…is not like the Merry Old Land of Oz…

…or Tomorrowland at Disneyland.

No, the Mythical Middle Ground is the name I have given to a place I see people flounder as communicators all the time, so much so that I gave it that moniker.

The Mythical Middle Ground (MMG™️) is that unattainable but oft-cited Valhalla to be reached where you are the perfect balance of two opposites: not too aggressive, but not too passive; not too detailed, but not too superficial; not too long-winded, but not too cursory.

This even gets parsed into supposedly valuable (but actually worthless) coaching, with advice like “use consistent but not confrontational eye contact” and “speak in a measured tone.”

Garbage.

• Women know this also as the double bind, aiming for the perfect balance point between Aggressive and Acquiescing that magically arrives at Assertive.
• Start-up founders know this as the impossible task of neither boring investors with technical language nor turning them off with slogans.
• Scientists know this as “speak to a lay audience,” but “demonstrate rigor.”
• And politicians know this as the ubiquitous advice to “dumb it down” (or perfectly achieve the vocabulary “of a 4th grade audience”).

I’m writing to you today with a provocative message of hope: Scrap the pursuit of the MMG!

It’s impossible to reach (because it doesn’t exist)!

For your consideration, I submit to you an examination of the Mythical Middle Ground in both Delivery and Content.

The MMG in Delivery

For delivery, let’s examine it primarily through the lens of Vocal Variety. That is the topic of the longest chapter in my book (if you want the full deep dive, you can find it here because it’s such an important topic). But the TL;DR version is this: those who speak without vocal variety (i.e. in monotone) are evaluated by their audiences as less authentic.

What’s better? Modulating the sound of your voice – by varying Pace, Pitch, Pause, Power, and Placement. (If you’re unfamiliar with this alliterative framework I created to teach these dynamics, here’s a video of me and Hilary Kole at a piano that explains it.) And the goal shouldn’t be a metronomically uniform pace of 150 words per minute, neither “too fast, nor too slow,” like a perfectly tepid bowl of oatmeal that Goldilocks can tolerate, but rather a complex and full spectrum of speaking rates, from fast, to medium fast, to medium, to medium slow, to slow – and every shade in between.

Because that’s how you actually talk in real life when you’re trying to make a point! Fast enough to hold people’s attention and convey purpose, slow enough to accurately choose words and allow points to land. 

Now for the caveats: on rare occasions and in certain fields, boring middle-of-the-road communication might be something to aspire to. I’m currently coaching a former diplomat who is in the midst of a career change: his previous communication mission was to make every word sound unremarkable and ordinary, no matter the extremity of the situation he faced. Sometimes academics are wise to present groundbreaking research with mind-numbingly boring delivery to convey the tone that results were achieved in: methodical, predictable, and repeatable processes (in other words, their research “does the talking for them”).

But these examples are isolated ones, and most of the time your communication tasks are best achieved with vocal variety: persuading, captivating, fascinating, inspiring, and motivating. Most universal of all, you’re likely trying to get people’s attention, not lose it.

So to avoid the MMG on the delivery front, use Vocal Variety.

The MMG in Content

The Mythical Middle Ground is also problematic for content. It leads people to parrot anodyne groupthink, jargon-riddled nonsense that doesn’t advance the conversation.

So, what to do instead?

Take a lesson from great art, and instead of trying to fall flawlessly in the middle and split the hairs between two opposites, encompass both opposites in the same event! In opera, theatre, music, dance and every other performance discipline, the goal is to encompass expansive range – to make the audience laugh and cry, think and feel, rejoice in awe and recoil in disgust.

The more avant-garde, esoteric, postmodern art that flouts this goal is often doing so for the very purpose of challenging our notions of ‘what is art?’ and – much to the viewer or listener’s dismay – challenging our ability to pay attention to constant, repetitive stimuli (think Phillip Glass’s Music in Twelve Parts).

So, don’t bore your audience into submission; encompass more in what you say!

How? Here’s a quick exercise to start.

Talk unfiltered for a moment. Don’t write! Talk. Use some sort of transcription software and get out the ideas that you really think. Use any of these prompts to get cooking. Speak them out loud while the transcription is recording and then just see what comes out of your mouth next:

• If I didn’t care about seeming ‘professional,’ what I would say is…
• The thing everyone is thinking, but no one is saying is…
• If I were a guest on a podcast called The Most Interesting Way to Say It teaching listeners about my topic, I would share…
• If I wanted to grab people by the throat with my words, I would say…
• If I wanted to get their eyes to well up with tears, I might say…

Then, listen back to what you recorded and ask yourself things like:

• Was that candid enough?
• Would that wisdom and directness add value to others?
• Was it interesting?
• Would people pay attention to what I say (and therefore remember it)?

If the answer to all those questions is yes, congrats! You are no longer in the MMG!!!

You may have already traveled to Interesting Island, Provocative Place, or even the true Valhalla, Wisdom World.

But you’re not done; if you said a bunch of pessimistic Real Talk, now your task is to explore the uplifting possibilities to an equal and opposite degree. If you swung for the fences with a bunch of hyperbolic, all-upside, passionate zealotry, hammer home the potential risks and downsides, no matter how unlikely.

Once you’ve done both, revel in what it feels like to actually say something of value – with all its possibilities and pitfalls!

Cheers,

Michael Hoeppner and the GK Training Team

P.S. If you’re interested in a deep dive on the rate of speech, why people talk too fast, why they haven’t been able to change it, and how they can learn to do so in the future, you’re welcome to join a free webinar I’m giving on the topic. Email us at info@gktraining.com to learn how.