Presentation as inspiration

I’m a bit of a sceptic when it comes to inspirational presentations. All too often just firing people up without giving them the tools they need apply that energy can leave them no better off than when they started. Often, in fact, they’re worse off, because they feel like a failure, for not being able to ‘just do it’ like they believe everyone else can. Repeatedly trying and failing isn’t good for you.

(Side note… Yes, I know, the fans of motivational speakers here are shouting at the screen saying “But that’s the point – if you don’t try, you can’t succeed”: while that’s true, it misses the rest of the picture about what to do if you do try but don’t make it. No matter what the big gurus of motivational speaking will tell you, that’s statistically the more likely outcome. I make a reasonable amount of work out of helping those people let down by the motivational speaking circuit. But before you rush to burn me, know that I’ve seen some fantastic motivational speakers too!).

But I’m going to make an exception here and introduce this video. Take a few minutes to watch it before you read on. As I understand it, it’s a Sikh, presenting in a Baptist Church, in the presence of a Jewish Rabbi (which sounds like the line up for a joke, I know, but it isn’t). I’m not making any statement about the politics here (though I make no apology for them either!). It starts simple, just like any other technically competent presentation, but just wait!

https://www.facebook.com/scroll.in/videos/1307124816037062/

Hopefully you agree with me that this was one fine presentation – at least if you measure it by how well it appears to be received online. The last time I looked it had

• 11 million views
• 200 thousand plus shares
• 68 thousand positive reactions (on Facebook alone)

So that’s some serrrrious impact.

But let’s look at what we can learn from it – because there are a lot of subtle tools in the presentation, but there’s one big one I want to concentrate on. It’s the rhetorical question asking: what if this darkness isn’t to do with death, the tomb but the darkness that comes before light – the darkness of the womb. There are three fabulous bits of technique here.

Firstly the timing is perfect. Before that key question, things are, as described in the presentation, just get darker… and darker… and darker… and then this simple question (simple, ha!) turns all of that on its head in one sentence. It offers hope in what looks like a dire situation, and anyone listening to it grasps on to that hope in an almost desperate way. If we agree at all with the darkness before the question, we’re suddenly hooked, hoping for a light in the dark (no pun intended).

Secondly, the rhyme of ‘tomb’ and womb’.  As humans, we’re pattern-seeking animals. It’s one of the things that helps us survive as a species, because it allowed our ancestors to see danger coming long before it was visible… we learned the patterns and inferred from them. We knew danger was coming before it arrived because of the signs being the same as they were last week… Consequently, we’re attuned to patterns – and you don’t get much more of a simple, powerful pattern than a simple rhyming pair like that.  Immediately our subconscious minds grasp onto it, lapping it up and committing it to memory.

Thirdly, the use of the analogy of the womb leads beautifully into a call for action. What does the midwife tell us to do? Once we’re hooked, memory-wise by the pattern of the rhyme, the analogy follows this up with a semi-specific indication of of what to do.  The use of tomb-to-womb attracts our attention and gets us motivated but – importantly – it gives the audience an indication of what they should do next.

• Don’t panic – breathe
• Fight back – push

Brilliantly the analogy doesn’t tell us the messy details of how to do the latter, where we might all start to argue with each other, but stops short, staying at the level of unifying agreement.  Sheer genius.

So what can you do like this in your presentations?

• Patterns are powerful – anything you can do to add pattern to your presentation is potentially very helpful. Rhymes and repeats are great examples. So is alliteration. (See what I did there? 🙂 )
• Analogy – there’s a lot of research (trust me or read the book!) to the suggest that the analogies we use to explain/describe things set the framework for how the audience responds to thing. If crime is a ‘scourge’ or an ‘epidemic’ makes a huge difference to how people think it’s best to respond to it, for example. Pick your words carefully!