Why you will fail to have a great career

Universities can scrap the scheduled speakers for this year’s graduation ceremonies. They can whack up a  screen and speakers, and play their students this TedX jewel instead.

Professor Larry Smith of the University of Waterloo, berating students about “Why you are going to fail to have a great career”.

The Professor enumerates for his audience the reasons for failure, pick-axing one after another the self-destructive excuses we feed ourselves for not reaching our dreams.

“I’m an economist, I do dismal.”

Not only does he do dismal (inspiringly), he does manic, funny, and spit-flecked passion. He does logic, structure, and crafted balancing of speech techniques. He offers a 15 minute alternate take on the tired old formula of the Commencement Address, and delivers memorable and stand-out thought provoking.

The talk veers through life stages from birth to death. From a digression on how not to propose marriage through to what your gravestone epitaph will say compared to what it could have said.

No punches are pulled in highlighting the self-destructive tropes we feed ourselves for why we can’t stand-up to achieve greatness……

Unless…….

Presenting with an iPad

You no longer take your laptop to a picnic if you want to play music; you take your MP3 player instead. The same thing is happening to how we deliver presentations, with tablets and even phones becoming potential delivery devices for mobile presenters.

• Light and easy for carrying around
• Small enough to be useful even in cramped airline seats
• Instant-On capacity. Just flip open, and there’s the presentation ready to go
• Highly usable presentation software
• Excellent for performing presentation edits in minutes
• Simple to connect to a projector via a VGA connector

All of these advantages have encouraged me to experiment with my iPad as a presentation tool, and as long as you are aware of the pitfalls, I’d recommend it.

OK. The pitfalls. There are three big ones:

• No reliable remote control
• No ability to black-out the screen during a presentation
• Unable to plug-into the power while connected to a projector

If like me however, you can’t resist going early-adopter, here are some of the workarounds I’ve discovered for presenting from an iPad.

Quick edits & delivery only

An iPad is an oversized iPod, without the functionality of a laptop. It’s good for quick edits on the move, and content delivery, but when it comes to the heavy-lifting of writing your presentation, that remains best done on your laptop.

Buy a stylus

Much of what you’ll want to do requires the precision of a stylus rather than fingers. I’ve found the Pogo Stylus to be excellent.

Keynote converts PowerPoint easily, but check for oddities

Transferring PowerPoint slides into KeyNote is an easy WiFi process, but do check for font changes that knock your formatting around. Also be careful to check any graphics that were originally created within PowerPoint; straight lines that were in there have an odd habit of vanishing!

Slim-down the slides

iPad remote control apps are available, but I’ve experienced their WiFi / Bluetooth connections as too shaky to be relied on in front of an audience. You’ll need to manually advance slides, so remove fiddly transitions and minimize the slide-deck to reduce the number of times you have to return to the iPad. This might seem retrograde, but it’s always good discipline to streamline slide-decks, and iPad’s lack of an effective remote control simply reminds us to keep presentations simple.

Plan the black-outs

The inability to black-out the screen during longer presentations is the biggest single issue with the iPad. Possible solutions are to either create a special slide that stays on-screen during shorter activities, or plan black-out periods long enough that you actually turn the projector off altogether. Many audiences breath a sigh of relief when that projector goes off, so it can be used to indicate a shift from presentation into discussion or activity. Do remember to switch the projector back on at least 90 seconds before you need it!

Maximize your battery

With the iPad’s out-port connected to the VGA, there is nowhere to plug-in the power. For shorter presentations, this isn’t a problem, but if it’s a whole day session then you can extend battery life by reducing screen brightness. Flight Mode can also be used to save even more power.

Practice first

Presenting from an iPad is a different experience from using a laptop. Practice prior to your first time in front of an audience. I would also suggest still taking your laptop with you as backup just until you are completely comfortable.

Is it worth it?

This question depends on the type of presenter you are.

