You've got some deep ideas and specific business goals to accomplish with your speech or presentation. You can go the traditional (i.e. boring) route and lay them all out logically. If you do this, you will use facts and figures and reference leading authorities to support your position. You will use vocal inflections and body language to communicate how important these ideas are.
OR...You can use analogies and metaphors to bring your ideas into contexts that your audience can relate to. When they relate or connect on a personal, internal level, they will be able to integrate your ideas into their own minds and act accordingly.
Analogies from everyday life:
Sports provides plentiful analogies. Not the 'team' dogma, but what it takes to have a 80% free-throw average. Or a .350 batting average. Or a 2000 yard rushing season. How many times does a player practice? How does he or she learn to make tiny adjustments that inch by inch make a difference? These analogies help employees see the value in small steps taken daily.
Nature is another source for analogies. Perfect storms are a confluence of many elements coming together in just the right magnitude, at just the right time. Individuals and departments can think in terms of just the right confluence of elements that will make a perfect storm of failure or of accomplishment.
Travel experiences supply analogies that everyone can relate to. Is getting something approved just like navigating a horrendous traffic jam on your highways during rush hour. How can you make it easier? It seems like everyday the airlines and Department of Homeland Security change the rules for air travel? What in your company is like that and how could it be changed?
Share some of your favorites analogies through our comment link. I will give some examples from my own speeches in the next few posts.
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