Episode 61

Why is Context Important for Speaking and Presenting?

In this week's episode of Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking, Kirsten and Kellie talk about adaptability and engaging your audience, especially when you have specific learning objectives to meet. Find out why Kirsten rewards the ugliest PowerPoint presentation, why Kellie’s students have to confront a taboo topic in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, and why context matters.

Our favorite moments:

  • (02:00) Education needs to change in specific settings to focus on the problem that needs to be solved, not a predetermined, standardized list
  • (03:02) Higher education is often iterative
  • (04:55) People don’t learn from dull
  • (05:56) Close reading means to stop, notice, and analyze
  • (09:59) Analysis requires curiosity
  • (10:28) Making connections between topics is how people deepen their knowledge
  • (14:23) Context matters
  • (16:27) Use more than one track or approach to reinforce your key points
  • (18:02) Kellie’s takeaway: analysis starts with noticing the details
  • (18:23) Kirsten’s takeaway: take creative risks

If you enjoyed this conversation about making connections among topics, check out Season 4, Episode 48:   Why is Adaptability Key for Changing Workplace Culture? The link is in the show notes.  

Rourke Training’s webpage: https://www.rourketraining.com/

Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking page: https://ongoing-mastery.captivate.fm/

RSS feed: https://feeds.captivate.fm/ongoing-mastery/

Read a transcript of this episode:  

For the video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/Xpm_ed1HAwA

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirstenrourke/


Looking for a kick-ass speaking group? Use our affiliate link to join Innovation Women: https://bit.ly/innovationwomen

Transcript
Kirsten:

This week, Kellie and I talk about adaptability and engaging your

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audience, especially when you have

specific learning objectives to meet.

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Find out why I reward the ugliest

PowerPoint presentation and why

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Kellie's students have to confront a

taboo topic in The Strange Case of Dr.

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Jekyll and Mr.

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Hyde, Let's jump into it.

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Hello.

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Welcome to Ongoing Mastery: Presenting

& Speaking the podcast and the discussion.

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Hi Kellie, how are you?

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Kellie: I am well, Kirsten, how are you?

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Kirsten: Hanging in it's

cold and wet and gross.

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But otherwise fine.

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Kellie: So what are we gonna

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Kirsten: talk about today?

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So what we're gonna talk about

today is sales training and improv

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and higher ed and some other stuff.

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The way this is coming up, everybody is I.

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Kellie and I are both educators, but we

have completely different backgrounds.

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She is a professor.

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She is in the higher ed world.

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I came from technical training in

the corporate world and freelance.

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So what I wanna talk about to lead

off is a class that I used to do on a

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regular basis in Worcester at San Cobain.

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I would do sales training.

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And it was typical Microsoft training.

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So go ahead and teach Word or

Excel or PowerPoint or whatever.

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And when I was in the training room, I.

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There was official outlines that

you needed to follow, but for sales

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training, they wanted you to come into

their area and instead focus on their

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needs, which is actually a much better

model for a lot of those learners.

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So what I would do, Is I made a deal.

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'cause I've been going there for

so many years that it's like,

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okay, here's the six products I'm

able to talk about with comfort.

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We're not gonna create an

outline until I get there.

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Yeah.

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And when I get there, I then interview

and on the whiteboard, you know,

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I, I talk to each of the kids and.

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They're in their twenties, but

they're kids and say, okay, so

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WeDo, what are you doing with email?

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What are you doing with your calendar?

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How are you keeping notes?

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Da da da.

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Okay.

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Do you use this product and start

building things on the board and actually

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build a two day outline that way?

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Yeah.

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Which, when I described this

to someone recently, they went,

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oh my God, I, I, oh, what?

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And I'm like, yeah, it's freeform improv.

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This is one of the ways in which education

needs to change is in certain settings you

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need to focus on the task that needs to

be dealt with and the problem that needs

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to be solved and not the specific list.

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Yeah.

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But in higher ed, there's

a different model.

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And Kellie, why is there a different model

and what is the value that that brings?

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Kellie: Well, I have my students

for 13 weeks, twice a week for

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an hour and a half at a time.

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So . Three contact hours across 13 weeks,

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in terms of writing, reading, et cetera.

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So . Minimum of 50 hours of work

roughly per semester, and that's a

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really good student who writes well

and doesn't take a super long time

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with identifying their ideas and so on.

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Obviously, it can go

much higher than that.

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Depends on what each student needs

to do, but when you've got that

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much time, you have time to let

things marinate, so to speak.

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So I'll introduce a set of concepts with

the first assignment, and we'll return

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to them with a second major assignment

and deepen and extend, and then we'll

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return to them for the third assignment

and do something different so that we're

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still reinforcing those early lessons,

but we're also advancing the goals of the

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course, that we're not just one and done.

