Professionally Speaking...

A Letter to Santa

Dear Santa,

I know you are terribly busy at this time of year building and packing all the toys, motivating the elves, polishing the sleigh and grooming the reindeer. But I could really use your help.
 
Business presenters all over the globe need to make better presentations so that the power of their messages will be truly heard and their audiences will be engaged and take action. Here are the gifts I send to presenters everywhere this holiday season. And Santa, any assistance you could provide in getting these presents distributed would be greatly appreciated.
 
Gift #1: Commitment to The Audience: an unshakable belief that an audience deserves your absolute best and an unwavering focus on making each presentation a valuable experience for those listening to you.
 
Gift #2: Minimal Use of PowerPoint Bullets: the time and energy to develop more visually meaningful and helpful slides to support audience comprehension and retention plus the courage to NOT use PowerPoint when you, the presenter, can communicate the message more powerfully.
 
Gift #3: Management of Presentation Nerves and Anxiety: a willingness to invest the time in learning how to manage the fear of speaking in front of a group so your audiences can benefit from the full impact of your message.
 
Gift #4: Acceptance of the Value of Rehearsing: the resolve to commit the necessary time to practicing every presentation so that your audience gets your most competent performance.
 
Thanks, Santa, for helping presenters everywhere to be their best! And do be careful on those slippery roof tops.
 
 
Professionally Speaking... will be on hiatus for the next three weeks, resuming publication the week of January 10, 2011. 
 
May you all have a very happy holiday season, filled with peace and joy, compassion and generosity.

Photo Credit:
Flickr/docjohnboy's photostream  C.C. 2.0

A Different Kind of PowerPoint Presentation

In this blog, I discuss presentation strategies and techniques relevant to situations where a human being is delivering the presentation. There are instances, however, where a PowerPoint presentation may need to stand on its own as a work product. Here is a guest post on this type of presentation from Dave Tracy at learnppt.com. Be sure to check out his website for some great resources.

PowerPoint presentations have become an inseparable part of corporate work.  This is true whether you're an analyst or executive, whether you work in marketing or IT, and whether your business is in the manufacturing or media world. Slide presentation usage has grown from just a speaking supplement to become a recognized and expected form of work product.  In fact, after multi-million dollar engagements, strategy consulting firms deliver PowerPoint presentations as their final client-ready products.  Market research firms frequently release stand-alone PowerPoint presentations with their latest research findings.  PowerPoints have become tangible work products meant for wide circulation within and outside an organization.

Naturally, the design and structure of a work product PowerPoint differs greatly from a PowerPoint meant to complement a public speaking event.  The work product presentation is very content and data heavy—relying on detailed and often complex visuals that present data and need to be understandable on their own versus visuals meant to supplement a speaker’s words.

The focus of this article is around the high level approach management consultants take to structure presentations.  As with any presentation, the first step is to define the "story."  Many consultants use concepts from Minto's Pyramid Principle in defining their story.

As a simple illustration, let's say this is the start of your story:

"Our industry is in a transitioning state.  Historically, it has been very fragmented--no one company with over 5% market share.  Over the past year, there has been significant consolidation, mostly through acquisitions.  Three big players are emerging.  We are currently ranked 7th--and need to make big changes to remain competitive..."

The next step is to convert the story from paper to PowerPoint.  In the example above, you will notice each sentence represents a stand-alone thought that can be represented on its own slide.  These sentences, called 'Headlines,' are written across the top of the slides.  In other words, when you take a consultant's deck, you can just read the Headlines across the top of each slide to understand the story.

Everything else on the slide is there to support the Headline.  At the bottom of each slide, you will usually find a 'Bumper'--a single sentence meant to capture the big "aha!" from the slide.  Whereas Headlines typically contain common knowledge, Bumpers offer the deeper insight that should be directly called out for the audience.  Any Headline or Bumper should not exceed 2 lines, to ensure the sentence is easily digestible.

Using the methodology outlined above, here is an example of how a work product slide would look.

