A couple of days ago, my oldest daughter had her graduation ceremony.
And besides being a very proud moment for me as a dad, there was a profound communication lesson that I wanted to share with you.
Honestly, I was expecting the ceremony to be a rather boring afternoon, with three speeches that I expected to be the usual boring talks that you see at those occasions.
But it turned out very differently. The whole ceremony – and the talks in particular – was really enjoyable and a pleasant experience.
I think it boils down to two things.
First of all, in all three speeches (from the teachers, the school principal, and the student) the speakers used plain and simple language, getting rid of all the overly professional jargon and not at all trying to appear more eloquent than needs to be.
The other aspect might be even more important. They were really speaking from the heart, sharing messages that meant something to them personally. They didn’t try to be overly clever and smart. Just sharing their thoughts and feelings and addressing us as humans. A stark contrast to the “target group” focused approach of many business presentations.
I think we all can learn a lot from these two lessons. When we use more plain and simple language and speak from our heart, our communication will be a lot less boring and probably have a much bigger impact.
