Connecting is not so difficult

There's a lot of talk about connecting with your audience if you are to succeed in influencing them. Not least from me! Are you wondering what it's all about? It's very simple. People won't listen to you if they think you're not listening to them. If you don't look your audience in the eyes properly and you prepare material that isn't relevant for them and your slides are your own manuscript and you run over time etc etc, how do you think they'll feel ?

So here are just a few things that will help you to make a connection.

• Speak with enthusiasm, passion and conviction 
• Know what you are talking about and deliver it as if it is vitally important
• Everything needs a context and relevance (for the listener), not least in order to be memorable
• Use open gestures, step forwards towards the audience, be as relaxed and genuine as you can
• Really look at people as if you are having a personal conversation with them and don't just scan over the audience with your eyes 
• Use metaphors and examples, stories and your own experience to make the subject more personal and real
• Minimise PowerPoint, use a whiteboard instead

Three things you should never forget about your audience

1. they are human beings
2. they are human beings just like you
3. they are not audio-visual recording machines

The five best ways to reach your audience

Most of my talks this spring, and a whole bunch already planned for the late summer, have all really been about only one thing. "Persuasion" is maybe the best word for it but "influence" and "motivation" play their parts also.

I have, in all, up to 2 hours of material (videos, examples, pictures etc) designed to hammer home some important points and explain why they are so important and exactly how you can apply these to a regular everyday presentation. Way, way too much to put here of course! But it all really boils down to five points.

1. Make contact with the audience, eye contact, open gestures
2. Make it about your audience, talk about what interests THEM
3. Be an authority, DEMONSTRATE that you know what you're doing, don't just say that you do
4. Stick out, be memorable, do something unexpected
5. Don't talk about information, tell stories

There's loads more stuff that's important and a wealth of things to think about when it comes to applying them. But maybe this shortlist will inspire some specific ideas that you can apply to your own presentations right now. Give it some thought. I'm sure there's something that you can do directly.


Here's a photo of a spot on my cycle ride home, one of my favourite bits. Have a great weekend everyone!

Dear John - a tale of separation

Dear John,
(that was your name wasn't it? I'm afraid I'm already forgetting)

I'm sitting here drinking coffee and chewing on a piece of cinnamon bun. Don't really have the energy to talk to anybody, even though there are many interesting people around me. I've just been listening to your presentation, the first 45 min up to the coffee break, and I'm sorry to say that I'm considering leaving you now.

I had such great hopes from the beginning. The subject is fascinating and I've read enough to know that there's much more to learn and enjoy. I looked forward to settling back in my seat and hearing the real thing, a true expert. Enlightenment was on the menu. Clarity and facts were food for my soul, but this fare has sent me into a post-presentation stupor. I'm over-full, over-fed, stuffed to the gills but still haven't tasted what I came for.

Something passed by there on slide number 38, seemed to be just what I wanted to know, but now I only have a ghostly image on the back of my mind which is fading fast. I'm really not too good at reading fast and listening at the same time. I guess it's back to the textbooks now.

I hope you won't miss me or mind that I go. You didn't catch my eye for 45 min, so I'm guessing you won't be so disappointed. I wish you all the best for the rest of your talk, you sure do know a whole lot about this subject so you won't have any trouble filling the next 45 min. You seem to love what you do and to be quite content talking about your passion.

Have a great conference, I'm off to listen to that guy in the other lecture hall now.

All the best,
Your audience.

Three levels of expertise

When I coach speakers I think in terms of three levels. Level I is all about the tools and basic skills. Planning presentations, using pictures and words, how you stand, how you use your voice, achieving good eye contact, rhetorical methods etc.
On the next level, Level II, it's all about connecting with the audience. If you're relatively relaxed and have good eye contact you can use it to forge a true connection. You can use stories and examples, metaphors and humour to shape people's experience of the presentation. This is where you move on to advanced presentation technique.
At the top level, Level III it's time to cut loose and be genuinely personal. The goal is to be able to present really well without any pre-warning or preparation and to be able to hold people's attention for a couple of hours, or even a day or two, without flagging. To prepare material that is both informative and motivating and which truly reaches people in order to influence them in the best possible way. And, most importantly, the end goal is to influence them to do something - to buy your product, to support you, to help with something, to be motivated.

