What is the KISS principle? When we’re discussing how to become a better speaker, the KISS principle means “Keep It Simple and Stupid”. I know it sounds too simple and too stupid that no one will actually think this technique will help, but it is really that simple. Believe it or not, you will notice that people start to get your point better when you apply this technique to your daily life. There are three main concepts for you to reach the goal of the KISS principle.
First, give the listeners a 30,000-foot view of your topic. If you are going to give a 10 minutes speech on stage, it will be great for you to spend the first minute giving a brief introduction. Instead of going through every detail at the beginning, which will mislead the audience about your original point, you should give an overview to the audience. This is like adding a receiver to the audience and they will be more sensitive about the topic you’re saying.
Second, simplify all your texts and graphs in your PowerPoint. You don’t want the audience to focus on two things at the same time. If you make a lot of words and complex graphs on your PowerPoint, where do you want the audience to focus? The speech? or the PowerPoint? Of course, the speech is way more important because you can provide the PowerPoint for them to study offline, but your speech will only exist once. Stop making all your script on the screen, the audience won’t have enough time to get both of the information in a short speech.
Last but not least, condense it into one point. If your audience can only take a concept after they leave your speech, what is the most important thing you want to tell them? Don’t make me wrong here, a concept doesn’t have to be a sentence, it could be something that is no greater than 100 words. There is a company that adapts the same strategy, Twitter limits the users to only share a post that is lesser than 280 characters. This design considered people want to get the most information out of the least words.
Using the KISS principle will definitely change your presentation, not only making it simple but also making your idea can be easily shared with others. Make sure you apply the three key points mentioned above and your speech will never confuse others.
