Presentation Skills
the blog for presenters and public speakers
The Great Presentations Scandal!
03 days
Rant mode on… because okay, calling it a scandal is probably over-stepping the mark. It’s not as if there are proactively corrupt politicians making thousands of pounds for every bad presentation that’s given (actually, if there were, that might explain quite a bit!) but it’s pretty clear to me that there’s an awful lot of money and time being wasted in bad presentations.
And it’s not as if there’s not a plethora of good advice on how to make better presentations available – all you have to do is look on Google for plenty of videos, tips and blogs like this one. (Mind you, there’s a lot of rubbish out there still – I couldn’t believe my eyes the other day when I saw someone still actively teaching the 7% rubbish of the Mehrabrian myth!).
It pays to shop around when you’re looking for advice, just like for everything else.
So why is it, that with all the good, free advice around that there are still so many shockingly bad presentations being made?
Here’s my list – based on experience, not research, so I may be talking rubbish. Let me know!
• Just like saying ‘I can’t do maths in my head’ seems to be acceptable, it seems to be acceptable to waste your colleagues time in an inefficient or even ineffective presentation. If everyone else is settling for ineffective, why should you bother doing something better?
• Fear of standing out. Lists of bullet-points don’t work but at least they’re familiar. Using a bit more imagination, making your presentation better, marks you out as different. And who dares to be different?! After all, if you get a reputation for being able to make presentations you might get stuck doing more and more of them!
• Laziness. There, I’ve said it. Powerpoint’s defaults don’t help – the seem to encourage ‘bad practice’ in that bullet points are what’s expected. When this point and the previous point jointly reinforce each other things can get really entrenched. Having everything on bullet points works as a cheap-and-easy (that is, lazy!) way to remember what you’re saying.
• Other priorities. This is a big one: I’ve come across it time and time again! “I’d love to learn how to do better presentations but I don’t have the time – I need to do my real job”. Really? If telling people about what you’re doing isn’t part of your ‘real job’ why are you making the presentation in the first place? Either it is or it isn’t. If it isn’t, stop taking everyone’s time up with your presentations. If it is, why not learn how to do it just like you learn to do the rest of your job?!
Bit of a rant? Absolutely!
But not one that’s come from no-where. I’ve been doing this for a long, long time now 
My wife is a teacher and comments on the irony of the fact that, at Parents’ Evenings, it’s generally the parents of the kids who’re not causing concern that turn up. So it is with some would-be presenters… the very ones who need the training most are the ones who resist it the most!
Not so very long ago I did an online survey of why people didn’t take presentation skills training – the results were a bit disappointing to be honest, as most people who said they didn’t take training because of the reasons I’ve just outlined above. The rest said it was because they didn’t need it – although most of them also went to say that they thought almost everyone else in their organisation did…
Not sure the maths of that stack up, to be honest… like the motoring survey of driving skills which suggests that almost every thinks they’re “slightly above average”. By definition they can’t all be right.
So have a couple of very challenging questions for you, gentle reader… 
Firstly, what’s your excuse for not getting your presentations above average?
And secondly, what are you going to do about it?!
Okay, rant over! I’ll go and take my meds now!
Presentation lessons from a car advert!
04 days
I’m a father of two daughters…. and I respond in a typical male way to their safety… What’s more, they’re of that certain age and are gradually leaving home.
Which means that this advert pretty much hits the spot for me.
What’s that go to do with presentations? I’m glad you asked.
Let’s think about the purpose of the advert (and a presentation): it’s to change something, to get me (the audience) to respond in a particular way. In the case of the advert it’s to get me to buy a VW Golf (or at least to book a test-drive).
What would happen if the advert had simply listed the statistics? The Golf has a reputation for being a safe car, sure, but would knowing the facts make me want to buy a Golf for my daughter – to keep her safe?
Hardly.
I’m not saying that your presentation shouldn’t have the facts and figures to back things up, but the advertising profession has known something for a long time – people (normal people that is ) make decisions based upon how they fee and then rationalise it after the event (very quickly – so quickly in fact that they don’t realise it’s happening).
So give audiences the facts they need to justify their choices but it’s also important to give something that touches the emotions too.