 

David Tracy has worked as a management consultant for the better part of his career, where he focused largely on corporate strategy.  In this time, he has created countless business presentations for clients.  He runs www.learnppt.com, a site that shares the PowerPoint practices, diagrams, and business frameworks used by consulting firms.

 

Photo Credit (at top):
Flickr/Nick Bramhall's photostream  C.C. 2.0

Presentation Handouts: Are They Useful for Your Audience?

Most presenters at most presentations give handouts to the audience. Most audiences either throw them away or file them in an obscure location where they couldn't find them even if they wanted to...which they generally don't.

So why are we, as presenters, so committed to sending our audiences home, laden with paper?

I think it's just become a habit. Somewhere in the foggy past, some audience somewhere asked a presenter if she had any of her presentation written down so they didn't have to take notes. And the presentation handout was born.

Now I'm not suggesting that every handout is a useless piece of stuff. But I am suggesting that, somewhere along the way, we've lost our common sense about when a handout is helpful and what makes it helpful. We copy our slides in all their bullet point glory, several to a page to save paper and time, resulting in type so small no ordinary human can read it. Or we reproduce our entire presentation, leaving the audience to sort out the salient bits they might want to keep.

Before you fall into these habits, ask yourself whether the audience even needs a handout. Depending on the subject matter and the make-up of the audience, a handout may be wasted time, energy and trees. For example, if you're giving an inspirational presentation, you want the audience to connect with you and absorb what you're saying at an emotional level. If you're successful, handouts may not be necessary to help people remember what you said. Or if everyone in your audience has laptops and takes notes during the presentation, there may be no real value in providing a handout. Just emphasize your key points as you make them so the note-takers are sure to capture them.

So do handouts have any value?

For sure.

Designed thoughtfully, with the audience's perspective in mind, handouts can help make your presentation more memorable, more focused and more useful. Here are some suggestions:

1. Be clear on what key points from your presentation you want your audience to remember. Since determining this is part of initially scoping out your presentation, you should already have these points firmly in mind.

2. Use a Word document to capture the key points, adding any relevant supporting data, resources and references. Create this information in a way that stands on its own, so if the handout gets passed around to someone who wasn't at your presentation, it will still make sense.

3. Avoid having copies of your slides stand in for handouts. If your slides are good -- visually impactful and designed to further explain your verbal points -- they won't make any sense in isolation. If they're not good -- text-heavy with bullet point after bullet point -- no one will be able to read them.

4. Keep the handout to 3-5 pages to force yourself to be clear and concise and to make it more likely the audience will read it.

5. Depending on the information you're providing, consider using a non-standard size/format for easier accessibility and memorability -- for example, a laminated bookmark, colored paper or a comb-bound booklet.

Yes, this approach is a bit more work than simply copying your slides and it requires that you allocate some time during your preparation phase to do a professional job on the handout. So if you're tempted to say, "But I don't have time to do anything extra," stop and ask yourself what is the purpose of your presentation.

Is it to minimize the work you need to do or is it to move your audience to agreement and action? I'm guessing it's the latter.

Here are some additional tips for creating effective handouts from Olivia Mitchell, plus some excellent points about why handouts can be an integral part of any presentation. Also, Phil Waknell at the blog PhilPresents has a brilliant post on Handouts 101.

Photo Credit:
Flickr/libraryman  C.C. 2.0

 

Review of Nancy Duarte's New Book: resonate

Like a great presentation, Nancy Duarte's new book, resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences is engaging, relevant and passionate. It is physically gorgeous with an appealing layout, evocative photographs and, no surprise, lots of visuals...diagrams, sketches, charts, graphs...that explain and clarify the content. But don't be misled into thinking that this is just another outlet for one of those creative types to show off her design skills. Even without the visuals, Duarte's content can transform the world of business presentations.

The book is fundamentally about how to use story to create presentations that produce an emotional impact on the audience. As Nancy says in the introduction, "This book is simultaneously an explanation, a how-to guide, and a business justification for story-based messaging." Using examples and lessons from the worlds of mythology, literature and cinema, she demonstrates how to incorporate dramatic elements into presentations which invite the audience to become more involved, more interested and more invested.

