Joe's Jottings
Jottings Number 72, by Joe Podolsky:
From Joe Podolosky:
Date: 7 May 1997
Subject: No Napping
This jotting is about presentations. By definition there are two parties to every presentation: a speaker who stands in front of the room and talks, and an audience on the receiving end. The speaker tries to impart some information while getting some ego satisfaction from being the center of attention, while the audience tries to get some of that information without any embarrassing snoring. In most presentations, both roles are challenging.
One big problem is that we confuse "presentations" with "education" or with "training." As we've discussed in other jottings, learning happens in direct proportion to student involvement. In presentations, however, only the speaker is completely involved. The "audience" is exactly that, a group of captives who mostly listen and look with about 10% of their mind and think about other things with the other 90%.
So, the first rule of successful presentations is, "don't do them." If at all possible, use interactive learning techniques so that there is a community of learners, not a speaker and an audience.
But, the fact is that there will continue to be presentations. We do them to customers, to our staffs, to our bosses. We use them to inform, and we use them to ask for something. We used to use slides and overhead transparencies; now we display fancy audiovisuals directly from our laptops using projectors and projection panels. The high technology merely exaggerates the basic process: the speaker shows off so that the audience is impressed.
Given their inevitability, we should learn to do them well. So I was pleased to see an article in the February : March 1997 issue of _Fast Company_ magazine called "Now That We Have Your Complete Attention..." by editor Eric Matson.
Matson suggests these eight points:
1. "Incite, don't inform. Effective presentations don't end with nodding heads and polite applause. They end with *action*." So, we presenters have to know ahead of time what it is we want our audience to do and how to get them to do it. This means that any visuals we use should persuade as well as inform. Make your visuals SHOUT, not just for the sake of noise but also to capture the passion as well as the intellect of the audience.
2. "Don't talk to strangers." Ideally, know ahead of time whom you are talking to and why they are there. Know about their key issues, their key sensitivities. If you are going to irritate them, do it deliberately, not by accident. And, if you don't know these things, if the audience is small enough, take a few minutes at the beginning of the presentation to give them an outline and ask them if that's what they want to hear.
3. "First (and last) impressions are everything." "The two most important parts of your presentation," says Matson, "are the first 30 and the last 15 seconds." He quotes executive coach Celia McDonald who says that a powerful close should be a call for action and also relate directly to the beginning. Give the audience the feeling of closure and completeness.
4. "Simpler is better." One study asked top executives at six large companies how to improve presentations. Their answer: "Make your presentations shorter and more candid."
5. "Perform, don't present." Johnny Carson once said that people will pay more money to be entertained than to be educated. Make that work for you. Belle Linda Halpern of the Ariel Group in Cambridge, Massachusetts teaches people to put more emotion into their presentations. Happiness, anger, loud voice, soft voice, pauses, strong gestures are all important tools for the speaker-entertainer. Emotions evoke emotions. Emotions create caring and action.
6. "The show must go on." High tech equals high risk. First, test all your equipment in the exact place in which the presentation will occur. Be sure you or someone else who will be there knows everything about all the different pieces and connections. And, second, have a (lower tech) back-up plan if something fails ... and test the backup plan as well.
7. "There's one in every crowd." Matson's consultants offer three possible ways of handling disruptive questions, all easier said than done. One suggestion is to repeat and paraphrase the question and then to disagree in a pleasant, conversational way. Another possibility is to agree to answer the question but after the formal presentation. Another consultant suggests that speakers answer angry questions immediately (especially if they have answered other questions in real time) but to direct the answer to the entire audience, not to the specific questioner.
8. "Practice, practice, practice." And the more different this presentation is from others we've done, the more we need to practice. The best practice is in front of both a video recorder and a coach. Next best is to practice in front of a coach. And, then there are two ways of practicing by yourself. One is to go through the presentation out loud in an empty room. But it is also helpful to go through a presentation step by step silently, visualizing what we will do. I've done this on airplanes, silently mouthing the presentation, sometimes to the amusement of my neighbors and the flight attendants.
Another excellent source of advice on presentations is _Presentations_ magazine (50 S. Ninth St., Minneapolis, MN 55402), a monthly publication, offered at no charge to qualified subscribers. Here are a few ideas from a December 1995 article called, "101 Top Tips":
- "No matter what your topic is, first-hand experiences involving people are almost always more interesting..."
- "... don't show and tell; instead tell and show." Make your points first verbally and then reinforce them with a visual. The "bad" part of this advice is that we can't make our job easy by simply using our slides as our speaking outline.
- "Step forward to make a point." That creates emphasis and power.
While the embarrassment of napping is probably the biggest audience danger, embarrassment can generate palpable fear in speakers. Matson offers the time-honored suggestion of visualizing our audience (or specific people) without their clothes. I guess I have a lousy imagination, since that approach has never worked for me. When I get scared (or, more often, nervous) I either practice more or, like our hunter ancestors, try to let the adrenaline make me more alert. Both are good ways of using fear; both are easier said than done.
Often, one of the problems in presentations seems to be the metrics the speakers use to evaluate themselves. Most speakers behave as though their metric is "slides shown per hour." A better metric, albeit a harder one to capture, is the amount of action that the audience is motivated to take. We all usually have the usual post-presentation evaluation form that asks us to rate the speaker on some 1 to n scale. Maybe, instead, we should ask one question: What are you going to do differently as a result of this presentation?
Perhaps the best way of ending this presentation on presentations is with this hint from the "101 Top Tips article:
- "The single greatest secret for giving a great speech or presentation can be summed up in one word, 'passion.' If you've got passion, you can break every rule of presenting and still succeed."
Joe
P.S. What are you going to do differently as a result of this jotting?