What are the 7 C's of public speaking?
The 7 C's are clear, concise, concrete, correct, coherent, complete, and courteous, a checklist of qualities good communication should have. They are accurate but do not facilitate follow-through: they describe a good outcome without giving a busy speaker a way to build one, and they leave out the Q and A, where most presentations are actually won or lost.
A tired framework in need of an upgrade
The 7 C's are interesting, but they do not facilitate follow-through. They are: clear, concise, concrete, correct, coherent, complete, and courteous. That is seven separate filters, and most leaders and executives do not have the time to sit down and run seven filters through a presentation they are already scrambling to finish.
What a busy executive actually needs
A busy executive needs a framework that can quickly get them where they are going, and that is where story driven data comes in. Instead of checking a presentation against seven adjectives after the fact, story driven data gives a speaker one thing to build around from the start: a story, matched with the data that backs it up.
The part the 7 C's skip entirely
This also does not bring up the most important part of a presentation, the question and answer portion, which nobody practices. We teach a framework to help the speaker become a guide, and a trusted guide, someone the audience believes has already thought through the questions they are about to ask.
Jess Todtfeld is a Certified Speaking Professional who replaced checklist frameworks like the 7 C's with a system built around story, data, and a practiced Q and A.