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We're gonna address these goals

with this project, and then we

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will never talk about them again.

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Across 13 weeks.

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Everybody's got the time to have a bad

class and it'll be okay, including me.

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I was really sick a couple weeks ago.

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I had to completely pivot the day's work

'cause I was not gonna be on campus.

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Mm-hmm.

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And I didn't want to give my

students busy work just to

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show me that they were working.

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I didn't want to lose

the whole class time.

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So I had to figure out

what I could have them do.

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That was useful.

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Productive and still not just do

it because I asked you to do it.

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And so that kind of flexibility is built

in when you have much more time and

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you still have to meet a set of goals.

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Every course has learning outcomes.

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Yep.

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And I need to be addressing those.

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I can't just throw them out the

window on day one, but I have a lot

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of flexibility on how I get there

because I have so much time to do it.

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So let's pick

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Kirsten: up on that learning objectives

thing, because you are a formally trained

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educator and professor, and I was an

instructional designer and tech trainer,

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so very different skillset, but we both

have the learning objectives thing.

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Yeah.

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Which is one of those things

where it's like, okay, this is

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what we're gonna try to get to.

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One of the things that I noticed, , With

technical training is that I would bring

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in humor, I would bring in creative stuff.

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I would bring in ways to think about

stuff that was outside of the box that

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really threw people because they're like,

well wait, but this is tech training.

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Tech training is.

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The numbers boring.

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And I'm like, yeah, but

people don't learn from dull.

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Mm-hmm.

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You know, humans don't

learn when they're bored.

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They don't.

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So let's think about it differently.

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Like when I would teach database design,

I started people out with legal pads.

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Mm-hmm.

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Which freaked them the hell out.

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Because I'm like, you're not

turning on access until after we

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talk about what fields are and how

you're collecting your data and how

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the data's gonna talk to itself.

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Mm-hmm.

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, and we're talking about the concepts

before we go in, into the software,

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and especially in technical training,

a lot of times the huge mistake they

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make is they start in the software

and they start with, now this is the

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file menu and this is the view menu.

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And it's like, okay, that's all great.

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But why the hell are you there and what

is the problem you're trying to solve?

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Yeah.

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If you don't give it context, then

you're basically doing rote work.

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Right.

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So I wanted to ask you, there's

a term that is not in my

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expertise, but is in yours.

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Close reading.

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Yeah.

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What is that?

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How does that work?

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Kellie: So close reading is when

you, well read something and instead

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of just skimming the surface and

taking in what it says, you stop.

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You notice and you analyze, and it's

an inherent skillset of analysis,

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but we do it so often that we forget.

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We learned how to do it.

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So part of the goals of my class

is to call that out for students to

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draw their attention to what they

already do so that they can choose

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how to do it more effectively.

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So here's a somewhat short example.

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We're doing an analysis essay.

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One of the short stories is Molly

Patterson's short story called

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"Honors Track" from The Atlantic 2012.

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And Plot is a group of highly, highly,

highly ambitious high school students

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trying to get into the nation's elite

colleges cheat and get away with it until

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one of them turns and exposes the group.

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And the group throws one

student under the bus.

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And then there's the ending, which I

will leave as it is, so, okay, great.

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Find something that

interests you in this story.

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Step one, I'm not gonna tell

you what you find interesting.

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You find something interesting.

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So being the geek that I am,

I love Shakespeare's Macbeth,

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it's my favorite of his plays.

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And in this high school in sophomore

year, in Brit Lit class, they

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have to do an essay on Macbeth.

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And that's a plot point because

two of them don't do well and they

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start to gather data because they

think the teacher's biased against

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them and and so on for plot.

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I'm making a point to my students.

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Okay.

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Brit Lit class.

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Very typical class.

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Analyze a Shakespeare play.

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Very typical assignment.

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Why Macbeth?

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Shakespeare wrote a lot of plays

in a couple of different genres.

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History, comedy, tragedy.

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Why Macbeth?

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Well, Macbeth is about ambition and greed.

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And what would you do to achieve your

goals and what do you sacrifice in the

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effort to achieve your goals, which is

exactly what the short story is about.

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I.

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If you just skim the service and

go, yep, Macbeth hated that play.

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Move on.

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You're missing something about

what's happening in the story.

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And so you can just read the

story and know what happens.

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But when you close read, when you

read with the intention to analyze,

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then you're, oh, I see that clue.

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I see that red flag.

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Mm-hmm.

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, there's another character, the character

who is the betrayer in the story.

