EPISODE 65
EMPHASIZE it!

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to storytelling with data, the podcast where listeners around the world learn to be better storytellers and presenters with best selling author, speaker, and workshop guru Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic. We'll cover a wide range of topics that will help you effectively show and tell your data stories. So get ready to separate yourself from the mess of 3D exploding pie charts and deliver knockout presentations. And with that here's Cole.

Hi this is Cole, thanks for tuning in! I was in London recently, and was reminded of the magic of being in person with others. Such a simple thing, and yet, if you’re like me, as a result of the past couple of years, you just don’t do it as much as you once did. It seems crazy to think that I used to have that every day when I’d simply go to work in banking in Seattle, or at Google in Mountain View. After that, when I first started SWD, I traveled nearly weekly, teaching workshops all over the country and around the world. I remember getting so much done on airplanes (uninterrupted work time), and I always got so inspired—creativity simply flowed—when in new or different environment.

Fast forward to today: things have changed. I work from home. I don’t travel nearly as much. I still like to think that I get work done and am reasonably creative. But this definitely makes the times that I do travel feel noteworthy and special. On this recent trip, I was able to catch up in person with my colleague, Simon, who’s based in the UK. Together, we taught a masterclass in London to a super engaged group. It was clear that being in a different environment wasn’t invigorating solely to me; rather, multiple people commented on how useful it was to be away for the day, in a place distanced from work and free of the normal distractions, to take a step back and think about how they typically work and how they might work better. We practiced a lot of low tech strategies for planning data-driven communications and exchanged feedback and ideas. One kind participant told me afterwards that the session had been “life-changing.”

I’ll pause here to mention that we have just one more public masterclass planned for this year. It takes place in a short few days, with the entire SWD team on May 5th (2023) in Chicago. While I had hoped that 2023 would be the year of “back to in-person,” it’s clear that people at large have a different agenda. Don’t get me wrong, virtual is great in a lot of ways; but it simply isn’t the same magic that you get in person. If you’d like to experience it, you should really join us in Chicago, because given the current climate I’m honestly not sure when we’ll do it again. If you are interested, be sure to listen to the end of this episode, when I’ll share a special discount.

Back to London—and a more positive note: I also had a conference keynote presentation. I drew on content from my latest book, which is all about planning, creating, and delivering stellar presentations. I did some of the typical, transform the graph or slide content, but also spent a good amount of time on the role that the person plays when communicating data. And in particular, what everyone can do to improve how they communicate—whether formally from on stage, in business meetings, or simply talking to colleagues. In similar fashion to how I showed good graph design by first starting with something less than ideal and then improving it, I illustrated speaking in the same way. First presenting in a typical but clearly uninspiring way—demonstrating several common issues that folks in the audience confirmed they could relate to—then modeling what it could be. I tend to get pretty dramatic on stage when doing these things, playing up both the bad and the good to really emphasize the power of that distinction.

I was chatting with an attendee later in the day and I made a comment about my own, let’s call it charismatic, delivery perhaps being too dramatic for a more conservative European audience. To which they responded, “No, not at all. It’s helpful when you emphasize it.”

It IS helpful when you emphasize it. Not only to make a point in a keynote presentation, rather thoughtful emphasis can be applied to basically all of our visual and verbal communications. That is what I’d like to talk about today: tactics for creating contrast and emphasis—whether a number, words, in your table or graph, or in the way that you speak and move.

Let’s start simple: say there is an important NUMBER you want to draw people’s attention to.

I’ll use a specific example to set up various ways that we might accomplish this. In the case study in my latest book, storytelling with you, one important number is wrapped up in the fact that macadamia nut prices have recently increased 37%. (note how I just emphasized that with my voice, we’ll talk more about that in a bit). Let’s say I want to make sure this sticks with my audience.

• If I’m simply talking, without visual aids, I might take a moment to write it down (paper: write and circle it, white board—people would watch this, and it would feel important due to the time it takes me to do it, and the fact that I chose to do so)

• If I’m using a slide deck to present, consider how I might draw attention to 37% in that case. I could make the number bigger or bolder than anything else on the slide. Put it on it’s own slide. A slide devoid of anything besides the number 37% is going to put the focus on that number. (own slide & big, bold)

• Still in slide land, I might visualize it: not in a graph (we’ll get there), but through an image. Imagine a full-slide beautiful crisp image of ton of macadamia nuts. I could show that, give it a moment to register with my audience, and then communicate the 37%. Or to combine these last two ideas, I could do that and then have the numbers 37%, big, appear on top of that image. This won’t always make sense, but think about when it could.

• In another context, I might humanize it. Let’s say the 37% isn’t the price of nuts, but rather some proportion of people. If appropriate to round, I might say 4 out of 10 people to help contextualize it, remove the abstraction of the %, and making it a quantity that people can picture.