You don't have to to work with someone else to achieve these three levels. Set up your own plan. List the things you need to polish in order to clear Level I (practice one thing at a time in each presentation you give). Start to work on making a true connection with your audience at Level II by improving your eye contact, using open gestures and moving around a bit more. If you do a lot of presentations and it's important to really get across then think about how you are perceived. Get some really good feedback from honest individuals. Look at what the real experts do. How do they use pictures videos or music? How do they start their presentations? How do they vary the content to keep people interested?

If you're a manager or a leader, a company head or a salesperson you'd better be aiming at Level III because you can bet the competition is.

 I'll just leave you with that inspiring thought...  ;)

Don't talk to strangers

Did your parents ever tell you this? Very good advice.

If you are very nervous about a presentation it can sometimes help to have some friends in the audience. So maybe you could try making some just before you stand up to speak. Shake hands with some people, stop and talk to them for awhile, drink coffee with some, see if you can find out beforehand who will be in the audience etc etc. if you know someone in the audience you could even ask them to smile at you from time to time. It will sure make you feel better!

Some professional speakers stand by the door and shake hands with every single audience participant who enters. Excellent idea, but you need a fairly resilient right hand.

But the most important point of course is to be sure that you know your audience and have researched as much as possible of the occasion and the location.

A simple way to improve slides - Tell and Show

Well, simple is maybe not exactly the right word for this but anyway... If you start from a slide that is a bit complicated and that covers several points, then break up all these points into separate slides. So the rule is one point per slide. Then make that point in a short phrase and put it into the title bar.

Now delete every other bit of text from your slide. Then fill the rest of the slide with a diagram or picture or illustration of some kind that helps to explain your point. Think of the simple phrase Tell and Show. You know, the reverse of Show and Tell that kids do in school.

Tell them what the point is and then show them what you mean.

You can handle many slides in this way. If the actual point you're making is in the title then everyone will get it and if they're really interested they will take in the accompanying explanation. If they're not really paying attention or a bit sleepy then hopefully the point will get across anyway. If you don't have an illustration to add, then you could have a text box with some key words as long as it's not complete sentences.

This is useful of course if you really need to get your message across to your audience. If you just want to blind them with science and show them how much you know then please just carry on filling slides with masses of text and details. :)

HAPPY EASTER!!

It's Friday, it's sunny and it's time to go home!

"There are only two types of speakers in the world:  

              1. The nervous and 

2. Liars."

Mark Twain

The company logo question

Reading back through the last post makes me think of another thing. Should a company's logotype and branding be present on every slide? The classic answer from a marketing department would be, yes sure, it's part of our branding, a chance to get the company name in front of many people, and possibly protects our ownership of the information on the slide. Maybe.

But what it sure does do I think is shout out: " Look, here, this is us! Check this out, we do all this great stuff. Look, I made the slide isn't it wonderful? And check this out, we do this and this, and make these great things, here's a picture of our building, here's a glossy photos of our products...".

On a slightly more serious note: the signal this sends is rather self focused and risks, at the very least, sending audiences into a minor coma when they see the same slide appearance again and again. The more prominent the logotype or slide background, the more tangible this effect is. When you stand in front of an audience as a speaker then YOU become the company's branding. What they think of you personally and what you say and show will directly rub off on their impression of the company. It won't help to have a big red or blue blob on the corner of your slides, but it sure might worsen the situation.

I have never been more aware of this than after listening to a superb presentation by a salesperson from a prominent molecular biology tools company some years back. As an expert on the subject matter, I happened to know that a lot of what he said was just pure rubbish, but his presentation was polished and extremely professional. At a coffee break afterwards I first heard people saying that HE was great and a very short time after, that the COMPANY was great. People very quickly forgot his name but they remembered the impression that he left. The glory rubbed off on the company and the product really quickly.

At the same conference a friend of mine was presenting his company and products for the first time as CEO. He gave an even better presentation! Same effect again. This all really left an impression on me and these are still the most clear examples of this phenomenon that I have ever experienced directly. I talked to my friend afterwards about the success of his performance and he said that he had practised that presentation until he was thoroughly sick of it. He had run through it in front of his boss a number of times, in front of colleagues even more and even his wife had had to put up with it.

