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How to Craft Compelling Stories That Move Your Audience · Speak In Flow

• 0:02
  Melinda Lee: Welcome. Dear listeners to the speak and flow podcast where we dive into unique stories to share, so that you and your team can achieve maximum potential and flow even when the pressure is high. Today I have an amazing experience leader with just lots of
• 0:24
  Melinda Lee: stories to tell. And he's actually telling an untold story which in history has, we think, that it has been told. But it hasn't, and he's taken the courage to do that. His name is Wayne. He is the managing director for Secretaria's advisor. He's the author of Michelangelo's saving Michelangelo's Dome.
• 0:47
  Melinda Lee: I'm so glad he's here. Welcome Wayne.
• 0:50
  WayneKalayjian: Thank you, Melinda. It's a pleasure to be here. I appreciate your asking me.
• 0:55
  Melinda Lee: I am ready to dive in because I love the topic that we're going to talk about. It is around written communication, but a lot of what we're going to discuss today is applicable to verbal communication as well.
• 1:09
  Melinda Lee: So, as I mentioned, we are, you're talking. We're going to talk about an untold story. So most people have not told the story because it's quite complicated. But Wayne has taken the initiative to go ahead and do that through his book. And so, Wayne, can you tell us a little bit about what you do? And also what what made you passionate about telling the story.
• 1:31
  WayneKalayjian: Thank you for the question.
• 1:34
  WayneKalayjian: I've been a civil engineer and a structural engineer for almost the interiority of my professional career.
• 1:42
  WayneKalayjian: and that's now 45 years.
• 1:46
  WayneKalayjian: and construction is in my blood
• 1:49
  WayneKalayjian: when I can, and I love art, history, I love geology. I have a wide variety of academic interests
• 1:57
  WayneKalayjian: that focus around building things, and when I was an undergraduate in college I came. I stumbled upon
• 2:07
  WayneKalayjian: this, mentioned that the great dome at St. Peter's basilica in Rome
• 2:13
  WayneKalayjian: was at the point of catastrophic collapse in 1742.
• 2:18
  WayneKalayjian: Now this dome had been designed by Michelangelo, it was revered, and if you've been to Rome. You know how it dominates the skyline. The Italians consider it as a national treasure.
• 2:29
  WayneKalayjian: and I had never known this, and I had just assumed, when I'm 20 years old, that this was a well-known story had been told. Often.
• 2:39
  WayneKalayjian: Little did I know years later I never came across it in anywhere.
• 2:46
  WayneKalayjian: So I became determined to learn more about this episode. And sure enough.
• 2:53
  WayneKalayjian: it's a very important and significant
• 2:57
  WayneKalayjian: chapter in Western civilization, because it created the the practice of engineering as we practice it today. Engineering had been around
• 3:11
  WayneKalayjian: before this and used in a sort of certain way.
• 3:15
  WayneKalayjian: but not the way we define it. The way we use mathematics and science was exactly how
• 3:22
  WayneKalayjian: the episode in in my book actually creates and invents.
• 3:29
  WayneKalayjian: and it becomes very important and significant time in in forming, forming
• 3:37
  WayneKalayjian: really western civilization. So that's what got me started, and it and and I, as you can tell, I love the story. It. It's a it's an untold story.
• 3:50
  WayneKalayjian: I quickly learned why it was untold, because it's a hard story to tell.
• 3:55
  WayneKalayjian: You had to be an engineer to understand the technical concepts, and engineers are really good at many things, but they're generally not known for good writing, and my personal
• 4:10
  WayneKalayjian: I would say my my personal philosophy is to to write well, and to write in a conversational
• 4:19
  WayneKalayjian: tone, so that your audience can be engaged, and that was my philosophy going in, and when I learned how complicated the story was, and how many characters were involved, and how difficult it was to keep up with these characters. A lot of the texts or the source. References are in Italian 18th century Italian no less.
• 4:45
  WayneKalayjian: It was a real challenge, but I loved the challenge, and I've gotten very good feedback from the book, and it was a wonderful experience.
