This blog is about presentations & public speaking - how to make 'em, how not to make 'em and how other people are making 'em. Feel free to read, use and comment on what you find here. And good luck with your presentations...
Copyright!
It’s mine, I tell you, mine!
Okay, I’m happy for anyone out there to use this material but I’m not sooooo happy about it being claimed as anyone else’s work but me. Apart from the mistakes and not-so-good posts, obviously: you’re welcome to claim ownership of those!
In other words - feel free to use this material but please mention me and provide a link back. Fair’s fair!
Presentations as contracts.
Setting aside for a minute the old claims that speaking in public is the greatest fear of the greatest number of people it’s certainly true that for a significant number of people it’s a difficult thing to do. Standing up in front of a group of people is - to be blunt - setting yourself up as a target. By standing at the front you’re self-proclaiming that you’re an expert and that you know more than your audience does. As Terry Pratchett would say, that’s akin to standing on a tall mountain in copper armour in a lightening storm, waving your sword high in the air and shouting “All gods are bastards”! 
Or is it?
Well it’s the perception of many of the people I train, certainly. They tend to be people who don’t want to be presenters: they want to be engineers, or managers, or accountants or…. whatever, but they find that for one reason or another they have to be engineers and presenters, or managers and presenters or….. You get the idea. They don’t want to be there and they assume the audience doesn’t want them to be there either. They may be right, or they may not, but either way I want to suggest a radicle alternative mentality here - the idea that by being at a presentation the members of the audience accept some form of responsibility for it.
Think of it as a contract.
Rather like in the theatre, there’s an implied contract between the actors and the audience: the former implicitly agree to speak up and the latter implicitly agree to listen. My wife will tell you - she’s a teacher - that teaching is a game with known contractual rules. The teacher agrees to teach and the pupils agree to learn. When that contract is broken by one side or the other there’s a degree of dis-harmony results.
As a presenter, the responsibility is certainly on you to present - and to do so in a way which is suitable for the audience. However, there is also the responsibility of the audience to pay attention, at least at first, long enough to see if you’re keeping your side of the bargin.
That mentality is tremendously empowering for presenters because it means they don’t shoulder the entire responsibility for a presentation. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying they don’t shoulder the lion’s share and I’m certainly not saying it’s not their responsibility to sort it out if it’s going wrong. What I am saying is that the audience signs up to the implied contract of being attentive and having goodwill, at least at first, by the very act of them being there for your presentation.
(I’m assuming that they’re not attending under threats here, obviously! )
Once you realise that as a speaker, you begin to understand that the audience is on your side and that they want you to do well. Otherwise, they’re going to feel slightly foolish for having agreed to “work with you” albeit implicitly.
That should help your nerves considerably, shouldn’t it? People often tell me that the first few minutes of a presentation are the worst: what I’m saying is that this is exactly the time that the audience is on your side by default. I’m not saying don’t be nervous but I am saying that there’s less need for it than you might realise.
Very quick presentation tip!
I’m stunned I need to give this tip but I was a networking meeting recently when one of the speakers’ computer “hung”. He promptly failed the “Fuse Test” (can you make a presentation without technology - imagine if all the fuses failed) and panicked. His presentation was awful. Sadly, he left before I could get to him to offer my services!
His problem was a simple one: his laptop had a virus checking program running in the background.
When the program decided it was time to do its thing….. everything else ground to a halt. Virus protection is essential, but set up the program sensibly: before you do your presentation ensure that everything except PowerPoint (or the alternative packages) are stopped from running - and that they’ll stay not running!
Other examples include things like routinely checking for email, downloading updates and screen savers. The latter is the voice of bitter personal experience! I gave my presentation and took questions for so long that the audience was treated to an image of an 8 foot tall, cartoon dinosaur shredding up the screen!
The good news is - I’ve learned!
Honest…..
Presentation critique - Al Gore
I’m a great fan of the presentation blog run by Garr Reynolds called Presentation Zen: I like the idea that presentations should be clean and simple and should not so much “not get in the way of the presentation” but should actually be invisible, pretty much. I was therefore very interested in the post on 30th June, 2006 where a number of videoed presentations were offered.
Garr commented about the presentations - saying of ex-Vice President Al Gore’s offering “I like Al Gore and his presentation style, but It would be even better if….” and I’m with him on that, but I’m a bit more critical: I know it’s presumptious of me to tell someone like Al Gore how to make a presentation but what the heck, what’s the worst he can do to me?
