Your Transformational Topic

I have long been fascinated by the law of constraints. I didn’t even realise that it had a name when I started using it to coach and train people in martial arts.

When people were having trouble with sparring or tournament fighting, I would look at what they were doing and find the main thing that we would need to work on first—their main constraint.

Often, this was how they stood and moved initially. They had poor balance and connection to the floor, which made them slow to move out of the way and unable to land any technique with power.

At this point, working on any other technical aspect of fighting is useless. Teaching them to kick harder or higher would waste time until they got their balance and stance right. I learned this intuitively over a decade or so of coaching martial arts. I never learned the term Theory of Constraints until much later.

Theory of Constraints

Simply put, the Theory of Constraints says that there is one specific bottleneck in any process. Fixing any other problem will not give increased results until the critical bottleneck is fixed. Once that is fixed, another point will become the critical bottleneck. And so you can continue to improve and refine a company process, a fighter’s technique, or even a mechanism.

In my first job as an industrial mechanic in the textile industry (starting at 16), I had a similar experience. I learned to identify the problem and then look at all the systems or processes that interacted with the faulty system, focusing on the most likely ones. You can only work on one thing at a time. Playing with all of them at once is a recipe for disaster.

Working with speakers over the past decade or so, I have had the experience of many, many people coming to me saying that they would love to speak from the stage. I give them some feedback on their ideas and plans, but 90% of them never do anything.

I have determined that the critical bottleneck to this is the lack of a compelling topic for their talk.

It sounds simple. And it is. Like staying balanced when fighting sounds simple, and it is, but there is far more to it, particularly when the fists and feet are flying.

So today, I want to break down the process I use to help people find their compelling topic. But before we get to that, I want to explore why this is such an important aspect of speaking. The right topic is not only transformational for your audience, it transforms how you approach it, and how you ultimately deliver it.

The Block

The problem most would-be speakers face is that they have specialised knowledge that they want to share, but because one thing is tied to another, it isn’t obvious where they should start to make sense.

Most experts will feel comfortable covering their subject in 3 hours, but when you ask them to do it in 30 minutes, panic sets in as they wonder where to start.

Most find this an overwhelming problem, which is why they never find the answer. In this post, I will show you how to resolve it.

But there is more to it than merely overcoming overwhelm.

The Power of a Compelling Topic

When you do find the right topic and the right frame, then it is energising. It propels you forward. You can’t wait to share it because you are excited about the idea and the impact that this idea will have on your audience and the world.

Your compelling topic offers transformation to your ideal audience, but it also has the power to transform you in terms of how you deliver your talk.

The Four Pillars

I believe there are four pillars to your refined topic.

1. Outcome

2. Audience

3. Engagement

4. Excitement

When you meet the needs of each of these pillars, your talk is already set up to be a success- even before any writing or practice is done!

Let’s go through each of these in turn. As we go through, it will become obvious that each of these pillars flows into each other—almost as if they are four parts of a whole—which they are. But I find it most effective to think about them separately so that you can be intentional about implementing them all.

1. Outcome

This is where you need to be selfish.

What is your outcome from this talk? What will it do for you, your mission, your business, or whatever you work on?

Take some time to think about how an effective, well-executed talk will move you forward. Make it real in your mind, and experience how it will feel to achieve this outcome. This should fuel your passion to execute this talk well.

But you also need to clarify what actions you want the audience to take from the talk and consider how best to encourage those actions. So, you want to consider your outcome in the longer term as well as from this particular talk or event.

2. Audience

You have to be clear on who your target audience is. I cannot stress this enough. This isn’t anything new, and I won’t go into detail about how to generate your ideal avatar. There are plenty of resources to help you already out there.

When you know who your audience is, you want to consider the transformational aspect of your message. What are they like before and after the transformation? What is their current pain? What would get their attention?

What can you share that highlights or showcases the transformation or what is possible? What is the frame that will give them inspiration, hope or ability to take action.

You need to know who you want to talk to, who will be in the audience of the event you are speaking to, and the intersection of those two groups. You need to understand who is in the audience that isn’t your target audience so that you can engage them, too. (See issue #23 -Your Two Audiences)

3. Engagement

With your knowledge of your target audience, you must be able to speak in a way that makes sense to them. They should see themselves in your stories. They must identify with the message you are sharing. But there must also be some unknown.

I often discuss my Puzzle Theory of Structure, which holds that people are puzzle-solving organisms. If you present them with something that doesn’t quite make sense or is incomplete, they will be engaged in completing the puzzle to find the answer. This sort of engagement is automatic. They can’t help it.

