before people even hear it once.]
- creating sticky ideas can be LEARNED! it can be systematic. that's what this model is for. and tomorrow's post is all about HOW to make your idea sticky!

that model i'll share with you tomorrow has become my Framework for all things creative and everything i communicate.

thx to the Heath bros for writing this awesome book!