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ОглавлениеThe First Key — Preparation
How’s this for a high-pressure scenario?
Your CEO steps into your office and gives you some big news. She’s chosen you to deliver a keynote presentation at a major conference, “Industry 2020,” in two months in Las Vegas. Basically, the deal is this: she wants you to share the company’s vision with more than five hundred senior and mid-level executives from throughout North America, with the goal of generating excitement about your organization’s planned initiatives and, ideally, renewed respect for your solid but staid outfit.
YOUR BIG SPEAKING OPPORTUNITY
Congratulations. You’ve just been given an opportunity to speak like a leader to leaders.
You’re pleased and excited, right?
Perhaps your overriding emotion is fear. You know for a fact that the CEO, let’s call her Peggy, should be the natural choice to give this presentation.
But Peggy has made the decision to sit this one out. She’s received extensive media coverage recently, and feels that a cult of personality has been starting to develop around her.
To her credit, she wants to put more of the focus back on the company and its strong senior management team. And you, my friend, are a member in good standing of that team.
You suspect, though, that one of your colleagues, your chief rival and longtime nemesis, the widely reviled Tim, would be a better choice to deliver the presentation. He knows a lot more about the company vision. The sycophantic Tim is also tighter with the CEO, but Tim will be in Europe for some strategic planning meetings during “Industry 2020” and those meetings can’t be rescheduled.
So while Tim is slogging away in overcast Berlin, you’ll be basking in the spotlight in sunny Vegas.
Who says good things don’t happen to good people?
It is what it is
Now, a cynic might say that you’re the third choice to give the big presentation at “Industry 2020,” and the cynic might be right.
But it should make absolutely no difference.
Whether you were choice number one or twenty-one, you’ve been handed the ball. Now you have to run with it.
Put any negative self-talk out of your head and tell yourself here and now that you’re going to take this project on, and complete it superbly.
Not to overwhelm you, but following your thirty-minute presentation you’ll be asked to take questions from the audience. Relax — it’s all good.
If you’re not pleased and excited, you should be. You get to serve the informational needs of a prestigious audience, while enhancing your company and personal profile. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Few learned skills carry with them the potential to speed you up the corporate, educational, and political food chains faster than the ability to speak effectively to others.
Barack Obama, the forty-fourth president of the United States, is the most dramatic modern example of the career-building power of speech. Just think about it: Obama was an Illinois State senator, little known nationally, when he rocked the 2004 Democratic National Convention with his passionate keynote. Four years and four months later, he was elected president.
Chances are you aren’t planning on running for the leadership of the Free World, but you can employ the simple but powerful speaking techniques that Mr.
Obama uses to compel his audiences.
We’re going to assume that you’ve enthusiastically accepted the invitation from your CEO to present at “Industry 2020,” and thanked her for the opportunity.
Good move. Now, let’s get to work.
Thinking about the challenge
How do you even begin to get your head around such an assignment? By embracing the first and most important key to speaking like a leader: preparation.
I’ve been a presentation skills coach for a long time, and it became apparent to me early on that accomplished communicators have three qualities in common.
First, they consider the chance to address others freely in a public forum to be an occasion to be respected, and never taken lightly.
Second, they understand that a presentation needs to be more than a compilation of facts, figures, and opinion but rather a story, the most powerful and sublime form of communication.
Finally, they’re rigorous and disciplined in their preparation.
Skilled presenters spend a great deal of time thinking about who their listeners are, what those listeners know, and what they need to know in order to respond positively to the message being delivered.
They know a presentation shouldn’t be about them. It should be about the people who show up to hear them.
Traumatic listener experiences
The need to consider the audience would undoubtedly come as a surprise to many of the speakers I covered as a young business reporter, back in the day. I heard a lot of bad speeches — mumbled, disorganized, meandering, interminable, and ultimately incomprehensible discourses that sorely tested the patience of the inconceivably polite people in attendance.
More often than not, the speakers knew little or nothing about the background or mindset of those in their audiences, and didn’t really seem to care. They’d mispronounce the names of the executives hosting the event at which they were appearing, propagate a dated or ignorant view of the issues affecting the sponsoring organization, and talk incessantly and reverentially about themselves.
It wasn’t pretty.
These speakers weren’t just rude, they were confusing. As a journalist, it was my responsibility to make sense of the just-completed assault on rationality. Because the presenters weren’t always available for interviews following their remarks and because I had to produce a story, regardless of whether a speech warranted coverage or not (it often didn’t), I was left to grapple with a perplexing question: what was their point?
Out of this early career tribulation came the determination to devote my professional existence to coaching good-hearted men and women in the preparation and delivery of presentations with clarity.
Clarity comes about only as a result of understanding — understanding your audience, its issues, its attitudes, and its motivations. Without knowing all of this, you simply won’t be successful. You can’t be successful.
Audiences can tell, astonishingly quickly, whether speakers have taken the time to learn anything about them or not.
