tellingpeople

It’s Formula One season once more and as always I’m stunned by the way the drivers stay calm under pressure. Make a mistake there and it’s all over – perhaps permanently.

One of the ways they do it, of course, is by keeping their sense of perspective. Just like other athletes under pressure they concentrate on what they’re doing… not on the consequences. It’s no good concentrating on the race as a whole: instead, drivers concentrate on the corner in front of them, the car to be passed and the shortest line to be taken.

What’s this to do with presenting and public speaking? Everything. We often have people to our training courses who say “I’ve got a big presentation to come up and I can’t afford to get it wrong.” The problem is that just thinking like that makes it more likely you will get it wrong! The right approach is to concentrate on the presentation itself – not the effects of failure – just like the tennis player who’s Match Point up (or down!) or the F1 driver who’s got a notoriously difficult corner coming up.

Concentrate on what you’re doing and let the consequences work themselves out afterwards! Of course that’s easier said than done but the effort is worth it.

And while we’re talking about this, when Formula One coverage moved back from ITV to the BBC this season there was just a moment’s hesitation in my head about whether they’d make a good job of it. I know they used to do it, but even so… then I head the theme music (Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain”) and I knew everything would be right. They’d kept the theme music from over a decade ago, and all was suddenly right with the world!

I’m often struck by how evocative simple things like music and images can be. They stick in your mind long, long after the hard-core facts-and-figures have leaked out of your memory.

You can use this ‘emotional connection shorthand’ in your presentations pretty easily – all it takes is a striking (and appropriate!) image. Setting aside for the moment the technical issues of getting an image that looks good when projected, the key thing to look for is that the image you use should be simple and striking. Plain backgrounds (or at least soft focus backgrounds) are ideal – and whatever image you pick should be clearly and obviously interpretable.

All too often we see images which people want to use in their presentation that don’t capture the whole story in one glance – the key tip of today is pretty simple: if your images take more thinking about that a road traffic sign, they take too much thinking about. Your audience should be able to grab them instantly!

If your audience members have to think about your visuals, your images start to lose their impact and you might almost as well be using old-fashioned text!

Well I’m back…..

….. and my opinion remains the same as my last blog. I think the idea of Toastmasters is great – but there’s a but.

This is actually the second draft of this posting – I’ve just zapped about 20 minutes work because it read too negatively! I finally realised that Toastmasters and Curved Vision actually do complimentary things. What we can give people on our courses as detailed techniques, skills and support: we can tell you what works, what doesn’t and why. We can also tell you what to try instead. What we can’t do (unless you’ve got corporate funding) is give you practice-time, because it costs money to hire us….

What Toastmasters provides is a supportive environment in which to try out your skills. Some of the progression stuff is a bit lightweight but that’s fine – Toastmasters isn’t a training-ground; it’s a practice-ground. And as such, if last night was anything to go by, A1 speakers in Newcastle is going to be a supportive place to practice.

It seems to me that the best balance therefore is a bit of both. To that end, we’re going to be offering members of A1 Speakers a chunky discount on our public presentation skills training courses.

Well, Toastmasters is a global brand after all and it had to happen eventually! I’m going to go along to the inaugural meeting tonight (at Dance City for good pragmatic reasons) this evening (Monday 23rd March, 2009) to see if I can help out… not because I’m a particular fan of Toastmasters (as regular readers will know!) but more because some of the people setting it up are reasonable friends of mine.

I love the idea of Toastmasters, really I do. I love the fantastic idea that you get peer reviewed and therefore grow in skill and confidence as a public speaker. I do, however, have a hesitation about it, too… in that you only get peer reviewed – and if your peers aren’t up to the job, the review you receive won’t be much use, either.

Thing is, I’ve seen some really bad advice given to speakers at Toastmasters (eg: drink plenty of chilled water when you’re presenting) and that just takes the edge of the great idea I think it could-and-should be.

I’ll let you know how things go!

I’ve banged on recently about graphics in presentations… seems I’m not the only one interested!

