CHAPTER 16
Close with Commitment
Leadership: the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because they want to do it.
— DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
You finish a rocking speech on physical fitness. How would you close?
You wrap up a very productive meeting on how we can all, in our work space, be more green and environmentally proactive (save money and save the planet). How do you finish that meeting?
What do great movies, books, concerts, and shows all have in common? They have a great ending. It fulfills the audience members in such a satisfying way that the experience stays with them long after they’ve left the theater or stadium, or turned the final page of the novel. We’ve all had these experiences. Maybe you’ve been so unnerved by a scary movie that you can’t sleep for a few nights, or you find yourself glancing over your shoulder when you’re walking down the street. Maybe you find yourself humming or singing a show tune or a song that you just can’t get out of your head.
As a speaker, you want your presentation to stay with the people in your audience long after they leave the room. Being memorable is important, but it’s only the beginning—a means, but not an end.
I will often ask a student, “What did you want your audience to do?” As Michael Balaoing says, “WTF.” What’s the feeling you want everyone to have?
People often look befuddled (apparently, a common effect I have on people) and say, “Well, I just wanted them to know X or understand Y.”
That is not enough. If your goal is just to have people understand your topic, then often, your message will be like water through their fingers. They do understand, for a minute, but they won’t remember. You have to give your audience a vessel to “hold” that understanding. That vessel is an action. When you get your audience to act, the understanding comes along for the ride. When you focus only on what you want people to know, action rarely leaves the parking lot.
You want your audience to do something—to buy your product, to contribute to your fund-raiser, to meet the new sales goals you’ve just outlined. The closing of your presentation must prompt the people in your audience to action. That’s why you were speaking before them in the first place; that’s the point of your presentation. Your goal is not to convince your audience that your nonprofit group does great work. Your goal is to get people to write a check. One of my college roommates had a cruder version of this philosophy: “How the date ends, dude, is how the date went.”
In the first chapter of this book, I asked you to pour some water into your hands and try to hold onto it. The water slipped through your fingers because you did not have a container to hold it in. The exercise was intended to pull you into attack mode, to get you actively engaged in the process of learning. During our in-person trainings, I revive that technique to demonstrate a second, different message.
Most speakers have a wonderful message; they succeed in motivating their audience and inspiring strong feelings and emotions in their audience, but they don’t give the audience anything in which it can hold the message and the emotions. The audience members can feel the message and the emotions wash over them, but within moments of the presentation being over, they are bombarded by competing messages, both externally and internally, and by the time they walk out the door, the message and the feelings have dissipated.
Great leaders ask questions that lead the individual to solve the problem or create the opportunity … hence learning takes place.
— DAVID BALL
As speakers, we need to give the people in our audience a vessel or container in which they can hold our message. That vessel is action. When we close our presentations by prompting the audience members to act, they will hold our message in their memory permanently. If the audience members don’t commit to an action, the message and emotions you have given them will slip through their fingers.
For example, let’s say you just gave a presentation on how to reduce supply costs in your office. An effective closing thought would be to ask everyone in the room to commit to one idea of her own choosing to help the company slash waste.
We talked about what we, as a group, will do to reduce the cost and waste of supplies, but let’s close with everyone making a commitment. I am going to go around the room, and I want everyone to answer this question: What are you personally going to do toward this effort?
What did we just do? We just used the audience involvement technique of going around the room to prompt our audience to action. You can use a number of audience involvement techniques—body poll, pair-up, survey, or, in this case, closing thought—to answer the action question. The key is that the action you are asking for meets the following criteria:
1. Simple enough for people to realistically commit
2. A step in the right direction
It doesn’t have to be a big step. A baby step in the right direction that everyone takes is better than a giant step that no one takes.
During one training session I conducted, a participant gave a presentation on the dangers of texting while driving. At the end of the class, he asked everyone to commit to never texting while driving. The audience members sort of agreed and nodded their heads. Afterward, we asked the audience members to raise their hands if they really thought they would never text while driving again. No one raised a hand. The audience members told us that they agreed in order to be polite, but they did not think that they could realistically promise never to text while driving. One person said that he agreed with the message and the principle, but he probably would not stick to the pledge.
The speaker then adjusted his approach, asking the audience to commit to absolutely not texting while driving for the rest of that day. Everyone agreed to this, and when we polled the audience, each person said that he or she would probably stick to the promise.
