Commit To Clarity

What’s the number one most important thing in a shortlist interview – or, really, any presentation? Pete suggests that it’s about the clarity of your message. Focusing on anything else creates a danger of getting in your own way. Check this latest post out, and let us know how it lands on you in the chat box below.

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I was working with a group of seven Architects this week and there was this one particular woman who was clearly experienced she knew what she was talking about she was an expert in her field but she was rattled about this presentation that she was responsible for and every time we got her up to speak she kind of struggled and really I think what was going on for her was she was seeing that other people were really eloquent and she felt like she needed to compete with them or be just as eloquent as as them and what happened was she was scripting herself out and she was creating poetry and it it it was really nice sounding and whenever she read what she had written it was very pleasant very evocative uh really great word choices but it didn’t sound natural at all it didn’t sound like presentation it sounded like writing and what was tripping her up on top of that was she had written a number of really long wordy sentences and she just couldn’t remember them so she kept referring to her notes and ultimately just kept defaulting to reading and she knew that’s not good I can’t read during this presentation so after a while I had the opportunity to sit down with her and work with her and I didn’t want to feel like I was taking anything away from her I I really just kind of helped her talk through her content and helped her understand what her main point was and in the process of this we stripped it down to its Bare Bones and two things happened at once she recognized what her main point was and she recognized that she was kind of getting in her own way with all of this word and all of this really nice evocative poetry I didn’t take anything away from her I think what she recognized was oh I need to take this thing out of my way and just be good with simple Clarity and I was so relieved because once she did that her personality showed up and she sounded powerful she sounded confident because she knew what she was talking about so in the end she gave up the idea of feeling like she needed to compete with the rest of the team and instead she put herself on the same level with everyone else by just committing to clarity

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