Silence is a golden UMM

I've just returned from a 7 day conference, of which I spent a great deal of time observing peoples reaction in the lift of all places. Sounds strange, but why do people feel that they have to crack a joke, say something obvious, or just be awkward when it comes to sharing a space with someone in the small confines of a lift. We all feel like we need to add some noise when it comes to silence, some say ahh, others umm, or in the case of a lift, something even more bizzarre. Even professionals are'nt immune to this deadly virus, I witnessed a professional TV presenter crumble under the pressure of a failed satellite link with lots of umms and ahhs as she tried to regain her composure in front of the cameras.

So back to the lift, why do we feel a need to fill in voids of silence? are we not confident or comfortable with silence, or is it the confines of a small space that makes us react strangely - although this doesnt happen on the tube at all which is far more crowded and impersonal!

Should you be giving handouts?

Handouts have two roles in a presentation, the first is to reinforce the learning points in more detail, for example, if you need to present data that is too detailed for the slides, and secondly, to provide a summary of the whole presentation for those arriving late, didnt attend or need to communicate the key messages to secondary audiences. Presentation handouts are not copies of the slides, this is the lazy presenters version of handouts, and correctly designed slides will make little sense without the verbal input of the presenter.

A word of caution, as soon as you hand out any form of written material, the audience will automatically skim through it to the end eliminating any effect your hard hitting conclusion or startling statistics that you may have had. Hand them out at an appropriate time, either during or at the end to help alleviate this.

Presentation anxiety, friend or foe

Simply put, some anxiety is good. It's only bad when you are so nervous that its visible to the audience and prevents you from communicating clearly. All good presenters suffer from some level of anxiety, even if it doesnt show, I guarantee you that they are anxious inside before a big talk. And lets face it, we value our pride, dignity and the respect of the audience, and what we really fear is failing before an audience in any shape or form. When I ask my students what they fear, the list is fairly predictable, forgetting lines, being boring, equipment failure or even being regarded as a fraud! But the good news is, our fears rarely see the light of day and even less so if you prepare. So, research your audience, minimise the failure of equipment by testing everything and having backups, understand your topic thoroughly and REHEARSE, and your anxiety will be kept to a minimum.

Humour - use it or not?

I've been pondering over a challenge from one of my students all week which is humour, do you use it in presentations or not. My stance is if you are going to use it, use it in moderation, make fun of yourself and no one else, and dont tell jokes, leave that to comedians. However, my dilemma lies in the fact that some people are jovial and funny all of the time, so their style is to be funny which contravenes my rule. My fallback position is if you are naturally funny be yourself, but only, and ONLY if you know the audience, if the audience is new and unknown, they are more likely to respond positively if you inject that humour, slowly and casually, let them get used to the funny you.

Tips on effective presentations

I've just spent the weekend looking at videos of presenters on YouTube, and have to say that I'm not overly impressed with the hype that many so called professionals make when it comes to effective presentations. Many of these presentations claim a magic formula or system to make your an effective presenter, 1'000 tips, secrets of success, this seminar will change your life forever and on and on. What all these hype merchants have in common is they all want to make money by mistyfying a subject that many people are anxious about and offering a get cured fast scheme to all those people who want to present more effectively.

My conclusion is that these people are no different that the snake oil sellers of the past, there is no magic bullet, good practice yes, robust methodology definately, guaranteed results, never.

So, what am I going to do about it? well I'm going to deflate these snake oil salesmens balloons by publishing some video lessons on my blog and YouTube shortly, for free with no strings attached. These lessons will be frequent and cover all aspects of presenting from anxiety through to Powerpoint, so bookmark this blog, and lets move great presentation skills up a notch.

Effective presentations - the devil is in the detail

People often forget that audiences are generally very perceptive, and will notice and pick up any fault or thing that just seems out of place. This could be as simple as unpolished shoes, misaligned graphics on your slide or simply clutter in the front of the room which isnt part of your presentation. So why is this a big deal?, well audiences have a habit of putting two and two together to make five, with subliminal conversations going like 'he has scuffed shoes, he cant be doing that well, or he doesnt care about his appearance, if he doesnt care or not doing well then surely system x must also be a losing system that is poorly constructed, and so I wont buy it'. Sounds a bit elaborate, but these conversations happen all the time in the audiences minds, so look carefully at what makes up your environment, and change it for the better.

The language of leadership

Sitting at my desk starring at the vast array of how to write compelling books in front of me I ask myself what exactly is the secret recipe?

An old student of mine Al Barrantine recently sent me his thesis on corporate social responsibility, his summation was brilliant, 'it should be renamed, just do the right thing'. It struck accord with me because so many terms and models exists to feed fat consultants whose role is to make small problems into huge projects, when all along the solution is simple 'just do the right thing' or in our case 'do what feels right for you'.

You can easily break down great speeches from the past and examine how they did it, the language and structure they used, but what is important is context, mis-interpret the audiences needs and you will fail every time.

I heard a funny story the other day from a BT engineer, who asked me what I did for a living; he quoted a presentation delivered by a senior BT manager to field engineers on the way forward. Sadly this senior manager had just returned from presentation bootcamp and proceeded to deliver what sounded like a Churchillian speech, rallying the troops into action in the face of great adversary. Sadly it failed miserably, the senior manager lost all credibility and quickly got moved to another division.

So the language of leadership, in a sentance, keep it simple, understand your audience, without followers you cant be a leader no matter how great your presentation is.