Clarity of Mind

One of my fascination is how the mind works to organise a huge variety of information into meaningful summaries. There are many instances where the skill to summarise and report the salient points of the discussion are required - as a chairperson for a meeting, a moderator for a panel of speakers in a seminar, and even for breakout sessions or group work. Often this task is to be completed within a very short period of time, not to mention the added pressure to reflect accurately yet concisely the entire discussion and presentation made during the sessions.

The same is true for making speeches, be it opening or welcoming remarks, closing speech or way forward remarks and valecdiction - tasks that are usually assigned to me, perhaps because I am usually the most elderly at the occasion. Let me attempt to share my observations and experiences on speech-organising before we move to the more complex task of summarising discussions or conversations into meaningful and coherent statements.

There are several styles to adopt for the opening or welcoming speech. I particularly like the "many firsts" opening - particularly if we have several first to announce as the opening line, for the welcoming remarks. The "the first first, ..., the second first etc" style however, cannot be repeated for the same audience. For closing, I usually adopt a crisp, the "one-two-three" approach - 1 mission for the participants to accomplish, 2 "must-haves" to accomplish it, and 3 observations in my view that will make or break the mission. This "one-two-three" approach makes the closing pointed and mission-directed, and is also suitable when pressed for time at the end of the session.

For valecdiction, the best example I have seen thus far was the one delivered at the graduation dinner of the MPM course at LKYSPP early this year. The (overseas) student who represented the class did an excellent job by landscaping his valecdictory speech with how the group (of students) came, bonded and struggled together, and how they have benefited from the course. The speech was peppered with citations made by lecturers during their lessons to demonstrate that they remembered and internalised the points and messages taught. One of the highlights of the speech for me is how the student have managed to reflect their attitude and aptitude pre-course, the main takeaways from the course and their intention to apply what they learnt in their own operating environment, when they return to their own countries.

But my admiration goes to Father Justo Balda, a Jesuit priest who rapporteured our workgroup presentation and discussion through an interesting strategy. He captured all the keywords from the presentations and discussions as it happened and grouped them into three broad categories. The categories formed the idea while the words formed the sentences that reflected the intent, spirit and desired meaning of the discussion.

There are other interesting ways we have used (often subconciously) to organise the discussion or notes - from Buzan's mindmaps, highlighting and clustering techniques. While the tools are readily available and commonly known, they do not replace the cognitive capacity of the mind needed to organise thoughts before it is mapped on paper.

Clarity of mind is a gift.
But a greater gift is the purity of the heart.