Would I use an iPad for a major audience, large stage event? No I wouldn’t. I would miss my remote control too much.

Would I use the iPad for delivering an in-depth technical presentation, requiring the ability to run separate reveals on my slides? Again no, and for that same lack-of-remote reason.

For myself as a presenter though, constantly flying, performing small edits on the move, and immensely prizing lightness-of-backpack, then yes the experiment has proved worthwhile. The pitfalls I’ve encountered will be rapidly filled as more of us find solutions and workarounds.

Do you have any solutions to share? Please post me back if you have. Be great to hear your experiences.

Scalia and the Broccoli Broadside

Piercing hyperbole delivered the veggie-based sound-bite used by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia during the Supreme Court’s health care deliberation.

Hyperbole uses exaggeration to create strong impressions in an audience. If health care  reform is allowed to stand, will it really lead to Government enforced consumption of broccoli? Of course not. But by deploying a natty line of logic-based hyperbole the Justice has lodged an indelible image in the minds of the audience.

“President mandates eating of broccoli” is a Fox News-ready visual metaphor that collides health, a most serious subject, into a less serious finger-wagging health-linked liberal caricature. It couples the queasiness that enforced broccoli eating inspires in so many children, and uses that to evoke the queasiness Government intervention invokes in so many adults.

The whole broccoli thing, is really quite brilliant.

While not agreeing with Justice Scalia’s judicial politics, it’s hard not to admire the health of his rhetoric.

Handling the question that mustn’t be answered

“Have you stopped beating your wife?“

Where do you go with a question like that? Only two equally damning answers appear open, but you would be cursed by a yes or condemned by a no.

Sometimes as presenters, questions are put to us such as the famous “have you stopped beating your wife” example, that are based on false prepositions. Whether intentional or innocent, they are unanswerable, and indeed, must not be answered. If you do, then you confirm the preposition, and the trap snaps shut around your ankles.

The first discipline when dealing with false propositions is to identify them. Pause before you answer questions. From a stage-craft perspective it makes your answer appear considered. From a thinking-time perspective it gives the opportunity to consider the question and check that it’s basis is factually correct.

Listen-before-you-leap. Expose questions that you shouldn’t answer. For example, watch a political interview to observe masters at work:

“How do you explain the failure of your administration’s economic policy?”

If the interviewee attempts to answer this question, they create a talking point around perceived economic failure. Therefore the legitimate route, is refute:

“I don’t agree with the proposition of your question. Amongst the many economic achievements we have produced are………”

The interviewee is now telling the audience what they, the interviewee, wants to say. They effectively answer their own made-up question. Is this fair? Absolutely. It’s not just fair, it’s essential.

Media Consultant Ann Wright, from Rough House Media, comments that the same techniques are equally important in both presentations, and during media interviews:

“Aim not to repeat the question as you refute the answer. If you reply with ‘I don’t accept that I have ever beaten my wife / I have never beaten my wife’ then this will re-enforce the question in the listeners mind. They could miss the fact that you are denying it.”

Like strategic chess-moves, false preposition questions are placed to trip us into check-mate. It’s fully justified to respond by pivoting back out of the trap.

Ann Wright of RoughHouse Media can be followed on Twitter at @roughhouse01

Simple preparation rituals can power presentation energy

How do you psyche yourself up to your best achievement levels?

If you’re Rafael Nadal, about to win your sixth French Open tennis tournament, then the process looks a little like this:

1. Push hair behind left ear
2. Push hair behind right ear
3. Knock heel of left shoe with tennis racket
4. Knock heel of right show with tennis racket
5. Scuff three steps sideways to the left along the back-court line
6. Scuff three steps sideways to the right along the back-court line
7. SERVE!

Athletes and sports-teams all have their own unique pre-performance rituals that they repeat before that first all important move onto the field.

For some, like the New Zealand All-Blacks rugby team, those rituals are dramatically overt, designed to both psyche the athlete and to intimidate the competition. For others, like Nadal, they are simply habitual actions that have become mentally linked to success.