The good news about the visuals is that the text on the slides as big. Great. That’s the only good thing about them: the font was wrong (though at that size it probably didn’t matter too much); he read them out verbatim; and the highlighting in red means that key words were harder to read (either that or the video recording was having problems with colour-balance).
(… and don’t get me started on whoever decided on that bloody awful transition between slides!)
Garr is right when he comments that Mr Gore turned to the back of the stage to look at his own slides too often. Doing it even once is too often! In many people’s case they do this because they can’t remember what’s coming next but I dont’ think that was Mr Gore’s issue.
He kept looking back because he identified with the issues so very, very strongly and was using what presenters call “First Position” (standing alongside you slides etc.) so that the audience identifies you and the presentation “as one”. Laudable though that is, it ignores the most important connection you should make as a presenter - not with your your material but with your audience.
Garr suggests a PowerBook at the front of the stage (not just a computer of some kind but a PowerBook) or a monitor. I disagree - doing that would have limited Mr Gore’s movements and, judging by how he tied himself to the screen, I’d be anxious about him tying himself to his monitor at the front, which could have been even worse.
One more not-so petty point! The conference this presentation was at limit speakers to 15-20 minutes. Mr Gore’s runs for barely over 16 min. Of that time, nearly the whole of the first half was taken up with humour and anecdote. Don’t get me wrong - both of these have their place in a good presentation but I have two problems with them here.
- The weren’t integrated into the presentation - it was a 50:50 split of fun then - bamn! - into the serious stuff with no humour at all
- The left the second half of the speach short of time - nothing could be followed through in the way it needed.
It’s a good presentation, no doubt about it, when compared to the standards I see sometimes, but nothing special. Certainly it’s nothing an “averagely-good” presenter couldn’t knock into a cocked hat with a little bit of training and thought…..
….and practice, of course!
But it works, overall. Why? Because he cares. Simple.
To walk the walk you need to talk the talk!
….or to put it another way, if you can’t talk to people on the phone, how are you going to present yourself to them? Okay, not every situation involves the phone but lots of them do - and increasing number in today’s tele-orientated-world. It’s a very peculiar kind of presentation - one where you are limited to one medium only.
Your phone makes particular demands on your voice: for example, it won’t transmit the full range of frequencies you produce when you talk and it can’t be sensitive to all the subtle variations in nuance that you’re no doubt putting into your voice. (Actually, phones can be made to do that, but they’re simply not financially viable.)
When I say this, I’m referring to things that ‘signal intent’: for example we can turn a sentence into a question by putting an upward inflection at the end to imply the question mark. You don’t need to do much of that in ‘real life’ but on the phone things are potentially different as huge amounts of your energy get swallowed by the phone.
Does that mean you needn’t bother with all these effects? Absolutely not! You see, unlike adding things to your voice, it’s not possible to take something away from your voice without doing it self-consciously – and the second you start to be self-conscious about your voice you’re sunk. You’ll sound shifty and untrustworthy on the phone and your chances of closing the deal will plummet.
If anything, you should exaggerate these features of your voice, for two reasons. The first is the obvious one that if you work hard enough at least some of the subtle effects might begin to carry through. Of course, it may feel exaggerated to you but not on the far end of the line.
There’s a second reason - a more subtle one. As phones suck energy out of your voice, putting in extra effort at your end of the conversation will simply mean your voice sounds bright and cheerful at the far end. Don’t worry about going over the top – it’s (almost!) impossible to do that using a phone (with respect to your tone of voice that is, not what you say!)
Stand up as you talk (or at least sit upright, not slouching). It makes your voice brighter, it makes your breathing easier and more likely to be based upon your diaphragm (the sheath of muscle across your stomach) which in turn will make your voice sound more mature, richer and more trustworthy. Phones make you sound tinny: if you’re breathing by moving your chest rather than by using your diaphragm, you’ll sound shriller still.
Drop your shoulders – again this will make your voice sound richer and more convincing.
Smile and (if you normally do so) gesticulate – this is a great way of putting energy into your voice.
Warm up your face before you make a call, or even answer one: all you have to do is yawn and waggle your jaw a little, but the effect will be to make your diction a lot clearer and thus easier to understand. For important calls I recommend you go as far as actually rubbing your cheeks and lips for a couple of seconds to stimulate the muscles before you use the phone.
Quite apart from the obvious benefits of all this, if the person on the far end of the line isn’t having to spend ‘mental energy’ figuring out what you’re saying they will have more ‘mental processing capacity’ to actively listen to what you’re saying, which makes you more likely to be remembered….