In some cases, it might make sense to further contextualize that number with others around it. I might opt for a TABLE. Let’s consider how I might focus attention within that structure.

• Most obvious: highlight. make all the rest of the elements of the table neutral (black/grey), then employ sparing contrast to direct attention: bold, color number, outline, color background - contrast

• Live: fill in first (all eyes will be looking there) or last (motion is attention-grabbing)

• Beyond a single number: entire row or column that you want to emphasize: order (put first, zigzag z), like single cell: could use bold/color, heatmap (layer: put first, make numbers bold, add heatmapping)

• Another way to draw people’s attention to important data in a table is to take it out of the table and visualize it…

How do we get others to pay attention where we’d like them to in a GRAPH? Let’s consider an example. Imagine a line graph. It’s showing the cost of nuts over time. The y-axis reflects price in dollars, the x-axis is time, measured in years. There are several lines. One of them, of course, is macadamia nuts. Others might include almonds, cashews, and hazelnuts. We want people who look at this graph to focus on the line reflecting the price of macadamia nuts over time. How might we accomplish this?

• (Brute force: better than nothing, can work if you don’t have access to the underlying data, for example if it’s a screenshot and you have to make it work) arrow

• Enclose it - put a box or circle around it (Simon, who I watched present last week, has a nice way of explaining here, which is if you had it printed on a piece of paper, when showing it to someone else, you might take your pen out and circle it)

• Transparent shapes

• Color

• Bold/thickness

• Position (make sure it doesn’t appear behind others)

• Line style (dotted)

• Label only that line, or do so more prominently

• Prime with words

• Show only that line (always ask if you can show less data…be aware of context lost)

• Show others, then add the line of interest

• Data markers

• Data labels (every point… draw attention to specific ones of interest by putting labels/markers only there - in this example, we might do that at the 37% increase)

• These tactics can be effective on their own, but are particularly powerful when you layer them: make the line bold, a contrasting color, label important data points, and prime your audience with words “macadamia nut price increased 37!)

Speaking of words…

When you have more than a few WORDS on a slide, you can use many of the tactics I’ve shared already. 

• Table… position (put important words at the top - slide title: takeaway title) 

• Sparing emphasis via contrast (similar to what we talked about with the single number): make important words big or bold, or a different color than the rest. Let’s consider a couple specific examples…

• Say we have a slide of bulleted text (don’t present live, but if it’s something people are consuming on their own), put the pithy topic or action first after each bullet point and make the text bold and a contrasting color, like black or bright blue, when the other text is dark grey. For example: let’s say we’re summarizing the findings of a customer feedback survey. I could emphasize a pithy phrase like “Winning on price” or “We resolve issues quickly” and then expand upon each of these with more details (there for reference, but the visual hierarchy makes it scannable).

• Speaking of survey data, another example where you might have words on a slide would be when sharing verbatim quotes. These can be fantastic for humanizing ideas and topics, because someone—a person—said those very words. In a longer quote, you might emphasize within it sparingly—make a few choice words that get the primary point across bold or big. If you can pique your audience’s attention and get the main message across through that, then those who want to can take the time to read the full quote.

Those are a couple of ways to emphasize words on a page. Let’s shift next to creating emphasis when we SPEAK. As it is in our visual communications, in verbal communications contrast is also key for providing a signal to our audience that something is different and they should listen and pay attention. We can do this with our voice in a couple of ways—through speed or volume.

• When it comes to speed: I might increase my pace of speech as I approach a critical point that I want people to remember, creating energy with the tempo of my voice. OR I might.. slow… down, putting palpable thought into every word. You wouldn’t want to do either of these things all the time, again, the value is in the contrast. Speak normally most of the time and then use increases or decreases in the tempo of your speech to get people’s attention in a different way.

• We can do this through volume as well. I can get LOUD to emphasize. Or get increasingly louder, building a crescendo. I could also reduce my volume—even whisper—to build anticipation and get people’s ears to perk up for what I’ll say next.

• After that I might pause, allowing space to punctuate my spoken words, and then make a critical point: …“The price of macadamia nuts has increased…37%!” (there you get a taste of the drama that I sometimes bring forth on stage—it’s not to mean that you need to do things to the extreme, but rather, to illustrate the spectrum of what you could do. And get you thinking about when and how you might start to incorporate some of these tips into the way you speak in a manner that is authentic to you.

When speaking live to others, BODY LANGUAGE is something else we can use for emphasis.

