When you start to think about your presentation – what to say, how to say it, the dynamics of your words, movement and body language — does it all seem like chaos? Let's examine a few ideas to help you create an effective presentation.
For an effective presentation, you need to face your own "Chaos Monster" and create order out of chaos. You need a structure.
Make it simple. Start with three basic parts: Open with silence and a deep breath. Build tension in the room. Then deliberately shatter the calm with an opening that demands the audience's attention. Use "a hook" and deliver that hook with dramatic voice, gesture and technique.
The Body of your presentation will tell your audience what's important. What is your point? How do you support it? Use particular techniques, which may include voice, metaphors, visual aids, humor and more to lead your audience and to keep them interested.
Finally, the Conclusion. Wrap up your presentation. Let the audience know you're done. With vocal inflection, with authority and certainty – make them positive that your presentation is completed.
More About Structuring a Presentation>>
Introduction to The Henderson Group video >>
Feedback is a terrific tool that can bring greater awareness to our communication. It can also carry intense internal conflict when the picture we have of ourselves clashes with how we are perceived by others.
1. Develop your inner observer by noticing your reactions to feedback.
2. Resist the powerful urge to explain yourself.
3. Become a sponge. Simply absorb it all.
4. Work to accept the feedback as possibly correct. Use the 1% rule.
Feedback provides an excellent springboard for improving skills and gaining new insight IF we can abate the ego's natural tendency to defend itself. Read More >>
Perusing Craig Senior's excellent blog on presentation and public speaking, I found this video.
Often referred to as one of the greatest speeches of all time, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech is remarkable in many respects. King was a master of speech and the classic art of rhetoric.
Here are a few of the speech's many outstanding elements:
A) Research
It was well-researched with references to the Bible, The Gettysburg Address and the US Declaration of Independence.
B) A compelling opening
He opens with, "Five score years ago" – a direct reference to The Gettysburg Address.
B) Repetition of themes
The repetition of a series of themes:
1) "Now is the time"
2) "When will you be satisfied?"
3) Finally, "I have a dream"
C) Powerful use of poetic metaphor
1) "But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice."
2) "we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."
3) "The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges."
4) "the red hills of Georgia" hints at blood, pain and sacrifice.
5) "Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression"
D) Use of alliteration
Which is the repetition of consonants.
1) "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence …"
2) "…they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." (Say it aloud and enjoy the strong percussive sound of the Cs.)
3) "We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating 'for whites only.'"
E) Passionate non-verbal delivery
The energetic, passionate and rhythmic, musical quality of his delivery building to a powerful concluding crescendo. This provides a moving and satisfying emotional drive to the speech.
F) A powerful conclusion
"When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
There is a terrific analysis of the speech here.
[Rhetoric] is “that art or talent by which discourse is adapted to its end. The four ends of discourse are to enlighten the understanding, please the imagination, move the passion, and influence the will.” — George Campbell
Dialogue has been in the news of late concerning the violent clash between Tibet and China:
The Dalai Lama has recently affirmed, “It is my sincere belief that if the concerned parties were to meet and discuss their future with an open mind and a sincere desire to find a satisfactory and just solution, a breakthrough could be achieved. We must all exert ourselves to be reasonable and wise, and to meet in a spirit of frankness and understanding.”
Britain, along with other Western countries, will use this year’s Beijing Olympics to put measured diplomatic pressure on the Chinese Government. Continued violence in Tibet will add to calls for Western nations to boycott the opening ceremony at the Games, or even the whole event.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown told MPs: “I made it absolutely clear that there had to be an end to violence in Tibet. I also called for restraint, and I called for an end to the violence by dialogue between the different parties.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Beijing since a deadly March 14 anti-government riot in the Tibetan capital, said he appealed to Chinese leaders to engage their critics. "I expressed our concerns about the violence and urged a peaceful resolution through dialogue." Paulson said.
With less than five months before the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, China's sharp criticism of the foreign news media comes precisely when China wants to present a welcoming impression to the outside world. Chinese officials have blasted the foreign media as biased against China, castigated the Dalai Lama as a terrorist "jackal" and called for a "People's War" to fight separatism in Tibet.
"The language they are using about everything has been Cultural Revolution hyperbole," said Susan Shirk, a former assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs and author of "China: Fragile Superpower." "This does not look like the reaction of a strong, confident leadership."
What can we recognize about dialogue from these headlines? If your trust diminishes along with your patience and good will, you are likely in discussion. Discussion is about being "right", appearing "strong". Dialogue has the potential to convert detractors into supporters and conflict into consensus.
The profound efficacy of dialogue requires much of us:
- Listening more deeply and for longer periods of time.
- Inquiring of others and paraphrasing their ideas when every cell in your body wants to attack, defend or explain.
- Becoming aware of your mind drifting and repeatedly returning it to the topic at hand.
- Examining our thoughts and separating assumptions from facts.
Whenever your conversation tends toward a discussion, where positions harden and frustration flares, turn the conversation around by asking questions.
Instead of making statements about what we believe, begin asking questions about what others believe. This is in accord with a principle articulated by Saint Francis and popularized by Stephen Covey:
“Seek first to understand; and then to be understood.”
When I attack your position and repeat my own, I strengthen your attachment to your position. When I ask you about your position in a spirit of inquiry, however, and empathically paraphrase what you say, you tend to hold your viewpoint more gently. You are more open to other perspectives, increasing the shared potential for influence and understanding.
Who doesn’t love a story?! Whether it’s ours or theirs, fiction or non-fiction? Who doesn’t want to be drawn in and captivated?