Learning how to do this effectively and consistently would be reason enough to buy this book. But Duarte offers many more applicable lessons such as how to plan the audience's journey, how to create meaningful content, how contrast creates interest, how to recall stories, how to turn information into stories and how to move from data to meaning. These topics, rich with case studies of people and companies you'll recognize, cover easily usable techniques that will improve any presenter, regardless of experience or job level.

One of the things I love most about this book is its focus on the audience. The clear truth that the audience is the raison d'etre for any presentation is proclaimed loudly and often. Contrary to what we experience in so many presentations, Duarte says,

"The audience does not need to tune themselves to you -- you need to tune your message to them. Skilled presenting requires you to understand their hearts and minds and create a message to resonate with what's already there. Your audience will be significantly moved if you send a message that is tuned to their needs and desires."

resonate is being called groundbreaking and magnificent. I don't think that's hyperbole. Presentations shape every aspect of our business lives and they have enormous power, much of which we don't leverage. If you have any interest in becoming a more compelling presenter and transforming your audiences...and who wouldn't consider that a worthy goal...rush out and buy resonate. It belongs on your bookshelf, to be consulted frequently.

Then you'll be much better equipped to accept Nancy's presentation challenge: be bold, stand out and go change your world.

 

Are Presentation Skills Like Riding a Bicycle?

From time to time, I get the following question from prospective clients and participants in workshops:

"What should I do, if I have been away from presenting for a while, to refresh my skills?"

Perhaps you've had some presentations skills training in the past. Perhaps you even previously presented with some frequency. But you haven't presented in some time -- because of a job change or having been out of the workforce. Now you want to get back to feeling comfortable speaking in public.

Should you start all over with basic presentation skills courses? Should you just jump back into presenting, assuming it's like riding a bicycle and all your former skills will come back to you?

I think the best advice is a combination of both.

RECOMMENDATIONS TO REFRESH SKILLS

1. First, assess your current presentation skills. This may require the help of a professional coach or trainer who, by videotaping you delivering a presentation, can help determine the key areas you need to address.

2. Depending on what your assessment uncovers, there are a variety of presentation skills workshops and books you can use to refresh your skills. Do some homework so you choose ones that focus mostly on your deficit areas rather than on a broad spectrum of beginner skills, many of which you may still be reasonably competent in.

3. If presentation nerves are bothering you, here are a couple of good books to give you some perspective on that anxiety and tools to deal with it: It's Your Time to Shine: How to Overcome Fear of Public Speaking, Develop Authentic Presence and Speak from Your Heart by Sandra Zimmer and The Confident Speaker: Beat Your Nerves and Communicate at Your Best in Any Situation by Harrison Monarth and Larina Kase.

4. Update your knowledge of how to use slideware (PowerPoint or Keynote) to support your presentation. This is one area where there has been significant change in best practices. Search out blogs like PowerPoint Blog, PowerPointology and PowerPoint Ninja and books like Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds and slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte.

5. Other resources that can educate and inspire you are the TED presentations, where speakers are challenged to give the presentation of their life in 18 minutes and PechaKucha presentations where speakers streamline their talk to 20 slides, each forwarded automatically after 20 seconds. Listen to brilliant orators like Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Don't ever underestimate the value of watching and listening to skilled speakers as a way of incorporating techniques into your own style.

6. Speak frequently. Look for opportunities to present to groups whether it's staff meetings, customer briefings or sitting on a panel. The more you get back up on that presentation bicycle, the smoother and more comfortable you become.

7. At the end of the day, whether you embrace all or some of the above recommendations, it comes down to practice...and more practice. If you're just rusty...practice. If you are acquiring new skills...practice. If you're refining and updating previously used techniques...practice.

Practice is truly the one thing that will make a significant impact on your confidence and ability to deliver presentations and speak in public.

So presentation skills are indeed a lot like riding a bicycle...you'll always have them. You may just need to take a few spins around the block to once again feel comfortable.

