Our first PodCast! The Jason Womack Interview

An interview with the author of “Your Best Just Got Better”

by Peter Watts

I recently wrote a blog about a productivity book called “Your Best Just Got Better”  It’s a book that has made a huge personal difference to how I work, where I set my priorities, and how I go about defining those priorities.

As a follow-up to that review, it’s my pleasure this week to be able to welcome to The Presenters’ Blog the author himself, Jason Womack.

Jason has conducted over 1,500 seminars. To each audience he brings not just knowledge, but energy, experience, and passion.

1,500 audiences! How does he do it?

During this podcast, you’ll find out how the personal performance ideas that Jason shares in “Your Best Just Got Better” can be applied to the world of the presenter:

• Overcoming barriers that might be holding you back, such as nervousness

• Why it’s essential to know, and to believe, that your ideas truly matter. That you have something to say!

• How to identify your key message: the one thing that you want everybody in the room to have heard and understood during your presentation

• The role that dissonance plays in the hard-wiring of our brains, and why it’s essential to proactively take charge of our own post-presentation coaching

• Why it’s important to keep every presentation delivery as fresh as the first, thereby honoring your responsibility, as a presenter, to your audience

This podcast is packed with ideas and tips from Jason. Listen to it by clicking this link for the Jason & Peter PodCast, or if you’d rather read the conversation, we’ve included this transcript as well.

In addition, Jason and I have also put together ideas to boost your presenting; how you can identify your own unique knowledge, craft your message, and then take that to the stage…. this week! It’s combined with a very short  video message.

Enjoy the Jason & Peter PodCast, and do please leave any comments that you might have.

It would be great to hear from you.

Seasonal variation in presentation

Seasonal variation creates variation in your presenting

by Peter Watts

We’re hardwired to think in seasons. For our ancients ancestors, there was a time to plough, a time to plant, a time to reap, and a time to party round a fireside because outside the snow was deep and crisp and even.

Think of sport: Different seasons have their different games.

Think of religion: Different religions have their different holidays and festivals.

Think of food: There are certain foods that we just have to have to at certain times of the year.

We navigate our world by the seasons. Our world, that is, except for the world in which we make presentations. Presentations happen in a sterile land free of seasons. Free of individuality.

A world without seasons is a homogenous and decidedly unsexy world of grey.

Corporate style sheets and “standard presentations” are often a constraint on what we can do with presentations, but would it be too crazy to make ourselves distinctive by thinking about how we can incorporate the season into the show?

It could be as simple as including some seasonal metaphors into your speech, or if you are fortunate enough to have some control of those style sheets you could add seasonal color shifts to the slides. It doesn’t have to be a slash of bright pumpkin orange, unless of course, you want it to. Flavor and temperature could be added by shifting elements of the palette towards warmer colors in winter, and cooler shades in summer.

We think in seasons. How can you take advantage of that thought pattern to increase both the pleasure and the memorability of presentations?

Conjuring presentation magic for Halloween

Let the magic flow into your public speaking

by Peter Watts

Halloween. Time for stories, and for magic.

Let’s talk of magic, and illusion. This Halloween, as little witches and wizards bearing bags begging candy come up to your door, reflect on the thought that every time we take to the stage as presenters, we too join a world of magic and illusion.

As a presenters we perform magic not with objects, but ideas and information. Take a look at this list of some of the standard categories under which stage magicians file their acts:

• Production: Making something that wasn’t there before, become suddenly apparent and obvious to all
• Transformation: Transmuting one thing into another
• Restoration: Reducing something to it’s atoms, and then restoring it to exactly as it was before
• Teleportation: Something moves mysteriously from one location to another
• Escape: From a seemingly inescapable position, the magician succeeds
• Prediction: What is in the audience’s mind is mysteriously understood.

The categories of magic describe perfectly what presenters do with the base metal of information. Think of your next presentation. Will you be seeking to perform a production conjuring understanding where none existed, or a transformation, turning hesitancy to excitement, or maybe a prediction, where through the magical power of research and planning you demonstrate to an audience how much you understand them; that you know just what is in their minds at this moment.

You are a magician.

This Halloween, as our minds turn to magic, give a thought to some of the great magicians and illusionists. Either the living such as Lyn Dillies, past greats such as Harry Houdini, or even the mythical such as Merlin or Dumbledore. Ask yourself, “What can I learn from them as a presenter?”