When speakers have done their due diligence, listeners can be remarkably supportive and forgiving. When they haven’t, well, onlookers can become downright hostile, in a silent, seething way that can take on a near-malevolent force of its own.
But you’ll never experience such antipathy, because you’re all about the preparation.
Or soon will be.
GETTING STARTED
You can begin preparing for your big presentation by thinking about others. How can your remarks at “Industry 2020” best serve the informational needs of your listeners, while achieving the goal set down by your CEO?
Schedule an in-depth meeting with your boss and ensure that you share absolute agreement about the objective of the speech, an understanding of what success looks like, and her buy-in on the investment of time and resources it will take for you to adequately research, write, and rehearse the presentation.
You can’t slack off on any of this stuff. Do that, and you’re guaranteed to come up short in Las Vegas.
Schedule weekly meetings with your CEO to review your progress and to solicit her input. For this project, your personal motto should become, “There’s no I in team.”
Regular consultation will eliminate (or at least dramatically reduce) the chances of any frantic, late changes resulting from your boss not having seen the content, while providing you with the ongoing benefit of her insights and advice.
Comprehensive preparation includes several essential components, including learning as much as possible about those to whom you’ll be speaking.
You need to know about your audience
For whatever reason, presenters at every level often fail to embrace this responsibility with the diligence and care it so obviously requires. It’s as if they believe they’ll somehow learn too much about their listeners, and the knowledge will serve to spoil the spontaneity of their presentation.
But that’s just crazy. You simply can’t know too much about your audience.
Put in a call to the conference organizers and learn about the delegates who’ll be attending “Industry 2020.” What organizations do they represent? What are their expectations of the conference, and from your presentation?
Ask for a delegate list, and for permission to contact a handful of respected attendees. You’ll want them to answer your questions candidly.
Ask:
“What are the biggest challenges facing our sector?”
“What keeps you up at night?”
Don’t be reluctant to go deeper when you sense there’s more to learn. You can always ask, “Can you tell me more?”
Your aim should be to acquire enough quality information to understand the attitude of your audience at “Industry 2020.” It’s invaluable intelligence to keep in mind as you build a presentation that tells your story while exceeding the expectations of your listeners.
Think about life from their perspective. These days, the people who run businesses are quicker than ever to dismiss or ignore information that doesn’t relate to their organization’s most pressing needs, whether short or long-term.
Business leaders are more focused than ever. They have to be. They want insights and ideally some answers, yet very few speakers provide them. So be a speaker with the insights.
Be a speaker with the answers.
Find — or create — the “nugget”
Resolve to discover and present at least one “nugget” of information that your listeners don’t know, or may have overlooked. It will get their attention — and boost your credibility.
Can’t find the nugget? Then create it.
Take the initiative. You’ll want to get permission from your CEO and the conference organizers first, but once they’re onside, survey the attendees about an issue that will be central to your speech. Then present the results, with appropriate theatrics, at “Industry 2020.”
The nugget concept also works effectively for internal presentations.
Say you’re given the assignment of presenting to your senior management team. Again, assuming the approval of your CEO, you could poll a select number of customers about the company’s new national advertising campaign, or your co-workers about an internal productivity program, for example.
In fact, when preparing new business pitches, well-run public relations and advertising agencies will frequently survey captive respondents — their own employees — to collect research on a prospective client’s products or service, and then present the findings at their pitch. It’s an inexpensive but effective way of proving to the prospect that the agency is willing to go the extra mile to learn about its business and contribute to its success. Prospects love it. They’re flattered by the attention, and often learn something of solid value about their business.
Will the results of your informal survey be scientific or statistically relevant? Absolutely not.
Will the members of your audience be interested in them? Absolutely.
Why? Because the findings will be all about them.
The right nugget can help you shoot the lights out at “Industry 2020.”
Are you getting a little more excited about your big presentation now?
Is Vegas a party town?
UTILIZING THE POWER OF THREE
You’ve learned about your audience, which will prove invaluable in your speech, the telling of your story.
But just what will that story be?
In these early days, you need to establish a theme for your talk, one that your boss endorses (the more enthusiastically, the better), the organizers approve, and you love.
You’re going to be spending a lot of time with your theme. It’s the core of your presentation and you should be able to express it in a single, concise statement that anyone can understand. If you don’t have a theme, you won’t have a speech. All you’ll have is verbiage, disconnected and ineffectual.
Once you’ve established your approved theme, it’s time to start creating your presentation, your story.
Most speakers make this process far too complicated, when all they really need to do is employ a simple but unerringly effective template known as the Power of Three.
A remarkable number
There’s something quite special about the number three. From an early age, we organize, explain, and retain information best when it’s arranged in threes.
Children instinctively “get” the number three. Indeed, kids are often better communicators than adults because they’re invariably sure about what they want, and they think and speak in threes. Free of all the complexities that mark adult lives, they haven’t matured to the point where they fear simplicity. They embrace it.
Great speakers of the adult variety welcome simplicity as well.
It can set you apart.