This post is part of a blog carnival at The Eloquent Woman blog -- surf on over and check out some other perspectives on how to revitalize rusty speaking skills.

Photo Credit:
www.flicker.com CC 2.0 
Kyle Gradinger/BCGP

Presentation Barriers: Physical

Barriers are helpful between skin and sun or between deer and freshly planted flowers. Barriers are a hindrance between speaker and audience.

We have enough challenges in engaging an audience without imposing a physical element that our message needs to travel through. Yet, speakers routinely choose to block themselves from the people trying to listen to them.

Here are three physical barriers that can dilute a speaker's message and compromise an audience's experience.

TELEPROMPTER

Teleprompters act as a barrier because they focus the speaker's attention somewhere other than on the audience and force him to remain stationary. The speaker must keep pace with the scrolling text and that makes eye contact with the audience challenging and likely fleeting. As well, placement of the teleprompter screens may mean that the speaker is positioned farther away from the audience than she would be otherwise.

I wrote here about best practices for using a teleprompter. Minimize the teleprompter barrier by knowing the speech well enough that you can make eye contact with the audience beyond just darting glances. Large, animated gestures will help your audience catch your enthusiasm and make you seem less robotic.

PODIUM

In one of my recent presentation skills training classes, a participant asked my opinion about using a podium, asserting that he felt a podium conveyed authority.

Using a podium or lectern cuts off 50 plus per cent of most people's bodies. If you're on the short side, like me, your audience only sees a head, part of the upper torso and disembodied-looking arms. A podium is a huge barrier between you and your audience, making you seem unapproachable and distanced. Convey your authority through command of your subject and a well organized, easy-to-follow presentation, not by setting yourself apart from your audience.

Other podium problems: they encourage a speaker to lean on them; they make it easy to grip the sides, particularly when nervous; they can invite slouching; they give a top of the head view when a speaker is reading from notes.

Stay away from using a podium if at all possible. If you must speak from one, don't hide behind it, don't grip it, have lots of eye contact and use large gestures that your audience can see.

POWERPOINT SLIDES

Slides can be a real barrier -- if the projector gets between you and the audience. Or a perceived barrier -- if you focus too much on reading the slides from the computer screen or turning around to the large screen behind you. Remember that slides are meant to support your presentation not supplant it. You are who the audience came to see and hear.

Minimize the number of slides you use in your presentation so neither you nor the audience will be focused on reading from the screen. When you do show a slide, invite your audience to join you in interacting with the information shown.

If your presentations will include any of these three physical barriers, plan in advance how you can compensate for any disconnect they create between you and your audience.

Photo Credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/j0nny_t/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Presentation Resolutions: Embrace Technology

Although we only have three hundred and forty-four days left in 2010, I, for one, don't think it's too late to create some New Year's resolutions for the year. And for those of us who want to take our presentations to a new level, let's start out the new decade* by embracing some resolutions involving technology.

[* to be absolutely correct, 2010 is actually the final year of the last decade, but it sounds like a start rather than an end to me!]

[calendar from redstamp.com used under a Creative Commons License]

Here are a few ideas that can improve your presentations if they make their way onto your list of resolutions.

UPDATE YOUR POWERPOINT SLIDES

If you have some presentations that you deliver over and over, it's time to look at your slides with a fresh eye. Make a critical assessment of each slide and ask yourself..."Does this slide further my audience's understanding of my message?" Be honest. I'm betting you'll have to answer "no" for a number of slides, particularly if they're filled with bullet points.

So you now have the opportunity to either eliminate a slide or improve it. Think about what visual representation could enhance the audience's involvement with your content. Be creative. Think of images outside your subject matter field that could produce a good analogy or metaphor. Read Presentation Zen and Slide:ology for design principles and suggestions.

Check out SlideRocket which is presentation software that includes a full set of authoring tools, collaboration features that allow you to work on a presentation with colleagues, access to your presentations from anywhere and capability to measure presentation effectiveness. There are a variety of very reasonable price points, starting at free.