• Hands: point, enumerate, throw my hands in the air for emphasis

• Moving intentionally in space, imagine presenting from stage in front of a large audience, or to others in a meeting setting, where people are seated around a table: move in the space so that you can connect with everyone, no one feels ignored, this means you’re more likely to have their full attention when you employ some of these tactics for emphasis

• Move in a way that reflects what you’re talking about… e.g. analytical process R to L

• I mentioned throwing my hands in the air, but think general about getting BIG when something is exciting or noteworthy (like we’ve done visually already with #s and words), or going from sitting to standing or vice versa to shift and gain attention

• Contrast via how you move, how you use your body, facial expression

Just like when we talked about the power of layering visual contrast to direct attention, we can layer aspects of everything I’ve touched on today to make sure we have people’s full attention when we need it. The next time you have something to communicate, consider how you might emphasize it: visually, verbally, or in both of these ways.

Back to my session in London last week, there were some great QUESTIONS following my keynote presentation and over the course of the day that I thought I’d take a few moments to share.

You talked about moving with intention when presenting: how does this change when presenting in a virtual environment?

• You’re boxed in: get familiar with your box (my external camera, recording window)

• In virtual you’re flattened/shrunk, need to be BIGGER (careful of hands, facial expr)

• Voice becomes even more important

Another question spurred by my keynote—it’s a place where many people struggle…

When I present, I try to be conscious of not using filler words. But then once one creeps in—which always happens—I find myself in a downward spiral and they come pouring out! How do I eliminate filler words?

Reducing and, optimally, eliminating filler words is something we should all aim to do. In a business setting, they can make you sound unprofessional, uncertain or lacking in confidence, and even bring your credibility into question. Please don’t try to get out of this by using the excuse “it makes me sound more conversational!”. Like clutter in a graph, a filler word here or there isn’t likely going to be the end of the world, but don’t let more than a few distract from you, your words, and your message. To curb them, I’ll mention a few things to try.

• (Mighty) record yourself: become aware of what they are and when you use them (get comfortable pausing, um, ah, oh: like you don’t know what you’re talking about, vs. pausing until your mind lands on the word you want or a suitable replacement: thoughtful

• Let those around you know, practice eliminating them from regular conversations, too

• Practicing aloud (without slides, my morning prep walk through Regent’s Park)

• Written reminders (notes, sticky computer in virtual), remind yourself before presenting

• When presenting: don’t worry, be in the moment

I mentioned that my colleague Simon was at the conference as well. He ran an awesome breakout session on the “analytical journey”, I’ll turn things over to him briefly to share a question that came up after that and his response. 

[ ]
Thanks Simon! At the conference, I also participated in a panel discussion on the topic of “storytelling to the c-suite.” One question that came up there was… 

What mistake have you made when communicating with senior leadership and what did you learn from it? Nikesh story: caveats discredited me; today: step back and consider what I was trying to accomplish: your org spends a ton of time and energy interviewing to fill open roles (which is something I could actually reasonably quantify if I thought it would be compelling), given all the energy that goes into it, we should work to retain people once they are here, because the cost of doing that all over again is significant.

It’s funny how situations like that stick with us. More generally: pausing to consider each success and failure, what we can learn from it, and how we can use that learning to do better next time, is a powerful way to refine your skills—both when visualizing and communicating with data, and when communicating in general.

Before I wrap, a couple quick updates:

• Our 1-day storytelling & presenting data masterclass is this Friday, that’s May 5, 2023, in Chicago. This will feature the entire SWD team AND will be our only US in-person public workshop this year, register to join us before time & space run out! For those unable to join in person, we do also have upcoming virtual SWD and SWY workshops. Details & registration at storytellingwithdata.com/workshops. Use the code PODCAST10 at checkout for 10% off registration price. That’s PODCAST-1-0.

• If you’re wondering why nuts were a prominent part of today’s episode, check out my latest book, storytelling with you: plan, create, and deliver a stellar presentation. It will make sense then, I promise. Visit storytellingwithyou.com to download sample content or order your copy today. If you’ve already read and enjoyed it, I’d be super appreciative if you’d take a moment to share your review on Amazon.

• On the topic of books, if you teach from—or would like to teach from—storytelling with data books, we have a fantastic set of resources for university instructors. Go to storytellingwithdata.com/university to learn more and join upcoming instructor-focused events.

• Would you like to ask a question or share a challenge you’re facing with one of the talented and experienced folks on the storytelling with data team? That’s one awesome benefit of premium membership in the SWD community. Join weekly office hours to get input on your work, brainstorm approaches, or get your data, graph, and presentation questions answered. Learn more at community.storytellingwithdata.com/premium.

• If you like to learn via video, or would appreciate data visualization and presentation resources to share with colleagues, check out the SWD YouTube channel. That’s at storytellingwithdata.com/YouTube. Subscribe for a no-cost way to support us and to be notified of new episodes!

Speaking of subscribing—if you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and share with a friend. Thanks for tuning in!