Being clear and concise when speaking publically

Introduction

Like many people, my first introduction to public speaking was at high school. It’s a common requirement that students should experience speaking in public (or at a minimum to their schoolmates) alongside all of the preparation and research that goes into this beforehand.

These days, when I’m engaged and inspired by what I’m talking about I actually really enjoy public speaking and presenting. For example, earlier this year (February, 2024) I gave a talk at the biannual Congreso Internacional de Oftalmología Pediátrica, in Puerto Vallarta, México. And later this year (September, 2024) I’ve been invited to present at the XXX Congreso Boliviano de Oftalmología, in Cochamamba, Bolivia.

But for the longest time when I was younger I’d have so many ideas bouncing around my head that whatever point I was trying to make (if indeed there ever was one!) would be lost in the flood of rambling that actually came out my mouth. Through university and into post-graduate studies, I had a million ideas running through my mind; I would be learning new things, making synaptic connections in my head. Some of the best days when completing my PhD would be when I spent the entire day reading new research papers and thinking about how these new ideas could fit into my work.

But with such excitement it was often the case that if anyone got caught in a conversation with me, and one of my “great new ideas!” they’d often come away from what I’d said either confused, or not picking up the same excitement I felt I had expressed. More often than not, and certainly increasing in line with however excited I was, I would usually not be able to get my point across as accurately, efficiently, or clearly as I wanted. What sounded right in my head often didn’t come out my mouth the same way.

Is this just the way I operate? Maybe.
Am I just a scattered thinker? Perhaps.
Can I simply not organize the thoughts in my head? Surely not.
Maybe I didn’t know what I was talking about. No way!

In this article lets consider some frameworks we can use to take all of those exciting, nebulous ideas that bounce around our minds and by applying a little structured thinking turn them into crystalised ideas that others can understand, respond, and engage with.

What makes us jabber, babble, and ramble?

There are perhaps three specific things that cause us to scattershot our ideas to the outside world.

First is when we begin to speak but don’t actually have a point in mind. This can happen to anyone, regardless of their personality type. It is a very natural situation, especially when we are excited about what we wish to say, because our thoughts are just nebulous electric signals between our synapses. Our minds are incredible thinking machines, super fast, intuitive, and inventive. But when we try to put these thoughts into words, there must necessarily be a translation process that converts those electrical impulses into coherent, structured output.

And especially if we are, for example, speaking in public for the first time, or we’re on the spot, or we’re under pressure, or we’re speaking about a new topic area, then it should be of no surprise that crystalising our thoughts can be one of the hardest things to do. And then suppose we look to social media and see other people, who are very articulate public speakers and immediately judge ourselves to be lesser than them. Or less capable. Now, to be clear here, we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves. After all, we haven’t seen the process those other speakers have gone through; to take their nebulous thoughts and wrap structure and meaning around them, and the endless practicing that goes on behind the scenes.

But in any case, the first thing holding us back from speaking articulately is not actually having a point in mind.

Next, the second element that is often missing is structure. As I mentioned in the introduction, my most common tripping up point was being so excited at, for example, learning something new, or having seen different ideas put together in a new and intriguing way, that I would then end up speaking almost a stream of consciousness when it came to actually expressing these thoughts out loud. Imagine you’re giving a presentation, how often have you progressed chronologically through the set of thoughts in your mind? We talk out loud about all of the ideas we had, our spoken stream of consciousness is our minds replaying (again, out loud) the entire history of our thought process. The random connections we made that ended up going nowhere. Until finally we get to the really exciting bit we’d like to express. We think to ourselves let’s go through all of those historical details so I can process them as I speak. Or we think, surely I need to include all this background otherwise the best bit won’t make sense?. The danger of course is that, without having applied any structure, prior to our speaking, that we end up either not getting to the point at all, or reducing the power of the point we eventually get to.

Thus, again, if we introduce a little bit of a structure, within a framework, then everything becomes so much clearer.

Finally, the third aspect that is missing is specificity.

More often than not, when we spend some time studying, listening to, or watching those we consider to be clear thinkers, clear writers, clear speakers, we realise the real talent to their clarity of thought isn’t necessarily that their ideas are novel or insightful. I mean, it could be, but I don’t think that is enough on it’s own. Instead, what clear speakers do is they sharpen those ideas with specificity.

So, we must focus on those activities that we can practice in order to bring specificity to what we’re saying.

Get to the point

First, when we lack a point, what can we do?

The easiest thing to get to the point is to include the word “one” when you first introduce your topic. For example, the “one” thing you must know about this topic is “x”. Thus you’re using language and what you’re saying to actually guide your thinking. To be able to think for yourself, before you even have the chance to ramble, consider reinforcing in you mind what is the one thing I’m going to talk about?

Now it might be that when you use the word “one”, or the phrase “the one thing” in a sentence, or some other variation, that you don’t end up saying anything ground-breaking at all. For example, suppose you’re talking about an employee training program you recently led and you say:

The one thing you need to know about our employee training program is that it improved overall productivity.