BUY OR BORROW A VIDEO CAMERA

There is no better way to evaluate how you come across to an audience than seeing yourself on video. Together with live audience feedback, this allows you to determine what aspects of your delivery work well and which ones may need to be updated or changed.

It's easy to tell yourself you don't have time for this or you feel awkward watching yourself on video. Get over it. If you're truly committed to improving your presentation effectiveness, the video camera will become one of your favorite tools.

LOOK FOR RESOURCES ON SOCIAL MEDIA

You don't have to know everything about presentations nor do you have to re-invent the wheel. There are a ton of resources available, just for the asking. Use Twitter and LinkedIn to request help, suggestions or resources. There are highly competent, even famous, presentation gurus in the social media world and they are extremely generous with their knowledge.

Pay it forward by sharing on social media what you're doing in your presentations -- techniques you've tried, good sources for stock images, how you've increased audience involvement.

EXPERIMENT USING TWITTER IN A PRESENTATION

A great deal has been written on the "backchannel", the practice of audience members maintaining an online, real-time conversation during a live presentation. There are some very vocal opponents but increasingly, presenters are realizing that a very engaged, involved audience is the potential reward. 

Tap into some resources to understand how the backchannel works and how to manage it. Cliff Atkinson's new book, The Backchannel: How Audiences are Using Twitter and Social Media and Changing Presentations Forever is a great place to start. And then give it a try if you have even a partially tech savvy audience.

What other geeky resolutions have you, or would you like to, put on your list to improve your presentations in 2010?

This post is part of the Blog Carnival: Public Speaking and the New Year. Check out other bloggers' perspectives on what will improve your presentations in 2010.

The Don't Miss This List, Edition 5

These lazy, languid, dog days of late summer provide the perfect opportunity to catch up on valuable presentation advice from some of my favorite bloggers. Read on for insights into better PowerPoint, better speaking and better preparation.

• Angela DeFinis has written a great post on The Seven Deadly Sins of PowerPoint Design, where she outlines the problems with PowerPoint slides and how to fix them. It fascinates me that in spite of the volume that has been written about bad PowerPoint and all the great suggestions for improvement, so, so many business presenters still refuse to change. An interesting comment on human behavior! Here are some of my suggestions for jump starting better PowerPoint practices.
  
  
• One thing that causes many presenters anxiety is worrying they won't be able to effectively handle audience questions and interruptions, particularly ones that are confrontational or argumentative. Ian Griffin, in How To Deal with a Hostile Audience tells us not to rely solely on logic, but to be conscious of the emotional concerns underlying a question.
  
  
• As only Seth (Godin) could explain: How To Make Graphs That Work. Advice that is simple, easy-to-use, provocative...and right on the money.
  
  
• Learn from the TV newscasters how to handle slips of the tongue in Lisa Braithwaite's Stumbles, Fumbles and Mumbles.
  
  
• You've often heard me extol the benefits of practicing and being prepared in this blog, so I'm happy to pass along a very critical checklist from Nick Morgan: 10 Points To Check Before You Speak.

PREVIOUS "DON'T MISS THIS" LISTS:

The Don't Miss This List, Edition 4

The Don't Miss This List, Edition 3

The Don't Miss This List, Edition 2

The Don't Miss This List, Edition 1

PowerPoint: It Depends On Where You Stand (or Sit)

There is a striking dichotomy between what people say and what people do regarding PowerPoint.

When I ask participants in my presentation skills classes what bothers them the most as they sit in the audience listening to a presenter, they invariably say, "...too many words/bullet points/text on the slides." When I probe to uncover why that behavior is so annoying, I get responses like:

• It makes it more likely that the presenter will read most of his slides.
• It's too distracting to have that much information visible...I can't concentrate on what the speaker is saying and read at the same time.
• The type is so small I can't read it. 
• The presenter isn't adding any value to what's on the slide...why didn't she just send me the PowerPoint deck?

Yet the puzzling part is that when these same participants start working on their own presentations, they typically have way too many words on the slides.

So why the disconnect between audience attitude and speaker behavior?