Tennessee Williams spoke for audiences worldwide in “A Streetcar Named Desire” when he wrote the words:

“I don’t want realism. I want magic!”

May your Halloween be magical, and your public speaking spellbinding.

The Third Presidential Debate 2012. Analysis and Commentary. And Who Won?

by Peter Watts and Gavin McMahon

Up till tonight, it was one round each.

Both candidates had proved themselves. Governor Romney had shown himself an admirable debater when the battleground was formed of facts. He had shown himself credible as the next CEO of United States of America Inc. President Obama meanwhile had delivered the debater who could stir the passions. His greatest challenge had been to overcome his alter-ego as Professor and deliver Presidential. He achieved it.

That’s not to say it’s all been bouquets. There have been brickbats too. We’ve had the snoozefest of President Obama’s comatose comments during the Domestic Affairs Debate, and were then entertained by the binders full of blunders that opened during the Town Hall Meeting.

Tonight was the final round……

So who flourished in Florida?
Did the Sunshine State shimmer on someone’s parade?
Who was….. the strongest debater?

Gavin:
I’ll start by saying this wasn’t a fair fight. There’s a big difference between knowing your subject and learning your subject. I’d imagine that this was the debate Governor Romney looked forward to the least, and President Obama the most. Talking about action and fact is a strong position when things are going well. Obama generally did this. Words like we did and we are, are stronger than we should. The subject of foreign policy is high ground for Obama, and he had it all night.  Romney frequently had to make his positions seem the same, but with woulda-coulda-shoulda differences. To which Obama could frequently respond, with variations like, “I am pleased that you are now endorsing our policy.”

Obama: Fewer ships than 1916? We also have fewer horses and bayonets. http://t.co/HWEpRqoP #CNNdebate

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) October 23, 2012

Obama practiced debate ju-jitsu all night — which he did very well. In response to Romney opinion about increasing the size of the Navy, Obama responded with a clever and well positioned rejoinder, “You mentioned the Navy and that we have fewer ships than we had in 1916, well Gov we also have few horses and bayonets.” It was a nice rhetorical comparison that made Romney seem outdated and misinformed.

He did it again when he compared his first foreign trips to Romney’s (which have been documented as gaffe-prone) “I went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum, to remind myself of the nature of evil and why our bond with Israel will be unbreakable.”

"the central question is who is going to be credible to our allies and enemies." establishing the judging criteria, nice #TRDW

— Jennifer Mercieca (@jenmercieca) October 23, 2012

These and other comparisons let Obama credibly claim the central question of the night. “The central question is who is going to be credible to our allies and enemies.” In debating, pitching, selling, if you can define the frame by which the decision will be made, you win.

Peter:
Tonight could have gone either way, and when Governor Romney won the coin toss to go first, a subtle part of the power balance moved into his favor. When the first question turned out to be on Libya, which is currently the weakest topic for the President, the balance moved decisively into his favor. This was a chance to get his opponent on the back foot from the word go.

So what went so very wrong for the Governor?

To understand why Mitt Romney found himself so frequently on the ropes tonight, it’s necessary to look back over the past 12 months. There has indeed been a degree of the etch-a-sketch to many of his pronouncements, which in fairness, has been thrust upon him due to the necessity of initially appealing to one electorate during the GOP primaries, and then having to broaden that appeal to a wider and more disparate national audience. The President seized upon that weakness and ripped it apart live on national television.

.@MittRomney is looking shaky and uncertain. @BarackObama's strong and steady leadership on full display tonight. #RomneyWrong

— Adam Fetcher (@AdamKFetcher) October 23, 2012

The first signs of trouble were concealed in the early Obama sound-bite that America needs “strong and steady leadership, not wrong and reckless leadership”. This would turn out to be Obama’s key message, returning to it frequently as he laid out examples of Mitt Romney’s changed positions on multiple issues.