• 4:55
  WayneKalayjian: But if I didn't know how to write, and if I didn't know how to communicate. Well, it would not. I would not have pulled it off. It would not have been enjoyable. What I what I learned more than anything, is that you have to be able to communicate, to connect to your audience. Writing a book
• 5:12
  WayneKalayjian: for the sake of writing a book is meaningless. If your readers don't read it.
• 5:19
  WayneKalayjian: and so I really made a point of wanting to engage it. I was
• 5:24
  WayneKalayjian: fully cognizant when I was writing
• 5:26
  WayneKalayjian: of that. My audience. I don't want my audience to be a group of professors of civil engineering
• 5:33
  WayneKalayjian: or academics.
• 5:35
  WayneKalayjian: I wanted the audience to be the everyday person, the everyday reader. That was my goal.
• 5:42
  WayneKalayjian: and so I wouldn't. I knew I had to communicate
• 5:46
  WayneKalayjian: in in a way that would connect with them, using
• 5:51
  WayneKalayjian: simple sentences, simple words, not oversimplified, not dumbed down.
• 5:57
  WayneKalayjian: not condescending, but in in writing, in a way that they would quickly engage with, and that has been my approach, not only
• 6:07
  WayneKalayjian: through the book, but also in my professional life. That's, I think, the most effective way to get messages across.
• 6:14
  Melinda Lee: Well, I can really can't wait to read more about it. And actually pick it up myself, because it sounds so great, I mean you've taken the time to really cater and develop this for the general audience. And even though this is a fantastic structure.
• 6:32
  Melinda Lee: with so much engineering and design in the background to really help us to understand the fantastic, all the the thought and put behind it. That's amazing.
• 6:42
  WayneKalayjian: Thank you.
• 6:43
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 6:43
  WayneKalayjian: It was fun. It was hard. But and and you know, like like most things in life, the hard things
• 6:51
  WayneKalayjian: also turn out to be fun, especially especially in hindsight.
• 6:56
  Melinda Lee: During it. What were you thinking during it? What was the the most difficult point during
• 7:02
  Melinda Lee: the the development of this.
• 7:04
  WayneKalayjian: Yeah. So, as I said, you know, my goal was to communicate in a way that would connect, resonate with the average reader with the day-to-day reader, and
• 7:18
  WayneKalayjian: being able to communicate difficult technical concepts.
• 7:25
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 7:25
  WayneKalayjian: In a
• 7:26
  WayneKalayjian: in a more simple way, requires a mastery of the topic that most people sort of don't fully grasp until
• 7:38
  WayneKalayjian: they're in that same situation. So, for example, it's 1 thing for me, as a civil engineer, to talk to another civil engineer
• 7:46
  WayneKalayjian: about a technical issue, we can use words and jargon and and phrases that we commonly understand because we're in that in that environment. But when I am trying to communicate those same concepts to someone who's not an engineer who who doesn't live in that world. I have to
• 8:08
  WayneKalayjian: use certain words or use fewer words or different words, and I have to simplify my language, I I have to be concise. I need to be able to use analogies
• 8:22
  WayneKalayjian: that that would help bring the images, the imagery to life. So there's there's a degree of of work
• 8:31
  WayneKalayjian: that's required and thought a lot of thought. How do I take this
• 8:37
  WayneKalayjian: complicated issue and boil it down to its essence
• 8:43
  WayneKalayjian: in in a way that the audience will be able to read in a simple paragraph and say.
• 8:51
  WayneKalayjian: Okay, I think I understand that. By the way, I know not all the concepts in in my book the general reader will immediately grasp. I mean, these are some of these are technical concepts, and some of the feedback I've gotten is, you know, I didn't understand everything in the book.
