Imagine you are sitting in an audience. There’s quite a complicated presentation going on and you are attempting to follow it. The presenter is using a lot of slides with several sentences on every slide.
What do you do? Keep listening to the speaker and ignore the slides completely, or attempt to read the slides whilst the speaker keeps talking? Neither option works. Either you try to ignore the distraction of the slides and listen – hard to do. Or you can chose the opposite – while you struggle to read the slide, the speaker has moved on to a new topic.
Don’t try to use slides as hand-outs for the audience to take away. They are attending a face-to-face communication, not reading a book. Reading and listening are two completely different forms of communications, using different mental processes. Audiences can’t read slides and listen at the same time. In fact, If you have too much on the slides, they are very hard to read on their own, even without the complication of listening.
I’ve talked previously about how brief good slide content must be. Basically – hardly any words. Let’s face it: If the slides were any use to someone who hadn’t attended the presentation, they probably didn’t communicate well during it!
Garr Reynolds at Presentation Zen has a good example of using speaker notes plus slides for a reasonable compromise on the slide+hand-out front.
Two contrasting events happened in Communicate this week that put the power of stories firmly in mind: I was working with a group of auditors and discussing options for presenting technical auditing issues in an engaging way. Back in the office I picked up an email asking for presentation help for a guy described as a bright guy, very theatrical in his style who enjoys theory and concepts but is too abstract and jumps around ideas too much for people to follow. Obviously he needs to build some stronger audience engagement.
In both cases story telling is the answer. All humans enjoy stories and a good story can turn knowledge into something that really connects with us and can stimulate us to understand and to act. Even something as technical as auditing has human story behind it – stories as to why that rule was developed, what happened when the rule was broken and so on.
Often when I ask people about the best presenter at a recent conference, the answer relates to story telling – the presenter told a story that the listener could relate to and use as the basis for future action.
An example? A new team leader hearing a presenter talk about the issue of sometimes having to make an unpopular decision as a leader. The presenter told about her son falling over that very morning and getting a bad gravel graze. The mother had to inflict pain on the boy to clean out the graze so it could heal well. Who knows how true that small story was, but it lingered with the listener and gave her the confidence to act on some difficult issues she was facing.
Don’t get stuck on the idea that your life is too mundane for stories. You don’t have to have chopped off your arm with a multi-tool to escape from being trapped under a rock! Often the most powerful and long-lasting stories are built from very simple accessible material – as in the grazed knee example. With this type of story, an audience can think: ‘Ah ha! Yes, I get that. This is familiar’, then they have the basis for understanding or action.
A while ago I worked with a group young army recruitment personnel. Some of them had coped with some very dramatic situations during their overseas service, but the most compelling story came from a woman who talked about how joining the army had enabled her to find a route out of a very negative and limited background. The audience could relate to the story and use it as a message for action. So, just look at your ordinary daily life for compelling content. If you want an example, take a look at Carmen Agra Deedy telling the story of taking her mother to the shopping mall. Okay, she’s a brilliant story teller and has really worked on this one, but the source of the content is very simple:
So look around your life for some real stories, then when you have some ideas or concepts that are difficult to get across, ask yourself: ‘What else in my life is similar to this concept or has the same kinds of elements? Who knows how your life might be compelling for someone else.
Some other useful resources:
One of our favourite books: ‘Made to Stick’ by Chip and Dan Heath covers story telling for presenters very well and…
This presentation uses a very funky approach to slides whilst giving you some great pointers on preparing your presentation. Take a look and let me know what you think!
Psychologists have long believed that how you stand makes a huge difference to how you feel about yourself and your situation. The Power of Posture, Economist January 13, is an interesting article reporting on research that supports that belief. Scientists at North Western University, Illinois found that research participants who sat in an expansive posture had a stronger sense of their own power than those who sat in a constricted position. The expansive sitters were also more likely to choose the more active option in situations such as speaking first in a debate, deciding to leave a plane crash to seek help, and joining a fight for justice.
Interestingly, the expansive participants’ higher levels of self-confidence occurred regardless of the status of their position.
‘Expansive’ posture? Just like your mother always said – of course! Head up, shoulders back, legs spread wide (oh dear!) and arms reaching outwards. It’s all about enhancing your appearance of size.