Presenting is a performance sport. You too are on the field before an audience; You too have adrenalin flowing as if entering the Olympics; You too can benefit from pre-performance rituals.

Rituals connect you to a feeling of success. I know many presenters who have mantras that they quietly repeat to themselves, or use specific breathing techniques to get into the zone. I myself have the habit of quietly placing together my thumb, index finger, and middle finger in an accupressure position for a few quiet seconds before I present. Over years of repetition I now associate this simple hand movement with entering my calm-zone ahead of speaking. Nobody can see me do it, and the ritual’s associative power puts me exactly where I need to be before I go onstage.

Avoid rituals that rely on external objects such as the famous “lucky tie”. Think for example of the stories we hear about leading singers who couldn’t perform because there weren’t exactly five pink carnations to the left of their dressing room mirror, or someone forgot to remove the blue M&M’s from the candy bowl. These rituals fail because they rely on external objects or other people.

The guidelines for effective pre-presentation rituals are simple:

• based on affirmations, minute gestures, breathing techniques, or visualizations that you can always summon when needed.
• can be performed quietly and immediately without the outside world being aware of them
• quick and simple, taking no longer than 3 – 5 seconds
• effective in bringing you to the required performance state for the task at hand

If you don’t already have a pre-performance ritual of your own, try experimenting. The best time to adopt one is immediately after a successful presentation. In that moment when you are experiencing the endorphin rush of success, try to anchor that wonderful sensation with your own conscious ritual. Repeat the process at a later time, and you’ll feel the echo of the endorphins once again powering through your system and powering you out onto the stage.

“The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs”

What would you do if you could “hold the internet in your hand”?”

This was the question posed by Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs at the San Francisco launch of the Apple iPhone. Within hours, the catchphrase “the internet in your hand” had telegraphed around the globe. I heard it that same evening, on the radio of a London taxi, prompting my driver to comment: “You couldn’t pay for publicity like that could you?”

Was it the product that had made the news, or was it the presentation abilities of Steve Jobs? A new book by Businessweek columnist, Carmine Gallo, “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs” has taken the famous Jobs style and laid it out as a how-to guide, promising the secrets of “How to be insanely great in front of any audience.”

The art of public speaking is governed by rules existing since the time of the ancient Greeks. It’s a challenge to find new things to say that haven’t, at some point in the past 2,000 years, been said before!

To be original, an author must either create a whole new lexicon on presenting (unlikely!) or stick to the proven formula. Repetition of the same ideas is a common blight. This is where Carmine Gallo’s book surprises. It re-visits the tried and tested rules of public speaking that every presenter needs to understand, while presenting those concepts by analyzing them through the style of a modern master.

The result is an example-packed guide with ideas taken from the Web 2.0 world. Gallo demonstrates how Steve Jobs crafts messages that spread from audience to audience; hence what Jobs says at 10 am in San Francisco, is repeated in the back of a cab by 7pm in London!

While many guides focus on what happens during the presentation, Gallo’s book has a focus on what we should be doing before the presentation. Four fifths of effective presenting lies not in the delivery, but in the preparation, and Carmine Gallo demonstrates this by showing how groundwork and rehearsal is a clear factor in Steve Jobs’ success.

During February, I’ll review three of the ideas demonstrated in “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs”:

February 8^th: “The one question that matters most”

February 15^th: “Create Twitter-like headlines”

February 22^nd: “Introduce the antagonist”

The book itself contains a great deal more.

“The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs” by Carmine Gallo

Published by: McGraw Hill

Positive word of mouth spreads your presentation message

The movie “Avatar” is well on it’s way to becoming one of this highest grossing movies of all time.

Avatar absorbs its audience into a wrap-around world of story-telling and imagery. When director James Cameron set out to create Avatar, his mission was to change the way that movies are made, and he succeeded.