Romney’s response was weak, but also underlies his debate strategy. Referring to himself, he stated: “Attacking me is not on the agenda.” It was an attempt to rise above the debate. It was an attempt to strike a tone of consensus. All it achieved was waving a rather large white flag into the face of an already charging bull.

https://twitter.com/simonwillo/status/260548929882558464

Both candidates frequently pivoted away from the subject of Foreign Affairs and headed back into Domestic Affairs. One such pivot yielded what for me was one of the President’s finest lines: “You seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.” This line also set the President up well for the first of several pivots to the topic of women, a key demographic in the undecided electorate.

In past debates, we’ve noted that Mitt Romney favors four-point lists as a speaking tactic, where the fourth point on the list will normally be his key talking point, and during the first debate, that key talking point was Small Business.

Tonight he returned to that key talking point, but sadly the President’s team had seen it coming and the President was uncannily ready with a list of negatives about Governor Romney’s record on exactly that subject.

This was another strong element working in the President’s favor: Incredible preparation and planning concerning both his own strategy, and his opponent’s.

Governor Romney did attain the occasional moment of glory. In particular, I thought his response “America has not dictated to other nations. America has freed other nations from dictators” was both clever and stylish. Sadly though, it was his only such moment.

It was an Obama victory tonight. And a victory that pointed up the importance of not just passion, but planning and preparation.

 

Debating the Presidential Debate. This week: Rhetoric

by Peter Watts and Gavin McMahon

Writing with Gavin over at the “Make A Powerful Point” blog, our continuing examination of the Presidential Debates. This week: Rhetoric

make a powerful point

Over $1.1billion has been spent so far on this year’s presidential debate. The American public, tired of two wars, a recession and a flagging economy is also suffering from campaign fatigue. There’s an outcry against political rhetoric. Yet it’s rhetoric that moves the needle. Witness the debate in Denver where a surging Obama came up short, and a once DOA candidate has come back to life. Early on, Romney responded to Obama saying, “let’s look at policies as opposed to rhetoric.” Lovers of irony everywhere should appreciate this comment. The debate was chock-full of rhetoric.  So instead of looking at policy, let’s look at rhetoric. Specifically the rhetorical devices that both used.

“Gov. Romney doesn’t have a five-point plan; he has a one-point plan. And that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules.” This phrase opened up Obama’s response to…

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Ed Milliband Conference Speech. Showing how it’s meant to be done!

 

by Peter Watts

Congratulations Ed Milliband. The leader of Britain’s Labour Party just delivered what can only be called a barn-stormer of a speech.

In the age of the bland and of the auto-cue, he just reminded us of what an old fashioned speech should look like, sound like, and feel like.

One speech does not an election win, but Ed Milliband has done himself a tremendous deal of personal good today. Had you asked me this morning if I thought David Cameron had anything to worry about in the next election, I wouldn’t have counted Ed Milliband as being amongst his troubles. This speech has just changed my mind.

Here are some of the reasons why I loved it:

1: It was all from memory!

Not an auto-cue in sight. For over an hour, the speaker spoke from memory, and with zero trips or hesitations. An incredible achievement under the pressure of audience, spotlights, and TV cameras that allowed him to….

2: Speak naturally 

Everything was aimed directly at the audience. Without an auto cue to look at, notice how easily the speaker can move himself around the stage, and his gaze around the entire audience.

3: Telling a story

Key to the whole achievement is the way that Ed Milliband is using a story. It’s his own story. What could be easier to hold onto for him? He also manages to achieve a full range of emotions, and those emotions are backed-up with…

4: Superb voice modulation

There are slow bits, fast bits, quiet bits, crescendoing bits, sad bits, and there are even….

5: Jokes!

Normally a no-no. Jokes can be so very dangerous, but he pulled it off. How? By a perfect choice of subject matter guaranteed to get a conference giggle.

6: Metaphors and allusions

From the word go, there were some wonderful allusions. My favourite was the oak tree reference in the first two minutes. A wonderful multi-level metaphor that set up the forthcoming….

7: Key message

You can never repeat a key message too many times, and even though some commentators are accusing Milliband of doing just that, with his 46 references to “one nation”, it’s interesting to note how his choice of trope is now broadbanding it’s way across every media outlet in the UK. By tomorrow morning there won’t be anyone within reach of a TV, radio, or newspaper who won’t have heard it!

8: Use of space

Last week I criticized Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg for being perched on his little podium, a slave to the TV cameras. This week we saw Ed Milliband using a large square podium, and even though there were people sitting behind him, just take a look at the way he walks that podium, in the “Square Dance” method we mentioned last week.