Presentations and the Hawthorne Effect
410 days
I spent over two decades as a research scientist. I published in grown-up, peer-reviewed journals and have letter both after my name and in front of it! And I was a social scientist. And that means, amongst other things, that I’m painfully familiar with a number of issues which plague research. One is called the Pregnant Man Syndrome (but let’s move hastily on!) and another is the Hawthorne Effect.
The Hawthorne Effect says, basically, that the process of studying something changes it, so that it’s hard to get an idea of what something is really like. For example, I do a lot of work supporting people as their organisation is restructured so that they need to develop some emotional resilience (coping tools): if I do a survey of the people in the workplace and include the question “Are you stressed?” I’m likely to cause some people thing think of themselves as stressed when they didn’t before I asked the question. In other words, asking the question about stress biases the answers.
So it is with presentation skills training using videos.
Seriously.
Anyone who doesn’t think people change how they ‘perform’ when there’s a camera in the room needs to try it. Any anyone who insists that they don’t change after that is either masssssssively experienced or about as in touch with reality as the drunk driver who says that they actually drive better after four pints of beer.
Nope, you just drive so badly you don’t notice your mistakes…
Okay, I’m over-stating but you get the picture. (There are times when it’s a good thing, certainly, but I’m concentrating on the bad here!)
So unless you’re going to be presenting to a video camera, why practise with a video camera?!
Actually there is one time I can think of that makes the camera handy – and I was reminded of it when I watched Rory Bremner being interviewed on the tv this morning (hey, I was at the gym and it was on the machine, okay!?!). I remember him saying a long time ago that one of the ways he got his impressions sorted out was to watch video recordings of his ‘victim’ played at high speed. That way, he pointed out, visual habits became much more obvious much more quickly… and in a presentation almost any visual habit is a bad habit.
Essentially if the audience notices it, it’s a bad thing. Why? Because anything that distracts from the message needs to be pared down if at all possible.
Christmas Freebie – no catch, I promise! :)
517 days
Not a single catch, Honest!
As it’s nearly Christmas, I thought I’d give away a copy of our two Ebooks. In keeping with what we do it’s a presentation skills ebook and comes with a second book of simple presentation tips.
All you have to do is let me know, before the 31st of December, why you need it. Simple as that – I’ll let whoever needs it most, have it. Can’t be any more straightforward.
Of course, I don’t have any objective way of deciding who needs it most, so it might end up being a silly idea, but we’ll see.
Have fun everyone!
Simon
Presentation stamina
017 days
Last friday I did a big presentation. A full-on two hour barnstormer…
….twice!
Now any professionals amongst you will know that breaks one of the rules – it’s just physically too demanding to do something like that and expect to be able to perform as well on the second gig as on the first.. but it was important to the client and the subject matter was going to be really helpful to the people who came along… so what the heck!
It dawned on me that, as I used all the tricks I’d learned, it might be useful to share them. No doubt some of them will be painfully obvious to you but others might be new.
- Get a good night’s sleep – not just on the night before but the night before that, too! It’s worth paying for a better-than-budget hotel or something… so that you’re sure of a comfy bed and a good how shower. Take it from me, there’s very little a shave and a shower can’t improve!
- Be fit – seriously fit. We’re not talking about Olympic level decatathlete levels here but you do need to be physically able to walk and bounce around for a long time. Personally I find skipping and swimming to be great exercises. I was performing for four hours.. …that takes a lot of energy!
-
Snickers - presentation energy
Take a Snickers Bar – your choice of snack is up to you, but these babies are calorie-loaded for a quick boost!
- Have a flask handy – I’m sure you know how silly it is to drink during presentations but you’ll need to refresh yourself as soon as you can afterwards. I find a flask of hot chocolate to drink is an really handy treat. Of course that won’t work if you don’t like hot chocolate… but if you’re that odd I can’t help you!
- Use anything you can to improve your audience’s sightlines. In particular, if you can raise yourself just a little it helps hugely in terms of keeping your head in the right position to protect your throat. Tipping your head back, as you might be tempted to do on a flat floor with a couple of hundred people (does that sound like experience?!) is a sure-fire way to get a sore throat.