Then we tried one more approach. We went around the room and asked each person to say how long he or she could commit to not texting while driving, but first we asked people to really think about it, and not to say anything that they didn’t mean. We asked them to be brutally honest and give only a time frame they believed they could commit to 100 percent. If they weren’t sure, or if they didn’t want to do it, we gave them an escape clause. They could just say, “I want to think about it.”
Whether it was one day or one week or longer, we asked the audience members to commit only to what they were sure they could deliver. We then went around the room, and each person gave an answer. Afterward, the session participants said that they thought this technique produced the biggest commitment.
Your closing action should be a small task that is simple enough for people to actually, really do it.
Let’s try another example. You are promoting a brand, so you ask the members of your audience to “like” your brand on Facebook once they get home. What if, instead, you asked the audience to take out their mobile phone or device, click on Facebook, and “like” your brand right then and there? Done. Instead of asking people to do it olater and hoping that they won’t forget, you have turned it into a group activity that took only a few minutes.
Maybe you are giving a speech to promote an organization that helps military veterans. You could ask your audience members to send a card to a veteran, thanking her for her service. Maybe they will go home and do it. Or, you can ask them to reach under their chairs, where you have placed a thank you card and a pen. Ask them to write the card right then and there, on the spot. Do you think they will be more likely to pop it into the mail? The point is to figure out a way to have your audience members do something right then, in the room, that will lead them to do something more later.
In our training sessions, one of the ways we teach this technique is to hand out cards with topics printed on them. We then ask each participant to come up with some simple, directional tasks to ask an audience to do based on the topic he or she has drawn. When you are preparing for your presentations, you want to prepare a closing that will include an action request.
Whichever technique you decide to use to secure a closing action, you must also let the people in your audience know that they will be accountable for seeing their commitment through. Be clear on the deadline by which they are expected to take that action, and the means through which they are expected to report back to you.
Cook Up Something with Your Family
Parade magazine reaches tens of millions of readers every Sunday through hundreds of newspapers. I’ve had the pleasure of working with the wonderful publisher, Jack Haire, and editor in chief, Maggie Murphy, on a range of projects.
One day, Parade asked me to work with one of its star talents, Jon Ashton, the celebrity chef from Britain. Jon was embarking on a cross-country tour, starting in Pittsburgh. A couple of thousand people had paid money to watch Jon cook on stage for a couple of hours, and if you met him, you would understand why. Entertaining, charming, and genuine, Jon doesn’t “fancy himself a celebrity chef.”
Jon didn’t need much help or coaching, but when we got to the end, we talked about what could make a great closing. I asked what he normally did for a closing, and what his goal was for his cooking demonstrations.
One of his themes is getting families to cook together, so we devised the following closing for him:
The last two minutes are the most important of the two hours, because now you are the celebrity chef in your own kitchen. I want everyone to pick a partner and turn and face me.
Now, when I say, “Go,” I want you all to make a commitment. We are all in this together. You are going to commit to your partner that you are going to make a meal together with your family within the next week. What day, and what theme. That’s it. The rest you can decide later. Pick which day and what theme. For example, you could say, “I am going to do Mexican for Tuesday breakfast, or Italian on Friday for dinner.” But don’t say it unless you are really going to do it. You have 30 seconds. Ready? Go!
Okay, turning back this way, raise your hands if you made a commitment. When they bring a microphone to you, say it nice and loud when I point to you.
Jon then had a few people share their meal commitment, which built more energy in the room. He told them which website to go to after the family meal to tell him and all of us how it went.
If Jon had not done all that at the closing, how many people would have cooked a meal with their families in the next week? A few, for sure. But when he did a closing with a call to action and commitment, how many more do you think did it? I don’t know either, but I’m willing to bet that the number is higher.
Your presentation is your gift to your audience. The call to action is what makes the gift last longer.
Whichever technique you decide to use to secure a closing action, you must let your audience members know that they will be accountable for seeing their commitment through. Be clear on the deadline by which they are expected to take that action, and on the means through which they can share or report back.
SUMMARY
Close your presentation by asking the people in your audience to commit to an action.
The key to persuading people lies in what you ask them to do. Ask yourself, what do you want the audience members to do, and what questions will offer them a chance to act?
The closing action should be simple and easy, something that your audience can do immediately.
Create a follow-up mechanism. Make sure your audience members know that they will be accountable for completing that action.
Practice
You are making a speech to a large audience on the third floor of a conference center. The topic is health and physical fitness. You are amazing. Well, of course you are. Informative. Inspirational. But now that it’s time for the close, what could you do? Film yourself trying different closings.