Presentation Skills
the blog for presenters and public speakers
Tweeting presentations?
210 days
by Simonr
in Presentation tips
The twitter logo
Over on his blog, the fascinating Jeff Hurt is saying some interesting things. On one post in particular, asking “Is your Conference Twitter Worthy or Not?” he makes the suggestion that technology, in the context of social media is the sixth sense… it gives us an awareness of where our friends are and what they’re doing.
The important point however, from my point of view as a professional speaker and trainer is that I’m not sure I’d want people tweeting while I was talking… obviously if they’re doing it to let everyone know how wonderful I am it’s not as bad as if they’re saying the opposite but whatever they’re tweeting, should they be tweeting if they were as interested in my message as I’d hope?
(Have a quick read of my comment on Jeff’s blog to see where I’m starting from.)
Now obviously I’m over-stating the case here for the sake of a quick blog post (who me? cynical?) but I’m generally sticking by my guns here – if people are ‘able’ to tweet while listening to the speaker, the speaker has a problem… even if the tweets are complimentary. The point is that your presentation should, in an ideal world, be so interesting and to provide so much information that the audience simply doesn’t think of tweeting – they’re too fascinated!
Is that just me? Am I too optimistic to suggest that a professional speaker should be able to hold the attention of his or her audience?
Postscript: That said, I can see a use for this kind of technology if it’s use to provide immediate feedback to the speaker – such as by asking questions or getting an informal feel for the opinion of the room. Asking everyone in the room to tweet with a #hashtag followed by ‘yes’ or ‘no’ might be useful.
Holocaust presentations
012 days
I spent much of today (as part of our 13% community and charity giving back promise) working with speakers who are presenting at this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day. It didn’t go entirely according to plan, but it was very definitely work the hassle of working on a Sunday! 
With no pretense that this is anything like a comprehensive list, here are some of the things that we discovered between us, for when it comes to events like this…
Practise. Well yes, obviously. You should practise any public speaking event of course, but in particular we found it was particularly important do so for this kind of event where, to be honest, we thought that audiences would be potentially offended, or even upset, by mistakes. While you might not intend to be at all disrespectful, if you accidently find you skip someone’s name from a list then you’re naturally risking their ire.
Check your pronunciation. Generally you can simply pronounce things as you pronounce things – regional snobbery about accents is (almost) extinct (in the UK). For place names and (in particular) names of people making sure you pronounce them as they would pronounce them is simply a mark of respect.
As before, if you get it wrong, someone can easily be upset of offended.
Allow extra time and speak more slowly. For events like this, there’s a reasonable chance that some of your audience won’t have English as a first language, or may have some difficulty hearing, either because of the age or because of the venue. Speaking a little more slowly than you normally do will help.
Be absolutely clear in your diction. Again, this is to help people who may need just that little bit of extra help but will also be useful in terms of making any microphone-to-speaker system more useful. Generally (though not always) PA systems make your voice less clear:you can at least do your best to start with clear diction!
Take great care with your nerves – not just your nerves, do be honest, but the same tools work very well in terms of making sure you don’t get caught up in the emotion of the event. Being passionate is one thing, letting it show too much is another. Remember always that the audience (or congregation, call them what you will) are more important than you – your job is to facilitate their experience, not have one of your own.
Whatever similar event you may be speaking at, good luck. And if you’re speaking at on Holocaust Day, may I wish you, sincerely, all the very best.
Scamper through your presentations
023 days
Lydia Bates
My friend Lydia is a copywriter and general wordsmith (and does a cool training course on writing for the web). As part of that course she uses the acronym SCAMP to help people remember how to write online: it’s so useful for that that I reproduce it here (with comments of my own) with reference to slides and presentations.
Lydia’s original comments are as quotes below (she was writing in a bullet-point list at the time!)
Simple – avoid jargon or sales patter, keep words easy to understand
Oh, if only people who wrote presentations and slides in particular would keep to this advice! Trying to keep this kind of stuff out of your presentation when you write it is tricky because if you try and censor yourself as you write you’ll inevitably reduce the flow of your writing and end up cramping your style.