It’s been said that never have we known more and understood less. We live in a world flooded with information, yet executives generally speak less effectively than ever. Swimming in data, they try to cut through the dross to deliver relevant content that hits the mark.
Much of the time they fail. Why?
They’re insecure about their content.
The reason so many presentations and pitches go over their allotted time these days — an appalling breach of professional etiquette called “overspeaking” — is that speakers are often uncertain about what should comprise a story, so they pile in every piece of even tenuously related information in order to support it.
It’s little wonder they go long.
Great communication starts with making the right decisions about what material needs to go into your presentation and what needs to stay out, given the time available.
The Power of Three helps you make the right decisions. It’s an elementary formula that facilitates the organization of material, however complex, within three main categories: Introduction, Body, and Conclusion.
Let’s examine each category and determine how to best employ it.
The Introduction
The introduction easily qualifies as the most critical part of your presentation. It’s here where you either hook your listeners, or let them know they’re going to be in for a banal or disagreeable experience.
Or both.
Presentations often go off the rails right out of the gate because the speaker never lets the audience members know what’s in it for them. At the outset, a presenter needs to state, “This is why what I’m about to tell you is important to you.”
I often ask clients, “What’s everyone’s favourite radio station?”
Why, it’s WIIFM, of course: What’s in It for Me?
It’s how every audience member thinks. It’s the way we all think, for the most part, just about all of the time.
Hit your listeners right off the top with how they’ll benefit from your talk, how it will help their careers, their organizations, or both. Be as specific as possible.
Audiences, for the most part, are remarkably keen on having you succeed, if only for self-interest. They know that if the talk tanks, it’s bound to be an unsettling occasion for all concerned.
If you don’t engage your listeners early — within the first ninety seconds — you won’t get them at all. Some will continue to try to make a connection between your topic and their lives, but most will tune out, their heads bowed before their PDAs.
Make sure you hook them right out of the gate.
Context is key
The introduction is where you state your theme, and do what so few speakers do (at least well): provide context.
Context is the most valuable and under-utilized ingredient of modern day communication. Just as a building needs a solid foundation to remain upright, so presentations require the underpinning of context or background to stand firm and soar.
With context, you can speak like a leader by setting the groundwork for the information to come, while supplying listeners with an account that reflects your perspective.
Often, speakers wrongly assume that listeners have the most current information on the issue at hand (or already share the speakers’ views on it). As a result, presenters will begin their story at, say, point D, when the audience doesn’t know, understand, or fully appreciate the consequences of A, B, or C. If you don’t lay down the back story, your listeners will be struggling to catch up with you for the duration of your presentation.
When you fail to supply adequate background you shortchange your listeners, since it’s unlikely everyone will have updated, comprehensive knowledge of a subject or issue.
Ensuring everyone is up to speed
Unless you know for certain that the audience already shares your level of knowledge or experience, you have to lay down context. If some listeners are fully up to speed on a subject and others aren’t, you need to serve the ones who aren’t by reviewing the issue (quickly and efficiently) from the beginning. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing them.
As for those who already know the latest score, well, they’ll just have to sit through your review. It’s no big deal. Usually, no one minds hearing the same information more than once; it can actually be reassuring in this manic world.
There are other important reasons for providing clarifying context in the introduction. If done well, with at least a modicum of objectivity, you can start influencing an audience’s perception of an issue. Listeners will begin to see the matter from your standpoint because, through your discourse, they’ve shared your experience.
Finally, laying down lean, well-structured context makes you look smart and self-assured. It means that you care enough about your listeners to ensure they have all the information they require to fully understand your story. It means you’ve taken the time to bring about understanding. It means you’re speaking like a leader.
The Body
At the heart of the Power of Three, the body is where you expand on your theme, and make your major points. But if it becomes overloaded, the body is also where presentations can fall apart.
Your listeners always need to know where you are — and where you’re going — in the telling of your story. An efficient way to keep them on track is, again, through the magic number three.
Too often the body becomes a repository for a laundry list of observations and initiatives. As a longtime media trainer I can tell you that journalists’ attention drops way off after three points; it’s the same with every audience.
For example, here’s a statement you could make in a media interview that would get a reporter’s attention: “Our programs are valuable to the community for three reasons: one, they create employment; two, they save taxpayers money; and three, they benefit the environment.”
Employ that tight, bright media technique to arrange the body of your presentation in threes. If it’s essential that you cover off eight or ten points, organize them in categories or silos of three.
Of course, you can always choose to have only one or two points. Those options work as well.
But there’s nothing like three. It’s the power number.
The Conclusion
As a reporter, I covered a host of speeches that were quite successful up until the last few minutes, but then ended up as if they’d been accidentally dropped off a cliff.
A typical speaker would have concluded something like this, “Er, thank you for your attention. Ah, any questions?”
However you end, you need to do it with impact.
The conclusion is where you sum up, provide a resolution to the story you’ve just shared with the audience, and issue a specific call to action. What do you want your listeners to do after hearing your presentation? Buy your product? Sign up for your service? Invest in your company? Work together to make Canada a better place?
