Why communication goes wrong...and how to fix it | Tim Pollard | TEDxBillings

Thank you very much and good morning, yes, I have always been fascinated by the topic of

communication

s, it is so full of riddles and paradoxes, for example, how many of you have ever sat through one of those horrible PowerPoint presentations, dozens of slides? , hundreds of vignettes, yes? all of you and guess what you totally hated it and you know it didn't work and yet knowing how many of you have done it to someone else is not that fun

communication

is very interesting so what I want to talk about this tomorrow that's why it's so important how most of the time it

goes

wrong

and how to fix it now when you think about how important it is, I mean I think it's proven throughout history that communication is probably the tool most important, if not the most powerful, you can. putting it in the hands of a human being is not just about how we give and receive ideas, but how we get many of those things we want that job we desperately need that project we want to be funded that donation we need to maintain our nonprofit afloat incredibly important I mean, history has shown, uh, history has always shown the enormous advantage that great communicators have, whether it's Steve Jobs or Winston Churchill, although interestingly, probably the most striking example in history is much darkest, most impressive communication achievement, is probably Adolf Hitler.

I mean Churchill, all he was doing was uniting people against tyranny, but Hitler took the most sophisticated and highly educated society of his time and persuaded them to support tyranny, madness and barbarism, that was Purely through the power of your voice, so communication is amazing. important and powerful, so what's the problem? We're not very good at that. Most of us freely admit that we have difficulty communicating as effectively as we would like, and the data absolutely confirms this. We did a big study on communication in the business world and what we found was that less than 30 percent of business presentations are considered good or better, two-thirds are considered mediocre or worse, and a really large number are much worse. , so we have this thing that's incredibly important, but we're just not very good at it.

Well, we obviously mean well, who here intends to punish their audience with slides? Don't do that, I think it's actually more interesting that I think what's happening is despite our good intentions, we're lured, we're seduced into doing really stupid things. I think a nice image here is sort of the mermaids of yesteryear. Do you remember the mermaids that attracted sailors? You know, unsuspecting sailors onto the rocks. a painting for a woman named ariel burgess this is us this is what's happening to us so this is you here this is your big next performance your big moment here are the rocks you're about to crash on and sink so what is he doing that? luring you away well, I would say they are these three deceptions or three mermaids the mermaid of the slides the mermaid of style with a girl combing her hair I like that and the mermaid of success now let's talk about these the mermaids slides I think we all understand We are very addicted to our technology when it comes to presentations for many of us, presentation equals slides, but that's really strange, so here you have to make this great presentation.

What is the first thing you do? You open PowerPoint and you start writing and starting to write feels good because you have the illusion of progress, but the interesting thing is that you keep writing and you keep writing, and all of that can mean that you're not really thinking about what you should be doing, so I will often ask you what he will do. What happens is that this would lead us to absolute madness. I often compare sort of powerpoint and keynote to tequila in the sense that they're not inherently bad, but given the right circumstances they'll make you do some really stupid things and, um, and you know. exactly where this ends, I mean, this is a slide deck built by one of the leading technology companies in the world.

They were trying to win a monster deal with this platform, but guess what for a two-hour meeting? Guess what they built? 121 slides with something simply absurd. complexity and little fonts that only dogs can hear, I mean it's crazy right, my wife is a counselor, she recently went to an online seminar on depression and it was just one of these sliding fire hoses and I asked her after I said: Hello, honey. You learned? I didn't learn anything except that now I am depressed, which is not the result we are looking for at all, so the first deception, the first way we are deceived into stupidity is through contempt, the second is really.

Interesting is the siren of style because we have been told that great communication is this eye contact, body language and power poses, as if that were really palpably absurd. How many of you have ever walked out of a presentation and said I really hate it? make any eye contact with me it was embarrassing, of course you died, we didn't even think about that, but there are companies out there, dozens of them, in fact, an entire industry that still wants to tell you that's what you need. Doing it right is crazy. I can prove it a couple of years ago.