Again, while this isn’t ground-breaking, I would nontheless argue that it’s far better than starting with, say, “Let’s talk about our employee training program. As you know, three months ago, we had this discussion where we talked about five different options for syllabus structure, and then we had a meeting where we decided on a final best structure, and then we did all this research and then we combined it with this and that and cross function, etc., etc., etc”. After 10 minutes of words and sentences coming out of your mouth you still haven’t got to the point, and we haven’t learnt anything about the employee training program.

Thus, first, to at least give you a basic direction of thought and speech: “the one thing is …” leading to ”… it improved overall productivity”. And then you can go into the details and expand from there.

Leading on from this you might then notice the chance to further refine your point. So just because your opening line was “the one thing you need to know is it improved overall productivity”, as you talk through it, you might see for yourself that, actually, the point is not just it improved productivity, but actually for example it generated a great sense of employee ownership over their work and motivation for what we’re trying to achieve. And that was really why it improved productivity.

Your point doesn’t have to be set in stone. You have flexibility as you talk to refine it.

So remember, the first thing when you introduce a point is to consider the use of the word “one”, or a phrase derived from this, and start with something like “the one thing you need to know”.

Add structure

The second thing is just because you introduce the point doesn’t mean you are immune from meandering. We still need to add structure to our thoughts and speech. Plenty of practising before your presentation will help exercise your mind muscle memory™ so that your main points become second nature. At which point you will find that improvisation becomes more natural, helping you to think on your feet and get additional points across. One particular framework common to improvisation is the “three line scene”.

The first line sets the scene, and we already have this setup from the “Get to the point” section above, which covered the “one” thing you need to know about the topic is “x”. At this point then, everyone will know the topic, everyone will know what you want to talk about. And so we can move on.

Enter the second line, which adds depth. You can add depth in two ways. First is for you to go deeper into that first point you made. You could say, “what I mean by ‘x’ is”, and thus you explain a little bit more about that “one” thing. Last time we said “the one thing is …” and this led to ”… it improved overall productivity”. And so now we can add depth with something like:

What I mean by improved overall productivity is that both the number of quality control issues decreased over the last month, but we also observed that the number of employees opting to come into the office and hold in person meetings, at the whiteboard, working through difficult problems together, proactively, has shown a significant positive response.

Alternatively you can add some depth by introducing a surprising detail. Something that people wouldn’t know if they were just considering this at face value. Here you could introduce a surprising detail like:

But the surprising thing about it is that even though the training program improved overall productivity, it seems that employee engagement scores have not increased as expected.

And so you’ve added intrigue to what you’re saying. You’ve introduced an “oh, why? moment. Now you’ve got people really on the edge of their seat; they’ll want to know the reason why; and so then you bring in the third line “what’s next?”.

With “what’s next?”, again, you have two options. You either open up the conversation with a question or you can close the conversation with an answer.

So let’s say we open up the conversation with a question. We could ask, ”… and the question is how do we find out why our employee’s engagement has not increased? Discuss”. Thus we’ve now opened up the floor so that everyone can contribute. The audience is no longer sitting in a warm lecture theatre falling asleep - instead they’re engaged with the surprising results and the depth you’ve added to that “one thing” point you made at the beginning.

Or you can bring the answer yourself and use a phrase like “and it’s because …”. For example:

… and it’s because employees didn’t feel ownership over the direction of our corporate strategy. So we need to give our employees a voice and way to express their thoughts and suggestions as to either our overall strategy, or some subset of who we are and what we stand for.

Be specific

Now, you’ve probably noticed that with our introducing improvisation there were already clues about the need for specificity. Thus variations of the phrase “what I mean by …”, likely talking about the surprising thing introduced above, or about the phrase “and because this and that”. So we’re already trying to dig at details.

But let me suggest another framework that you can use to practice discussing specificity; ‘Via Negativa’. Effectively, this refers to describing what it specificially is not rather than what it specifically is. I’m referring here to how, in my opinion, it can be really difficult to articulate exactly what something is about, whereas it is far easier to say what it is not about.

For example:

And it’s because the training sessions, while effective, were perceived as too lengthy and intensive. So we need to break them into shorter, more engaging modules.

This is the easy way to help us rethink - even if we’re on the spot; we’re under pressure.

What are we trying to say?
What is the specific things that people need to understand?

Conclusions

The one thing you need to know about our employee training program is that it improved overall productivity.

What I mean by improved overall productivity is that both the number of quality control issues decreased over the last month, but we also observed that the number of employees opting to come into the office and hold in person meetings, at the whiteboard, working through difficult problems together, proactively, has shown a significant positive response.

But the surprising thing about it is that even though the training program improved overall productivity, it seems that employee engagement scores have not increased as expected.

And it’s because employees didn’t feel ownership over the direction of our corporate strategy. So we need to give our employees a voice and way to express their thoughts and suggestions as to either our overall strategy, or some subset of who we are and what we stand for.

Introduce a clear main point (one is sufficient).
Add depth with a surprising detail.
Conclude with an explanation and a proposed solution.

And these three points should be backed up with plenty of practice before you even step foot on the stage so that you know them without even thinking, freeing up space for you to improvise where appropriate.