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...
Daughters and airplaines - another point!
As my daughter did her first freefall a couple of weeks ago, someone jumping with her managed to get some stunning photographs of her as she fell. With her permission (obviously), I’m turning one of them into a slide, showing the three things you need to make a decent presentation. As I looked at the pic it dawned on me that doing this kind of thing needs three things.
- the right techniques;
- the right equipment;
- the right attitude.
Miss any one of those and you’ve got a problem. Okay, so you can cover up for a lack in one with an extra dose of another more when you’re presenting than when you’re in freefall but you get my point, I’m sure. (You can’t substitute the skill of flapping your wings for the lack of a parachute but you can substitute good voice projection to cover the lack of a microphone! 
)
So next time you’re sitting there thing “hhheeeeelpp” ask yourself which of the three it is you’re missing. If it’s kit, buy or rent it (we’ll advise you on which is the best), if it’s skills you’re missing, call us for training…. and if it’s attitude, well, we can help a bit there, too but mainly it’s up to you.
It’s not about being un-afraid. Attitude is about being afraid and doing it anyway.
Cheers…. Simon
PS : the slide looks absolutely fab, too!
Daughters and airplanes
Two miles is a long way under certain circumstances. Okay, it’s a short walk and and even shorter run, but it’s a hell of a long way to jump out of an airplane.
It’s an even longer way to look upwards if you’re the one on the ground and it’s your daughter who’s doing the jumping. God, I felt old. I think I forgave her everything she’d ever done as a teenager at that point.
Still, more money raised for Amnesty, so it might have been worth the ulcers.
More relevant - in terms of this blog - is some of the advice she received and one of the articles written in ‘Skydive Starter’ magazine - some of the techniques advocated for dealing with the fear of jumping are pretty much the same as I use for dealing with the fear of presenting and public speaking.
Let’s face it, if they work when you’re about to freefall for the first time, they’ll probably work when you’re standing in front of an audience. I’ll deal with the breathing another time (I’ve mentioned it before, too!) but let me just spend a moment or two looking at visualisation. It’s a technique where you use your imagination to go through the motions of what you want to be doing, but without do it (which is useful for things such as presenting when you can’t get as much practice-time in front of an audience as you might need). But it’s not just about “imagining it working”.
The key elements to the technique are to be disciplined and structured about it - go through things carefully and in detail. Add just one element of the visualisation at a time… carefully.
Start with imagining exactly what you will/want to see. Be specific, be detailed. Once you’ve got that, add what you can hear. Again, be detailed - but don’t do it until the visual stuff is under control. Then add anything you can smell. Finally add how you feel and what you feel. Things like warmth, a draft from a window you’ve already imagined you can see and the feel of you shoes would be examples of that.
It’s a method that easier to learn face-to-face than when you’re just reading it over a coffee break in your office, but it’s worth having a go - and once you’ve got the basic idea, it’s something you can even try sitting at your computer…..
Questions - or not
Someone who recently introduced me at a presentation I was making checked with me - very courteously - whether I wanted to take questions as we went along or at the end. Taking questions is a point that this blog posting handles rather briefly: as does this post: and this one…. and, well never mind - you get the idea. I’ve even blogged about it myself here.
Referring back to my original question (during or after) I’m going to rather over-state my case for the sake of making a point…
I strongly feel that any questions your audience might have should come along afterwards, not during. This is because your presentation should be so clearly and tightly structured that there’s no need (and no chance for) people to ask you any questions as you go along.
Questions in the middle of your presentation come from loose ends. They come from you having started a train of thought running in the head of someone in your audience and then not having dealt with it. If you’ve really, really understood what your audience wants to know, your presentation should be a seamless move from where-they-start to where-they-want-to be.
Questions at the end tend to be along the lines of your audience taking what you’ve given them and then applying it to other circumstances, places and times; typically they’ll be applying them to their own circumstances. If they’re doing that, it’s good in a big way. It shows that you’ve sold your concept to them and they’re trying it on for size. That’s fine - you should be able to deal with that kind of thing - if you can’t you have to ask yourself hard questions about what you’ve just told them!
I told someone recently who was showing me his Powerpoint slides (and asking for feedback with the question “Does it hold together?”) something quite vicious (kind of!):
- firstly - if you have to ask, the answer is probably “no”
- secondly - when you’ve finished talking about a slide (any slide) there should be an obvious “what next” question in your audience’s head. They should be thinking “So….?”. Your next slide should start with that question.