What I suggest instead is to design your presentation as you would normally, then take a break to get your mind clear; come back to what you’ve designed and written with a clear head and cut/edit everything that’s not simple and clear. It takes longer at first but it means your presentation is much, much better written.
Concise – about half as many words as you would use in print
This is almost irrelevant for slides, where there should be almost no words at all, of course, but you get the idea! Less is more. Almost always. As someone said “Make sure you stop talking before your audience stops listening”! (Sorry, for the life of me, Google can’t find who said that originally!). Ask yourself, how long would you be able to concentrate for… not listen… concentrate… then plan your presentation to finish in just less time than that!
Active – eg ‘Mr A did action B’ rather than ‘action B was done by Mr A’
This is just plain obvious, isn’t it! Active stuff is much easier to listen to!
Meaningful – edit out any padding that doesn’t actual mean anything
Again, this is best done using the two-step strategy. Write, refresh yourself, then edit! The problem for expert presenters is that they know too much and find it hard to decide what’s meaningful. Well of course they don’t! What they find difficult is to figure out what’s meaningful to their audience at that time, in that place.
Positive – eg ‘we do this’ rather than ‘we don’t do that’
Again this is just easier to listen to and easier to act on. Obviously there are some exceptions. “In case of fire do not use the lifts” makes more sense than “In case of fire do use the stairs” but as a general principle, it takes some beating. The key to a good presentation is that it changes something – usually the way members of the audience behave by the end of the presentation – giving them something to do rather than something to not do makes a lot of sense in that context!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting this is ‘the answer’ any more than anything else I’ve ever cited in this blog, but it’s a nice start!
Five tricks to improve your presentations
039 days
by Claire
in Presentation tips
I’m not one for simple lists of tips. The Devil’s in the details, generally, and just saying ‘do this, do that’ doesn’t really help anyone. We’re trying to be a bit more useful on this blog… but for what it’s worth, here are five simple, straight-forward ‘do this’ type tips for people wanting to speak to garner themselves some PR and marketing…
Talk from the heart
Talk about topics which mean something to you. Although you’re welcome to talk about any topic you can imagine, you have better chances of making an impact if you talk about topics which are close to your heart. Do not talk about global warming if you’re actually a qualified life coach. (Seriously, I’ve seen this!) Don’t talk about Life Coaching if you are a PhD is astrophysics… (Yep, seen this one too!) Topics which are not your speciality won’t allow you to showcase the authority so won’t help in attracting those people who may be interested on what you provide.
Besides, if you’re not helping people, you’re hindering them. As the old adage goes, of you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem!
And while I’m ranting about this, don’t talk to people who don’t want to hear. If you’re in front of a group of accountants, talk about something you think (hope?) will interest accountants. They might be interested in climatology or life coaching but they might not, okay?
Use ultra powerful titles (no, really?) Okay, don’t
You can improve your presentation’s impact by making use of expertly written slides to grab the attention of your target audience. The best way I’ve ever come across is to think of the titles as being akin to headlines in a newspaper article. Instead of talking about ‘five main fears’ mention the ‘five greatest nightmares’. No one is suggesting that you don’t back it up with hard-core facts and figures but if you don’t grab people’s attention, no amount of worth data is worth the electrons it’s stored as. Serious – don’t forget to add something extra to rouse their curiosity, and think about how you can target their emotional hot buttons.
People don’t respond to facts too well. If they did, we’d all eat less and exercise more. Give them something they can respond to.
Make your data count
Data is valuable. It costs a lot to collect and it’s not to be given away lightly… unless you want to do something useful with your presentation…!
Offer your audience something they can make use of; something that will help them do things on their own or help them solve their problems. This approach generates much more interest than telling them the history of the things they may not even find interesting. If your audience is interested in your data, they’re likely to want to learn more about you and the product or service you offer.
But – and it’s a big but – don’t be temped to put your data into your presentation (unless it’s a workshop scenario) because people can’t learn facts that way – get them interested in the real data in your presentation and then have the hard-data-document available as a PDF download.