Unless you tell them, they won’t know.
The conclusion presents you with a final opportunity to speak like a leader.
Everyone wants to know what’s going to happen in the days, months, and years ahead. If you have an opinion about the future, a reasoned, thoughtful outlook, you can differentiate yourself from the many timid souls who disclose only what the audience already knows.
Write long, cut short
However you decide to tell your story at “Industry 2020,” use the versatile Power of Three as your template.
For your first draft, write as long as you can, working in every conceivable fact, observation, and anecdote about your subject matter. It’s a healthy, productive process that will get you thinking about the telling of your story in new ways, from different angles.
Now, edit ruthlessly. For every sentence, ask: “Do my listeners really need to know this? Will it be essential to their understanding of my story? Am I providing new, valuable, or insightful information?”
Those questions will help you quickly separate the narrative wheat from the chaff. After that, it’s just a matter of placing the grain in the appropriate silo under the Power of Three template.
Life is complicated. Communication need not be.
Organizing Your Presentation According to the Power of Three
Introduction
• Hook your listeners early; why is what you’re about to say important to them?
• State your theme.
• What context or background does the audience need to fully understand the information to come?
Body
• Arrange the core of your presentation here, in three or fewer points.
• Make it clear what point you’re on, where you’ve been, and where you’re going.
• Support each point (with one or more of the following: an anecdote, fact, example, quote, or insight).
Conclusion
• Provide resolution to your story.
• Issue a definitive call to action.
• End with impact — in content and delivery. Leave plenty of time between the conclusion of your formal remarks and your invitation for questions. Don’t rush your listeners; give them an opportunity to express their appreciation of your presentation.
The “list” option
I’m an enthusiastic fan of the Power of Three for several reasons — among them is that it provides new, inexperienced speakers with a simple, easy-to-deploy template for organizing their narratives. Indeed, it serves presenters of all levels of know-how and ability exceptionally well.
Given their acumen, though, accomplished speakers certainly have license to deviate from the Power of Three to organize and deliver presentations in lists of up to ten elements.
Comedian David Letterman has popularized the “Top Ten” list, which can work superbly if the points are clearly themed (for example, Letterman’s “Top Ten Text Messages Sent by Tiger Woods”) and delivered with substantial flair.
If you believe you have the wherewithal to manage a list successfully, don’t feel locked into the number ten. Lists from four to nine elements can work efficiently, too. But don’t go over ten; at eleven, your presentation will start to feel and sound like the recital of a catalogue.
I conduct several workshops that are organized according to lists, among them “The Seven Most Powerful Ways to Influence Up,” “The Seven Steps to An Effective Meeting,” and “The Ten Biggest Communication Mistakes Financial Advisors Make.”
If I were to speak on “The Communication Mistakes I’ve Made,” I’d organize the talk according to the Power of Three.
Why? Some lists are just too distressing, for listeners and presenters alike.
“OVERSPEAK” AT YOUR OWN RISK
As you begin creating your presentation, you have to promise me that under no circumstances will you include so much content that you’ll speak too long on your big day at “Industry 2020.”
Those who talk over their limit are guilty of one of the most serious offences in communication: overspeaking.
It’s abominable.
I once attended a conference where a succession of presenters crossed the line from mere self-absorption to lunacy.
Indifferent to the obvious distress of the audience, they each rambled interminably past their twenty-minute speaking times. One bore went on for forty-five minutes (yes, my friend, more than double the period apportioned) and asked for questions from the audience afterward. None were forthcoming.
By this time it was well past noon. The conference luncheon was delayed and served cold. The afternoon’s speakers didn’t get to eat much at all, because they were so busy hacking away at their presentations to comply with the edict of the now-desperate conference organizers to reduce the length of the talks to come. The proceedings ran late anyway. Flights were missed and delegates were apoplectic.
What overspeaking says
Here’s the bottom line: When you overspeak, you’re basically saying to your listeners, “Look, I know I’m over my time, and I know you’re aggravated, and I know that the speakers to follow will have to cut their remarks short. But frankly, I’m more important than any of them, or any of you for that matter, so just sit back and listen to the genius that is me.”
One might assume that less effective presenters would be more conscientious about delivering a presentation within the time assigned. In fact, the opposite is often true. Poor speakers, psychologically disconnected from their audience, can just plow on, struggling to get through a story that was absurdly long to begin with.
Whatever the reason — insensitivity or cluelessness — those who overspeak are paying a heavy price. Potential supporters and customers among an audience might reasonably wonder, “If this person can’t fulfill a simple obligation, such as speaking for twenty minutes, why should I trust him to honour any other undertaking, like delivering a product on time, or completing a project within budget?”
Overspeaking drains time, reputations, and an audience’s patience. So what can you do to avoid it? Plenty.
Make a commitment to speak under your time
Blaise Pascal, the seventeenth-century French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher, knew the potency of brevity. “I have made this letter longer than usual,” he wrote, “because I lack the time to make it short.”