So there you go, THAT'S how you succeed in making a mark for your organisation or product!

There aren't any shortcuts. Just put your logotype on one or two slides and make sure ALL the slides are good.

Nick Morgan, a great source of advice

One of the very best authors and contributors in general to the subject of communication, theory and coaching, in my humble opinion is Nick Morgan. Look him up! I recently read one of his books, the latest, from 2008: "Trust me: four steps to authenticity and charisma".  His web site is http://www.publicwords.com/ Aeons better than most of the advice out there!

A new outlook on things

Have you thought what you could do by changing the usual set up of seating at a seminar? I'm sure there's lots of ways to do this. We're just so set in our ways and lacking in imagination (or daring!). So I would like to send out a general appeal for new thinking and imagination. Even if it just means that you place the chairs in less than perfectly straight rows...

Did you hear about the conference where they filled the room with big Pilates balls? Or the one where there weren't any seats at all? People started to invent new ways to get comfortable, and even started talking to each other.

Can you imagine?

Friday time - a serious thought for a bleak afternoon

"It takes one hour of preparation for each minute of presentation time."
Wayne Burgraff

Here are some flowers to cheer things up

This is not the information age

We're moving on really fast. The so-called Information Age has arrived, settled in and changed our lives. We've been drowning in data from all directions for a while now. We know where to find it all and the technology delivers it pretty reliably, wherever we are. So what do we do with all this information?

Time to stop talking about the information age and start thinking about the persuasion age. How do you stand out and get your message heard?

 In the context of presentation technique, people have the resources to gather their own information and there are simple ways to get it to them. You really don't need to stand there listing all the facts. What many people need is the motivation and inspiration to use that information to get results. They need to know what stuff really means and why it's important. Where can they find the rest of the details and what can be done with them? What good is it? The big SO WHAT?

Far too many speakers are still just delivering information. They fail to connect their content to emotion and purpose and fail to motivate people to interest and action.

Your audience has become more demanding. Their time is a precious resource and they won't accept boring PowerPoint presentations full of details. We all demand relevance, stimulation and real understanding. We always have actually.

So slow down a bit. Work on connecting with the audience. Think about what you can add to the subject that they can't look up on Google or your website. It's really not so difficult once you dare to put yourself into the presentation.

The trick is in the planning - step four

I love PostIts! You can do so much with them and they have to be the best planning tools ever. Maybe this would be a fun thing to try.

If you're planning a new presentation which is just a bit too complex and you have many ideas in desperate need of structuring, then try this. Take a pile of PostIts, maybe in different colours. Get hold of a pen with a nice broad tip. Find a big whiteboard or a piece of paper from a flip chart. A big desk surface will also do the trick.

Write down all of your separate ideas on PostIts and for the time being just spread them out over a surface so you can see them all. Break up big ideas into smaller ones and add even more PostIts. When the ideas start drying up, group the PostIts together into categories or subjects or sections of the talk. Pick out the best ideas and throw away the rest. Think about how much time you have and whether you can get through all this material. When you have the categories sorted out you can start to convert them to messages or statements. Think in terms of slide headlines that describe the main points you are trying to make.

Then you can arrange these main points in order and start to add some supporting statements or sources of data. After this you need some transitions between the main points, which could be written on PostIts of a different colour. You may want to add notes about how certain points can be put across, also on PostIts. Somewhere here you can transfer the whole thing into PowerPoint and turn the words into pictures, videos diagrams and other illustrations. What you have to think about is only writing the point itself on the PostIts, not the actual words you will use to get the point across. Supporting statements/data should also be very brief; keywords and bullet points.

It might not work all the way for you but most help can probably be had in the early planning stage of presentations. I find that deciding the order of slides or sections of the presentation is a lot easier using PostIts on a whiteboard than working in PowerPoint.

Hopefully you'll find a little bit of inspiration in there somewhere. Have fun!

Friday again!

All this snow is getting to me. Time to dig out the car again... Here are two small quotes to finish off the week.

"Of those who say nothing, few are silent."

Thomas Neiel

"The most precious things in speech are the pauses."