What has been peculiar about the Avatar success however is the relatively low-key marketing that went ahead of it. Compare it to the pre-launch hype of a “Harry Potter” or “Lord of the Rings” for example, and Avatar’s marketing machine seemed almost silent. So what is that has propelled the crowds at the box-office?

The answer is “word-of-mouth”. The film, with its compelling story-line, has launched a chain-reaction of positive commentary. It is almost impossible to see Avatar without then telling as many of your friends and family as possible that they too have to be a part of the experience, one that is encapsulated by the fact that this is the first movie in a longtime where as the closing credits roll, the audience are on their feet applauding!

So what does the Avatar experience have to do with the activity of presenting?

Avatar reminds us of how powerful word-of-mouth can be. A simple message, when passed from person to person, will spread like wildfire. As presenters, we need to ensure we are crafting a message clear enough, and simple enough to spread in the same way.

For a message to spread it has to be short and to the point. It can feel a little daunting to continuously edit and refine your slides and words, pursuing a simple headline that your audience will grasp, believe, and then spread. We take security from the weight of the information we bring to a presentation but frequently it is this very weight that drags our presentations down.

Beware of facts and figures. Quite rightly we include them to back-up our case, but at the risk of losing sight of the case itself. The denser your “evidence”, and the more packed into the presentation it is, the more your audience will drift away from the point.

To have an Avatar experience, with your message spreading out like a fire across a savannah, challenge yourself to say less, not more, and let that message surge through loud and clear.

And go see “Avatar”. You’ll be amazed!

Time waits for no man, and in controlling presentation timings, neither should you!

Presenting involves a contract between audience and presenter, and clearly stated starting and ending times are a key part of that contract. Compliance with these requirements is an important indicator of the health of that contract and the respect that both sides have for each other.

Start on Time

As presenter you control the room. You are going to be that group’s leader for however long you keep the stage. As with all groups, there is an initial period of gentle testing where the group explores the behavioral boundaries around them. “How firm is the leader going to be?” “Do they stick to their promises?” “Who is in charge?”

Although frequently sub-conscious, these questions are all hanging around the room, and there is no truer way of testing out the answers than by testing the area of time! If members of the audience are late, and you wait for them, then you allow power to transfer from yourself, to them. If you stick to your guns however and start regardless, then you retain the power balance for yourself, and late-comers become merely that; late!

Courtesy

If you hold up proceedings till all the laggards have assembled then the individuals who did extend you the courtesy of an on-time arrival rapidly learn that there is no reward for being on schedule. Your priority is to those who were on time. Don’t keep them waiting for others.

Finish on time

As important as starting on time, is finishing on time. While the start time is all about the audience extending courtesy to the presenter, it is by respecting the stated finish time that the presenter repays that respect. If the presentation is to last 30 minutes, then keep it to 30 minutes! Presenters who over-run are rewarded with seat-shuffling and increasingly exaggerated watch-checking.

What about the VIP?

I started out this blog by talking about power, and how within the presentation environment you are the leader. Where does this leave VIP members of the audience and what to do if it’s the head-honcho who is the tardy one?

The subject of the power dynamic between presenters and VIP’s would take up a whole extra blog, so I will restrict this point purely to the area of time-keeping.

If you are presenting, and you know that there is an especially important person in the room who must be there to hear what you have to say, then it would be foolish to start without them. The mere fact that someone in authority is abusing that position by being late rather than setting a positive example by being on time already indicates that they have a powerful sense of ego, so it would be a mistake to deliberately attempt to deflate that ego, tempting as it might be.

There is however, a half-way house that will allow you to start on time, while still waiting for the late VIP. The technique is to start a discussion with your audience while you are waiting so that the awkward gap becomes productively filled.