Share a slice of your expertise
As a presenter, it’s crucial to convince possible clients you’re very expert. A few gems of in-depth knowledge through your presentations and a start. A torrent of good stuff is better!
There’s no point in presenting if you don’t have anything to say – you’ll just look a bit silly!
You’ll only get one chance at this, one chance at making a good enough impression for people to want to hire you, so I’d say it’s better to miss the chance until you’re ready than it is to take that chance before you’re ready. Blow it, and you’ve blown it – few second chances exist in this game!
Seriously – consider not making a presentation unless you’re good at it. If you’re presentation sucks, people will think your content does too.
Present like a professional
Even if you’re nervous, it’s important not to let your nerves show. Smile, be confident, venture out from behind your podium, and dont be afraid of being animated. Relax, take time to look your audience in the eye, take a deep breath and enjoy the results of your preparation. (You did prepare, didn’t you..?)
… and yes, I know that’s easier said than done: why not get some training? ;)
So there you have it… like I said, we’re not up much here for simply nieve lists. But just for once they can’t hurt, right?
The Nike approach to presentations – ranting again! :)
146 days
You know the ads, I’m sure: “Just Do It“. Just like in sport that’s a two edged sword for presenters.
On the upside it means that people are encouraged to stop prevaricating and actually have a go – to do something… and that’s great. All too often I find people with great things to say who don’t say them for fear of being laughed at, for fear of making mistakes and for fear of looking foolish. In many ways I empathise with them (because I used to be one of them – and still am when it comes to dancing! 
) but also because they’re great clients…
On the downside the ‘JDI’ approach is absolutely and positively dangerous!
Firstly, anyone who goes out there without preparing and practicing deserves to make the practical mistakes they’ll inevitably make. If presenting was as easy as some people make it look we’d all be doing it…
Secondly, if you JDI, I’ll put good money on the fact that you’ll not have thought through the full question of what your audience needs and wants. JDI presentations (in my almost humble experience) tend to overlap pretty strongly with those presenters who think they can JDI because they can wing it. Here’s the list of presenters I’ve seen recently who actually can wing it:
- errrr
- well, perhaps he.. no….
- maybe she could because.. oh, no, she can’t either.
I should add I’ve seen a few who think they can – but that’s different.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you should have a go – by all means get up there if you’ve got something to say, but don’t just get up there because you (think you) can.
Okay, I’ll stop ranting now, before I begin to froth at the mouth, because the only way I know to JDI it is to practice, practice and practice more until it looks like you’re JDI-ing it.
Remember – if it looks like you’re working hard, you’re not working hard enough. It should look like a JDI, sure… but only look like it.
Gender differences in Audiences for your presentation
153 days
by Simonr
in Presentation tips
Over at Blokes on the Blog, a site where I write occasional pieces, I’m thinking out loud about differences in gender for audiences and what allowance should be made for that by presenters. See what you think here: http://www.blokesontheblog.co.uk/gender-based-audiences-differences/
Scripts, keyword prompts and the like in your presentations…?
156 days
by Simonr
in Presentation tips
For some years I worked as a Theatre Director, covering ground from plays that no one had heard of; to massively popular stuff such as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musicals; to Shakespeare. As anyone who has ever done amateur dramatics will tell you, let alone any professional, there comes a point in the rehearsal process when the actors have to “move off the book”. That is, they have to put their scripts down and start to work from memory.
Directors like this to be as soon as possible, generally, and actors tend to hang onto their scripts as long as possible (in my experience at least!). There’s often friction between the two camps, with actors claiming, vosiferously that they aren’t using their scripts, they’ve just got them in their hands “in case”.
Rubbish!
As the person who stood at the front watching the rehearsals I can assure you that (and in the bar afterwards actors will admit!) if there’s a script in your hand, you’ll use it. Perhaps not word-for-word, every-single-line but quite a bit.
And certainly more than is needed.
It’s as though having the script in your hands stops the actors brains working properly.
On a personal note I’ve just driven a couple of hours to a training venue for today’s session. It’s a venue I know well, not least because I’ve driven here maybe 50 or 60 times before, always from the same starting point and always (except once when I got lost) using the same route.