… and if you’re in a direct head-to-head with a number of other potential suppliers this can only be a good thing!
PowerPoint Problem - remote takeover
It’s old news that you shouldn’t open Email attachments you weren’t expecting from people you don’t know. I have tech-head friends who won’t even try and fix your computer if you do because, in their words, “You’re too stupid to own a computer anyway”. Harsh!
But up until now I’ve thought that PowerPoint files were safe - well, in terms of computer security at least, if not in terms of their content!
This week however, Microsoft released this notice (about Trojan.PPDropper.B - along with the steps needed to remove it from your Windows system). According to other sources, opening a hostile PowerPoint file can result in your PC’s security being compromised and the machine being taken over and potentially used maliciously (which can happen without you knowing much about it!). The level of risk and damage isn’t thought to be high, but the inconvenience can be huge.
Like I say, you have to open the file in the ‘old fasioned way’ of spreading problems from one computer to another, but it’s the first time I know of that PowerPoint files have been used in this way, so it’s a caution that bears repeating.
It’s not as simple as black and white.
PowerPoint is a great tool - sometimes. But it can also be the worst tool in the world. When I teach people how to use it in their presentations, I often liken it to playing Mozart on the piano: anyone who’s technically competent can play the notes but it takes a musician to play the music. Anyone who can use a computer can use PowerPoint, but you need a flair for communication to use it well.
One of the biggest failings I notice in presentations is in the way people use colour. It’s common sense to use very different colours for your text and your background, but there are a couple of points to consider. Firstly, people suffering colour-blindness can have problems with contrasting colours. Secondly, what you see on your computer isn’t what an audience will see when it’s projected. Projectors bleed colour out and so do the sun and lights - lots. The strongest colour-contrasts are white or yellow on dark blue. Sadly, when these combinations are bleached out by the background stuff in the room, the contrast will be much, much less than you might expect, making some surprising things un-readable.
The tip?
Design for variation in brightness, not in colour. You can, of course, do both if you’re careful. The way to test is to check everything in shades of grey. If you can’t read easily it in “greyscale” your audience might not be able to read it, even in colour. It’s easy to flip between full colour and greyscale, whether you’re using PowerPoint, Keynote, OpenOffice or any other presentations-supporting-software.
The voices on the radio!
One of the ups and downs of what I do – training people to make better presentations and use their voice properly – is that I tend to listen out for the way other people are currently doing it. It’s not conscious, it’s just a background activity, if you see what I mean. Every now and then, I’ll have the radio in the background and something will bring my full attention to what’s on: I start actively listening, which is quite a lot different to just letting it play in the background……
I should add at this point, that we are a house divided in terms of radio. We split roughly along generational lines between Radio One and Radio Four. I’m carefully not offering a prize for correctly guessing who listens to what.
On the occasion I’m thinking of, I was half aware of some politician from Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition telling people what the government was doing wrong and what they should be doing instead. So far so good – my cornflake eating went on as normal. It was the next question, or more specifically the answer to it, that brought me up short. The question was simple enough: “So how would you do it?” . The answer should have been simple enough too, but right from the first word I could hear in his voice, as clearly as though he was actually admitting it, the fact that right down at the bottom of him – deep in his heart of hearts – he simply didn’t know. (Or at least, if he did, he wasn’t at all sure it would work.)
How can you tell?
Simple.
His voice tightened up. He sounded strained and even (though this is probably more subjective than something a spectrograph would pick up on this particular occasion), slightly higher pitched.
To make matters worse, it was one of those situations when it wasn’t unreasonable for him to have said something like “I don’t know all the details yet” but for some reason, saying that seems to be a major taboo in politics (and business!).
He should have bitten the bullet and done just that.
Even if he’d been given a hard time by the interviewer at least he’d not have sounded ’shifty’, losing the respect – at least in part – of tens of thousands of listeners. Surely, surely, surely, in a time when politics is seen more and more as a dirty word and there’s a received wisdom that people are disengaged with politicians it isn’t beyond the wit of an otherwise intelligent man to be honest and courageous enough to say “I don’t know”.
Either that or learn how to fake it so that he doesn’t sound like he’s making it up as he goes along, which is pretty much what happened.
So that’s the story of my breakfast. Some calories in the cornflakes, some protein in the milk and some vitamins in the fruit I put on top….. and some cynical thoughts about politicians.
Maybe it’s a good job you can’t hear my tone of voice as I type.
