Talking points. Briefing memos. Prep docs.
I hate them all.
Ok that may be a bit strong. These are the kinds of materials that so many look for when they’re preparing to advocate on an issue. They want complex issues distilled down to sound bytes, with supporting facts to hammer home the points they’ll try to make in the room.
For many, those kind of documents are great. If you’re willing to put in the time to digest the issues – really getting deep with them – briefing memos and talking points can be tremendously helpful in organizing your thoughts. But what about the volunteer advocate walking off the street to help with the cause?
If I’m being perfectly honest, that unscripted volunteer advocate is a must have for me.
Sure, we want the rockstars who know the issues and have done the homework. But on some level, they can actually be over-prepared. In those situations, they can come across as scripted and rigid. More often than not, that scripting doesn’t connect in the way you think it might.
Years ago, I had a volunteer team of advocates across the table from me on an issue they were trying to highlight for members of Congress in Ohio. They were extremely well rehearsed. It was almost as if they were reading from cue cards. And as a guy who’s spent his fair amount of time on stage in life I can appreciate the effort. But their message failed to connect in this meeting. Why?
Simply put, they were talking at their targets, not with them. Because they had spent so much effort tightening their talking points, they were reacting to cues from each other and failing to make the very necessary human connection that’s so important in advocacy.
To prevent that in my own advocacy work, I use a really simple trick to help my volunteers distill the meeting down to the most important sentiments they wish to convey. I ask them one simple question:
“If you leave this meeting and they can only remember one thing you say, what do you want it to be?”
This question is a great way to get folks to pull their heads out of the briefing documents and see the bigger opportunity in front of them. I ask the question – or some variation – ahead of the vast majority of the meetings I host (not just the political ones).
You should absolutely have a plan for how your advocacy team will progress through a meeting. You should absolutely spend time learning what you can about the details of your issue. You should absolutely do your homework on what opponents would say to counter your arguments. You should absolutely read the briefing documents.
But in the moments before the meeting, and after all that cramming, you should absolutely take a moment to shut it all out. Boil it all down to the one idea that you’d kick yourself for not delivering. That topic, that one idea, that’s the bread and butter to breaking yourself away from coming across as too scripted.
When we get to the core of our motivations, we are more likely to convey a story that connects with a listener. Advocacy is so deeply personal that it would be a missed opportunity to hide your passion behind a briefing memo. Find your core concept, and tell the story that matters.
We have to break the idea that a policy proposal has to be delivered flawlessly to be effective. It’s just unrealistic. You’re not going to have all of the answers in the room, but you can bring every ounce of your personality into the room. You and your story – at the end of the day – will be all the more effective if you put this one hack into practice.
Part of the Possible 