- Take as much time between sessions to rest as you can. I know it’s obvious, but it means you should consider things like bringing your own packed lunch so that you don’t have to spend half an hour looking for a place to eat… getting off your feet is useful!
- Bring a change of socks! – other than a shower, very little makes you feel better than a quick change of socks (and shirt too, perhaps). Personally I find it useful to take a pair of training shoes to wear between performances too, to give me feet a rest from ‘proper’ shoes.
- Pace yourself – how mind-bogglingly obvious is that… but it’s a rookie mistake to go flat out in your first performance and have nothing left to give your second performance. Two performances at 90% are better than one at 100% and one at 70%! You don’t need to pull back much, just enough to be able to make it to the end of the day.
- Don’t let it show – seriously. No one paid to see you looking like you’re knackered. They paid to see you give your best material. If it looks like you’re working hard, you’re not working hard enough! I’ve got no sympathy for presenters who standing their panting and trying to show how good they are by showing how much effort it takes to deliver it.
- Consider some backup – not to deliver your presentation but to look after the other stuff. Knowing that all you’ve got to think about is your own performance is a lot handier than worrying about the video camera and the drive home afterwards!
That’s all for now. No doubt some of them were a bit obvious and no doubt you can add stuff for me…..
Presentations – the what’s the point?
024 days
by Simonr
in Presentation tips
The title here is a bit misleading…. most people can see the reasons for giving presentations. What I’m talking about here (ranting about?) is the idea that there’s no need to get good a making presentations. People see bad presentations all around them and think that
Steam from my ears
- that’s how presentations are supposed to be
- they don’t need to make better presentations than that
Steam from my ears at this point! The thing is – quite apart from the fact that I like a good long waiting list for our services, obviously – there’s just so very much wrong with standard presentations that they’re so inefficient they should be made illegal!
So why, exactly, should people bother to learn how to make better presentations?
- It’s easy, and doesn’t take much time. Okay, that’s almost a lie, ‘cos making really, really good presentations takes a lot of effort and rehearsal and is pretty skill-full, but making presentations which are relatively good – that is better than the vast majority – can be learned in a day or so. You don’t need to be as good as Steve Jobs (or me ) to make presentations which make you stand out from the crowd in a good way. And all other things being equal, that’s good for your career prospects, right?
- You’ll sleep better. Not every night, of course, but as we all have to make presentations at some point in our lives, wouldn’t it be better to make them without feeling sick with worry, boring all your friends to death and missing out on your beauty sleep? Thought so…!
- You’re better at your job. If you’re in any kind of ‘intelligence’ job (and who isn’t, if you’re making a presentation, by definition!?) your job is not just to do X, but to help other people do X. If that’s the case, making presentations about X becomes part of your job too, right? Why would you deliberately be bad at part of your job?
- You’ll be worth your money. Presentations are expensive to mount. They cost pounds (or Dollars or Yen or Euro or whatever) to stage and when you include the cost of everyone’s time, they cost lots of pounds (or Dollars or Yen or Euro or whatever). If your presentations aren’t good, they aren’t efficient – in terms of the amount of information your audience gets from their time – and so the cost of staging the presentation isn’t justified. You become a cost-liability to your company… and you know what happens to those, don’t you…
- It can be fun. For our presentation training we promise you’ll laugh as hard as you work. Simple as that. On top of that, of course, is the added fun of knowing you’ve mastered something – and something most people haven’t at that. And what’s more, once you’ve got your hand in, you can enjoy the presentations themselves. Simple. How many birds would you like to kill with that one stone? There’s two, at least!
To be honest, any one of those ideas can be pretty important. Put them together and it’s a no brainer. Now stop making excuses and email us! (sme@curved-vision.co.uk) Alternatively, let us know what might motivate you to learn to make better presentations…
(sme@curved-vision.co.uk) Alternatively, let us know what might motivate you to learn to make better presentations…Presentation tips oldschool!
028 days
by Simonr
in Presentation tips
The old ones are the best, so they say… I’m not sure it’s true about music and jokes but in the last few weeks I’ve sat through some presentations that disappointed me – not only did they not use the techniques for effective presentations, they actively tried (it seemed to me!) to break the basic rules, never mind the advanced ones!