The great Guy Kawaski pointed me at this article (via twitter). It’s a great example of how to present data visually – and thus in a suitable way for presentations.. at least in concept, the lines are too thin to show properly when projected but the idea is sound.

It’s a “map” of how people moved from journals in one field to journals in another thus illustrating the linkages between them, and by implication showing the logical linkages between them.

I like it because it does three things at the same time which are pretty trickly to pull off in combination. Firstly, it gives a great overview, allowing the ’storyline’ to be sussed out at a glance. Secondly it contains an absolute wealth of detailed information that one can spend ages getting to grips with. Thirdly, of course, it’s just visually interesting.

All in all a nice combination. Heaven alone knows how long it takes to create but if you want to create a killer presentation, I’d say that finding the time to do this kind of thing is actually a presentation skill in itself!

Pretty much the whole of the online public speaking advice community has spent the last months (years?!) banging on about less text. Few bullet points with fewer words! Images are the way forward!

For people with data to show this has sometimes been a little bit scary (if my inbox and the questions I get on our presentations training is anything to go by).

My response is usually to suggest that people stand by the ‘less is more’ philosophy and think about graphical representation of their images. The inevitable then happens – the wrong kind of graphics, badly drawn…….. There’s some good advice kicking around in various places online but a lot of it assumes that people know quite a bit about statistical/graphical manipulation. So here’s my attempt to simplify things……

If in doubt, don’t. There’s nothing sillier than an un-necessary graphic on the screen. I’ve blogged about ducks and golden ducks in presentations before and I stand by that advice: do you really (and I mean really!) need a pie chart to show what percentage of the population are male? If so, take a long, hard look at your approach and your audience! Sometimes a lot of things can be simply said – you don’t need a graph of any kind.

If you’re trying to show a change over time, it’s almost always best to stick to the most simple of structures – a two dimentional graph. Put time along the X (horizontal) axis, from left to right, with the ‘most future’ date on the right hand side. Put whatever you’re commenting on as changing over time on the Y (vertical) axis. That’s it. Keep it simple. Don’t try and show too many things at once – I’ve rarely seen an on-screen graph that could be read by an audience that had more than a couple of variables (other than time).

Remember a couple of simple statisical rules too. Only use lines if it’s justified by your data! If you know the number of unemployed in January and July, don’t be tempted to use any kind of lines for your graph which imply you know the number of unemployed people in the months between. Put simply, that’s a kind of lie. For all you know, the number could have gone up in February by tenfold and then spent March to June coming down to July’s level, not going up in a smooth line from Jan to July!

If you’re using something like Excel to draw your graphs and things, remember that it will do its best to sabotage your graph by picking colours which don’t project well by default and lines which are hopelessly thin, when looked at from the back of the room!

If you’re trying to compare two variables, neither of which is time, the same kind of graph (such as in a scatter plot) is probably the best way to go. If you’re trying to show more than two variables at a time, be very, very careful. My instinct is that if you’re trying to do that, you’re trying to do too much at a time, to be honest. If you must do it, show the relationships between your variables seperately first.

All the research I’ve read suggests that data are best passed on to your audience in handouts in any case. Data should be printed – your presentation should concentration on the trends in the data and in interpreting the data.

Simple!

In the past, I’ve read in various places suggestions and claims that music, and in particular Mozart, stimulates people’s brains. It’s been associated with everything from better surgery to smarter kids. (I’m drafting this with my iTunes playing Mozart Symphony 40, so you be the judge!)

What I’ve noticed for myself however, is that before presentations – during that awkward time when people are arriving, seating themselves and getting sorted out – it’s often more pleasant for the arriving audience to have some kind of background music. That’s particularly true for the early-birds who can find themselves feeling somewhat exposed and socially awkward in the silence. Music can be very welcoming. Besides, if nothing else, it shows that you’re ready and relaxed!

That said, the choice of music can be critical. There can be few things worse than something which irritates people or winds them up. So with that in mind, here are a few simple (perhaps obvious bits!) of advice for background music, where-ever and however you use it.