Keep Them Engaged

Episode 59:  Adam’s Rib

Hawkeye:    I didn’t hear you say that.  Because it isn’t possible.  It’s inhuman to serve the same food day after day.  The Geneva Convention prohibits the killing of our taste buds.  I simply cannot eat the same food every day.  Fish, liver, day after day.  I’ve eaten a river of liver and an ocean of fish.  I’ve eaten so much fish I’m ready to grow gills.  I’ve eaten so much liver I can only make love if I’m covered in bacon and onions.  Are we going to stand for this?!  Are we going to let them do this to us?!  No, I say, NO!!  We’re not going to eat this drab anymore!  We want something else!

Hawkeye is enraged by being served the same food week after week and demands for something different.  His desire for a change inspires him to place a takeout order for spareribs from Chicago all the way to Korea.

As a preacher, week after week I have the responsibility to prepare and deliver messages that will inspire and inform a diverse group of people how to integrate biblical truth with everyday life.  In order to keep my congregation interested my content must be relevant and my delivery engaging, otherwise they will zone out or look elsewhere.  Whether you are a teacher or preacher, coach or mentor, facilitator or consultant, the creative tension between content and delivery is the space that must be managed by all effective communicators.  In my experience, great messages can be equally compromised if the speaker is all charisma with little content or has great content without any passion.  In an age of sensory overload our audience won’t tolerate being anaesthetized by either. So be well prepared, stay energized and keep them engaged.

What's The Idea?

Episode 44:  As You Were

Henry:     Being as how we’ve got so much spare time on our hands lately, I thought I’d deliver the required commanding officer’s monthly orientation lecture this morning rather than wait for another time, which while we have it, why not use it?  So if you guys are ready, why, we’ll start with today’s subject.

Trapper:    Which is what Henry?

Henry:      I’ll answer questions later, McIntyre.

Hawkeye:    Can you give us the subject first, just in case we can’t tell what it is from your talk?

During a lull in the war, Henry delivers his monthly orientation lecture resulting in hilarious interjections from the officers who try and lighten up an awkward topic, making the task almost impossible for their leader.

Have you ever sat in a lecture and wondered what on earth you had just spent the last hour listening to?  Or have listened to a sermon and have struggled to pull all the disjointed pieces together to nail down the main point of the message?   As a leader and a preacher I understand how important it is to ensure that I don’t bombard people with so much information that they miss the point or to complicate it so they don’t understand it.  Authors Chip and Dan Heath provide some powerful and practical strategies in their book ‘Made to Stick’ to ensure the ideas we are seeking to communicate take hold and positively impact your audience.  In summary, they share the following six principles to help make an idea stick:  keep it SIMPLE, attract interest through the UNEXPECTED, give CONCRETE examples, refer to CREDIBLE authorities, appeal to the EMOTIONAL, and use STORIES.  If an idea is worth communicating, then it is worth making the effort to effectively present it in a way that maximizes its impact.

Clear Communication

Episode 43:  The Chosen People

Frank:      Captain Pak.  You are here as a medical observer,    

            not to give us language lessons.

Hawkeye:    Frank, by a strange coincidence, the inhabitants of 

            Korea communicate in Korean.  It wouldn’t hurt us to 

            speak their language.

Frank:      I speak American.  And I can go any place in the 

            world.

Trapper:    We can have you packed in 20 minutes.

Hawkeye:    We’re living in Korea, Frank.

Frank:      Not me, fella.  I’m part of the American military 

           establishment.  I eat in an American mess.  I shop in   an American PX.  All I want to do is save these 

            people and go home.

Capt. Pak:  And we thank you from the bottom of our bomb craters.

The 4077 compound is taken over by a Korean family claiming it is their farm.  Radar is blamed for fathering a child with a Korean girl.  And Frank demonstrates his cultural insensitivity towards the reality of living in Korea during the war.

There is an amazing event in the Bible where God’s Spirit empowers the followers of Jesus to speak in the languages of the nations gathered at a religious festival in order to fulfil His commission to “go into all the world and make disciples of all nations.”  The result?  “About three thousand were added to their number that day.”  Whatever your leadership context is, those sorts of results demand your attention!  Clear communication is key to effective leadership and successful mission.  There was a time in my ministry when I realised that I wasn’t reaching a particular group in our church very well with our vision.  While we were casting it consistently through verbal, written and visual means, we were not speaking their language.  We learnt that understanding our message wasn’t enough; we had to understand our audience to effectively reach them with our message.