With that in mind, perhaps it’s time to go back to basics, to bring out some of the old, old tips.
So here we go – oldies but goodies.
- Don’t look at the screen. That’s right, not just don’t read of it, don’t look at it. Your audience didn’t come to see the back of your head, they cam to see your face (in as much as they came to see you at all!). Don’t be so rude as to turn your back on people you’re supposed to be talking with.
- Use the B key. It toggles the screen to black (and back again). If you want to get your audience to really, really concentrate and concentrate on you in particular, black out your screen. Fading into a black slide is nicer, of course, but sometimes even the best of us get taken by surprise and decide to go black. When that happens, simply tap the B key and when you want to start the slides again, hit it again. You can also use the W key to go to a white-out screen, but I can’t think why you’d do that, to be honest!
- Don’t step into the cone… that’s the cone of light between your projector and the screen. You’ll get shadows on your screen and the image that should be on your screen will be on your chest. Neither of these is a good thing, believe me. The only time you want to case shadows like this is when you’re making bunny shapes on the wall to entertain children.
- Dress smartly. I”m not saying you need to be in a three-piece suit, or the women’s equivalent, but you should be at least as smart as your audience – and preferably a step smarter to give yourself a little bit of authority. Don’t go overboard and turn up in a killer suit if everyone else is in scruffy jeans as it’ll just set you too far apart from your audience. I f they’re in scruffy jeans, you should be in smart jeans…….
- Don’t use a script. Almost no one can write a script that works well when it’s spoken out loud. Those that can are professional speech-writers and if you’re reading this blog I’m assuming that you’re not! Write you outline, pick your keywords and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. In theory it’s possible to over-rehearse but I’ve only ever seen it once in my entire career.
- Rehearse. Yes, I know I’ve just said it, but people don’t listen. Only experts can improvise – and even then they can only do it after a lot of rehearsal. Seriously.
Present your data after your credibility
037 days
Time and time and time again I see it… presenters throw facts and figures at the audience in an attempt to be credible. Frankly, it doesn’t work.
If I don’t trust you, I’m not going to believe your data. Deal with it. If I think you’re a politician (say) with a know political stance, am I going to take your word for facts X, Y and Z? No. I’m going to assume at the very least you’ve selected facts X, Y and Z to suit your political stance. No amount of thrown data is going to make me trust you.
On the contrary, it’s going to make me ‘untrust’ the data. (I know untrust isn’t a word but it says what I mean better than the real word ‘distrust’ )
I see it a lot in nervous presenters too – rather than have the courage to stand up and metaphorically say “this is me and here are my arguments with their supporting data” they say “Here’s a lot of data” and either pray or assume the audience can put the pieces together in their heads (they usually can’t but that’s another post for another day!).
The right way to do things – as understood by any actor, orator or… well, frankly, anyone with charisma and personal impact… is to spend time establishing credibility first. Then, and only then, will your audience be prepared to accept your arguments and/or your data.
There are no exceptions – or at least none that I can think of as I write this at stupid o’clock in the morning!
The nearest I’ve heard to a refutation of my position came from a research scientist who pointed out, quite rightly, that scientists “don’t do the posturing and credibility stuff” at the start of their presentations. My response was that
- firstly, the very fact that you’re an independent, objective scientist with no ax to grind is what establishes your credibility; and
- secondly, I think you’ll find your published record means you are judged, just not as obviously!
What do you think? Have I over-stated the case here? What about in general terms – credibility first?
Let me give you a simple example: on twitter I’ve recently been followed by a self-described
oldest, most diverse and most influential centre-right think tank
I’m not making any implied comment on their political stance (or mine) when I say that as a result of this description I’m going to assume anything they tell me is based on, and biased by, this political position.
At the other end of the spectrum, how about this for an opening sentence designed to give credibility…? The presentation was about the advantages of taking part in martial arts for young people and the first words from the presenter were
Hello. My name’s S—- and I have a black belt in three different marital arts: for two of them I have the highest dan.
Suddenly, I’m all ears and ready to hear her argument and her data…..
