Your “Golden Thread” -How to Keep Your Message Even More Focused
You have been using “Golden Threads” for many years, yet you're probably not calling them “Golden Threads.” You've used them in describing a movie, a trip across the country, and a recent speaker you heard give a powerful presentation.
A "Golden Thread" is one sentence that describes your message and makes it clear what talking points you should make.
The “Golden Thread” for this blog is, “When you create a “Golden Thread” for any message, it will help keep you focused and ensure your audience knows where you're going to take them with your message."
The benefit to you is that helps you quickly decide what you should talk about. Since you know so much about your areas of expertise, your “Golden Thread” enables you to choose the most relevant stories, facts, statistics, metaphors and examples to share with your audience.
The Godfather movie series is legendary. What is the “Golden Thread” of those 3 movies? It could be this - "A sweeping saga spanning generations, The Godfather movies unravel the intricate dynamics within a notorious crime family exploring themes of honor, betrayal and the negative effects of power."
The “Golden Thread” for a trip you're planning across the United States could be something like this - "A 2-month journey from East coast to West coast stopping at every comedy club available and laughing our way across America." (Okay, this one is a little far-fetched, but you get the point.)
Here's how the “Golden Thread” became part of the Ultimate Speaking System:
Come back in time, to the early 1980s, before cell phones. Imagine you're in the audience, and you just heard me give a presentation called "Coyote Power - How you Can Thrive in a World of Change and be Unstoppable.” It was a 3-hour seminar with a break half-way through. You come with me as we go into the lobby and listen to people on the pay phone calling their office or a loved one. Yes, in the '80s, there were dozens of pay phones outside of every meeting ballroom because that was the only way to make a call. As you and I are listening, we hear almost everyone saying something like this - "Yes, I'm at a meeting, just on a break, don't have much time, everything is going great! Oh, I just heard a speaker who was terrific." Then you can imagine the person at the other end saying, " Oh, what were they speaking about?" And the person responding says, "He talked about---!" When I heard that decades ago, it was shocking that everyone said something different about the meeting topic.
At that moment, I got an “Ah-Ha” --- what if I could make it so clear what the message was about and if anybody asked them, they would all say the same thing. That's when the “Golden Thread” became part of the Ultimate Speaking System as a way to ensure that the message was focused and the audience understood where they were going with that message.
Now it's your turn to create a “Golden Thread” for your next presentation!
To learn more about how you can become an even better speaker, click here.
