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...
The obvious #1
This is the first of a set of a short series (13 I think!) of “the blinding obvious” when it comes to making presentations - particularly, in terms of dealing with the nerves associated with presenting. After all, it’s all very well and good talking about the subtle stuff but there’s quite a bit that gets taken for granted by trainers.
Without further ado, therefore…
Obvious Presentation Hint 1
Dress comfortably.
By that I don’t mean you should always wear jeans and a Tshirt (or whatever your personal preference is) but rather you should feel like you look good. It’s worth splashing out a good shirt, nice jacket or whatever it it gives you the right feeling when you pop it on. In short - dress the part…. something a little special.
As the adverts say, if you look good on the outside you’ll feel good on the inside. Of course, that’s not true is it, but the inverse of it is: if you know you look bad on the outside you’ll feel bad on the inside, so the least you can do for yourself is give yourself a fighting chance.
A quick trip to the toilets before you start (you’ll probably be doing that anyway) to check how you look is a quick re-assurer. Hair - tidy enough? Teeth - nothing stuck in them? Tie - central and straight? Fly - fastened? (Okay, so those last two are for me only, but….)
WIN
No, it’s not an instruction or something screamed from the side-lines to urge you on, i’ts an acronym: Women into the Network.
I did a free lunchtime session for them yesterday and despite the best efforts of the 60 mph winds had a great time. This is just a quick thank you to them for the invitation and a ‘thanks’ on the questions too!
Blinded by the lights…..
It might not happen to you, but it might just… you’re called on to give a relatively big presentation and they tell you that there will be plenty of light - a spotlight on you, even. Wow. You can’t fail to be seen - after all, they’re shining a big, bright light at you…If only it was that simple!
If you ever find yourself in the position of standing in the light (you might hear it being called “hitting your spot”) you’ll find it’s not as easy to do as you think, unless you know what’s what. Here are a few simple tips…
- Mark it - if you have the luxury of having rehearsal time, ask for the light to be put on and get someone in the audience to tell you when you’re in the right place (for your face to be seen particularly). Then take a tip from professional actors and ‘spike’ your spot. That is, use a piece of coloured electrical tape to mark the place on the floor where your toes should go. If you’re on a raised plinth so the audience can’t see it, you can even make it brightly coloured to make things easier in the heat of the moment.
- Feel the heat - before you start to speak, take a moment to concentrate on the heat of the light - if it feels warmer or brighter on one side than the other, move towards that side. Your audience will wait: even if they notice the time you spend doing this, they’d rather see your face than not, believe me! (As a crude aside, by the way, the better you can see the audience - for spotlights coming at you from the front, this is - the less well they can see you: actors can’t see their audience at all!)
- Use your head - Concentrate on getting your head lighted. Unless you’re used to it, people have a tendency to walk into a spot of light on the floor and stand in the middle of it. Unfortunately, unless the spot is very big (and by this I mean too big!) doing this means your head will be out of the top of the light and you’ll look daft. Instead, resist your instinct, and move so that your feet are at the very front of the light. That way your head will more likely be in the middle of it.
Sharia Archbishop!
Well, the Archbishop of Canturbury has really hit the news for a bit of public speaking this week! For example, the Telegraph talks about it here; a BBC article can be found here. If nothing else, it’s a sure-fire indication that people haven’t lost their interest in public speaking and so on.
There’s an interesting sub-story here, too - the actual presentation involved was a lecture given to a room full of lawyers. That’s fine: from what I know of the speech it was appropriate for such an audience and such a context. Sadly, it got taken out of context - partially by Rowan Williams himself when he did a radio interview before-hand, in which he appears to have forgotten that the audience for that sort of thing would be different to his original audience.
Consequently his style was no longer appropriate: people mis-understood what he was saying, jumped to conclusions and reacted to what they heard, not what he was saying.
Salutary lessons all round, eh?
A bit of a problem though - the UK media spent some time slagging the Archbishop off, then, when they realised they’d mis-reported what was included in the actual speech, slagged him off once more for not realising they were going to mis-report him! Some times you can’t win….