• 9:08
  WayneKalayjian: but you made the issues
• 9:12
  WayneKalayjian: that things that I could understand. I could more readily understand, so that, I think was the biggest challenge was
• 9:22
  WayneKalayjian: taking the difficult conceptual technical issues and
• 9:27
  WayneKalayjian: phrasing them in a way and communicating them in a way that the general audience could still appreciate. And, by the way, the technical audience that reads the book, they will have assurance that, yeah, you know what collagen got it right? He simplifies the issue without dumbing it down.
• 9:49
  Melinda Lee: Bye.
• 9:50
  WayneKalayjian: And so that, I think was the hardest part. The other thing that was difficult, and I think, in communication.
• 9:57
  WayneKalayjian: We come across this, too.
• 10:00
  WayneKalayjian: The story itself.
• 10:03
  WayneKalayjian: Takes place largely over 12 months.
• 10:06
  WayneKalayjian: and during that time there's a lot of concurrent events.
• 10:11
  WayneKalayjian: And yet you can't. When you're writing about it or communicating about it. You can't just keep jumping around, back and forth, back and forth.
• 10:21
  WayneKalayjian: even though that is what was going on right. What you need to do is you may be able to. You. Need I use an analogy like us.
• 10:30
  WayneKalayjian: spaghetti, where you have a bowl of spaghetti.
• 10:35
  WayneKalayjian: you need to be able to take out the strand, straighten it out.
• 10:39
  WayneKalayjian: put it on a put it on your plate, and then go for the next strand, straighten it out, put it on a plate, and then explain the strands and put them all together.
• 10:51
  WayneKalayjian: And even so that even though my chapters read sequentially right chapters 2 through 12. They read like a linear story, much of the story. It's going on at the same time. But it was impossible to tell the story.
• 11:09
  WayneKalayjian: If everything was confused and a big bowl of pasta
• 11:14
  WayneKalayjian: you needed to be able to have. And so that means you needed to have such a command of the story. You needed to know the story so well
• 11:24
  WayneKalayjian: that you could actually know. Okay, this strand of pasta
• 11:30
  WayneKalayjian: gets placed 1st over here, and here's its story. And then I'm going to take this pasta, this strand of pasta, and it doesn't go right away. It goes into Chapter 5,
• 11:42
  WayneKalayjian: right? And then this one is going to be chapter 7. And then this one's gonna be chapter 4. So you need to know
• 11:50
  WayneKalayjian: the story so well. And then you have to think about it the way
• 11:56
  WayneKalayjian: you'd like to think you'd like to tell it versus how the reader would like to know. So you can't introduce things
• 12:05
  WayneKalayjian: in a story if the reader hasn't been introduced to them first, st
• 12:09
  WayneKalayjian: you have superior knowledge, you know that there's 15 different characters, but the reader doesn't know them, so they need to gradually be introduced to each of these 15 characters
• 12:23
  WayneKalayjian: in a way that makes sense
• 12:25
  WayneKalayjian: logically to the story and the way you want the story to go. The writer has a great deal of artistic license, but that doesn't mean the writer can be crazy. The writer needs to be mindful that the reader
• 12:41
  WayneKalayjian: has to absorb the story, and so it was a great experience. I learned so much, and
• 12:49
  WayneKalayjian: it taught me it made me a much better communicator.
• 12:54
  Melinda Lee: Yes, yes, I can see that I love the way that the spaghetti analogy.
• 13:00
  Melinda Lee: And and do you think that Michelangelo had that much foresight as he was creating the dome in the same way that he could foresee how this was going to be like. Did he have that much.
• 13:14
  WayneKalayjian: The Michelangelo is a very complicated character.
• 13:18
  Melinda Lee: Got it.
• 13:18
  WayneKalayjian: And he did have grand visions, for this being one of the greatest structures
• 13:27
  WayneKalayjian: in Italy, he had no illusion, I mean, that was.
• 13:30
  Melinda Lee: So.
• 13:31
  WayneKalayjian: He was he. He consciously had the the the dome and of Florence at sun at as his
• 13:42
  WayneKalayjian: model, and he patterned a lot of his design after the the cathedral in Florence.
