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.

Technological wonder

I wonder whether this will work, this technology advancement that writing from my Iphone might confer upon my life. Or will it just be a pain because the phone cant cope with me switching languages all the time...


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Thoughts on language and teaching

Oh what a long time since my last blog entry! Just been a bit too much going on. But I've been thinking about it the whole time, I promise...

So there's this thing that's been preying on my mind for some time. It has to do with language and education, and attitudes to both these things. A couple of years ago I ran a course at Masters level for the Swedish agricultural University, SLU, over a period of 10 weeks. From the students who participated in that course I learnt that all the Masters courses at SLU are run in English, they're open to international students so there's a reason for this. But here's the first problem, which someone actually brought to my attention much earlier. Not all of the university lecturers are proficient enough in English to allow the teaching to be at an appropriate level. The person who first mentioned this to me was very concerned about the standard.

Fast forward to my course and my discussions with the students. This course was also run in English, which wasn't much of a problem for me, it being my native tongue, but it certainly caused complications for the students. A couple of them in particular had quite a hard time because I ran the whole course based on participation and discussion and their lack of practice that English held them back. Now this course happened to be the last one of their entire university education. So they had been to at least two years of courses run in English and you have to wonder why they hadn't already become quite used to using the language. The simple answer, I learnt, was that no one had forced them to participate in discussions previously.

We talked about this at length and, after experiencing what the 10 weeks with me had given them in terms of knowledge as well as practice, they were themselves painfully aware of the shortcomings of having to sit and listen without active participation in all the previous courses (lectures).

So I have two points here: the first is that language is a fairly important part of the art and skill of teaching, how on earth do you get complex subjects across without control of language? My second point is, what on earth is going on when Masters level education does not include an absolute requirement for student participation?

And just as a final point, one might care to dwell on the fact that while Swedes are in general much better at English than other nationalities that don't speak it as their first language, that doesn't necessarily mean that people are really good at English. Better is a relative term. There are very few people that speak English well enough to be able to teach a university level course.