Constricted posture? Shoulders hunched, hands under your thighs, legs together. The word ‘fetal’ comes to mind!
The recent earthquake in Christchurch Christchurchcity.govt.nz showed us that fundamental core value of caring is alive and well. Neighbours rallied around to help each other setting up BBQs, sharing with each other and making the most of a very difficult situation. Organisations donated generously in both cash and goods
And yet we so often read ,or experience, situations when caring seems to have been forgotten.
Caring translates into all our dealings with people not just those closest to us.
When we deliver a presentation we should ‘care’ about our audience
When we work with clients and customers we should ‘care’ about them
As managers and leaders we should care about our staff.
Yet unfortunatelyoften we get too busy ,or just plain forget to use that core value in almost all of us.
Roger Steare rogersteare.com recently spoke at a meeting and he talked passionately about the need to get back to using our core values at work. We care about the things that matter close to us -our families (and/or animals!) and yet so often at work the culture dulls what we know is intrinsically right -the universals that make us civilised. The too tight job description so we don’t ‘go the extra mile’. The rules that stifle common sense
Perhaps it’s time to take stock and not wait for a disaster to bring out the best in us .We all do care it’s now time to show it
Do you need to communicate complex ideas in your presentation? My son is working on a presentation on progress so far on his Masters thesis and we are doing battle about keeping it simple. To make the point to him and hopefully to be useful to you: Ellen Finklestein has a very useful and brief online video presentation on keeping PowerPoint simple and visual. In 2.39 minutes she gives a very accessible lesson on why you need to keep slides simple and visual. She includes a before and after sample of the difference.
Ignore the irritating teacherly voice because the content is good. She is using an interesting new technology called BrainShark to share the presentation.
We know that warm-up is a vital part of preparation for sport. Before a game we need to get the heart pumping, warm the muscles we will need to use and get the body ready to make unusual movements like twisting or jumping.
So too do audiences need to be warmed up to whatever we want to communicate.The audience is always warmed up to something, but unless we are aware of the warm-up process they may not be mentally in the right place. As they arrive, whilte some maybe very keen to listen, others might not want to be there, or expect that the presentation will be too hard for them to understand. To get them warmed up you will need to establish your credentials on the subject fairly early on. You may want to show them that it is easier than they thought to understand this difficult subject.
This concept is closely related to the general idea of audience engagement and here are soem tips on that from TechRepublic.
It is also a bit different: Each time you need to audience to shift what they are thinking about or doing, you need to plan carefully how you will get them make that shift. For example:
If you want them to buy your suggested solution, make sure you warm them up to the pain of the problem it solves.
If you need them to give you their views on how some change will work, make sure you explain how it will look in practice and be welcoming of dissent.
Audiences are a little different to sports players because they are really always warmed up to something. Make sure you control where that warm-up is heading. Don’t go off on a tangent or they will warm-up in the wrong direction. In short, don’t jump them, or confuse them!
A common issue for our coaching clients in the past year has been the challenge of increasing the impact of their personal presence. Their questions are often: ‘What is this ‘presence’ thing and how do I get more of it?’
While everyone needs to be aware of their personal presence, as we take on more influential leadership roles, we need to be even more conscious of establishing our presence.
The key to it is simple…..or is it?
Seek first to understand
The message isn’t new: Great personal presence requires us first to simply be present to others – by listening to them very carefully. Steven Covey sums it up well with his quote: ‘Seek first to understand before being understood.’
This seems very straightforward, but most of us tend to go into conversations focused much more on our own point of view – what we find interesting, what we want to talk about and so on. This approach certainly establishes presence, but of the wrong sort! To develop a strong positive presence, we need to focus first on understanding where the other person is coming from in the conversation.
Active listening is the key communication tool for keeping ourselves present. There’s a challenge though, because while listening appears to be simple, it isn’t often easy. The process requires commitment and real discipline of our conscious thought. Sometimes we have to keep repeating to ourselves: ‘I really want to listen to this person.’ When we manage to focus in this way, we are truly present. There is a very powerful story that captures the magic of this combination in The Power of Presence and Listening: A Fellow’s Narrative by Musharraf Navaid MD, in the Journal of Palliative Medicine.
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