Sir Ralph Richardson

Designing slides - there's a lot of help out there

There are a few great books on the art of designing good slides. For example: " Presentation Zen: simple ideas on presentation design and delivery." by Garr Reynolds or "slide:ology: the art and science of creating great presentations." by Nancy Duarte. Nancy Duarte has also written the wonderful, beautiful book "resonate: present visual stories that transform audiences." which really does live up to its title. If you like graphic design in general then you'll love thumbing through this book. It's a wonderful source of inspiration on planning presentations in general and one of my absolutely favourite books.

But I would suggest that if you want to create really stunning slides then the best source of inspiration comes from books on graphic design. One of my favourites that's piled full of inspiration is "Design elements. A graphic style manual." by Timothy Samara. I have a couple more at home whose titles I've forgotten for the moment. Send me a mail if you're interested and I'll give you some more suggestions.

...and an extra thing just because it's Friday

"What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The trick is in the planning - step three. Make life easier for your audience!

When you figured out your main message and your purpose for being there, and you've considered who the audience are and what they want to hear from you, then you should have at least a general idea of what you're going to put into the presentation. At this point you might want to try the following approach. Open up a number of empty slides in PowerPoint (just keep pressing the new slide button). Pick a suitable number for the time that you're going to present. Then fill in the titles of the slides by writing what the point of that slide would be. Another way to look at this is to write the conclusion or the bottom line that belongs to each slide. Ideally you ought to be able to read all the titles from start to finish and hear yourself telling a story that has a beginning middle and end. So you can also start by writing out that story and then break it up into slide titles of course.

For example a slide somewhere in the middle of the presentation might describe a series of costs that would be entered into a budget in the form of the table. The title might be "Our total costs amount to XXX". So the conclusion becomes the title and the audience don't really need to listen to a description of the rest of it unless they are particularly interested. The more common title on a slide like this would be "Costs" or "Budget"or something else equally non-informative. It's usually a description of what the subject is rather than what the actual point is. You're placing quite heavy demands on your audience if they've got to listen to every detail you say in order to figure out themselves what the point of each part of the presentation is. So make it easy on them!

The trick is in the planning - step two

Okay, the next step is for all of you who have a clear purpose, you know exactly what your primary message is, you've characterised your audience as far as you can (including the room that you will be speaking in), and you know what result you want to achieve from your presentation. You're well ahead of the game already.

So another way to prepare your thoughts of what to actually include in your presentation is to take the three vital ingredients of ethos, logos and pathos and to make an inventory of how you can work with each of these.

Firstly, Ethos. How can you be perceived as credible and reliable? Of course you can always list your qualifications, drop names and generally be fairly direct about it. But this is not always the best way, nor is it usually enough. I would say that you should never need to actually introduce yourself in terms of your qualifications, your name and affiliation is enough. If you can't achieve credibility through the things you say, with your voice and stance and body language and generally by being a competent presenter, then there's no way you will compensate by telling people about all the positions you've held over the last 20 years. The audience's impression comes from what you do more than what you say. So think about how you, personally, in your own way can ensure that you are perceived as someone who knows what they're talking about. Start by learning your presentation well, practice it and take notes with you if you need them. Then think about the specific things you can say to boost your credibility and be subtle about it. For example: " when I worked as head of research for Roche I learnt this excellent method for visualising complex research projects which I would like to share with you today."

Logos is all of the facts, the rational stuff, figures and statistics, and the meat of the subject itself. This is where most people have all of their focus and of course you have to sort through all of this, prioritise and find a logical order. Then you have to present it so that people pay attention, understand and preferably remember. Even more work is required if you expect them to act on your words. So there's a lot of work to do here and this should also support your credibility (ethos) by being accurate and relevant and so on. List the most important facts. The things you really can't leave out, in order of priority. Find as many pictures or diagrams as possible to illustrate the subject and keep it as simple as you can.

Pathos I have written about earlier. But just to recap: you need to reach people through emotions and experiences. Logic is not enough. People will forget what you said and they'll forget what you did and they will never forget how you made them feel, as someone famous once said. So this is the key to influence, persuasion and memory. Think about ways that you can use to reach people in this particular presentation.Your own enthusiasm for the subject is a starting point. Find ways to surprise people, make them wonder, make them laugh and make them smile in recognition. If you're putting photographs into a presentation try to find pictures of people. Use bright, beautiful high-resolution photographs. Above all, describe your subject in terms that are relevant for them, explaining why this is important in their own context.