• 13:52
  WayneKalayjian: There's no doubt that these domes, whoever designed these domes.
• 13:57
  WayneKalayjian: they were way over their skis. I mean the the technical knowledge required to build them, I was surpassed.
• 14:08
  Melinda Lee: She did not know. Let me see.
• 14:09
  WayneKalayjian: Available knowledge. At the time. I mean, today, we we understand how these domes are built. We have sophisticated technology to help us design them and build them. These
• 14:23
  WayneKalayjian: these are architects, artists.
• 14:26
  WayneKalayjian: Brunelleschi in Florence, Michelangelo in Rome. They didn't have any of that. They did it by intuition.
• 14:34
  WayneKalayjian: by judgment, experience, and trial and error.
• 14:40
  WayneKalayjian: The and and that is the lesson of my book is that up until this time in 1740,
• 14:50
  WayneKalayjian: that's how construction happened. It was trial and error, intuition, gut, feel, and.
• 14:56
  Melinda Lee: During the project.
• 14:58
  WayneKalayjian: During the project.
• 14:59
  Melinda Lee: Like.
• 15:00
  WayneKalayjian: Before, during and after. Okay, it was like.
• 15:03
  Melinda Lee: Well when the people clients get upset, if you are taking too long, because there's a trial and error period.
• 15:10
  WayneKalayjian: Well, no, that was the way it was. It was expected, I mean, so long as your building didn't collapse, which happened
• 15:18
  WayneKalayjian: a lot. The the clients didn't know better. Right? That was just the way construction was.
• 15:26
  WayneKalayjian: but it was because of what happened at at this building and this episode in my book, which changed all that because the solution to fixing the dome that had cracked
• 15:39
  WayneKalayjian: beyond well, it was scary, it was terrifying. It was at the point of collapse.
• 15:47
  WayneKalayjian: What the the solution was, these 3 mathematicians.
• 15:51
  WayneKalayjian: who had no experience with construction, none 0.
• 15:55
  WayneKalayjian: But they. They had a lot of experience with mathematics and physics.
• 16:02
  WayneKalayjian: and they were the ones who said, We can solve the problem with mathematics and science.
• 16:09
  WayneKalayjian: even though we don't know construction. We've never designed a thing in our life.
• 16:14
  WayneKalayjian: We we can draw on other disciplines to solve the problem, and it became the pathway forward
• 16:26
  WayneKalayjian: to how we solve a lot of these real world challenges in the everyday world automobiles, obviously, skyscrapers.
• 16:37
  WayneKalayjian: iphones, refrigerators. On and on it goes.
• 16:42
  WayneKalayjian: We use, we solve our problems. How do we communicate better? Oh, let's invent an iphone.
• 16:48
  WayneKalayjian: Well.
• 16:49
  WayneKalayjian: you use a you use mathematics and science to do that, and to design them and to manufacture them. How do I keep my food from spoiling?
• 17:02
  WayneKalayjian: Well, we can invent a refrigerator. How do we do that? Well, we use a lot of math and science believe it or not to
• 17:09
  WayneKalayjian: to design and create a refrigerator. How do I build a bridge, a tunnel, a skyscraper, mathematics, and science? We take that for granted, because that's the way things are.
• 17:23
  WayneKalayjian: But until this episode in 1742, everything was seat of the pants. Everything was judgment, intuition, personal experience talking to your friend. There was no, there was no discussion or or consideration of mathematics and science as a precise way of solving a problem.
• 17:46
  WayneKalayjian: and so not to digress. But that really is the core message of the book is that
• 17:53
  WayneKalayjian: people were thinking out of the box.
• 17:56
  WayneKalayjian: They communicated a message by the way. It was a message that wasn't well received.
• 18:02
  WayneKalayjian: These mathematicians were laughed.
• 18:06
  Melinda Lee: Oh, really.
