Create a Memorable Message

• Author: Faith Dianne Pincus
• Profession: Attorney and former Federal Law Clerk
• Pages: 23-43

23

MESSAGE

CHAPTER THREE

Create a Memorable

Message

Be Brilliant at the Basics

Remember my “friendly” AMI™ Method—Audience, Message, and

Image/Delivery? Not hard to figure out that having spent some time

talking about who you’ll be speaking to, we’re going to concentrate

now on the M—your Message. And to kick it off, I’d like to start with

a joke: A funny thing happened on the way to writing this book ... I

coached hundreds of attorneys, executives, politicians, and nonprofit

staff members.

Okay, that’s not really funny. (As I confess later on, I’m not a born

joke-teller.) What is funny is that when a client requests time with me for

one-on-one coaching, or even in a small group setting, they always say

they don’t need help with their organization, just their delivery. Every ...

single ... time.

And what I’m going to say next is very predictable: I’ve never met a

client who didn’t need to work on his or her speech organization.

Everyone needs help with creating and organizing their message.

This isn’t a bad thing; it’s a true thing. And it also means that you really,

really shouldn’t skip this chapter. (Not that you’d skip any chapter, right?)

The reason attorneys trip up when organizing their presentations is

that most people taught in law school have never been trained to create

speeches.

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24 Being Heard

For some reason, a lot of folks think that the basic rules of essay writ-

ing don’t apply to creating a presentation. But they do—at least for most

presentations, and definitely for legal and business presentations.

• Yes, you really do need an introduction, a conclusion, and a body

in your speech.

• Yes, you really do need transitions.

• Yes, you really do need main points and sub-points that logically

flow, even if those sub-points are simply examples or explanations.

Organizing all that isn’t just daunting—it sounds boring. Too bad.

If you want to deliver an effective speech, you have to buckle down and

deal with the hard work of organizing your presentation in the first place.

Four Types of Speeches (and the One

onWhich to Concentrate)

One fine day I was chatting with someone who happened to state that he

was terrible at extemporaneous speaking: “all that last-minute stuff and

such.” Whoops! Okay, I know I’m a speech geek, but this is important.

Before you can learn to be a better presenter, we have to get some vocabulary

straight. “All that last-minute stuff and such” is called impromptu speaking,

not extemporaneous, and there is a very big difference.

What types of speeches are there, you ask? The most common are:

• Impromptu

• Extemporaneous

• Written out verbatim (word-for-word)

• Delivered from memory (usually written out, then memorized).

In the anecdote above, my friend was confusing extemporaneous

speaking with impromptu speaking—a common mistake. So let’s look at

these forms of speaking a little more closely.

Different Presentation Methods,

DifferentResults

Impromptu. This is exactly what it sounds like. It’s when someone asks

you at a meeting to give a report about something and you didn’t know that

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