Think of it as a game or tease. You are giving your audience tasty breadcrumbs they want to follow to see where they will lead. The key is that every breadcrumb must be tasty in its own right, just like every scene in the movie needs to be complete and satisfying to lead the viewer to the next scene.

The key is to present the right promise with a premise that requires an explanation or revelation to make sense. This is the frame, hook or angle of your talk that makes for a compelling topic. Engagement is all about your audience caring enough to want to see what happens next.

4. Excitement

If you cannot be excited about your topic, you have no hope of your audience being excited.

Read that sentence again because I can’t put it any other way. That is the heart of it. You must be excited about your message and what it can do for your audience, for the industry or for the world.

When you are excited about the potential, it is easier to add excitement to the stories you tell and the experiences you share. Excitement is infectious. If you can infect your audience with excitement, they are more likely to take action or refer you to others.

Many people think excitement is over-the-top enthusiasm, but this isn’t reality. Often, the best excitement starts as a low-key commitment and builds throughout the talk. Excitement should be the infectious heart of the talk, not a performative exhibition of passion.

One key is to shine the spotlight on your message and on your audience rather than on yourself. If you are excited about your message and your audience, it will be much easier for them to share the excitement.

Putting it Together

Ultimately, your talk will depend on what you want to achieve. This will impact how you weight your efforts among the four pillars. Each talk is different, and there is not a single ‘right’ way to do anything.

For example, if you are giving a TEDx talk to highlight the research you have spent the last six years working on, you will struggle to give the subject full coverage in fifteen minutes.

In that time frame, your best bet may be to pick a slice of the research or one experience or outcome from your work that can grab the audience's attention and cause those interested to find out more.

Although this might look overwhelming, if you focus on the pillars one at a time, you can quickly identify your compelling topic. Once you have that, you will be on your way to a great talk.

Transformational Topic Workshop

This compelling topic constraint is so important I have decided to offer a weekend workshop for up to six people who want to identify their compelling topic. This virtual workshop will take place on Zoom and is a rapid implementation workshop.

This means I will work personally with the group, and everyone will work to end the workshop with a clear, compelling topic and an outline of your talk that you are excited about. Just $300 for the weekend workshop. Guaranteed! Or I will keep working with you until you are excited about your compelling topic and outline.

If you have wanted to speak from the stage or virtually but have not gotten your talk together, or if you have given a talk or presentation that didn’t go as well as you would like, this workshop may be for you.

All you need to do to find out more is book a time to catch up with me on Zoom for a quick chat to see if you are a good fit for the workshop.

Click to book a chat in my calendar.

Snippets is a section where I comment on interesting text I encountered in the previous week.

In a meeting this week, I heard a couple of terms that tickled my fancy:

Someone referred to Mona as an AI Dolphin. I like this because the sub-culture talks of business people as either sharks or dolphins. One plays well with others! I thought it was interesting because you know that the culture works when this sort of thing is used in conversation, and everyone adopts and understands the terms.

In the same meeting, someone described a situation as a Giant Cloud of Clutter. I was struck by the simplicity, yet depth of the term. You know instantly that it is opaque, engulfing and confusing. You get the feeling—all in four words.

I also found this to be food for thought:

Unpacking Wisdom is a weekly section where I dive into a famous (or not so famous) quote and explore how this can apply to the Compelling Communicator.

Bill was talking about business, but the same is certainly true of presenting or speaking. I have seen others and been guilty myself of connecting with an audience, getting a great response, and assuming that it was because I am good, and assuming that this will continue.

The reality is that many factors can impact the reception of your talk, from things as mundane as what time of day the presentation is to who spoke before you.

Assuming that you can replicate the same reception from your audience by just replicating your performance is comfortable, but it is also too simplistic. You need to realise that there are many factors, and you must do everything you can to engage your audience at every event.

Stand-up comedians know this. No matter how “Famous” they get, they can still bomb when trying out new material at the clubs.

What I am up to this week…

Professionally:

I was inspired to assemble this workshop to find your transformational topic. I have some upcoming speaking opportunities, more details when they are confirmed. This has been a quiet month for Instructional Design, which has given me time to work on other things.

Recreationally:

I got to meet a co-worker physically, whom I have been working with virtually for about a year. Three of us who work together had lunch. It was great!

What I am watching:

I started watching the first season of The White Lotus, and I am enjoying it. A week ago I saw the movie Late Night with the Devil, which I can recommend to anyone who likes a good horror movie (clever rather than gory).