Two talks, both about children in developing countries who don’t have what children in more developed countries have. Both about children relying on charities and support from people outside their own countries. 

I’ve always been more interested in supporting animal charities than those for children and yet one of the talks made me want to actually take action. One of them gave me a clear direction on what action to take, while the other left me feeling … nothing. Why? 

As I sat and listened to the second talk – the one that had no impact on me – I thought about what it was that made the first talk so different. What did the first speaker do, to move me to get involved? Where did the second speaker go wrong? 

Emotional Connection First 

The first speaker shared her story with the audience. She told us about how she had burnt out as a high flying executive and had effectively run away to South East Asia to do voluntary work in an orphanage, while she tried to sort her life out. She told us about the children who lived in the orphanage – most of them disabled – who didn’t have their own socks and yet whose feet would get cold in the winter months. Without socks, these children would just stay in bed in order to stay warm. They wouldn’t interact with each other or take part in any of the games they usually loved to play. She told us about one particular boy who loved to dance, but who, without socks to make his borrowed shoes fit properly, couldn’t join in with the dancing. 

This speaker painted pictures in my head. I could see the colours of the children’s clothes and their socks; I could hear the chatter of the children and their music. She made me laugh by describing the antics of the children – including how some of them would try to take off their socks as fast as she tried to put them on! All this without the need for any slides or props – just one pair of socks. 

Data and Diagrams Second 

The second speaker works for an equally deserving cause, providing medical support to young children around the world. He has probably helped far more children than the first speaker and yet he did not inspire me to support his charity. 

This speaker showed us a large number of slides – too many to count – that were full of bullet points of data – too many to read. There were maps showing the countries in which the charity works and lists of those countries next to the maps. There were lots of numbers – the number of children born with heart defects, the number of infants who die, the number of successful operations … and many more numbers that meant nothing to me. White slides with black bullet points. 

On all these slides, presented over 20 minutes, only a handful showed photos of the people involved or the children who had been helped. Even when we did see photos of healthy children, there were no stories. Who were they? How had they been helped? What are they doing now? There was no emotional connection in this talk – in fact there was no emotion. Throughout the talk, the speaker showed no real emotion himself. There was no joy and there was no sadness. He didn’t even share he story with us, so we don’t know why he was involved. The talk was dull and colourless. And there were no socks. 

Share Your Socks – and Your Stories 

When you’re on stage, speaking to an audience that you want to inspire or move to action, will you do it by drowning the audience in data, or by reaching out to their emotions? Will you expect people to take action because the numbers add up, or because you’ve been honest enough to share your own story and vulnerability? Will you keep to the black and white facts, or paint colourful pictures that bring your talk to life? 

If you’re not sure about the answers to any of those questions, let me know and we can have a chat about what you want to achieve with your next talk and how you could go about doing it. You can call me on 07773 252 744. 

And if you would like to share your socks with the orphanage in Vietnam, you can find out more about it here.