Hi Friend,
Last week, my son walked into my office carrying a piece of paper, and asked, “Hey Mom, what’s a ‘mic drop moment’?”
I took the paper out of his hand and read it, a big smile spreading across my face.
His class is learning how to deliver better presentations, and for his upcoming book report (they actually call them book “reviews” these days, which is a huge improvement IMO) the teacher wants the class to practice delivering a strong close. She wants students to create a “mic drop” phrase that sums up the presenter’s point of view.
I said, “A mic drop moment is when you deliver a message that is concise, clear, memorable, and a tiny bit devastating.”
“Devastating?!?”
“Well, I mean, it hits the audience emotionally. It can be devastatingly funny, devastatingly sad, or devastatingly pointed as a criticism.”
I asked him to show me his first mic drop attempt. It read:
Fellowship of the Ring is a necessary book to read if you want to read the Trilogy, but it’s a little slow.”***
I asked my son, “Does that sentence make you feel anything?”
“Nope.”
So he rewrote it.
If you are going to ask a reader to hang in there for 423 pages in order to get the necessary backstory, at least make it a page-turner. Do I recommend it? Absolutely. But do yourself a favor—use Audible to get through it, but once it’s time for Return of the King, buckle up, because it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read.
MIC DROP.
Your thought experiment this week is to pick a meeting that requires you to deliver your point of view on something. Be deliberate about your close, and make it a mic drop moment.
Life is too short, and too full of distractions to bore the audience.
Shine on, my friend.
B
P.S. I wholeheartedly DISAGREE with my son’s book review. I found Fellowship of the Ringfascinating and terrifying (Dark Riders haunt my dreams). But then again, I was nearly 30 years old when I read it. Any other LOTR fans out there with me??
