#74 The EPIC effect of rhythm!

EPIC Thought of the day

I have been privileged to personally be part of an audience and experiencing the wonderful performance of more than 30 outstanding platform speakers in my life. What’s made them ‘outstanding’ was subtle. For many years, it remained a mystery to me as to why these speakers were so memorable… why they are what I describe as my top 30 experiences as an audience member. I’ve read the transcripts and listen to the available audios of the top 30 political speeches ever given in the USA. I noticed, they too had this mysterious quality… and then one day, it dawned on my… they all had one thing in common. They all possessed a certain quality called rhythm. Today I’m going to talk about the EPIC Effect of Rhythm and how you can have it as a communicator. No matter where we are, in a client’s meeting room sitting around a table on a platform in front of thousands… the principles I’m going to share with you today will work. Now, just to remind you, EPIC is an acronym for Engaging, Persuading, Impacting and Compelling. Since 'definition is critical for clarity', let’s start by defining what we mean by 'having rhythm' as a business communicator. The word rhythm literally means ‘a strong, regular repeated pattern of movement or sound’. A real in-depth look at the meaning of the word can be found on Wikipedia. The late Maya Angelou was a profoundly wise voice and amongst many of her insightful... and life enhancing saying was, “Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.” As a speaker, when you have rhythm... you dance. You flow. You are a relationship of connections. When you picture a speaker using rhythm I want you to see them speaking with a cadence. The effective use of cadence is the ability to use a phrase with disciplined repetition. It’s this disciplined repetition that connects the words into the ear for greater rhythmic impact and memorability. Probably the best example that everyone will recognise immediately is the famous “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr. To Listen to the entire I Have A Dream speech click here. Listen to the cadence of this classic speech. "And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that. Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring." Or, how about Winston Churchill’s speech given to the British Parliament in June 1940. Listen to the entire speech by clicking here. “We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and strength in the air. We shall fight to defend our islands, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!” A more modern platform master is Barak Obama. In my opinion, he is probably one of the most influential communicators we will see in our lifetime. Obama has mastered a certain cadence that’s very effective. As he’s talking, he turns to the right to make his first point with a rise, then he turns to his left with a fall in his voice to close. Obama puts on a showcase of The Eight Constant Factors of a Platform Mastery. He is engaging, persuasive, impacting and compelling. He is passionate and always speaks with clarity of purpose. His posture is commanding and his ability to use his voice with texture, nuance and projection are wonderfully balanced. An Obama speech has such rhythm that there is almost a musicality about it. In fact,