The Four Pillars to Framing Your Idea

Often, the reason you give a talk is that you are sharing an idea—something that you feel has merit and that can possibly make a difference in the lives of your audience.

But the reality is that most of us have no real strategy or knowledge about how to share ideas in a compelling and engaging way. -That is the point of this week’s article.

When we talk about framing an idea, we want to focus on four pillars. These pillars are essential for ensuring that your talk is effective and resonates with your audience. They are not in any particular order; the key is that you want all four of them. You will also notice there is some overlap between them; this is to be expected as the pillars share the weight of the idea. Your goal is to strengthen all of these pillars as much as you can and remember that the weakest pillar determines the ultimate strength of the structure.

Pillar 1: Accessibility

Your talk must be accessible to the audience you are addressing. They need to understand the idea you are presenting. It is crucial that they grasp the idea to the degree that they can imagine themselves using it.

If you present an overly technical explanation of your idea to a non-technical audience, you have made this idea inaccessible. Anything that causes an audience to pause and consider while you keep talking is a moment of inaccessibility, which I refer to as a speed bump. Your goal is to remove any and all speed bumps. Often, this is done by simplifying your message. Sometimes, this can be done by using effective metaphors or analogies (which we will see more of in Pillar 4).

Pillar 2: Engagement

The second pillar is engagement. How will you engage the audience with your idea?

If you present the best Rocket League strategy or tactic ever devised, it will not engage an audience that has no interest in Rocket League. The engagement context is missing. However, if you explain how you developed the strategy or tactic, you can engage a non-Rocket League audience by focusing on the process of developing a strategy. This makes the content engaging and relevant.

To do this effectively, you need to examine your idea and your audience objectively. How does this idea most strongly impact your audience? How can we frame this idea to engage this audience and show the maximum impact and benefit to them?

Pillar 3: Actionability

The third pillar is actionability. Your talk must include actionable elements. The audience needs to see how they can use the idea, understand what it means to them, and apply it in the context of their life. This makes the idea practical and useful.

Even the most abstract talk on quantum physics should include what this idea may make possible, how it might be used and what this discovery might lead to. The most common mistake I see when discussing an idea is leaving this pillar out.

The more actionable your idea is, the more engaged your audience will be. As I have mentioned in previous issues, including a call to action (CTA) empowers the audience, and showing the actionability of an idea can have the same effect.

Pillar 4: Context

The fourth pillar is context. This involves explaining where the idea fits within the structural model of the world that exists in your audience's minds. How does this work in the context of other things that the audience already understands?

You can use metaphors to help the audience understand the idea in the context of how the world is perceived. For example, you can say, "This new idea works Just like this different thing works," or, "We always thought this, but actually, it's this." This provides a positional context for the idea of living on the map of the mind.

Metaphors and analogies are shortcuts to understanding, and picking the right ones will make a massive difference in the engagement and impact of your talk. But when you don’t get it right, you can create real problems.

Conclusion

The four pillars of framing an idea when giving a talk are Accessibility, Engagement, Actionability, and Context. These pillars have obvious overlaps, but I find that if you look at them individually, you will find opportunities to strengthen your talk or presentation. Strengthening one pillar automatically strengthens the other pillars.

Whenever you present an idea, make sure you know who your audience is, and consider these pillars to increase the effectiveness of your talk.

Unpacking Wisdom is a weekly section in which I explore a famous (or not so famous) quote and how it applies to the Compelling Communicator.

Something you may not know about me is that I was a Shodan (black belt) in Kyokushin Karate, and I taught for many years, even taking over and running the dojo for several years. While Karate was much more structured than Jeet Kune Do (Bruce Lee’s martial art), I agree with his quote.

If you are too regimented in your approach, you are doomed to fail.

You must treat every opponent as different because they are different. My students had different strengths and abilities than I did, so their strategy would maximise the use of these abilities. You must react to new tactics and strategies employed by your opponent, but there is a difference between reacting and being reactive. You must react, adapt and forge ahead with a new strategy of your own to dominate them.

What does this have to do with speaking?

Everything. It all applies equally. Every audience is different, you must prepare for each audience. You cannot go in with the talk you did for a different audience, without adapting it for the audience you are about to face.

You must be prepared to adapt your approach if you find the audience's reaction is not what you expected. But you cannot live in reaction to the audience. You may change direction, but you need to push forward in that direction.

As a speaker coach, I use the same philosophy as I did with my martial arts students. You may be more or less humorous on the stage than I am, and you may have a more or less charismatic persona on the stage than I have.

It doesn’t matter what your strengths are. What matters is that you identify them and leverage them to maximum effect. Beware of mentors or advice that tells you how to do things rather than introducing you to frameworks that you can utilise and adjust to fit your individual strengths.

What I am up to this week…

Professionally:

I have a lot of Instructional Design work and coaching for the upcoming TEDxUoWaikato.

Recreationally:

Starting detailed planning for our 500th episode, live recording of The Chris and Sam Podcast.

What I am reading:

Re-read the Dungeon Crawler Carl series of books by Matt Dinniman.

What I am watching:

re-watched season 3 of The Boys in preparation for watching season 4.