I think the big reason is that overloaded PowerPoint slides are so ubiquitous and standard operating procedure, many people are afraid to deviate from the method that everyone else uses...even though they know, from the perspective of audience member, this method is not effective. [Read about more reasons in Olivia Mitchell's excellent analysis].

I also think that most presenters care about having an impact, care about engaging their audience and are looking for opportunities to improve. But they may not be prepared to go totally "Garr Reynolds" with simple, elegant graphics, numerous pictures and minimal text.

So I suggest the following steps to course participants as a way to test the waters:

• In preparing the presentation and slides, put your audience hat on and think about how you would respond to those text heavy slides.
• Try changing just a couple of slides to start with. Perhaps pick a complex point in your presentation or an aspect that always generates a lot of questions; develop another way besides text to display this information, like a chart, graph or image that symbolizes your meaning.
• Then assess how the audience responds to the information in this format. Do they understand better? Do they have fewer questions or are the questions different? Do they seem more engaged?
• Solicit feedback from audience members to validate what you observed.

What kinds of experiences have you had using a PowerPoint format markedly different from the norm?

6 Steps For Creating A Presentation

Everybody knows how to create a presentation, right? You just sit down at the computer, open PowerPoint and start filling in content on the slides. Mmmm...perhaps not. Perhaps there is a better way.

When we have a presentation looming, our bias for action tempts us to skip any planning phase and get right to producing the final product. We may even fool ourselves into thinking that we plan and create simultaneously. But sufficient time devoted to mapping and organizing your presentation up front allows you to deliver a more focused message that is more likely to address your audience's needs.

Let me suggest a process:

1. Audience Needs Analysis. Before you put pen to paper or finger to keyboard, spend some time determining what your audience already knows about your topic, what information they can use, how do they feel about the topic you're presenting. You want to answer the WIIFM question...the "what's in it for me?" question that every audience member has.

Some methods you can use to uncover information about your audience's needs: ask questions of a few representative audience members; talk to people who have presented to this audience before; do a survey; question the person who invited you to do the presentation.

2. Outline Your Presentation. Develop a bullet-pointed outline of what you want to cover and the approximate order. Don't go into a lot of detail here...this is just your road map. Make notes on areas that you need to research or on which you need to find additional resources. Once you've completed the outline, it should give you a good sense of whether or not your presentation flows logically, covers the key aspects of your topic and fits the allotted time frame. It is during this step that you want to answer the question, "What is the one key message I want my audience to take away from my presentation?"

3. Research. Next you want to compile the more detailed information and resources you made note of in the Outline step. This may entail reading, interviews and internet research. Make modifications to your outline based on your audience needs analysis and research.

4. Write Out Your Presentation. Now that you have all your material organized, write out your complete presentation. Although this seems onerous and I certainly don't recommend that you deliver your presentation from a fully scripted version, this is an interim step that allows you to get a good sense of the flow of your information and work on intentionally crafting your language.

5. Create Delivery Notes. Create the notes that you will use to deliver your presentation by condensing the fully scripted version to bullet points. [Note: these are bullet points for you, not for any slides you may design.] There are a variety of note formats you can use and I recommend trying a few to see what works best. This step gives you another chance to refine your message, make it more focused and incorporate vivid examples.

6. Design PowerPoint Slides. Yes...it's the very last step. [And it's a good idea here to ask if you really need PowerPoint...will it enhance your audience's understanding?] Once you have created and refined your presentation, then and only then should you design your slides. Now you can really focus on what slides will add additional clarity to your spoken words, what slides will give the audience a vivid graphic example to help them get your point, what slides will help explain a particularly complex idea.

Some of these steps may indeed overlap. For example, parts of your audience needs analysis and your research may occur simultaneously. Your research and designing your slides may overlap as you find a terrific chart or illustration that you want to include. You may also decide to omit writing out your presentation and move directly from research into creating your notes; however, I do not recommend this for beginning presenters or those who present infrequently.

For your next presentation, try this approach to creating your remarks. I guarantee you that your message will be clearer, your audience will be better served and as a bonus extra, you'll be much better prepared which will free you up to really focus on connecting with your audience.