So there it is, ethos, logos, pathos. Check you have a balance and check you have them all.

The trick is in the planning - step one

How do you plan your presentations? Do you have a system? Do you usually open an older PowerPoint file and adjust it according to the new situation? Do you change planning approaches every time you start a new presentation?

I've spent a long time thinking about this and and done it badly many times! These days I have much more of a system. I thought I would share a few thoughts about how to make life easier. Maybe something in here might be useful to you. Well, we can at least try!

Step one:
For me the first thing is always the audience. Who are they exactly, how many people will be there, and why are they there? There's loads of questions that could usefully be answered here and it's often not too difficult to find out if you're prepared to ask around. What does the room look like where you will talk? Will you have a small audience sitting around a meeting table or a couple of hundred people spread out in an enormous sloping lecture theatre with everything that implies?

Then the next question is what is your purpose in being there. Do you want to create any particular impression? Do you want the audience to do something? What results do you expect? Think really seriously about this. What are you REALLY doing there? After that you need to formulate your message. What is it that you really want to say, expressed in one short clear sentence? If you can get this far then you should have a much easier time deciding what material to actually put into your presentation. You should have a clear goal and purpose and that always helps doesn't it?

So next time you have a presentation ahead of you spend some time seriously considering these aspects. Write them down on a piece of paper, it helps to clarify things that little extra. And when you then open PowerPoint and start creating slide material, don't forget to look back at your purpose, your message and your definition of the audience, preferably before and after every single slide!

Hope this helps a little. Step two of planning follows in a little while

Another Friday thought

"No one ever complains about a speech being too short."
Ira Hayes

Openings that kill your presentation

The first few moments of your presentation is when your audiences attention peaks.

 If you work at it you keep their attention for the rest of the time but even if you lose it, those first few moments should not be squandered. So don't waste it doing the following:

• talking about background and history of the subject area
• describing your organisation with charts and names
• talking about your experience with more than one item from your CV
• describing your organisation, "all about us", to outsiders. They want to know what you can do for THEM
• telling a joke or anecdote. It's usually irrelevant and just keeps the audience waiting. It's also hard to do this well. So even if the joke is relevant, wait until later and just get the talk started
• describing your organisation...
• apologising for being late, for equipment not working properly, for not preparing enough, for not really being an expert (!), for bad slides etc etc etc
• describing your organisation...
• fumbling around with notes and trying to think of something to say to start

You get the idea? Instead try to start with something that is of real interest to your audience. The "what's in it for me?" message. Describe an interesting problem or situation and then proceed to solve it during your presentation. Dive straight into the subject matter and what's really interesting and come back to a little of the background information when people understand why they need to know it. Let your credibility rest on giving a well-prepared and well-informed presentation, and don't spend time talking about yourself and all the important things you know or have done.

A final small thought for a Friday afternoon

" There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practised, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave."
Dale Carnegie

Questions worth asking

Here are just three things that should be going through your head when preparing a presentation.

Why me?

Why them?

So what?

Just keep these rolling the whole time and you'll be fine!

There isn't only one right way

I am a strong advocate of finding your own way to good presentation technique, I hope anyone who has worked with me would confirm that. Sure there are plenty of rules and tips and good ways to do things, but nothing is of much use at all if you can't be yourself and make a genuine contact with the audience. The video below is a very good example of how a whole bunch of rules just fade into insignificance when the message and the feeling are really good.

In this video posted on TED.com in April 2010 Dean Kamen gives an informal kind of a presentation which on first glance, and for the first few minutes, doesn't exactly give the impression of something you may remember for the rest of your life. He looks very modest, looks down a lot, holds his hands in front of his bodyand even starts playing with his fingernails. His talk feels a little unstructured and you almost feel nervous for his sake. But by the time he's got to the end of the story I wonder whether anyone would not be affected by it and would not remember it for a long time after. His own passion and interest become more and more apparent and this is what it's all about. Truly reaching out to other people with your story and conveying emotions and experiences to them in a way they'll never forget.