I was asked to speak at a company leadership conference. I'm done and they told me to stay until the end because the CEO was going to give this closing speech. It's absolutely amazing, so it's okay. so I stayed and he gets up at the end and checks every box. He has the eye contact of a peregrine falcon. He has the body language of Kramer from Seinfeld. He is resourceful. It's fun. He has this impeccable suit. There are no nerves. He's checking every box. except what I noticed was that their theme was the 10 things we need to do well this year, they were actually very good, but there was no narrative flow or story within the ten things which I thought, well that's very interesting ever. anyway, so it comes to an end and the crowd leaves. wild, they're throwing flowers, they're throwing underwear, I mean, it's a little cultish, um and anyway, but then the meeting comes to an end, it's a true story and I get a little good, not the part of the underwear but the real story and I just grabbed someone.

At the end I said, what do you think he says? Oh, it was amazing. I said yes. Can I ask you a question? How many of the ten things could you name for me? Please, two. That is a deep story because what it tells is more. What we've been told about communications is actually

wrong

, this guy had checked all the boxes of traditional thinking but had totally failed as a communicator and that's what happens when they trick you and make you prioritize style over substance now the third hoax the third The mermaid is actually the most interesting, it's not the one we think about much.

I'm going to call it the siren of success and what I'm going to argue is that almost all of us don't really understand what success in communication is. That seems like a strange statement, so let me, it's a lot easier if I draw it for you, so let me draw it for you, so I hope this shows up on the screen, yeah, cool, so it's you and you're making a great presentation. your boss let's imagine you are trying to finance this big project, it's very important to you now, that meeting is important, yes, so you want me to continue, you say, yes, I made it, but what's the problem is that the most important meeting No , never why, because the decision is not made there some time later.

There is another meeting and it is a meeting to which you are not invited and in this meeting the decision-making body is going to decide whether your project receives funding or not. Now no, that's really interesting because when you think about it that way, what you realize is that you know it's important that everything

goes

well, yes, but actually what's more important is that this person can retell your story. story effectively, so what I would say is the only The most important word in communications is actually retailing or representability because this is always true in sales this is the purchasing group in business this is the purchasing committee management or the board if you are talking to a donor this is the grants committee now it is always true this should completely change the way we think about communications because the trick is that we obsess over the first meeting so we think yes , the first meeting was a success, but no, no, no, your message is so crisp, so clean, so compelling that you can actually achieve success in the second meeting, that's really it. deep so those are our three deceptions the lies that we have been told that lead us to do really stupid things how many of us here have been deceived by one or all three things well all of us so the question is how do you solve it?

This can be solved and it's not an academic question because each of you in this room will have many moments in your lives when you're going to give a really important presentation and you really need it to go well, so this is personal, how do I do it? make sure you can do it right, there's actually a tool I want to show you that will completely defeat these three mermaids. I know Ted Talks are lofty and don't always get down to the practical side, but I want to give you a very, very practical tool here the tool is called a planned results pyramid and it's incredibly simple, it's kind of like a cocktail napkin, so If you were creating a message presentation, anything, including a Ted Talk, what would you do well?

I would start from the top and I'm just going to think about what do I want my audience to do, what action do I want them to take, what decision do I want them to make and that's very, very important, but that raises a very interesting question, how do we make good decisions? the decisions? let me illustrate that imagine I wanted you to make a decision which was to raise your hand and play a game with me we don't have time we won't do it and here are the rules of the game I will ask you a simple trivia question if you do it right you will receive ten dollars if you do it wrong, you owe me a dollar and you can ask a friend for help if you want now, if we played that game, someone here would raise their hand and the moment you did, the moment you raised your hand, you would be illustrating one of the most important principles of communication, which is that in human beings action is preceded by belief;

In other words, we make decisions based on the beliefs we have about that decision, so if you had raised your hand on the other hand, it would have been for three reasons, one is that I think I could probably answer that he said it was easy, two is, I like the risk reward, ten for one, yeah, that works, and three is, I'm not going to embarrass myself because I can. Get help if I need it right and I can prove it, so I said I'll ask you a question about particle physics. It's 20 if you win. 20 for me if you lose and you're alone.