• 18:07
  WayneKalayjian: Oh, yeah, no, that it was so far fetched. It was. It was ridiculous and and yet
• 18:15
  WayneKalayjian: the kernel of of their idea
• 18:20
  WayneKalayjian: lingered with some very thoughtful individuals, and they start, and the idea started to gain traction and more traction and more traction. So within 50 years
• 18:33
  WayneKalayjian: this concept of using mathematics and science to solve problems
• 18:38
  WayneKalayjian: in the everyday world. It became commonplace
• 18:43
  WayneKalayjian: within, as I say, 50 years, and then within a hundred years, it was being taught at university levels as the way as formal engineering training. So it was a remarkable episode. We again, it's unknown. People just don't know about this story, and it's just a remarkable story.
• 19:05
  Melinda Lee: That is so great.
• 19:07
  WayneKalayjian: I was so.
• 19:08
  WayneKalayjian: You know I do consider myself blessed to be the one to tell it. It was so fortunate I'm so fortunate to be the one who, to have told it.
• 19:20
  Melinda Lee: I am. So that's why I'm very grateful and thankful for you being here sharing your experience while writing this book. And what would you say would be the one leadership takeaway that you want people to remember when they're communicating with others.
• 19:36
  WayneKalayjian: Up. Always keep your audience in mind.
• 19:40
  WayneKalayjian: Never take for granted your audience. Be prepared for your audience. I
• 19:49
  WayneKalayjian: I give a number of talks I teach, and I give book talks, and even in my day to day conversations with my peers in the office
• 19:59
  WayneKalayjian: I'm mindful of whom I'm talking to.
• 20:02
  WayneKalayjian: and I I'm prepared. I I don't just bloviate which I've seen a lot of leaders, do they? Bloviate? And to me that indicates
• 20:13
  WayneKalayjian: that they're not prepared right that they don't have a central message that they're not focused. They're just there to talk
• 20:21
  WayneKalayjian: or fill time. And I respect other people's time, and I and I want them. There's only so many brain cells that we have in a day. Right? And that's my. There's only so many brain cells. And I want my brain cells. I want other people's brain cells to be filled with good thoughts, and I want them to know what my message is. So that's my philosophy is, know your audience, and be prepared.
• 20:50
  Melinda Lee: Right. Keep them in mind, just like you did with the the book you you gathered all your research and all the data and information, and like any leader, I think when we are experienced we come into meetings with a lot of information insights we want to pass, but sometimes we just spill it out, not really keeping. You could have done that with the book.
• 21:09
  Melinda Lee: but you carefully had the audience in mind, and who the audience was, and took the time to to lay out the spaghetti. What story is gonna go in? And so that it's easy to digest and easy to read. And so now we have an untold story told, and so I am so grateful for you and sharing your insight. So keep your audience in mind.
• 21:35
  Melinda Lee: Really have a clear, direct message, clearly understandable message, so that people can have something to take away.
• 21:44
  WayneKalayjian: And then one more thing, I might add, is, be concise.
• 21:49
  WayneKalayjian: And and keep it as simple as you can.
• 21:52
  WayneKalayjian: That that, I think, too, carries a long way.
• 21:57
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 21:59
  Melinda Lee: Yes, thank you so much, Wayne, for your.
• 22:02
  WayneKalayjian: Yeah.
• 22:03
  Melinda Lee: Today it was really fun.
• 22:05
  WayneKalayjian: It was. Thank you so much for having me, Melinda. It was a pleasure.
• 22:10
  Melinda Lee: Pleasure and audience. Thank you so much for being here today. I trust that you got your golden takeaway.
• 22:18
  Melinda Lee: Think about your audience. Be concise and go implement that right away in your next presentation or meeting. And remember, anytime you have a moment to communicate. It's also about connection and making a positive difference in your community in the world. Thank you so much for being here until next time. I'm your sister in flow. Take care.
• 22:41
  Melinda Lee: bye, bye, bye, Wayne, thank you.
• 22:44
  WayneKalayjian: My pleasure, Melinda. It's take care. Okay.
• 22:48
  Melinda Lee: Here.
• 22:50
  WayneKalayjian: Bye, now.