Page 60 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

TALKING WITH PICTURES 51

and the problem is only compounded if subsequent speakers
make the same mistake.
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Ernest Hemingway said: “Don’t tell me about it—show it to
me.” That’s how he wrote. He showed you the matador dying in the
bloodied sand of the bull ring, and then let you see what death was
like through the matador’s own eyes. Hemingway showed you what
fear was like as German soldiers stormed stone walls. That’s what
you’ve got to do. You’ve got to build little word pictures and give solid
information.
To say you had a “great year,” for example, has no real value, no
credibility. Why a great year? How? Compared to what? Measured
in what way? On what do you base your claim? The basis for the
claim is more interesting than the claim itself because specifi c exam-
ples are always more interesting.
So tell them about the surprising turnaround in sales in the
southeast, for example—up more than 50 percent over the last year.
Or about the favorable article in BusinessWeek, or how your trip to
China produced a bonus order of 20 million units for the Chinese
market.
Failing to provide your audience with examples is like a lawyer
presenting a case in court but forgetting to provide evidence. Your
“evidence” as a speaker is the examples you pull up to prove your case.
If our topic is globalization and our subtopics are strategic planning,
research and development, quality control, management develop-
ment, and so on, then let’s add another dimension—another level
down—that gives weight to the subtopics and is made up exclusively
of relevant examples. Put another way, the examples modify the
subtopics, and the subtopics modify the theme. We include nothing
extra, no tangents, and no distractions.
To illustrate further, if you were pressing your case and arrived
at the part where you were explaining the vital link between strate-