By the way, if I’d been forced to give him a crash course in ‘faking it’ I’d have said “Don’t”. If he really, really had to, I’d have said: “Take half a second to drop your shoulders and breathe out for half a heartbeat before you say anything. Let the tense air out of the top of your chest before you speak.”. It’s a very simple way to make you sound ‘cooler’ when you’re under pressure.
Come to think about it, that’s pretty good advice in the rest of life too….
…and one day I’ll be honest and courageous enough to take it myself.
I’d have bought a sheep!
Not a business presentation skills tip this post, but one about “voice” - though they’re related, as you’ll see.
I’m just back from Scotland – sunny Scotland, much to my surprise, despite the rainclouds which threatened all the time – and the accents are fantastic. Rich but accessible: I can think of one really fantastic chat I had with a Shepherd. He was explaining to me the different calls for his dogs, both voiced and by whistle.
The whistle carried further and was what he used when the dogs were working at what he called “a distance”. On the moors he was referring to, “a distance” was something over about 200 yards. Not a bad range, particularly if you’ve got the wind cutting your voice away! (The whistle, by the way, means he can work his dogs at a range of over 700 yards.)
Now, I don’t usually do this (because I’m not that sad, honest!) but with this man, I was listening to what he said and the way that he said it – because the latter was particularly effective. I’ve just mentioned that it carried over the moors, but it did more than that - it carried those distances without being any strain to him.
More importantly though, it carried in a different way. It carried with it the man’s warmth for, and love of, the lands he worked on and the animals he worked with. It was rich, warm, mellow. It was the voice of a man you could trust – a man I could do business with.
A few days earlier though, it had been a different story. I was training with a bunch of teachers. The Deputy Head in charge of staff development had asked me to come in and work with a mixed group. The only thing they had in common was that they needed to improve their authority in the classroom. They needed to “sound like they mean it” in front of the kids. In the jargon, they needed to improve their “Classroom Management”.
One of the group in particular needed to work on it – but not in the way the majority did. He barked instructions like a bad characature of a Sergeant Major. All the good work he did with the pupils who wanted to learn was undone by the fact that his voice caused other pupils to (as the Deputy Head put it) “kick off”. So what was it that so warmed me to the shepherd but so alienated the school kids?
Well, the technical answer is “timbre”.
The more someone’s voice is ‘rooted’ in the body – and less in their head and throat– the more warm and credible they appear to be.
If they can fake sincerity they’ve got it made and keeping your voice ‘in your gut’ instead of ‘in your throat’ does just that.
So how do you actually do that – because in business it’s absolutely necessary to sound good…. Well, doing it by an electronic article isn’t easy but these basic tips will help. To be honest, the hard part is remembering to actually do them!
1] Keep your head tipped slightly forwards – if necessary raising your eyes – so that your throat isn’t stretched like it is if you’re tipping your head backwards like most people do
2] Drop your shoulders – and then drop them again, because no one ever does it right the first time.
3] Relax the muscles of your bottom - it might look better if it’s tight, but it you’ll sound better if it’s not.
Stop the drinking!
I don’t know about where you are, but I’m sitting in the garden at 24 degrees as I write this. The forecast is for this to continue through the week. Great – except that in the middle of next week I’m supposed to be making another big presentation. I can feel the energy-sapping heat of a packed conference hall in my imagination already……I’m tempted to take to drink……. Water that is.
Almost every other bit voice or presentation skills training you might get will tell you to drink plenty of water before/during your presentation. They’re sort of right, but be careful. Don’t drink it cold.
Yes, I know cold water is refreshing… but it’s also cold – and there-in lies a problem. Your vocal folds are backed by muscles. In fact they’re working at several hundred movements per second when you speak (women at almost twice the rate of men, which is why female voices tend to be higher than male ones). Imagine you’ve just played a hot and sweaty game of squash (or whatever else gets you hot and sweaty): you’d not take a cold shower would you?
No.
Try it and you’ll soon find out how quickly and how painfully muscles can cramp when they’re shocked like that.
Okay, your vocal folds aren’t in direct line between your mouth and your stomach, so that the water doesn’t pass directly over them (if it did, you’re on your way to drowning yourself) but it passes close enough to mean that the shock of the cold water will still hit your vocal folds.
As it does they’ll tighten up and you’ll find the quality of your voice deteriorates. If you’re trying to sound credible and calm – or if you’re trying to be able to speak clearly all day, as at a conference – you’ll find that cramped up vocal folds will severely hamper your style.
