Hear the sound of your self-esteem. Coach accordingly

I became aware of a damp patch.

Inevitable with a Victorian cottage. Moisture slowly creeping up an outside wall. Tell-tale watermarks on plaster in the hall.

Months of contractor confusion led to my hiring an independent surveyor to take charge. He promptly nailed the source of all my problems as being a tiny pipe, steadily and slowly dip drip dripping beneath a floor.

Seemingly tiny little leaks of self-esteem can have exactly the same effect on our confidence.

The most damaging are those hidden beneath the floor-boards of our bravado; the inner comments we make to ourselves when offered the chance to take on new challenges.

• “I’m no good at x”
• “I’ll screw it up if I dare to have a go at y”
• “I’ve not got what it takes for z”

Over months and years, those drips become a damp-spreading mantra, soaking foundations. Our confidence water-logs from within.

My surveyor told me that to identify a hidden leak it’s important to listen both to what you can hear, and to what you can’t.

Listen for noises that shouldn’t be there (in my watery case, an almost inaudible hissing sound), and then listen for the sounds that are missing, such as the high pressure surge of water rushing through a healthy system.

• As a presenter, do you suffer a low level hiss of negative internal criticism?
• After speaking, how clearly can you hear your that healthy surge of success?

Maintaining a constructive inner-dialogue is essential presenter care-and-maintenance. Self-coaching can be one way to do this, but sometimes problems require the help of an external expert for true diagnosis.

Professional coaching assists presenters at all stages of their careers, in the same way that my professional surveyor was able to help me.

It’s well worth taking the time to fix those little leaks.

At the end of the day, nobody enjoys a presentation from a damp-patch.

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.

Santorum out. But can Romney learn to like himself?

The personal characteristics that enable others to believe in us the most, are often the ones coached out of us as being most likely to frighten the horses.

The Republican nomination process for the candidate to face President Obama this November, has demonstrated this supremely.

Candidate Rick Santorum spoke from the tightly constructed belief system of a 17th century religious fundamentalist. He knew what he stood for, and had that stand consistent. He knew his social views made him unacceptable, yet he trumpeted them through all pronouncements. The interesting result was that while we might have abhored his policies, we couldn’t help but believe the man. When Santorum spoke, we believed him. When his opponent, Mitt Romney speaks, we don’t.

Romney appears insincere. His character appears disparate and dislocated. We are shown the urban sprawl, while denied even a glimpse of the central city. What is so awful that Mitt Romney hides it from view?

The problem is that Romney has been told his wealth does not play well with the electorate. He’s been told the same thing about his Mormonism. The result is a candidate hobbled by the two defining characteristics that should be surging a Republican candidate to victory; red-blooded business success and missionary-grade religious ardour.

Romney struggles to portray himself as something he’s not, or to put it more precisely, he struggles not to portray himself as what he truly is.

We should have been hearing about Mitt-the-Merciless. Instead we get Mitt the Etch-A-Sketch; one quick shake and the policies dissolve.

While Romney flustered, Santorum flew. Santorum flew despite the fact that he knew he would never become the nominee, but still consistently put his own true self out onto the stage. Result: respect.

Mitt Romney came into the campaign as Republican heir apparent. He came into the campaign as the candidate the White House feared. And yet, while he will indeed leave the campaign as nominee, he will also leave it weakened by evasiveness and flip-flopping.

Mitt Romney is no longer a candidate the White House fears.

To speak in public with passion and integrity, your own personality attributes must lock together into a convincing narrative. Try to run away from your own true self and you’ll find your audience can run even faster! This was the strength behind Rick Santorum, and the weakness behind Mitt Romney.

Problematically for Romney, it is also the strength behind Barack Obama.

Chicken soup for the Presenters’ soul (without harming chicken)

There is a New York Times article that will inspire you.

It’s short. It’s morning-air crisp, and in one brief column will transport you to a place you can scratch.

It’s a place full of chickens. And the daily life of chickens. And I never before appreciated quite how much inspiration your average chicken has to offer to a presenter.

Chickens, it would seem, appreciate more than any other creature, how even the most raked-over ground can offer surprises to those who come to it with fresh eyes and persistence.

There is always something new to be found, and we feed ourselves and our audiences by being constantly alive to the possibility of the angle undiscovered.

Here’s the article. Go on, be a chicken…… I dare you!

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.

Controlling flashy graphics

I recently observed an exciting approach to presenting a boring subject. The type of subject that is entirely fact driven, very technical, and needs a lot of slides!

This approach held an auditorium of 200 people in rapt attention for just under two hours. How? The entire presentation had been professionally animated!

The basic animation scheme was simple. As each slide appeared, with data points all grouped neatly down the left-hand side, a filmed human hand holding a pencil would appear on the right hand side and rapidly dash off doodle-style illustrations appropriate to the content.

It must have been expensive to produce, and the audience, anticipating deathly dullness, were visibly delighted at the approach.