• Welcome your audience as you would normally, thanking them for attending, and briefly outlining the presentation agenda and objectives.
• State that you are going to wait a few more moments for Mr or Ms X to arrive, and then immediately tell the audience that in order to use this time productively, you would like to go around the table and find something out from them.
• Use the ensuing discussion time to find out something relevant to your presentation. You have full control of what this subject will be; It could be their past experience with a product or process, their key objectives for the presentation, or their opinions about key challenges and opportunities faced.
• Select a subject area that supports the thrust of your presentation, and avoid contentious areas that might detract from your message.
• As you facilitate the discussion, capture key points onto a flip-chart so that they then remain visible for the rest of the session.

When the late VIP does then arrive, you can welcome them cordially, gently close down the discussion, and move into the planned body of your presentation. What has happened though is that you are now starting from a position of vastly increased strength. By being late, the VIP has given you the chance to work the room and develop a rapport with their team. You now have comments and people that you can refer back to for support as you present.

Above all, you kept control of the process, and without inflaming anyone’s egos, remained in charge of the room!

Watch and learn for how to improve your presentation skills

Watching other people presenting is a great way to improve your own presentation style.

Frequently when we find ourselves sitting in meetings and watching presentations, we regard it as something of a chore, quietly checking our watches to see how long it is to the next break. Instead, every time we are sitting in an audience it is an opportunity to observe the presenter, build up ideas about what works and what doesn’t work, and then apply that to our own style when it comes to being at the front of the room.

The next time you attend a presentation try to analyze how the presenter is conveying, or not conveying, their message. Pay close attention to:

The structure

Is there a clear beginning, middle, and end to the presentation? As an audience member, do you feel comfortable that the presenter has provided you with a clear route-map of their goals and objectives?

The message

Is there a consistent message running through the presentation so that the content all hangs together logically?

The style

Does the presenter have body language and voice control that serves to underline the message and bring emphasis to key points, as well as making the presentation vivid and easy to listen to?

When you see something that you admire, make a note of it and try to model it in your own  sessions. The very fact that you admire it indicates that it is something of which you yourself are fully capable. At the same time, if there is something you don’t like, or that you find confusing, you are seeing something that you should be working to avoid.

In this way, presentations in which we sit in the audience, be they in business, at PTA meetings, or even in places of worship, all become informal training opportunities. Every presenter has their strengths, and indeed, their weaknesses. Observing these strengths and weaknesses with our full attention is a great way to literally, watch and learn!

Presentation body language: Hands and open posture

There are three things your hands should avoid touching during a presentation; your chest, your hips, and each other!

 

When we feel insecure, we use defensive body postures. Our hands might clutch before us, interlocked fingers flexing in angst, or alternately they might find a convenient object and start to fidget compulsively with it. All such gestures are unconscious and it’s only when we see ourselves on video that we discover what distracting gestures our hands get up to while we are speaking!

 

The optimal posture for presenters is to keep the upper body “open”; free from defensive body postures. This leaves the question of what to do with those flapping, fidgeting hands, and is why many presenters use props to anchor their hands, the two most popular being pens and notes:

 

Pens

Hold a pen with it’s right end in your right hand, and it’s left end in your left. Your hands are now occupied, while being physically prevented from meeting by the pen between them. If you need to gesture to something on the slide, the pen becomes a convenient pointer.

 

Make sure the pen you use isn’t the type with a clicker to extend and retract the nib, or you might subconsciously click your way through the presentation instead!

 

Notes

As with the pen, notes can also be an anchor. Hold them by their two bottom corners and, once again, you are securely in the open body position. If you want to gesture or point then you can do so, before returning your hand to it’s note-holding position.

 

Carry a minimum of ten sheets even if your notes only cover the top page. Ten pages have a rigidity that a single page does not. If you have the slightest hand-tremble, a single page will amplify it, whereas ten pages will absorb and mask it.

 

Over time you will become used to working in the open posture and can free your hands  to use as tools for adding emphasis and style. Initially though, it can feel more comfortable, as many presenters do, to use well chosen props to keep that posture open.