Presentations on the tube
245 days
by Simonr
in Presentation tips
I live in the north of England and so I only use the tube system in London when I visit or pass through on my way to work or friends. And as anyone who’s not a regular visitor to London will tell you, the tube is a massively complicated and confusing place/system. (You can tell the regulars, they’re the ones who get annoyed at anyone who has to stop to read the signs! )
A quick look at the conceptual map of the tube will show you what I mean.
Trying to find your way around if you don’t know which way your station is, what line it’s on or which way the trains are traveling is a bit of a nightmare.
I have to admit, without my trusty iPhone app I’d be in trouble – and yet, can you imagine how complicated this map would be if it hadn’t been simplified?! It’s topologically accurate, but not geographically. (By the way you can see a pretty cool shot at showing something more physically accurate map in places like this.)
On a recent trip to London to do some work for Dell, it struck me how well designed the map (and the whole signage in general!) actually is. Information in presentations should be presented in ways that people can understand and use. The map is an excellent example of that – it’s got a huge amount of information on it, and with just a few minutes study you can find your way around…
To cite Einstein:
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.
which pretty much means this map hits the spot.
Presenting information in simplified form
Back to my journey. Let’s keep things as simple as possible and we get things like this simplified abstraction on the right here…
No information you don’t need – just the facts about whether you want to turn left or turn right on to platforms 1 & 2 or 3 & 4.
Not only does it give you the information you need (and only the information you need, nothing extraneous to confuse you or distract you) it gives it to you at the very moment you need it – as you get to the decision point… left or right!
Imagine being given the original map, or anything like it, at this point!
The designers of signs and maps on the London tube can teach us a lot about how to design our presentations, clearly! It’s not about telling your audience what you know – it’s about telling them what they need to know, in a way they need to know it. And whatever else the London tube system gets right or wrong, the way it presents navigation information approaches pure presentation genius.
Presentations of a social context
053 days
by Simonr
in Presentation tips
Over the years I see a number of presenters make references and jokes which their audience just doesn’t ‘get’. There’s no ‘communality of cultural understanding‘ between the presenter and his (or her) audience: something similar happens a lot for technical presentations, of course, when the presenter may slip into jargon and assumptions that the audience isn’t party to but it’s a significant problem for less technical ones too.
Without a shared social context, not only can people not understand you, they won’t remember you – because memory is often based upon hooks to what we already know. Think about it for a moment – how much easier is it for you to remember a list of random facts and figurs, unrelated to anything you know, compared to remember the same number of facts which make sense to you because they apply (for example) to a car engine you’re working on (yes, okay, it’s a silly example!).
You may remember the last Indiana Jones film: I went with my family and the elder of my daughters (who is half way through qualifying as a doctor, so she’s not exactly stupid!) simply didn’t understand it! Why not? Because it contains extended references to an age of fear of ‘The Bomb’ and an action sequence based upon a test nuclear explosion in a mocked up town. My daughter has not grown up afraid of The Bomb and simply didn’t understand that whole sequence, assuming it was some kind of hallucination. After that, none of the film made sense. She had no cultural understanding of that kind of fear and of how bomb tests were carried out.
Many years ago I directed a production of Macbeth. I used a whole host of symbols on and around the stage whenever my witches were on stage – and even when they weren’t (implying their influence). A group from South Africa who came to see it failed to understand any of those allusions because they didn’t share my UK-based association of witches with pentagrams and so on.
If you’ve failed to understand that last paragraph it proves my point – I wrote it with the implicit assumption that you know the story of Shakespeare’s play “Macbeth” and the significance within it of three witches… :)
On another note, a recent JLS video (forgive me, I had little choice but to watch it at the gym this morning) features an old-style (as in World War 2) contact mine for use in the sea. Unless the people watching this video have also watched plenty of WW2 navel movies, the chances are that reference is wasted!
What what has all this got to do with presentations?
Well I’m kind of hoping it’s pretty obvious – presenters need to make sure any cultural references they use are understood in the same way by their audience as it is in their heads! Without a shared frame of reference, your audience may understand your words (in a litteral sense) but they simply won’t ‘get it‘.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…. start designing your presentation from where your audience are!