… but whether or not the media covered themselves in glory, the responsibility for being understood lies with the speaker……
A Buddist meditation observation…
I’ve been reading up and studying a little on the art/science/craft of meditation, for reasons of my own. (Here, for example.) One of the things that struck me - as mentioned in that very blog! - is how often people who take up the practice seem to comment and/or complain to their instructor that they are more confused/chaotic and stressed out after they’ve been working at things for a while than they were before they started!
That, naturally, puts them off.
It certainly did me, for a bit, which was why I was researching it in the first place! 
The instructors’ responses are often that this is not so - it just seems to be so. What is actually happening, they say, is that the sensitivity to the clutter in the mind has improved. The mind of the newly practicing meditator might have been getting better, might not have been changing much in either direction (or might genuinely have been getting worse!) but that the most likely cause of the ‘problem’ is that the person involved is now conciously aware of how chaotic their mind is.
Stick with it, their instructor says, and the improvements will come.
And what’s this got to do with making presentations? This: I encourage people to practice their presentations before they deliver them - and many times I’m told that doing that just makes them worse. After a few (10? 5? ) minutes of practice they give up in disgust, intent up on ‘winging it’ because that’s the best way of doing it for them.
Well, it’s possible, I suppose. But is more likely - much more likely in my experience - that the process of practicing has simply made them aware of the things that could be improved. They see things they wouldn’t have noticed were wrong with their presentation otherwise because they are conciously examining it.
Get’s worse with practice? Nope, it is just that you’re noticing what needs to be changed - whereas you didn’t notice these things before-hand! In short, they’re seeing things in a way more like the way the audience sees things.
And, as in meditation, that’s the first step to enlightenment… or in this case, giving a better presentation.
A day in the life…
Kit check….. including socks, by 8:00 and then out of the door. Why are my socks part of my kit check? Simple: lots of the breathing and posture exercises we do are ideally done without shoes on and it’s pretty embarrassing to take my shoes off and have holes by the toes!
By 8:30 I’m at the venue and checking what’s not working. We use projectors, laptops and so on and: inevitably if something’s not working it’s not what you think…. it’s the stuff you don’t think of… Laptop’s fine, projector’s fine… so what’s the….? oh yes! The cables that connect them! We carry our own of everything in case client’s kit isn’t “as advertised”. Come to that, we carry spares of everything (except one of our cables ‘cos that is the spare, the original having gone “walk-about” last week!).
Then it’s time to do what we do… clients are generally very nervous indeed when we start so the first exercises are always the critical ones. We have to make sure everyone’s in the right frame of mind to work (and work hard) but also having fun. Watch out for the quiet, shy ones… work with the exuberant ones….. change the running order of the day if that’s what clients’ need.
It’s all about “doing a swan”. The topside is calm, cool, collected and in control. The stressy, sweaty bits are no-one’s business but our own. We have a mantra about our own performances: if it looks like we’re working hard, we’re not working hard enough!
Lunch: informal chatting to people to find out where they want the afternoon to go and what they want to concentrate on. I’ve got a ‘default’ in mind, of course, after consulting with the manager who hired us, but it’s always good to be flexible. Without people noticing I’m not longer there, leave and prepare for the afternoon session. Another kit-check, another set of exercises to warm up again…. more time with the clients…
This is the part of the day I typically really love: all the stuff we’ve done in the morning has started to seep into people’s minds and they’re able to start applying it. The improvements are often spectacular at this point and it’s great to see people’s self-esteem rocketing, and share their sense of empowerment.
Towards the end of the day we often spend a lot of time integrating the different technical things we’ve done during the day and bringing things all together. It’s a very intense part of the process and we have to manage it carefully as people are tired by now, too. Sometimes though, we laugh so hard it hurts.
Feedback time and good-byes: then questions and dealing with individual issues if people want. Then pack the kit (you should see us trying to carry Djembe drums and cymbols on public transport!) and to the nearest cafe to de-brief (which is almost my favourite part of the day).
Back to the office and sort out what’s needed for tomorrow (good fun) and dealing with the administration (not good fun!).
Oh yes… and then a shower!