Hundreds of years ago, Pascal nailed it.
Less is invariably more in communication. You’ve been asked to speak for thirty minutes at “Industry 2020”; you should prepare your remarks for twenty-five. Why? Presentations have a way of expanding in delivery, what with introductions, technical glitches, and extemporaneous remarks.
By finishing slightly under time, you’ll look — and sound — like a leader. Go over by even a minute and your credibility begins to suffer.
I love a presenter who, shortly after being introduced, will say, “I’m going to speak for twenty minutes, and then I’ll be happy to take any questions. I can guarantee you that we’ll be done by 11:45 so we’ll have plenty of time to head out of here and get down the hall to enjoy the delicious lunch that’s being prepared for us.”
With that, the speaker tells the audience members that they’re in good hands, so everyone tends to relax, free of concerns about time, and listens.
Rehearse, and be ready to chop — or fill
How long you end up speaking at “Industry 2020” shouldn’t come as a surprise, to you or your audience. You need to rehearse often, for a number of reasons.
First, the better you know your story, the freer you’ll be to be yourself. Second, you’ll come to know how long the different sections of your narrative run, which will be essential if you have to add or jettison material.
Why would you possibly have to add material? After all, isn’t overspeaking a crime right up there with bad grammar and pastel leisure suits?
Yes, indeed.
However, you have to be prepared for anything in the presentation business, including the possibility that another speaker eats some bad salmon, takes ill, and bows out. Meanwhile, you’re feeling fine; you had the chicken. But the conference organizers want you to lengthen your remarks.
Think about what information you can add, while maintaining the structural integrity of your talk and, more importantly, keeping the audience interested.
Say the previous speaker goes over his time, and in order for the proceedings to stay on track you have to chop eight minutes out of your presentation?
What would you take out? You need to know, ahead of time.
Almost always, the material that can be excised takes the form of supporting information in the body. You’d be hard-pressed to remove stuff from any other location.
Think about it. You’ll need your entire introduction to compel your listeners, introduce your theme, and let them know what’s in your remarks for them.
The conclusion is where you provide resolution and issue your call to action. You’ll need all of that.
The content to go would have to come from the body. In rehearsal, shorten and lengthen the midsection to deliver different length versions of your presentation; try a version at twenty minutes, even forty-five. Have some fun with it.
It’s far better to anticipate time-related challenges and prepare for them now, than half an hour before you take the lectern at “Industry 2020.”
Join in the fight
It’s straightforward. Your obligation as a speaker is to relate an absorbing story that serves the informational needs of your listeners within the time prescribed, and then sit down.
But you have another duty as well, and that’s to help eliminate the scourge of overspeaking. To be eradicated for all time, it’s got to be rendered socially unacceptable, like smoking in public buildings or watching reality TV.
I have a friend who, when taking the lectern to follow a speaker who’s gone over his time, will say, “I was going to speak for twenty minutes, but unfortunately Ed went on too long so I have only fifteen minutes to address you.”
My friend doesn’t smile when he says this. Neither does Ed.
For people like Ed, a presentation means never having to say you’re finished. However, the days of those who partake in the self-indulgent practice of overspeaking are numbered.
The revolution has begun.
THE PERILS OF POWERPOINT
Will you use PowerPoint at “Industry 2020”?
Think carefully about your decision. There’s a lot on the line.
I once described PowerPoint as the most misused technological innovation since the handgun. Why? It kills a lot of presentations.
In “PowerPoint Is Evil,” a now-famous article in the September 2003 issue of Wired magazine, Edward Tufte compared slideware (computer programs like PowerPoint) to an “expensive prescription drug that promised to make us beautiful but didn’t. Instead the drug had frequent, serious side effects: It induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and degraded the quality and credibility of communication.”
With those words, Edward Tufte became my personal hero.
When used responsibly, PowerPoint can be a useful tool, bringing clarity and organization to the parts of speeches, presentations, and briefings that need it. Far more often than not, though, it’s atrociously deployed.
Great speeches help build great careers, so I find it incomprehensible that so many presenters undercut the incredible personal power that comes from connecting deeply with an audience to throw up a collection of pedestrian slides and read aloud desultory, static information that listeners can whip through much faster.
Your PowerPoint slides should serve as a guide, not a script.
Hiding behind slides
I suspect the penchant for poorly delivered PowerPoint has to do with the fact that great numbers of presenters, even among the executive and professional sets, are unnerved by the preparation and discipline it takes to speak well in public.
When PowerPoint came along many of them figured, “This is terrific. Now I don’t have to go through the hassle of writing and editing a script, which takes forever. After all, I’ve got a life going on here. I’ll just organize a deck of slides covering the main points and address them one by one. It’s all good!”
The advent of the now-ubiquitous technology served a deeper psychological need as well, seemingly protecting the fearful from the perceived oppressive scrutiny of audiences by diverting at least some attention away from a jittery speaker to visual aids.