From the days of humans exchanging tales around a flickering cave fire to watching today’s widescreen TV, storytelling as a way of embellishing or improvising an event is an art that will always be with us. Ancient times as well as our current high-tech times have provided stories which educate, entertain, convey information, put forth the morals of a particular culture and more.
Powerful personal stories increase the impact of any presentation. Include a story in your speech, your meeting, your one-on-one and you will capture their interest and help clarify your message. Add the drama of a personal story, including a difficulty you have overcome.
Don’t relate a personal success but illustrate a struggle. Everyone can relate to a struggle.Give your story characters, thereby giving the story life which will reel in your audience and help them relate to you on a deeper level.
Learn the elements of effective stories and how to create a story. It’s the best way to create an effective and powerful presentation.
Learn More >>
Below, Professor Brian Sturm of the UNC at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science presents storytelling as a way of organizing information, conveying emotion and building community. Though his presentation skills need work, the points he makes in his lecture are useful.
How do you prove to a speaker that you are really listening to what they are saying? Paraphrase in a way that captures “the essence” of all major points the speaker makes. Use the speakers’ key words.
Work on making sure that your tone of voice, gestures and energy level are commensurate with the speaker’s. If you restate the speaker’s words in a dispassionate and detached tonality, you have not empathically paraphrased. Listen to the speaker’s emotions, sentiments and desires, then pitch your voice and use your face and gesture in a manner that reflects understanding of the speaker’s emotive state.
Subtractive: The most common way in which your paraphrase will be inaccurate: all the speaker’s key ideas are not captured. That is, the paraphrase has subtracted some of what was said. The speaker says, “I am concerned about A, B & C.” The paraphraser says, “You are concerned about A & B.”
Additive: The next most likely way in which your paraphrase will be inaccurate: we hear what we want to hear and focus on our own ideas. We then add statements that the speaker did not make. The speaker: “I am concerned about A, B & C.” The paraphraser says, “You are concerned about A, B, C, L, & R.”
Interpretive: Instead of paraphrasing what was said you offer your interpretation of what you believe the speaker meant to say. You hear A, B & C and say “I have the impression that what you are really talking about is G.”
Your empathic paraphrase is fully interchangeable when the speaker feels you have captured his thoughts and sentiments exactly. It often coincides with an excited burst of energy or an enthusiastic, “Yes!” When Should I Paraphrase? >>
Below, Jacob Needleman, author and professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University, argues that the act of listening is a critical step in the development of a personal morality. He's describing the use of Empathic Paraphrasing and "how hard that is." It is the hardest skill we teach AND the single most important.
We present to shift the audience's perspective. We want to sell…we want to educate…we want to motivate. None of this can happen until you awaken your audience and get their attention.
How to awaken your audience:
- Be Specific
- Be Surprising
- Be Still
- Be Subversive
When the audience knows what you are about to say, or how you are about to say it, they're ahead of you. Gradually their minds move on to something else.
This video was sent to me by my meditation teacher. It's a talk by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor. Having a stroke the thought hits her, "This is so cool."
As the caption reads on the TED Talks page:
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.
From a public speaking / presentation skills standpoint:
- Dr. Taylor uses movement extremely effectively.
- Her use of a very surprising prop may shock you but will certainly compell you to pay attention.
- Her expressive (though thin and reedy) voice expresses her emotional journey very effectively.
- She also demonstrates great humor, vulnerability, and passion.
She also offers her personal and scientific observations about how the two halves of the brain function:
- She uses an ineresting metaphor comparing the Right to a Parallel Processor and the Left to a Serial Processor.
She says that the Right:
- Is concerned with This Present Moment.
- Thinks in pictures.
- Learns kinesthetically.
- Unites and connects us with others.
Meanwhile, the Left:
- Thinks linearly and methodically.
- Is focused on the past and the future.
- Picks out details, categorizes and organizes.
- Thinks in language.
- Is the voice that says, "I am" and, hence, separates us from others.
It's a compelling and powerful story – well worth watching. BTW, this is an 18 minute video and it takes awhile to load. Or you can go directly to the TED Talk video here.
One client approached me during a workshop and asked, "Terry, you are telling me to demonstrate more power and authority with greater volume AND you are telling me to be authentic. That feels like a contradiction to me. Can you help me with that?"
Having heard variations of this question over the years, I felt that I had a breakthrough in articulating my meaning that particular day. I asked him, "If the desire to demonstrate greater power comes from deep inside you, and the realization of that in your style requires that you change, what could be more authentic than that?"
The question that I put to clients and to workshop participants is not, "What is your style?" as "What do you want your style to be?" Not, "Who are you?" but "Who do you want to be?"
Recently, I was introduced to Carol Dweck’s book, "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success". I recommend it very highly. Dweck is a psychologist who has taught both at Columbia and Stanford Universities.
Her central thesis is that there are 2 basic mindsets that people operate from:
- The Fixed Mindset
- The Growth Mindset
For more on how mindset relates to communication style click here >>
Below, Carol Dweck speaks about The Fixed and Growth Mindsets.
How customers view you or your products is garnered by a framework of assumptions, stories and images in their minds.
If you really want to influence someone, your first task is to understand how they think. An individual’s perspective on the world can be identified and “mapped.”
A model for asking questions:
Step 1. Neutral Prompts
Step 2. Define the Universe with Wide Questions
Step 3. Prioritizing Issues with Priority Questions
Step 4. Pursue Detail with Deep Questions
More About The Discovery Process In Business >>
Below, Toastmaster Trey Gramann gives a thoughtful and humorous speech entitled "A Map for the Soul."
