As a child, my mother would only know when I was asleep by the absence of my talking.
What can I say? I love my words.
So when a freelance client recently approached me about turning leadership topics into 2-minute micro-lessons I was... [palms sweating] intrigued.
I've spent so much of my career developing others through facilitation and coaching. The prospect of converting my material into a series of 30-second "bursts" really made me pause for a moment. Could I be that brief?
In the spirit of using my words more sparingly, here are just a few things I kept in mind as I condensed some of my longer lectures into micro-lessons:
Packing a punch: What are the simplest tools I know that could make the biggest impact?
Defining my scope: What course objectives would be valuable AND realistic within 2 minutes? (i.e. What could I reasonably train someone on while heating up a frozen burrito?)
Removing white noise: In reviewing my training "scripts," what would happen if each idea/phrase/sentence were excluded? Would the explanation ultimately remain intact? (If so, CUT!)
When I watched back my videos, I noticed a few things that really surprised me. Most notably, I seemed to have a higher degree of enthusiasm than usual, as I had to make each and every word count. I also felt that I appeared more confident, getting straight to the point rather than padding what I was about to say with phrases like "it seems to me that..." (This isn't to say that clarifying statements aren't sometimes needed; it just occurred to me that I often was using them when they actually weren't.)
The whole process left me inspired to review my other training materials from a similar perspective (regardless of their intended length):
Which ideas, examples, and explanations are truly needed to transform a learner's understanding? (I'm eager to begin answering this through pilots and course feedback!)
Where could I benefit from keeping it brief?
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