But just as you can feel lonelier at a crowded party than in the solitude of your own bedroom, PowerPoint, badly utilized, can isolate and diminish you.
The purpose of PowerPoint
Folks, slideware was meant to support your presentations, not become them. The best speakers in the world rarely use it. They don’t have to. They tell their stories the old-fashioned way, with an uplifting combination of words and passion.
It’s no surprise that the higher you go up the corporate food chain, the less often tools like PowerPoint are used. There’s a reason for that. The language of leaders typically doesn’t translate to an inanimate screen.
As a presentation skills coach, I spend a good deal of time working with clients and their PowerPoint decks. I emphasize a simple ideology, and it’s this: We humans get to run the technology. It doesn’t get to run us.
That belief underpins my ten rules for using PowerPoint.
Determine if you really need it
If some of your content — such as complex technical or financial data — requires slideware, so be it. But keep in mind that effective speakers give as much of themselves to their listeners as possible.
Perhaps your thirty-minute presentation can feature just fifteen minutes worth of slides, or even ten. Keep thinking of ways to reduce the number of slides, to give the audience more of you and fewer words, numbers, and graphs on a screen.
Make sure your use of PowerPoint is appropriate. For example, it has no place within communication that evokes strong emotion, such as the announcement of layoffs or expressions of sympathy. Here, listeners require the full human connection.
Make sure your story comes first
The best presentations result from the careful preparation of a written draft, from which your main points are extracted. You can then display and speak to those points.
The script comes first and the points second, not the other way around.
If you simply produce points and attempt to link them, your narrative will never be as smooth or as cohesive as it would be if you’d created your script first.
Presenters sometimes borrow, inherit, or are saddled with PowerPoint decks created by others. It’s always difficult to tell someone else’s story, even if it’s one you’re familiar with.
My advice here is to build a new introduction, before rolling into the slides, linking your experience and responsibilities with the material to come.
Try and make at least some of the story your own.
Don’t overload your deck
Everyone has, at one time or another, been subject to an assault by a speaker displaying slides so laden with information as to be indecipherable. What does that say about the presentation and, more importantly, the presenter?
Not much.
It’s simple: the more material you jam onto a deck, the harder it is for members of the audience to read (especially those at the back of the room) and the more challenging it becomes for you to present.
If you have detailed information you believe listeners require, include it in a handout.
This will make you look quite smart. You’ll have, in fact, two versions of your slides: the comprehensive handout and the cleaner, eminently simpler presentation version, from which you’ll speak.
Display three points per slide (remember our Power of Three template), four maximum. The fewer words per point, the better.
For years, the generally accepted rule of thumb was to deliver one PowerPoint slide for every minute of delivery time. Skilled presenters can certainly cover off a slide in less than sixty seconds, especially if it doesn’t require a ton of explanation, but the “one for one” rule still isn’t a bad one to keep in mind.
For a thirty-minute presentation, thirty slides are plenty, unless you’re a consummate raconteur with a tight, superbly well-choreographed show that moves the story along seamlessly. Most people don’t operate at that level. And I always advise erring on the side of caution.
Go light on the slides, and heavy on your relationship with the audience.
Think symmetry
Speaking effectively is all about taking the pressure off yourself so you can be yourself.
Forget about any slide transitions for at least the first ninety seconds of your presentation. Instead, use that time to establish a bond with your listeners against the background of a slide featuring your organization’s brand or logo.
Conclude your remarks with your brand or logo coming up again. It will communicate to your listeners that you’re coming to your close, without you having to say “in conclusion” (please don’t say “in conclusion,” it’s cliché) or “as I wrap up.”
Presentation symmetry is a good thing.
It will make you look organized and, just as importantly, eliminate the need to ever create concluding slides that read, “Thank you” or “Questions?’
We’re not in elementary school here. Let’s have some dignity.
Maintain the connection
All over the world, presenters have fallen in love with PowerPoint and left their audiences behind in order to consummate the affair.
You’ve seen them, their backs to their stricken listeners, reading aloud some arcane reference from a slide groaning with data, the proceedings entirely comatose.
As a responsible speaker, it’s essential that you begin and end each slide transition with eye contact to maintain your critical relationship with the audience. Once you’ve confirmed that the appropriate slide is in place (and you can do that by glancing down at your laptop, not turning around to gape at the screen behind you), “square up” to the crowd and begin speaking.
You can, of course, turn and refer to a slide, but not every slide. If there’s something important on the screen you choose to emphasize, walk to it (backwards if you can; you want to minimize the time you have your back or even your side to an audience), and point to it, facing your listeners.
“Look at this,” you might say. “Our sales were up 20 percent this quarter — let me tell you why.”
See if you can do all this without a laser pointer, which can vibrate and shake in the hands of even slightly nervous presenters, and can distract listeners. There’s an old saying in presentation skills: anything that distracts, detracts.
If you must hold a laser pointer, grasp it in your right hand and support it on your left forearm, or vice versa.
