The Art Of Explanation by Lee LeFever

As a public speaker / facilitator / instructor, I help people make positive change for their businesses and lives, and at the foundation of each presentation should always be an explanation (why, how, etc.). Marketers and public relations people persuade the public to buy their product or candidate, and underneath that message is hopefully a clear explanation. Anytime we walk into a meeting to share an idea, we can focus on the exciting application of the idea without giving an adequate explanation of the idea itself. In other words, most of us need help doing a better job of explaining. And that's where The Art Of Explanation by Lee LeFever steps in.

LeFever understands that there is a gap, which we can easily underestimate, between our specialized (and often highly technical) knowledge of our subject, and our audience's grasp. This "curse of knowledge" causes us to spend hours on a presentation, only to deliver it to a disconnected audience. He shares a few models and templates for constructing better explanations, which I found so helpful in articulating my own "elevator pitch" and "video script."

Want to see what I came up with after applying the template? Here are three versions of "what I do for a living":

• Twitter description (140 characters or less):
  I help busy professionals present like professional speakers.
   
• Elevator pitch (30-60 seconds long):
  The typical professional gives presentations often enough to develop crippling anxiety, but not often enough to present well every time. I help these professionals learn and practice a handful of fundamental skills to nail every presentation with clarity and confidence. Because we present casually through everyday interaction, these same presentation skills improve all verbal communication.
   
• Video script (3 minutes max):
  Meet Jane. She is a respected engineer who is asked, about twice a year, to accompany her firm's sales team to client presentations as a technical expert.
  
  Jane, who is friendly and approachable but shy, spends most days with her small team of engineers. She feels anxious about these client presentations because she is working with clients she’s never met before, and because so much time elapses between presentations that each one feels unfamiliar and risky.
  
  Jane tells a friend about her upcoming presentation, and her friend recommends a public speaking coach. Jane thinks coaches are just for athletes, or high-powered executives, but she calls anyway. The public speaking coach shows Jane that just a handful of skills underpin every successful presentation. Over several sessions, Jane learns the models and practices these skills until she feels prepared, confident, and even excited for her next client presentation!
  
  As an unexpected bonus, Jane starts to see her everyday interactions with her small engineering team differently. She applies the public speaking models and skills to informal interactions and finds that she communicates more clearly, and gets better results.
  
  Hooray for Jane!

If you have an important message to craft, and you'd like to explore ways to do it better, pick up this book and give it a try. I've already shared one of the templates with a small group of cohorts who are using it to improve how they communicate about their small businesses.

Here's my review of The Art Of Explanation by Lee LeFever, on GoodReads.

The 10% Rule

I instituted "The 10% Rule" this year as a personal guideline for my reading: If I'm 10% into a book, and I don't like it, let it go.

At the end of last year, I saw that I'd finished and reviewed quite a few books that I didn't like! And most of the time, I had an inkling I wouldn't like these books early on. I just rationalized I should give each book more time to develop... so I'd keep reading... and before I knew it, I'd be halfway into the book. And then I'd feel I'd invested too much time to abandon it. Some friends and family members pointed out, after reading those reviews I'd written on Goodreads, that they don't typically finish ANY books they don't like.

What a novel idea!

So I tested my theory late last year. Could I tell by 10% completion whether I'd like a book or not? And the answer was YES. Thus, The 10% Rule.

I invoked it last week, for The Rosie Effect. Sorry to say that 38 pages in, this sequel had none of the magic of The Rosie Project. And I got to jump on Modern Romance, by Aziz Ansari, a book club pick from September that came from the library after that meeting was long over. LOL More on that one later...

The Artist's Way: Tips For Completing The Program

After a long-ago false start with the 12-week "creative recovery program" in Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way ("TAW" for short), I have finished. Victory!!!!!! Lots of exclamation points feel appropriate. Having abandoned it once, and now having completed it once, I have three tips in case you're interested in tackling this for the first time and want to complete the 12-week program:

1. Read through Week One before you begin, and first decide how "by the book" you want your experience to be.
   
   Cameron suggests you commit to daily writing via the "morning pages," a weekly artist date, and completion of each week's tasks. (Explanations of all these things are in the book.)
   
   It would have taken me a year just to do all the tasks, and my life has a satisfying number of events that qualify as artist dates. So I decided my main commitment to completing the program was to write those morning pages, 3 per day, every day, for 12 weeks.
    
2. Find support from a peer group.
   
   I was really lucky: As I considered jumping into the book again this spring, I received an email from a local craft studio (in fact, called CRAFT) that they were putting together a group to follow TAW for 12 weeks. About 10 people participated, and the idea was to meet each Monday, discuss progress from the previous week, and maybe complete a little craft together. Summer happened, and only 2 of us ended up finishing the entire program in the 12-week period, although some combination of at least 4 people seemed to meet each week anyway.
   
   Even though everyone had different goals and a different approach to the program, it was really helpful to have cheerleaders and co-commiserators (writing three pages a day is a challenge for most everyone!) offer their support, ideas, and enthusiasm. I enjoyed getting to know these artists, who had different perspectives about creative challenges and solutions. One artist joined the group to get momentum finishing a small but highly emotional piece, and through group discussion, revealed an unrelated huge project that had been sitting, untouched, for six years. She finished her small piece, and after our meetings, she resurrected the huge project and is updating it for publication.
   
   If you scour Craigslist and Meetup.com and don't see a group in your local area that you can join, consider starting your own, in person or virtually. The benefits of a peer group are enormous.
    
3. Plan your weekly progress on your calendar, so you stay on track.
   
   One of the best things I did to help me stay on track was to put an appointment in my calendar (iCal) each Monday with that week's chapter. So if you look at my calendar, on June 15, there is an appointment at 6am called "TAW: Week One." It was my prompt to read the chapter corresponding to Week One and start writing about some of the topics and tasks for the new week. On June 22, my 6am appointment was called "TAW: Week Two" to remind me to stay on track. And so on, for 12 consecutive weeks.
   
   Maybe you'll prefer to start your week on a different day, which is fine. My point is that I never questioned where I was in the program because it was on my calendar.

I wrote a Goodreads review of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, in case you'd like more detail both on what I thought of the book, as well as the overall experience of completing the program. I'll restate the final sentiment of my review here: This is a great book for everyone, not just "creative" folks, because when you think about it, we are all creating a life. Might as well make it one we love.