Most of us have ground-shaking ideas which go unexplored for a long time because we lack effective ways of communicating our imaginations. Whether we serve as teachers, entrepreneurs, speech writers or any other profession, there comes a time when we need our ideas to be understood and remembered.
Practically, when we make our ideas stick to our audience, we tend to follow the usual routine: Minding our body language and gestures, starting our presentations with a story or a joke, knowing our audience or repeating our key points over and over again. These can help, but highlighted below are other effective ways of making your ideas have a long-lasting impact and sensation.
1. Let your idea be as simple as possible
Your idea may have so much to it. But to make it stick, make it as simple as possible. Strip your idea down into tiny pieces until you arrive at its core. For example, if we strip down Opportunity Desk into parts, we end up with two powerful words, “global opportunities.” It is possible to rephrase our ideas into only one simple yet powerful sentence which will leave a long-lasting impression on our audience.
2. Go beyond people’s expectations
Ideas which catch people by surprise are often remembered for a very long time. Therefore, focus your ideas on what will increase people’s interest, curiosity and alertness. Systematically tailor your thoughts to leave people curious about what you are saying or doing. Then, you could respond to their curiosity little by little until your idea completely sinks into their minds.
3. Prove the concreteness and credibility of your idea.
Making your ideas concrete will increase clarity and simplicity. Psychology says our brains are wired to remember concrete language. For instance, instead of saying,” Many people benefited from this project,” you could say “The project directly impacted 1000 university students and another 3000 indirectly.”
In other instances where data does not help, credibility will. We all love to test things before we buy them. A minister of economy in a particular country could say this in an entrepreneurship forum, ” Since we allowed free trade between country A and country B, has your profits increase?” instead of “ Since we allowed free trade, profits have increased by 80%”. In the first response, the traders can easily clarify for themselves than in the second response.
4. Connect your idea with people’s emotions
Our ideas will stick if we make people care about them. It is easier for people to invest in charities if they care about the cause we are championing for. Therefore, when presenting ideas, ensures it answers the ‘why.’ Why is your idea viable?
Stories are a great way of connecting with emotions. Stories can make people start acting on our ideas. Stories stimulate the minds of the audience, preparing them to respond more efficiently to our ideas.
The above ways can be used together to present a successful idea. They don’t need any experience or expertise to implement because most of it is pure common sense. We can try these when making our next presentation, teaching lesson, application or speech.
For more articles, visit OD Blog.