And yet, because I have a satnav in my car I turned it on and – once it was on – I relied on it to get me where I was going without any attempt to either learn the route or remember it from previous drives.
It’s as though having a satnav in my car stops my brain from working properly.
As a trainer and speaker, I see plenty of fellow speakers using notes. I’ve nothing against notes but my experience is that most notes are notes at all, but semi-scripts. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve heard people say to me “They’re just there in case I go blank – I won’t read them… I promise”.
But they do.
It’s as if having the script in their hands forces them to read from it!
So what’s new?
057 days
Well it’s been a while! It’s been a long, long while, because between me and my ISP having some very, very odd practices (and downtime of their own servers.. and a failure to restore FTP access to things) the old home for this blog is no more. The king is dead, long live the king. I used to host this in a subdomain of Curved Vision – our presentation skills training brand but here we now are in our new home… and as far as I can tell, with all but one of our articles intact through the transfer!
Many thanks for this to Babs – the blog mistress (http://www.blogmistress.com/).
In the meantime, we’ve been getting a set of posts ready to go.
That said, the first of these we’ve just posted somewhere else: blokes on the blog has just posted a way to increase your credibility in your presentations by borrowing authority: http://www.blokesontheblog.co.uk/borrowing-authority-for-our-presentation/ Have a quick read over there!
In the meantime, it’s good to be back, and thanks for sticking with us!
Raybould’s Rules for Presentations #4
078 days
by Simonr
in Presentation tips
Rule four is simple: Do The Swan Thing
You’ll hear trainers say things like “never let the audience see you sweat” which is the same sentiment but for me, at least, it’s a bit limiting. Â What I mean by Do The Swan Thing comes from the old adage about how swans look serene and calm on the surface of the river, but when you see underwater camera footage it becomes obvious that they’re actually paddling hard – really hard – and working like hell!
Another way of saying it are things like (from a football coach: train hard so you can play easy.  My favorite other way of saying this comes  though comes from a friend of mine who’s a choreographer.  She was talking to some dancers who were, simply, stunning. Imagine coming off-stage, sweating, panting and clearly exhausted – but with the audience on their feet! – only to hear your choreographer admonishing you for panting, saying “If it looks like you’re working hard, you’re not working hard enough”.
She’s right.
Your audience should never, ever see the backroom stuff. It’s unprofessional and undermines your credibility. More importantly (see the previous rule) it reduces the audiences ability to take things away from your presentation. Â No one cares how much work you’ve put into getting your slide ‘just right’ – they just care what the end products are.
How does this apply in the ‘real world’ (whatever that might be). Â Lots of ways – but let me pick a few out based upon presenters I’ve seen recently…
- Arrive in so much time that you have everything – and I mean everything – set up and checked/tested before the first of your audience. Â That’s before they arrive, not before you’re due on stage.
- Don’t make any reference to how hard it was/is to get this information or design this slide. That’s your problem, not theirs. Would you expect an actor to stop the show every scene to say how many hours rehearsal to get this bit right?
- Have backups for everything. Â If you’re using slides, nothing short of a fire-evacuation of the building should stop you. Â Spare lamps, projectors, laptops, remotes, cables, fuses, ties, shirts should be no more than arms length away. If they are, you’re an amateur: you might be a good amateur but you’re still an amateur.
- Stage Fright isn’t as common as you pretend. What you’re experiencing is nerves, not full on Stage Fright. Deal with it, don’t revel in it – and your audience don’t need to be told (several times) how nervous you are. They aren’t your parents (well, okay, up to two of the might be I suppose, but there are other people there as well).
- Practice, practice, practice. Â That’s not the same as rehearsal – thought that’s part of it. Â Stumbling over your lines, forgetting what you’re going to say or being over-reliant on scripts and prompts is hardly doing the swan thing, is it?! No one wants to see you paddling.
I’m sure you can think of a dozen different times and examples when you’ve seen a presenter not doing the swan thing! Â Anyone care to add examples of when they’ve seen someone paddling, not gliding?