Ah, the secret elixir for great speaking! And yet, it is a secret no more. The Three Ones(tm) is your guide to always sounding smart, crisp and knowledgeable. Here are the three secrets:
-One sentence
-One topic
-One breath
Make each sentence about one topic, and one topic only. Brains can only understand one thing at a time. If you have more than one topic in your sentence, your audience will not know what they are supposed to remember. The result? They probably won’t remember anything. You will have overloaded their brains. So keep it simple.
The most important thing you can do to signal the end of your sentence is to lower your pitch to indicate a period or full-stop. This is the signal your audience is waiting for. Until they know the sentence is over, they will stay in ‘listening’ mode. Once they know you have finished, they will switch to ‘processing’ mode. This is when they will review what you said and commit it to memory. If you have given them one topic, it will be easy for them to remember it. This ease will translate into a positive feeling about listening to you. Sort of like, “Hey, I can follow what this person is saying. I could listen to MORE of this!” And isn’t that what we want people to think when we speak?
Next time, we will talk about how The Three Ones works with your brain. After all, you can only think about one thing at a time, too!