A superb performance, and whether your passion is Public Speaking or Politics or maybe even both, do take a look at today’s speech on BBC.com.

It’s a master-class.

Round. Nick Clegg’s Conference Speech Problem

by Peter Watts

Nick Clegg of the British Liberal Democratic Party, chose yesterday to forgo the stage for his leader’s speech at the Party Convention and to instead speak from a little round podium that had been placed in amongst the audience. He spoke quite literally in the round, with people all around him.

Was this a good style for conference speaking?

In one word: No

It was a horrible, horrible mistake for anyone performing a keynote. If an organizer ever suggests it to you, fire them immediately and get someone who knows what they’re doing.

Here’s why:

Leader of the Band

We want leaders in both politics and business who look like they’re capable of striding the world stage. To speak from a little raised podium makes you look more like the guy conducting the village band in the park on a Sunday afternoon.

While speaking from “amongst the people” might appear to create a nice contrast to the big staging of the big political parties, the contrast fails because here it merely suggested that the Liberal’s are a little party. The corollary thought to this is that they are a little party, with little ideas. And having merely little ideas they are all the more likely to be shoved-around, sat-on, and eventually sliced-off by their far larger and more aggressive coalition partners, the Conservative Party.

They’re Behind You….

Golden rule of speaking: Always look at your audience. Speaking “in the round” like this guarantees that at any given moment, there are a chunk of them that you can’t see.

If you do ever find yourself in a position where you have to speak in the round, then one approach to still being able to look at the whole audience can be the Square Dance.

Rather than revolving on the spot, which looks odd, the speaker moves through the four points of a square. It’s walk two steps, speak 60 – 90 seconds. Walk two steps to 90 degrees, speak 60 – 90 seconds, and repeat. Just be careful with your movements. Get the timing or direction wrong and you fall off your platform.

For Nick Clegg however, the Square Dance wasn’t an option. The TV cameras were the true target audience, and because they were all pointing in one direction, the speaker had to do so as well.

I don’t know how Nick Clegg felt about having all those people behind him, but had I been the one speaking, they would have been making me feel mighty uncomfortable.

To speak from the floor and achieve that amongst-the-audience feeling is a tremendously powerful technique. Don’t throw away the stage though in attempting to achieve it.

Keep the stage. Come down from it. Stand immediately in front of it.

And keep the whole audience, immediately in front of you.

How many PowerPoint slides should I have?

by Peter Watts

When people feel they need something to be really big, you have to wonder if they’re compensating for something.

Let’s take super-sized slide-decks for example. What hidden inadequacies might all that PowerPoint be trying to hide?

If your megabytes are bulking into gigabytes, take a moment to check that you’re not compensating for something:

Inadequate preparation?
Presenting direct from an unmodified standard slide-deck of a couple of hundred catch-all slides is a sure-fire sign of a presenter who did no more preparation beyond bringing their power chord.

Inadequate confidence?
When in doubt, leave nothing out! Going into battle armed with every single slide you can possibly find is a frequent clue that you don’t know your message.

Inadequate audience understanding?
If you don’t understand the audience, it’s awful hard to meet their needs. The one-size-fits-all maxi-presentation is the inevitable response.

Inadequate product knowledge?
When you don’t know your product, the slides have to do the work for you; after all, you’re relying on them for all the information.

Inadequate skills?
Giant-sized PowerPoints are no compensation for mini-sized skills. Competent presenters tame slide-decks down to manageable proportions. Really skilled presenters hardly use slide-decks at all.

Consistently strip your slide decks down to reveal their messages, or audiences might start stripping you down to reveal what you’re hiding.

Check the amount of talk-time that each slide is giving you. Good working slides will sustain you for at least three minutes of talk-time. As you grow in experience, each slide should be capable of sustaining you for ever longer periods:

• Beginner: Three minutes
• Intermediate: Five minutes
• Pro: Seven minutes
• Über-Pro: Who needs slides?

As your confidence levels develop, try having sections of your presentation where you switch off the slides altogether and talk directly to your audience.

How many PowerPoint slides should you have? As few as possible.

Controlling flashy graphics

by Peter Watts

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!

Handling the question that mustn’t be answered

by Peter Watts

“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