There were however, two snags:

A little over half way into the presentation, I realized that in my fascination at watching the furiously doodling antics of the hand, I was failing to pay attention to what the presenter was actually saying. My recall of the previous 45 minutes was limited to cutely cartoony houses, and people, and various bits of computer. It had been tremendously enjoyable watching the art of the presentation, but had failed the art of presenting. The visuals had swamped the message.

The second snag started to show up in the second half of the presentation, as the presenter began to tire.

All the visuals were running in a form rather like a movie. The presenter was in effect delivering a precisely timed live voice-over to what was appearing on the screen. For the first half of the presentation, this worked just fine. One had to admire the hours of rehearsal necessary. In the second half however, the video started to run away with the presenter. As he tired he would start to trip over his words or forget the odd passage here and there. The result was embarrassing periods of presenter staring at screen and trying to catch-up with the action.

The visuals were now swamping both message and messenger.

In commenting on this presenter’s approach we can draw two conclusions:

Firstly, full marks for imagination, preparation, and rehearsal. The subject being delivered, while innately uninspiring, was one that was vital to this particular organization. The effort to produce an eye-catching presentation was therefore valid, and in terms of fascinating the audience, delivered powerfully.

If the budget and skill-set are available to other presenters, I would encourage the same approach.

The second conclusion is that when you are using such an approach, as with all things presentation, keep it simple:

Don’t let the onscreen action be continuous. Have sections where nothing is happening behind you so that you can recapture the audience’s full attention and emphasize key points.

Use those gaps to create fire-breaks in the presentation where you have to manually advance the presentation to the next stage. This ensures that things can’t run away from you.

High-end graphics can be great, just keep them in control!

Enjoy presentation adrenalin. Purge post-presentation epinephrin.

The hormone we associate with presentation stress is adrenalin, and it’s a great little hormone. It boosts our performance, sustained for just long enough by its buddy-hormone, epinephrin.

Think of epinephrine as a garden centre grow-bag for adrenalin. It delivers optimal nutrients to extend your adrenalin spike. Whereas adrenalin is short-lived, epinephrin is sturdy. Its designed to stay in our bodies until the stressor has passed, and shifting it from your system requires aerobic activity. Without this, it hangs around, and here’s where things can go wrong?

When something stresses us, the body releases adrenalin and follows it up with a slug of epinephrin. Imagine that you have just finished a presentation. You are, at that moment fully topped-up on epinephrin which, without aerobic activity, will hang around your system all the way home and beyond.

If something else stresses you, say someone in their car cuts you at the lights, then bang goes another shot of adrenalin, followed by yet another slug of epinephrin. That slug joins the epinephrin pool already present in your body and tops the system up to a new higher level.

Every subsequent stressor does the same thing, until rather than finding itself being followed by a controlled shot of epinephrin, adrenalin finds itself being fired into a pre-existing epinephrine lake?

This is where chronic stress syndrome starts. If not managed, the epinephrin lake never adequately discharges, producing stress-related health issues?

Aerobic activity is the solution, and this doesn’t require a gym. Take the stairs instead of the elevator whenever you can. With each step, you lower the lake. Dog walkers seem to be universally chilled people. Why? All that walking discharges epinephrine, and you don’t necessarily need a dog to do it. Much of my own life involves airports, and as a practical measure I avoid the moving walkways. Walking to the gate helps walk-off the epinephrin?

When presenting we often stretching our limits. It’s important afterwards to remember to stretch our limbs.

Confidence tricks: The thawed paws pause

Hold a warm cup of tea. Or coffee. Or hot chocolate. It doesn’t matter. Hold a warm cup, and as you savor the heat radiating into your hands, a wonderful sense of calm comes with it.

Do this shortly before a presentation and you’ll get exactly the same reaction. Stress seems to mysteriously drain out of you.

There is a whole lexicon of words such as “toasty” that evoke the pleasure of warm hands and feet, and there is a physiological reason why we’ve developed them.

When we become nervous about something, presenting for example, one of the first physical symptoms is cold hands. As we enter fight or flight, our body diverts blood flow away from extremities such as the hands, and redirects it to the vital organs of the core. Because of this we develop the cold clammy hand sensation associated with presentation nerves.

This sets off a chain reaction. Our subconscious mind says to itself “Hello. I appear to have cold hands right now. I get cold hands when I’m nervous. Therefore I must be nervous, and being aware of that fact, am going to become even more nervous.”

If cold hands represent a state of nervous tension, then warm hands represent the exact opposite: relaxation. When we have warm hands, the mind associates this with a state of calm and safety, hence all the snuggle type language we have referring to the pleasantness of warm paws.

Knowing this, we can use a simple technique that I call “The Thawed Paws Pause” to trick our mental wiring into calmness pre-presentation.

Next time you are going to present, accept the offer of a hot drink. The contents of the cup are of secondary importance, but if you have a choice, then my recommendation would be something that is caffeine-free.

As you await your time to present, hold the cup and concentrate your mind on that lovely warmth entering your hands. Your mind is about to get a surprise, in that your internal dialogue is going to go something like this:

“I’m about to make a presentation. I get stressed when I make presentations, and when I get stressed I have cold hands, but hang on a moment! I have warm hands! When I get stressed I have cold hands, but right now I appear to have warm hands! Ah, I therefore can’t be stressed.”