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Has two favorite movies,

Home Alone 2 and Annie Hall.

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And that's relevant because she's

trying to get to New York City.

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They're in St.

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Louis, she's trying to

get to New York City.

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And those two movies

are pop culture movies.

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Yeah, they're not serious cinema.

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Or maybe Annie Hall is, but

Home Alone 2 definitely is not.

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And so you just go, favorite

movies, gotta move on.

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Or you stop and notice that

Annie Hall is about broken,

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dysfunctional, failed relationships.

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Okay, and Home Alone 2 is derivative.

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It's not an original.

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It's the second one, and it's about a

kid who keeps getting left behind and

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in Home Alone 2, when that kid gets

left behind, he foils the plot of some

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criminals trying to do a big crime.

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And so from freshman year, when we

learn that those are her two favorite

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movies, if we are careful readers,

we will notice that something's

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different about this student.

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Something sets her apart.

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Mm-hmm.

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and it turns out she's the

betrayer in their junior year.

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Kirsten: Interesting.

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And so when you point that out, or when

you help your students see that mm-hmm.

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, your students are business students.

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Yeah.

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What connection does that make

to them in the business world?

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Well,

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Kellie: being able to analyze

market trends there, we're

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very big on entrepreneurship.

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Being able to analyze what the

market has and what the market lacks

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and how can you bring something to

market to support and fill that gap

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is an essential business skillset.

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Analyzing all kinds of data

analysis is analysis, if it's

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words or if it's numbers.

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You have to have curiosity about what

you pay attention to, and then you have

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to be able to link somehow that set

of things you've paid attention to.

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That's, and figure out

what the pattern is.

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That's

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Kirsten: it.

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That's perfect.

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Perfect.

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So everybody listening, one of the things

that we want you to take away from this

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is that it doesn't matter your discipline.

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Yeah.

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The core underlying

structures and the intentions.

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Are the same.

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Yep.

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So making connections, making

relationships between topics is

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how people deepen their knowledge.

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Yeah.

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And it's how they are able to take

something and store it properly

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so that it is ready for retrieval.

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. So when you're adding, oh, sort

of a entertaining, I'm gonna

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put that in air quotes here.

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Entertaining dimension to a topic.

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So for example, I would put goofy

science fiction names in my database

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list classes or, or things like that.

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Or have people write ridiculous letters.

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What is the worst possible, most

ugly PowerPoint you can make?

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Okay.

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Ugliest one, win.

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. And somebody's calling.

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Here we go.

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Mute.

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Mute.

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So the reason why I would do that

is because it would push people to

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use the tool in ways that they might

not if they were being careful.

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Yeah.

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Because I wanted them to see

more of what was possible.

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So we went outside of the bounds.

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You actually were teaching Jekyll & Hyde,

and you and I were having a conversation

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about it in which you were talking

about the sublayers of the meaning

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behind things like the back door.

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Mm-hmm.

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, can you speak a little bit about that?

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Kellie: I can, this is where we get a

little bit blue in our conversation.

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So Jekyll & Hyde, Dr.

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Jekyll & Mr.

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Hyde.

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Spoiler alert, on a 200 year

old story, same guy, and Dr.

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Jekyll is very respectable in

his community, but has been

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acting a little bit weird.

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And so two friends go to check

on him and on the way they see

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something happen in which Mr.

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Hyde attacks a random person in the street

and like, Hey, that's not right, da da da.

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And so they follow Mr.

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Hyde and he goes into this

really disputable looking space.

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The door is really shabby,

the neighborhood's kind

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of grubby and all of that.

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And this whole encounter's

very odd plot goes on, and long

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story, a little bit shorter.

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Imagine a house on a really large

corner lot, and it's large enough

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that the front is different, that the

front street is different from the

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side street that corners the property.

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And so the front is nice and

respectable and looks out on a lovely

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square, good part of town, da da, da.

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But that side road is where

the neighborhood has started

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to go downhill rapidly.

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And it turns out that Mr.

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Hyde lives and went in through the

back door of the property where Dr.

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Jekyll is, and there is a whole

homosocial, homosexual entry about the

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back door are anatomical back doors.

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It is where the waste, where the filth

is, exits our systems and . It is part

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of the stigma against gay male sex

that happens at the anus because it's

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associated with filth and wow, do my

students not wanna have this conversation?

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they never see this coming.

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It is always very just out of nowhere.

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But once they see it,

they can't not see it.

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And they see all the other ways

in the story in which these

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references to what you hide.

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Hide and what is shameful

because the thing that Dr.

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Jekyll does that causes him to

have to hide, causes him to have to

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develop this alternate personality

through taking a chemical.

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Substance is never named.

