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...
Questions, questions…
In business presentations, if you think it’s obvious - it isn’t
According to some research I’ve just re-read, there are only six basic types of selling-story: the most powerful stories are those while fall into the category called “I know what you’re thinking”. People love to be understood and if your presentation can show them that you understand them, you’re onto a winner.
One way of showing you understand them, of course, is to answer the questions that they’re about to ask you - before they ask you it. Presentations shouldn’t be a simple Q&A session where you ask yourself questions and then answer them, obviously (because that’s boring!) but here’s a handy tip for checking your presentation’s structure…
Go through each slide or each point you want to use and ask yourself this one, simple question: “does this slide answer the obvious question my audience will have at the end of the previous slide?” It sounds simple, doesn’t it? But try it - if your slides don’t generate obvious questions, ask yourself if they’re really telling people anything important: frankly you can usually cut slides that don’t raise a question. If the slide generates one question but your next slide answers another… well, you’ll lose your audience quickly enough!
It’s a tougher technique than it sounds - you’ve got to be absolutely ruthless with yourself and put yourself in the position of your audience but I promise you it’ll be worth it!
Powerpoint Templates (or not)
I found myself getting quite heated under the colour on a forum where I was giving some freebie advice (what other kind is there I hear you ask!) about PowerPoint templates. I know they’re a quick way of making your presentation look better than you started out (maybe) but they also have a few downsides you should consider
- People will have possibly seen them before;
- They won’t be personal;
- They’re often designed to look good.
Can I unpack those a little? Well actually I’m not sure the first point needs unpacking - it’s obvious. If anyone’s seen your template before it’s going to make you look less professional, not more.
The second point is interesting. What I’m getting at here is that they won’t be “just right” for your company. And if they’re not “just right” what are you using them for? Of course it’s possible to customise them but as it’s so easy to create your own templates and so on, if you’re going to spend some time customising, why not spend that same time doing rrriiiiight - from scratch - and getting something that really works for you, not just with you?
Point three sound odd doesn’t it? How can something designed to look good be bad? Of course what I mean by that is that they’re often designed to just look good - sometimes I even wonder if they’re just designed to make the designer look good by showing off the clever bits of what they (and PowerPoint) can do…. but all clever, coloured backgrounds do is make the slide harder to read for your audience - particularly if they’re got some kind of visual or cognative impairment.
Ask yourself this question - what’s the presentation for? For you to show off or for you to get a message over to your audience?
I alway (well, usually at least!) advise people to design their own templates - simple and clean. If you want to prove that you’re able to do the flashy stuff (rather than just not doing it ‘cos you can’t!) then put a really flashy, animated splash screen at the front of your presentation to give yourself a build up. For example, a big countdown to you when you stand up; perhaps an animated montage or something… all it’s designed to do is look flashy so that your audience is excited.. but then the presentation itself is clean, clear and easy to understand.
The best of both worlds.
(Guy Kawasaki’s and) stories…
“Tell stories and make a point”: that mantra pretty much sums up a huge range of useful stuff about how to make presentations. We’ll talk in a moment about why that’s useful but take a moment, if you can, to look at this list of the different types of story you can use in your presentation.
An alternative take on this idea is given by Annette Simmons in a book called “The Story Factor”. Her six ‘types’ of story are
- who I am
- why I’m here
- the vision
- teaching
- values in action
- I know what you’re thinking.
and it’s not hard to see how these can be easily used in a presentation or public speaking engagement.
What many of these different types of story have in common is that they allow you, the presenter, to put yourself in the position of the members of your audience: that gets them onside. You break down the barrier between “us” and “them” - which also helps with your nerves, don’t forget. That’s one of the major upside to telling stories: it’s one of the main reasons they’re so powerful a tool.
There is a downside to using stories, of course. Firstly, I know someone who’s every story consists of the work “I” far, far more often than it should. It contains it to the point where I’m avoiding him altogether and this is one of the reasons why!
Secondly, there’s a real risk for good story-tellers in particular to forget that what they’re there to do is not (just!) to entertain. As a presenter you’re there to make a point. Stories are a means to an end in a presentation but all too often, when the audience is laughing and you’re on a roll it’s all tooooooo easy to let them become the guts of the presentation and find yourself running out of time.
Us them, but don’t let them be the point of your presentation. They’re a means, not an end….
Presentation tips
These hints and tips are all very well but may just blow my own trumpet for a moment? I’m just updating the website for our presentation tips ebook called “…like a brick wrapped in velvet…”
The upside of the hints there compared to this blog is that it’s a structured book, not just a set of hints that take my fancy as I write, day by day. The downside is, obviously, that you’ve got to pay for those hints…. but not much, don’t worry.
If you fancy a more structured approach to getting your hints and tips, this is the route for you. And let me know how you get on!
Farewell Luciano…
One of my key beliefs about presenting is that if it looks like you’re working hard when you ‘perform’, you’ve not been working hard enough when you prepare. (See this post.) He had that down!
On another point, he was also a technical master. The loud bits (fortissimo, if you’re interested) were certainly that, but they sounded even louder than they were because he had the technical skill (and discipline) to sing the quiet bits (piano) quietly!
He may have lost it a bit in the last decade, but who cares!
And the Japanese for “chatter” is…
No, I didn’t know either, but online mag Wired has a fantastic (in all senses of the word!) article about presentations for/by architects in Japan where the rules for the presentations are simple: 20 slides for 20 seconds only each. Then you sit down.
Apparently the result is that the presentations are now much more useful and don’t contain any un-necessary bloat…. It’s worth five minutes of anyone’s time… 
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-09/st_pechakucha#
