Recently I delivered a Listen and speak under pressure presentation for BIO, a networking group I am a member of. After the presentation one of the participants contacted me and said, that he had used one of the techniques I described in the presentation. The participant used my Open, Middle, Close speaking structure to interject in a senior level meeting. His interjection made an impact and won the approval of the senior executives in the meeting. Here’s what he said: OPEN “Let me jump in here . . .” MIDDLE: “My view is . . .(and he shared his view in one or two sentences) CLOSE: “That’s my view”.

This structure may seem too basic to be effective,

but extensive field testing with my clients has demonstrated it works. And doing the fundamentals – with precision, at speed, in any environment – separates extraordinary communicators from a ‘sea of talking heads’. Where people go wrong in interjecting in a meeting (as well as in other situations) is going on a monologue, or monologuing as one client described it. That is, they may interject and gain the attention of the meeting, but then they go on a rant . . .  with no end in sight. They lose the attention of the audience and their impact is diminished.

Own the Conversation

Implementation idea: In your next meeting, make a goal to interject using the Open, Middle, Close structure. Note the impact of doing so.