Matthew Dicks: evaluation

Transcript context

…What else? So we're basically talking about ways to become a better communicator and storyteller in business. You've shared a few tidbits here. One is, think of this personal inventory about yourself that makes you relatable. Try to share it in stories you tell, and presentations, and things like that. What else can people do to become better storytellers in business? I know this is a big question, but let's see where it goes. Let's go back to the idea that in business, you have to accept the fact that nobody wants to hear anything you have to say, that is not accepted by most people, even after I say it. So once you understand that, and once you truly believe it, there's essentially four ways to keep people listening to you in any story really, but especially in business, because really no one wants to listen to you in business. So the first is stakes, which we've really talked about already. You have to have stakes. In every good product story and every good PowerPoint... Everything, there are stakes, and they're set out and exactly the way I've described. All five of the stakes that I've described to you that I use in that story, Charity Thief can also be used in every business story, every PowerPoint deck, every entrepreneur pitch, everything. So stakes is one of them. Another one we've talked about is, surprise. I should absolutely be surprised in every talk that you give. Steve Jobs was a master of it. We could look at one of his talks, and I could show you how he planned it perfectly. Some others include suspense. So keeping an audience in suspense, and often suspense leads to surprise. So mastering the ability to be suspenseful. And then humor, daring to be funny, which no one in corporate America can do. Everyone wants to be funny. Every person I've ever met, who I've worked with, every business person in some way wanted to be funny, but that's really not actually what they want. They want to have been funny, because being funny means you must take a risk. You must say something that you believe is funny, and you expect an audience to also feel it's funny, and if it doesn't happen, that hurts. So people oftentimes tell me they want to be funny, but when I tell them how they need to be funny, they say, "Well, I can't say that." And then I say, "Well, that's the part that's funny." So I was working with a guy, sort of an executive at a company that you interact with every day. He was delivering a talk at the Javits Center, and he was going to be funny. We built in a talk, lots of jokes. He was ready to go. He went to the Javits Center, and four hours later he called me, and I said, "How'd it go?" He said, "I pulled out all the jokes." I said, "Why did you pull out all the jokes?" He said, "The first two speakers weren't funny at all. I felt like if I went on stage and I was funny, I was going to stick out like a sore thumb." I said, "No, you were going to rise from the ashes like a phoenix that everyone has been waiting to hear all day." It's the best thing in the world to follow two terrible people, and then go out there and land some jokes. But again, he thought, I have to stay within the confines of the herd rather than doing something different. But humor is a brilliant, and beautiful, and simple way to differentiate yourself from other people, but you have to be willing to try to do it. It's a scary thing for people. ing something different. But humor is a brilliant, and beautiful, and simple way to differentiate yourself from other people, but you have to be willing to try to do it. It's a scary thing for people. But I say it stakes, it's surprise, it's suspense, and it's humor. Those are the ways that you're going to. Stakes, it's surprise, it's suspense, and it's humor. Those are the ways that you're going to hold people and keep them listening. And if you're not engaged in one of those four things while you're speaking, people are not listening to you anymore.…

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