THE TOOLKIT
The Template
The Template is a communication tool aimed at organizing your thoughts and ideas for the most common and basic of messages. This framework can be used for informative messages such as status updates, project reviews, or strategic updates. It can also be used for persuasive messages such as business arguments, proposals, and pitches. This tool helps you structure your message whether you are delivering it verbally or in written form.
The Template is made up of four elements:
- Headline: The central idea or theme (e.g., object, topic, proposal, course of action, answer to a question, etc.). The key to having an effective Headline is to make it no more than one sentence. The true definition of a professional is someone that can take the complex and make it simple.
- Directory: The various categories or sub-points you use to break up your headline. You want to divide your headline into two to four, ideally three, sub-ideas for easier organization and understanding. Try and make your Directory key words or phrases that are easy for your audience to remember.
- Support: The details that further explain your directory and back your point of view (e.g., facts, examples, testimony, quotations, visual aids, statistics, etc.)
- Transition: The helpful connector that brings your audience from one point to the next.
Objectives
Listeners report that their ability to pay attention and understand messages depends upon the construction and organization of the speaker’s ideas. Therefore, to achieve effective and meaningful communication, The Template accomplishes the following objectives:
- Organizes your thoughts for easier understanding.
- Categorizes various subjects and topics under a central theme for conciseness.
- Constructs distinct categories for clarity.
- Provides supportive material to make your communication more powerful and influential.
Directions
The following is a simple four-step process for filling out the The Template form:
- Write out your Headline (e.g., making a suggestion, announcing a decision, answering a direct question, etc.) in the top box. This should be no more than one sentence long.
- Decide how you are going to organize your message and create your Directory. Think of it as a menu, and you are listing the various courses. There is no detail about the dishes and you are certainly not sharing the ingredients at this level of information.
- Write out your Support in the last level of boxes under the appropriate Directory item. Give people only as much as they need to hear, not everything you know.
- Create Transition statements that help your listeners move from one point to the next. These should be short phrases that connect your two points. You can also use questions to elicit input and create interaction and engagement.
Instructions
When you are ready to speak, follow The Template in this order:
- State your Headline.
- State each of your Directory points from left to right.
- Restate your first Directory item and discuss the Support associated with it.
- Share your Transition that connects first Directory item to your second.
- Restate your second Directory item and discuss the Support associated with it.
- Share your Transition that connects second Directory item to your third.
- Restate your third Directory item and discuss the Support associated with it.
- Conclude by repeating the Directory, asking for questions, or stating a conclusionary takeaway.