Okay, that’s a bit literal - don’t try to make that happen unreasonably; but it does give you a way to see how well your slides (and more importantly the whole of your presentation) holds together. Use the idea as a tool to look critically at what you’re saying.
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.
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.
teleseminar recording…
Happy New Year to everyone. I hope 2008 works out well for you. I just spent New Year’s Eve at Epcot in Disney World, Florida. If anyone can do fireworks, it’s Disney! They also ‘invented’ a technique for looking at projects and problems which I’ll talk about some time, but for now I wanted to start the new year with, ironically, re-visiting something quite old.
I while ago now I did an experimental teleseminar on how to deal with nerves when you’re doing a bit of public speaking. You can down load it here.
By experimental, I mean that the system of delivery was experimental, not the content! The content is sound but all I did to record it was set a copy of Audacity running in the background while we talked. That means the quality isn’t fantastic (which is why I’m giving it away - though it’s certainly okay at least) and you might struggle to hear questions, but you’ll hear the guts of it well enough.
It runs for over half an hour (nearer 45 mins) and it’s all yours. Have fun.
Simon
PS: A good backup to it would be to read a copy of “…like a brick wrapped in velvet…” !
How many words are there….?
in a five minute presentation? Or a three minute…? Or a 30 second elevator pitch?
That’s one of my pet hate questions that seems to crop up quite often in various fora: I even get asked this on our training days by people who I’d have thought would have known better!
Asking for a time-limited presentations winds me up - and yet it’s something that seems to be the staple of many training environments such as Speakers’ Circles, Toastmasters, schools and so on.
It flies in the face of everything I know about presentations: say what you’ve got to say, then stop.
It’s not a hard concept, is it? No, I didn’t think so either. (The tricky part is actually figuring out what you’ve ‘got’ to say, of course, but that’s another issue.) Why pad out a presentation than needs 2 minutes into five? Why try and crap a 10 minute presentation into 6?
Just because that’s how long your slot is? What a rubbish reason.
The content is the king. You decide how much you need to say and then say it: unless there’s an over-riding reason to keep to a specific time (you’ve got only 20 minutes before the next speaker and running late would be rude, for example) the time should be dictated by the content, not the other way around….
Okay… rant over! And yes, I know there are exceptions to that point, but the principle is sound, I think!
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!
(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….
Claptrap or Clap Traps? - part one
So what’s the difference? Well, according to at least one online dictionary claptrap is ” Pretentious, insincere, or empty language” where as a Clap Trap is a trick used to generate applause: it’s an old theatrical gimmick… apparently now obsolete.
Except, of course, that we know it isn’t - because Clap Traps are still used in presentations an public speeches left, right and centre around the world. This is particularly, I’ve noticed, in the political arena: in fact, I’d go so far to say that they pretty much only work in the polictical arena - that’s the area where people’s emotions are allowed vent.
Sure, you can get passionate in a business presentation but not in the way people do at a polictical rally - in any case, I don’t think Claptraps work in the kinds small and/or reserved audiences you tend to get there. They only work when the audience can get into the “mentality of the mob” - by which I mean they feel free to forget their inhibitions, in the way they might do at a football match or a big hockey game. People in big crowds can (and do) behave in ways they’d not even think about if they were working as individuals!
But hang on a minute! What is a claptrap then? Well, there are books on the subject (Atkinson, 1984 for example as well as serious online articles) but in short, they’re rhetorical tricks to elicit a (positive) response from the audience - such as clapping. They include things like
- lists of three - “education, education, education” is a bit of a cheat (Blair), but you get the idea - or “…a time for sadness, a time for struggle, a time for rebuilding ” (Bush)
- high contrast phrases - ” Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few”
I’m sure you get the idea - but before you rush out and start trying to use them, remember two things. The first is that your audience needs to be receptive (large groups for example and already warmed up) - otherwise you’ll end up looking like an idiot as your attempts fall flat on your face. The second thing to remember is that you need a certain level of chutzpah to pull these off: they’re not techniques for the novice or the faint of heart!
And at last (at last!) I come to the point of this article…. Clap Traps really are just claptrap, aren’t they - they’re techniques of rhetoric - of emotional manipulation or motivation - not anything to do with having a persuasive content of value.
…..more to follow in part two soon