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So we have to infer from the story that

whatever it is, is so very shameful.

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He cannot, literally cannot show his face.

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So sex of some kind, most often,

sometimes money, generally sex.

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So once they've noticed that, they look

at all of the other kind of repercussions

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in the story in which the story is

unstable and it changes a lot for them.

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Whether or not they think Dr.

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Jekyll is engaged in homosexual

sex, it's not the point.

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Mm-hmm.

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. But the possibility changes what they see.

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Kirsten: So what I find interesting

is that because it's written in a

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certain time period, in a certain

era, you also have to bring up

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the standards of that era, right?

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So

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Kellie: this is the late 19th century

London where homosexuality is illegal.

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And so if you were caught as it were,

doing illegal acts, you could be arrested

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Oscar Wilde in the same time period, a

newspaper slandered him and Oscar Wilde.

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Was gay, was flamboyantly gay and

a newspaper said something linking

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Oscar Wilde to a man romantically

and some kind of lover spout,

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whatever it was, I don't remember.

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But 'cause it was illegal, Oscar Wilde

had to contest it and say it was slander.

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And then as it turns

out, Oscar Wilde gets.

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Arrested , right?

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And so I was like, no, I

wasn't involved with that one.

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I was involved with that one.

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And so what the newspaper said was wrong,

and therefore Oscar Wilde wins the case,

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except he's now been exposed as being

gay, which homosexual acts are illegal.

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He goes to prison.

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And so this notion of what is publicly

acceptable, but it's your private desire,

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what you have to put on as a face to the

world, what you really, really want and

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have to hide and so on, is an important

point for them, for my students to train

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themselves to start to look for, right?

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It's not the secret, meaning

it's not, what does the author

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really trying to tell us?

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It's what is the author's environment

that they're writing in that is just

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baked into their language choices.

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That's

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Kirsten: it.

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Excellent.

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So the reason why Kellie and I do this

is because we're committed to the ongoing

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mastery of presenting and speaking,

and that is a very broad discipline.

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Yeah, that's a very broad topic.

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So one of the things that I encourage

everybody listening to do is to kind of

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take the core theme that we have from

today's show and just see in your next.

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Speech and your next keynote in your

next breakout session and whatever,

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are there ways in which you can put in

more than one, essentially track, and

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you have the obvious statements and

the obvious line, and then the, oh,

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by the way, here's a secondary meaning

that reinforces the point of the first.

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Mm-hmm.

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storytelling is something that.

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Is not used often enough in speeches,

especially in the technical world.

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Mm-hmm.

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, and I'm gonna hold up the How to Tell a

Story by the Moth book because I would

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encourage you to take some risks Yeah.

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With your presenting and speaking.

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Because going a direction people don't

expect and going into maybe a, a morey or

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a whimsical or theatrical way can actually

reinforce a core point because people

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might have preconceptions about the topic.

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And if you then come around here

from the side, you might show them

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aspects of this belief system they

have and go, oh, well wait a minute.

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Maybe it isn't.

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Yeah.

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And especially in the technical world,

when you are trying to kind of show people

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balances, like in cybersecurity, the

balance between risk and freedom Yeah.

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Is a dance that all tech

speakers have to deal with.

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Well, there's reasons why

that you might want to make

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certain adjustments and plans.

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So let's some creative stories

can help people see that.

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So Kellie, what's the takeaway

that you would like people to

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have from our episode today?

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Kellie: The takeaway is that analysis

starts with noticing the details

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and when you notice the details,

you are not overthinking it.

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You are not overreading it.

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You are noticing what's there and not just

glossing past it, it's there for a reason.

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What could those reasons be?

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Now you've started analysis and

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Kirsten: my takeaway will be

I encourage you to take risks.

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So try to be a little more storytelling

based, a little more creative, a little

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more literary in your work, in your

presenting and speaking, and see if that

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allows you to make connections for people

that they struggle to make on their own.

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Mm-hmm.

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. And I think that's it.

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All right.

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So everybody, please make the, we are

on all the socials and we have, and

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I think next week is an interview.

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Yes, and so we have a

couple of things coming up.

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So we have talks like this.

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We have interviews, we have

mini coaching sessions.

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Check us out on YouTube,

please, like please subscribe

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and we will see you next time.

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Thanks for watching.

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Cheers.

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If you enjoyed this conversation about

making connections among topics, check

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out season four, episode number 48.

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Why is Adaptability Key for

Changing Workplace culture?

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The link is in the show notes.

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About the Podcast

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Ongoing Mastery: Presenting & Speaking
Presentation and Speaking Skills for Business Leaders

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About your host

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Kirsten Rourke