All slides aren’t created equal; some will be more important than others. Nor will every point on a slide carry the same significance as others. Perhaps, on certain slides, you’ll want to speak to only one point. That’s cool. You’re the one telling the story.
Be creative
Want to make an impact?
Embed a digital clip or two in your PowerPoint presentation. They can generate a great deal of impact when utilized well, but many speakers don’t use them well.
They’ll play a somnolent, self-serving twenty-minute feature on their organization’s environmental initiatives and wonder why listeners are tromping off to the bar.
Solicit the opinions of respected peers on the suitability of your clips before playing them on presentation day. Will they enhance audience understanding in a captivating way, and in a reasonable amount of time? If so, in they go. If not, save them for the company retreat.
Use restraint
Just because we possess the technology to feature assorted elements of our every experience doesn’t mean we should.
I once watched a speaker at a major conference, a widely respected professional, embarrass himself and his audience by including family photographs and cartoons in his PowerPoint presentation.
Someone should have reminded him that the speaking venue was a business function, and that his photos and caricatures were, well, unfortunate.
Clearly, he wasn’t communicating like a leader.
Ten Rules for PowerPoint
1. Determine if you really need it.
2. Make sure your story comes first.
3. Keep thinking of ways to reduce the number of slides.
4. Aim for three points per slide — the fewer words per point the better.
5. Consider a presentation and handout version of your deck.
6. Think symmetry — with a title slide to open and close.
7. Utilize eye contact to introduce and conclude each slide.
8. Be creative — consider embedding digital clips.
9. Keep it professional.
10. Do not include “Thank you” and “Questions?” slides.
WHEN IT’S A TEAM GAME
In a follow-up discussion with your CEO about “Industry 2020,” she brings up the possibility of you delivering the keynote speech with some other members of the senior management team.
Ultimately, Peggy decides this conference won’t be the best setting for a team event, but she makes it clear that she wants you to organize and participate in such an initiative in the near future. She recognizes the potential of a multi-person opportunity, and, as you know, wants to showcase her group’s talent as part of a strategy to raise the company’s profile.
You’re not so enthusiastic about the “team” part. You know that while speaking on your own can be challenging, speaking as a member of a group can be downright daunting.
No argument there. However, you’d better get used to the idea of presenting with your colleagues. With the growing emphasis on teamwork in business, more and more employees are being called upon to speak alongside their co-workers, internally and externally.
Certainly, there are plenty of risks. Too often, team presentations succumb to the inherent difficulty of assimilating multiple personalities, styles, and priorities, and crumple into disjointed, ineffectual dog-and-pony shows.
However, when a team is clicking on all cylinders, there are few communication initiatives more forceful. Whether the collective goal is to share a vision, recommend a course of action, or win a piece of business, cohesion is the key to success.
Here’s how to make the principles of great teamwork successful at the lectern.
Pick a leader
There’s no way around it: someone needs to have overall responsibility for your group presentation.
When you’re deciding on a leader, aim high. The more elevated the chief organizer’s rank, the more profile and resources your project will be given.
For your first team event, I’d go for Peggy herself. Why not? The worst she can say is no, and she’ll be flattered that you asked. If she does agree to come on board, you know you’ll have the weight of the CEO behind you.
The leader doesn’t necessarily have to participate in the presentation, but ultimately makes the final decision on content, and on who speaks and in what order.
Ideally, though, the leader takes part in the production itself, kicking it off, introducing fellow speakers, setting the context, and then, once the others have completed their sections, wrapping up the collective story with a commanding summarization and call to action.
Keep it simple
Use the classic, tried-and-true Power of Three to organize your presentation under the sections Introduction, Body and Conclusion.
The most senior speaker almost always handles the introduction and conclusion, providing a nice sense of symmetry, organization, and authority.
Three presenters can participate in the delivery of the body, each covering a main point or category. That means a maximum of four speakers for your group presentation; there are precious few exceptions.
The more presenters, the less impact they deliver, and the greater the chances of foul-ups and misunderstandings.
Play to your strengths
Increase your team’s prospects of success by giving the more skilled, confident speakers additional presentation time, but not so much that lesser lights are marginalized.
Protect weaker presenters (and enhance listeners’ perception of their routine) by having them introduce an interesting clip, an attention-grabbing prop, or an especially well-crafted PowerPoint slide. Give them the outstanding stuff to refer to and you’ll raise their confidence and their game.
Of course individual egos must kneel in service to the greater good. That applies to even a team’s most senior speaker, who, as it may turn out, can’t make the oratorical grade. In such a case, the top dog’s time needs to be chopped, making for a shorter introduction and conclusion.
Sometimes, that’s not such a bad thing.
Look and act like a team
You may dislike a particular co-presenter, but in the image-based universe of team productions, you have to appear as though you vacation together.
That means relating as if you were trusted colleagues — with copious amounts of eye contact, frequent use of first names, and full-on listening techniques. Audiences can quickly perceive dissension, however slight, within a team in presentation mode. Nothing can undermine a group’s credibility faster than a harsh word, or even a cross look, from one colleague to another.