As your subconscious plays with this concept, the body starts to stand down some of the reactions we associate with presentation nerves, and a degree of those stage-fright jitters slip away.

It’s a simple trick, and one of the earliest I was taught when I first started presenting.

Next time you feel stressed or nervous, check the temperature of your hands. Icy? Take a moment to hold a warm cup. Feel tension melt into your thawed paws pause.

 

For more ideas on how to control presentation nerves, try the following Presenters’s Blog posts:

• Breathing yourself calm
• Calming stomach butterflies
• Dealing with a dry mouth
• Avoiding the presentation sweats
• Thinking your way to success
• Puncturing perfectionism
• Taking the plunge
• Coaching yourself after a presentation

 

Retiring the retirement speech

Retirement speeches are due for retirement. A blend of good luck and bad means that retirement is becoming a thing of the past. The good luck is that we live longer, fitter lives. The bad luck is that retirement funds haven’t kept up with us.

Today we more often work a series of downsize careers before finally retiring after a period of part-time employment.

With classical retirement on the way out, the appropriate speech therefore needs rewriting. Most examples found on the internet will either insult someone who sees themselves as having working years to give, or depress someone who wishes they were heading for a classic golf-course retirement but frankly can’t afford it.

Even if those two points don’t dissuade you from a “retirement speech”, just put yourself in the place of the average recipient of one of these dreadful things. The poor old codger, off to pasture while the bright young things look on in patronizing pity. Painful.

A solution is at hand in a speech type called an Encomium. It’s a tribute speech that’s suitable for seeing people on the next stage of their life journey, and works well for any type of leaving speech. Here is a step-by-step guide to a 21st century encomium that will make your leaver wish they weren’t leaving.

An encomium presents someone’s story as a heroic journey. As with all good stories, there is a narrative structure that can be thought of as:

• Step One: Their origin
• Step Two: Their traits
• Step Three: Their deeds
• Step Four: Their legacy

The vital ingredient: A character trait

The speech hinges on a specific personality trait of the individual being praised, and demonstrating how through that trait, the person leaving has contributed to the achievements of either the team or organization. You then conclude the speech by encouraging others to emulate that trait, thereby continuing the individual’s legacy. Here are the stages for putting your encomium together:

Step One: How they joined us

Begin with a brief description of how the individual came to be in their current position. Some basic facts to include are:

• What they did before joining your team or company
• The position they joined in
• The situation of the team at the time they joined

During an encomium you magnify the individual’s achievements. For this reason, the task is easier if you start low! If you include too much greatness in the early stages, then the best you achieve by the end is to show how the individual merely maintained that greatness. In other words, you show how they flat-lined!

Some examples of starting low might include how it was a tough time for the company when they joined. Their career and attributes can then be mapped onto how they helped the company/team pull through those times.

Alternately, you might focus on how the individual joined the team as a novice or apprentice, and has delivered great things throughout their growth..

Step Two: Their Traits

Here you lay out that essential personality trait.

This is important for the narrative in two ways:

• during the next stage you will detail a major contribution that person makes to the organization and why they will be missed. The aspect of their nature you highlight here, will be the logical foundation for the achievement that is to come.
• at the end of the speech you will exhort everyone else to fill the gap this individual leaves by emulating that trait. So, make sure its a trait you would encourage in others!

For example, if the individual is recognized as being a great salesperson, you will praise a personality aspect that supports this. It could be their persistence, their integrity, or their thirst for success.

Step Three: Their Deeds

The creators of the encomium, the ancient Greeks and Romans, believed this section should contain “the three Excellences”, and these were detailed to be the excellences of mind, body, and fortune. When we understand what would have been included under these headings, it gives an indication of the tone we’re aiming to achieve.

Under the excellence of the mind, classical speakers would share examples that demonstrated fortitude, stamina, and prudence. For the excellence of the body, they would talk about the individuals grace and style. Finally for the excellence of fortune, the speaker would talk about the position, wealth, or high connections that someone had achieved.

Try to hit some of those excellences in telling the story. Where did the leaver demonstrate stamina in achieving results? How did their unique personal style contribute to success? What fortune came to the team or organization as a result?

A classical encomium might list multiple deeds; the higher the individual, the more deeds would be detailed! For this speech however, limit yourself to just one or two.

Step Four: Their Legacy

This final stage wishes the leaver well on the next stage of their journey, and interestingly swings the speech away from the recipient, and onto the audience.

Ask those who are being left behind to reflect on the unique personality trait of the person leaving, and encourage them to emulate it. Each individual must rise up to fill the gap this departure is going to create. Encourage the audience to perpetuate that positive behavior.

Bring your attention back to the leaver. Simply and cleanly thank them for their service, and wish them well on the next stage of their journey.

This concludes your speech. As with all good speaking, draft it in advance and practice before delivery. Do everything you can to keep the speech brief, and if possible, try to deliver it from memory.

You might also want to have some tissues handy. People have been known to become a little teary-eyed at this point, but when they do, you’ll know that it’s for all the right reasons!