MASTERFUL SUCCINCTNESS

As a principle about training, here is a training principle that you might very well want to mind- to-muscle into your neurology: Highly skilled and effective speakers, presenters, and trainers are succinct. Ah, yes, succinct! That means that they can get to the point with a minimum of words. This means that they use an economy of words to say what they want to say.

• How about you? Are you succinct?

• Would you like to be? Do you know the power and elegance of being succinct?

• Do you know how to train yourself to be succinct?

One of the things I’ve noticed when I was modeling excellent presenters is that those who are succinct speakers typically speak in a succinct way even in their everyday talking. Sure, they can “wax elogant” and become wordy when they so choose. And sure, like most public speakers, they tend to have “a gift of gab.” So when there is a need to induce state through storytelling and extending a description so that they fully elicit the state and make it linguistically rich. Yet most of the time, it is succinctness that distinguishes the best speakers.