Your listeners will ask, “If they can’t even give a presentation together, how could they possibly work on our business together?”
It’s a reasonable question. You’re in it together, as a team. So look and act like it.
Rehearse your transitions
The final key to a successful team presentation lies in the transition, or “hand-off,” between speakers. Just as the baton in a relay race requires a smooth, sure transfer from one runner to another, so the story in a group narrative needs to be advanced.
Rehearsal takes on even greater significance in a group project. The effective linking of content involves a kind of verbal choreography that comes about only when each presenter has a thorough knowledge of the subject matter covered by the other speakers — especially his or her closing paragraphs — and then builds seamlessly on it.
This smooth transitioning takes co-operation and a great deal of practice.
All the presenters should consider themselves understudies and learn the script of at least one other speaker cold; it’s a coordinated strategy that, in effect, backs up the entire presentation. You need to be able to cover for each other, if something goes wrong.
It’s what teammates do.
Seven Steps to a Great Team Presentation
1. Pick a leader.
2. Keep it simple — the most senior speaker handles the introduction and conclusion, the three others a main body point each.
3. Give better speakers slightly more presentation time.
4. “Protect” weaker presenters with great content.
5. Look — and act — like trusted colleagues.
6. Learn at least one other script.
7. Rehearse your transitions.
THE DRILL ON PANELS
The organizers of “Industry 2020” have called.
Your presentation will take place on Monday, the first day of the three-day conference. They’ve also requested your presence on Wednesday, to participate in a panel discussion of prominent figures in your field.
Yikes! Are you supposed to vacuum after the conference as well?
Be cool. Panel discussions represent another forum in which to speak like a leader. You have to be careful, though. Panels can be tricky. They’ve earned their uneven reputation.
That’s because they’re often ponderous, unfocused affairs that drone self-consciously on as trapped, distressed audience members pray for an early wrap. It almost never happens. In fact, panels habitually run over their time due to poor planning and weak moderators.
The potential of panels
When they’re run right, however, panel discussions can dazzle and inform.
When a group of astute, motivated participants brings differing perspectives to a significant, well-defined issue while respecting each other (and the concept of time), listeners benefit from the rich discourse.
Like preparing and delivering a great speech, it takes a lot of work to get there. In fact, organizing and facilitating an outstanding panel can qualify as a more complex task than nailing a first-rate presentation, given the unpredictability of a conversation involving multiple players, and the inclination of some to amble off on self-indulgent musings and tangents.
To work at its best, a panel discussion has to be operated like a boot camp, while appearing to onlookers like a summer camp: inclusive, stimulating, and warm.
But that’s at its best.
Most panels don’t achieve anywhere near that level, underachieving in a stilted, self-conscious way that leads a host of notables in the business and artistic worlds to politely take a pass on them.
It’s become hip to inform one’s peers, “I don’t do panels.”
Politicians have no choice, though. They’re obligated to take part. Few of them ever look happy or comfortable doing so.
Clearly, panels need help. There are ways to reach the communication potential of these maligned group discussions in three key areas: planning, moderating, and participating.
Planning
The main advantage of a panel over a speech is that it will provide, or should, several points of view on a subject. Frequently, though, organizers will invite a coterie of lumpy, risk-averse company lifers (not you, of course) to participate; individuals who view a matter through the same slender prism. Listeners, meanwhile, can be rendered comatose.
When planning a panel yourself, ask, “What combination of guests will provide the audience with the best informational and entertainment value?”
Seek out subject matter and industry experts who’ll bring with them new perspectives, insights, and theories, speakers who’ll have the moxie to render definitive, even contentious statements and stick by them. Look for participants who’ll pack an edge.
You don’t want a free-for-all, but you do want ardent discussion and debate.
With the credentials of your speakers established, mix them up according to experience, age, gender, and industry profile. Build your panel with imagination and balance, always sifting the suitability of candidates through your primary filter: the interests of the audience.
Try and limit the number of panelists to four. At five, the conversation tends to become scattered. It also becomes increasingly difficult to ensure that everyone gets equal time. Limit discussions to an hour, ninety minutes at an absolute maximum.
Moderating
To run a panel effectively, you need to take charge from the outset, without having participants and listeners resent you for it.
Demonstrate any sign of ego or impatience and it will work against you. Consider yourself an affable, skilled host who directs formless conversations to positive, even rousing resolution, and tactfully but firmly informs guests when they’ve overstayed their welcome.
Open the proceedings by welcoming the audience, introducing yourself, and briefly reviewing the topic for discussion. You could then say, “Before I introduce the members of our panel, I’d like to explain how we’ll spend our hour together. First, each panelist will make a brief opening statement. [Bring out the hook for each speaker at three minutes.] Then they’ll engage in what we anticipate will be a spirited discussion for thirty minutes. Finally, they’ll take your questions. We’ll adjourn the session at 4:00 p.m. Now, let’s get to it!”
Moderators set the tone and the parameters.