Do you still make a decision yes I'm not going to play that game why three new beliefs I'm not going to be able to answer that question I hate the risk reward and I'll surely be embarrassed so come with me on this so if in humans the Action is preceded by a belief and if that's true, what that means is the most important question you'll ever ask when designing any presentation, it's that right, what does my audience need to believe in order to take the action I want them to take? to hire me, whatever it is?

Now you think that through and you write that in the middle of this pyramid and what that gives you is a small number of beliefs or big ideas, that's what we want, a powerful narrative driven by ideas now, once you get there, it's relatively simple if you know what the beliefs are then you just ask a final question, well what would my audience need to know to believe what kind of facts, data or evidence and you just write them at the bottom lined up below the supporting idea ? It's incredibly simple but it's incredibly powerful now I understand it's totally academic and theoretical so let me finish by showing you a really powerful example of this in real life.

I was asked to speak at a fundraising banquet for a non-governmental organization. Profit who wanted to raise money for a night shelter for homeless teenagers. This is a tragic situation that absolutely needs to be resolved, so I sat down and thought, do you know how I would do this? This banquet presentation. Well, the action is obviously very simple. I wanted people to donate to the night shelter, so now I'm starting to think, well, what would the audience have to believe? That's really interesting. I talked to the CEO and she said it's really interesting. Homeless teenagers will look really scary, but they do it. to defend themselves from the many dangers that they face because it is a very dangerous environment, but the strange thing about that is that the donors would look at these really scary children and say, I don't want to give them to them, they are just bad children, so the lightit lights up in my brain like okay, there's the first big idea, the first big idea is guys, these are not bad kids, they deserve our love, not our condemnation, that was actually my opening, that's good, but It doesn't get you there. because I also knew that the audience would know that this organization had a daycare so they could easily look at this and say well, okay, they're not bad kids, but we already have a daycare, don't we?

Yes, except for the second big idea, the The real danger comes after dark. What happens when a child is taken out onto the street at seven at night in the middle of January? By the way, at this point you can see a very good example of how you can test any idea. How could he have demonstrated that idea? I do it with a photo of just a child sleeping in a dumpster. It's a photo they had in this organization sleeping in the dumpster in the middle of winter. That's great. It's not there yet, so they would understand that they're not bad kids, they'd understand that they're in danger, but they could easily ask, well, okay, but is this the best use of my money?

I mean, there are many places I can offer, is this really it? Good place to invest, I think that led me to the final and very powerful idea, because what I wanted to achieve was what I needed to make them believe that this is not a simple fundraising banquet nor an old need, in fact, you are going to save. a life tonight your gift will actually save lives and there it is that was the intellectual argument the intellectual architecture of an eight minute presentation now what I want you to see is how it completely solves my three problems without even thinking about the slides, okay?

I'll get to the slides later, but what I'm thinking about is the intellectual architecture and that's what matters, so the slide queue doesn't move the content dog, so the slides do, but then the second thing solves Completely siren style, I'm not thinking. on how I am going to present this, I am thinking about what I need to say and why I will think about how I will present it later and finally, and most importantly, I have completely solved my retail capacity problem thanks to a simple and sharp Idea-driven narrative is the easiest story you can tell because ideas stick so hard in the brain and, hello, isn't that what ted is all about?

So this model and tool are literally cocktail napkins and will completely transform your communication. You're probably wondering if we raised the money and we did, it was very successful and that was very, very important, but the only reason I tell you this is because it's you, all of you here, all of us have had many times in our lives where we need to make a critical presentation and it has to go well and we can't afford to be dragged onto the rocks of any of those three problems and that's what I hope you can take away from this morning, so what was my action ?

I want you to commit to being a better world-class communicator and how can you achieve this? There are three key ideas. Communication number one is vital. We need to be good at it, so be careful with the three mermaids. Two-retail capacity is the standard we should aspire to. It is the key that will unlock everything else and three, the pyramid is the tool that will get you there. Thanks for your time.