I’m sure you’ve noticed:  one of the casualties of our speeded-up existence has been the death of real instruction manuals.  Oh, sure, some products still arrive with manuals attached, but they’re truncated.  They have a few pictures, a whole bunch of dumb warnings, like this product runs on electricity! Don’t submerse it in a bathtub, turn it on, and stick your fingers into the plug end!  Then they typically refer you to a website where the real information is.

Some products come with quick start mini-manuals, reading something like, STEP ONE: take the product out of the box lovingly and with proper respect for all the aesthetic beauty we designed into it over many sleepless nights when we could have been doing something more fun. Set it by the window and just look at it for a while, admiring it.  STEP TWO:  plug it in, turn it on, and good luck to you. 

So detailed, useful instruction manuals are largely a relic of slower-paced times.  As a result, people who make things (and services) that used to rely on manuals have resorted to two new strategies.  First, they make all products in a category pretty much alike, and as simple as possible, so that everyone can eventually learn by osmosis how to work them.  Things like microwaves and blenders fall into this category.  Second, and this is the interesting development, they have the product or service train us as we go.

In other words, things (or services) that are complex and interesting now need to take on the job of teaching us how to use them, in addition to just working well.

The first breakthrough category of such objects was video gaming.  You could go to an arcade, and each video game gave you a quick screen which looked like a movie trailer, but in actuality was a mini-instruction manual.  Guns appear, guys shoot a lot, bodies explode, repeat.  Simple, but you knew what you were supposed to do, right?  Anything else you would learn as you immersed yourself in the game. You would need to learn new skills, but you could do so as you reached higher game levels, by dying repeatedly, figuring out what went wrong, and trying again.  You thought you were playing a game, but what you were actually doing was being trained in how to play the game.

What does the death of instruction manuals have to do with public speaking?  The same choice faces speakers as the world speeds up and hand-holding devices like manuals become a thing of the past.  We can either make our speeches all alike and as simple as possible, or we can teach our audiences how to understand us.

The latter is infinitely more preferable.  Speakers need to hone their sophistication and individuality, not dumb themselves down.  So they need to undertake three tasks at the same time as they are delivering the speech.

First, teach the audience what the speech is about by immersing the audience into the speech as quickly as possible.  Don’t start with introductions, chit-chat, or other time-wasting stuff.  Just get into your first story, your first fact, your first penetrating insight.

Second, teach the audience the rules of engagement, again by demonstrating them as early in the speech as possible. If your speech is going to be interactive, start early on with interactivity.  If you’re going to be funny, start, continue, and end funny.  Don’t start with a joke and then spend the rest of your speech being serious.  Because then you’ve in effect switched instruction manuals on them.  And so on.  Start as you mean to go on, and teach the audience how to respond.

And third, teach the audience about your unique voice by beginning with something original, rich, and deeply authentic.  Don’t save your best story for the end.  Start with your best and then give the audience better ones.  Only you can tell your story.

Life no longer hands out instruction manuals worthy of the name for toasters, TVs, or talks.  It’s up to you to teach your audience how to appreciate you.