In this short video I demonstrate an innovative, highly effective approach to engaging young people.

I’ve been testing The Single Sheet for several years with a variety of age groups and messages. I’ve also helped organizations implement this method to increase engagement with their own messages. I recently filmed one of my presentations to demonstrate The Single Sheet in action. This video features highlights from that presentation.

The Single Sheet process engages people at a deeper level with a wide range of important messages. During this presentation we discuss the prevention message, “Avoid the use of alcohol.”

Know that the students’ thoughtful, insightful comments you see here are spontaneous. I didn’t prompt them to say anything.

Post this link to your organization’s website and Facebook page and help broaden the conversation about the how we can better engage people.

I’m grateful to my friend, a courageous educator, Heather Johnson, for furnishing her classroom, and to the students who participated!

I was out running yesterday when I came upon an enormous oak tree that was actively dropping acorns. I gathered a few in my hand and noticed for the first time the enormous contrast between a single, simple acorn and an elaborate, ancient oak tree.

Simplifying the complex is a form of art that oak trees practice each year. In the course of a lifetime their ever-growing branches house generations of birds, squirrels, and tree forts. But each year they still produce simple, elegant acorns.

Too often the way we communicate about a topic mirrors the complexity of our knowledge of the topic. As our knowledge grows we need the discipline to refine the complexity of our knowledge into its essential, most defining elements.

This is how our knowledge grows more complex, according to George Loewenstein, behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon University: we want to know more about what we already know. Through learning more about a topic we discover gaps in our knowledge. These gaps spike our curiosity and motivate us toward deeper understanding. In time, as we fill these gaps, our knowledge grows more elaborate and nuanced–like an oak tree.

The resulting depth and complexity makes us a resource to others. Your physician, for example, is a resource to the degree that she seeks to fill gaps in her knowledge base. But her inability to communicate her topic in relevant terms prevents her from engaging her patients, a shortcoming that renders her less of a resource.

The simplest, most refined presentation will draw people to your message and to you, the messenger. This discipline makes you and your message more accessible and engaging.

As you grow into a tree remember to ask yourself, “Am I still making acorns?”

We have a message. We know this message can change lives. But how can this message be as engaging as possible?

Here’s the problem: when we know a lot about something we tend to share too much. The result is that the people who could benefit most from the message disengage from it, or don’t engage deeply enough for the message to shape their behavior.

With this conundrum in mind, I designed and implemented with a group of teens an unconventional approach to engagement. I imposed the following limits on myself:

1. My notes had to fit on one side of a single sheet of paper.
2. I could only make two points during the hour and ten minute class period. The rest of the content had to come from the teens.
3. I couldn’t use any other resources (slides, books, etc.).

This is good time to emphasize just how frightening it can be to challenge the far reaches of our comfort zone. I knew that what transpired would be either dynamic or awkward and clunky. I had no idea which. What happened surprised everyone in the room. Especially me.

I filmed the demonstration and will post the footage in short segments throughout the summer. For now, I wanted to share the development process so that you can experiment and interact with it.

So here is what I did:

Step 1: Answer the following question with a single statement:

Question: What do I want to do?

At the top of the paper I put a summary statement: “Demonstrate tools of engagement.”

Step 2: Answer the question:

How am I going to accomplish step 1?

I wrote down all of the skills and practices that make up this engagement model which I had been collecting on 3” x 5” cards: Use of divergent questions, reflective listening, synthesis, curiosity, etc. These I wrote down on mini-sticky notes.

Step 3: In what sequence will I do these things?

I arranged the sticky notes in a progression that I thought would flow best.

Step 4: I transcribed the sequence into my single sheet of paper with one column for each of the two days I would be there.

With my single sheet in hand I was ready to put my engagement model to the test. What would you put on your single sheet of paper?

A reporter from the local paper observed the presentation. Click here to read the article.