When presenting to an audience of any size, you have seconds to make an impression. A favourable impression means that they will classify your information as relevant and valuable. They will make impression very quickly. You may have not even started on the content. An unfavourable impression means that they will classify your information as useless even if it isn’t. This is an emotional judgement. It is lightning quick.

So, look your best, be well prepared, pause before starting to make sure you are composed. Look at the audience and start emotionally.

Ask them a question about themselves. Who has enough money in their superannuation? Who remembers the last time they were really happy? You will get an emotional response. Even better, start with a story. Instead of saying my name is…. and I work for…. etc.  Start with….. ‘It was a really warm day as I recall. The north wind was blowing very hot. I could smell smoke…..’ You will have them in your hand instead of in your head.

Think of an unusual way to start your next presentation. Wait until you and they are ready and then wait another ten seconds. Every time you present to an audience you build on your presentation skills…. and your reputation.

• Use ‘you’ as the pronoun in the beginning. ‘What you will take away from my brief presentation today is….’ Avoid ‘I’ . ‘What I am going to speak about today is….’
• Relax yourself before you start. Get in a good mood. Soften your face. Be friendly.
• Greet people before you start. Be the reception committee.
• Encourage them to say ‘yes’ in the first few minutes. I am sure we would all like to be better at public speaking wouldn’t we?
• Make sure you are open to enjoying the experience. Look forward to the presentation.
• If you have negative thoughts that cause you to become anxious, let them drift away. They will go back to where they came from as long as you don’t encourage them.
• Dress up a little for the occasion.
• Get there early and survey your surroundings. Stand at the front and practise your opening.
• Make sure you equipment works. Be ready for plan B when it doesn’t work.
• Say to yourself ‘ I deserve to do well today. I have done the work’.
• Just be you.

I recently met someone who was asked to do a second presentation to conclude a multi million dollar deal. The client had got down to the last two providers and wanted a further presentation to make the final decision.

An opportunity or a very stressful situation?

We are all called on to presesent ourselves and our information regularly. It is hard to improve without feedback and external help. A good place to start is to see yourself in action. The next step is to get expert feedback. Final step is practice, practice, practice.

An exciting opportunity to record yourself and get expert feedback is available through an organisation called Presentationgym. See for yourself at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW2FfRDKFqg

Yesterday I saw a presentation with no words. The presenter showed photos which changed every twenty seconds, automatically.
She explained what we were looking at and the audience moved from the picture to her to understand what we were looking at. It was so smooth to hear from her and then hear her comments. The flipping was seamless.

This style is the way to avoid ‘Death by Powerpoint’ and is called Pecha Cucha. In its pure form, it is twenty photos without words which change every twenty seconds. The presenter follows the pictures and provides the words. It can be used for almost any style of presentation from highly informative to motivational. You need to make sure there are no words on the picture.

It also works better if the presenter is not closely scripted. ‘In this picture, you can clearly see….’. It will work best if you use photos that you took yourself as you can personalise the spoken message.‘You can see me in this photo…’.

Try it and move away from ‘Death by Powerpoint’. If the pictures change every twenty seconds, the pace of the presentation will be constant instead of getting stuck with questions along the way. If you need a Q & A segment, make it at the end and ask people to hold the questions for six minutes and forty seconds. Not long to wait. It works beautifully. Try it. There is no magic to the twenty / twenty format. Invent your own.

Regards
Paddy

The original meaning for ‘silly’ was more about enjoyment than looking foolish. You can imagine someone looking at a person having a wonderful time and judging that this person looked foolish or ‘silly’. Silly walks, silly hats, silly answers.

If you are having fun you will look silly to someone. Better to be having fun than being a judgmental voyeur.

Are you having enough fun in your life? What gives you enjoyment? Do you look forward to anything the way you did as a child or has life become serious and mundane?

Here are some activities that I have tried to increase my FQ (Fun quotient).

Visit a magic shop
I visited two magic shops yesterday and bought some hats, a whistle that sounds like a siren, a brick that is really a sponge and a gun that fires soap bubbles. They are all for a conference in Brisbane where I have an audience of over two hundred to educate and entertain.

Take up dancing
My wife and I are attending a dance class for Swing Dancing. It is great fun but we do increase the average age. We are attending with another couple who are close friends and it is a highlight of the week. Something to look forward to.

Develop your sense of humour
I cut out and keep unusual headlines like ‘Iraqi head seeks arms’ or ‘Prostitutes appeal to Pope’. There is enough humour in everyday life if you look closely. Just watching barristers dash around the city in their wigs is comedy enough. I also read humour books often to get new ideas for stories or humour activities. Put up a humour notice board at work and seek contributions.

Your sense of humour and fun is very much a part of who you are. Your sense of humour is your shock absorber and needs to be kept flexible with plenty of play. Watch children if you want to see a natural sense of humour and fun in action. Children laugh around three hundred times a day. Adults around thirty times.

So…find a way to let your sense of fun loose at least once a day and don’t worry about looking silly. Silly is good!

Paddy

FQ, fun quotient, silly, humour

A 1999 study conducted by Sigal Barsade at the Yale School of Management show that cheerfulness and warmth spread easily among working groups whilst irritability caught on less so. It will not surprise you to know that laughter is very contagious. When we hear laughter we find it difficult not to laugh or smile ourselves. Do you recall getting caught up in a spiral of giggles in a group? One starts and others follow. We get caught up because the brain has an open loop circuit that is designed to detect smiles and laughter and respond in kind. Scientists theorise that this dynamic was hardwired long ago because smiles and laughter had a way of cementing alliances and keeping our species alive.

I have read of many experiments to change attitudes to groups of people by forcing contact. If there is no enjoyment in the contact the attitude doesn’t change. It hardens.

The main implication here for us is that we can change the moods of others. The loop is open to outside influence. Be they customers, team members, peers, managers or family members, we can be a major influence in helping others to feel happy.

Some simple ways of doing this are:

• Greet enthusiastically. Don’t tell people how you are. Tell them how you’d like to be. Try some colourful words like: sensational, never been better, enjoying my life!

• Smile. Even if you don’t feel like smiling, others will react to your smile and smile back. You will see their returned genuine smile and react automatically with a genuine smile. Fake can become genuine.

• Shake hands warmly. Physical contact will help people feel better about themselves and about you. Match the strength of their grip and look them in the eye. Soft for soft. Hard for hard.

• Farewell warmly. People will remember the last words you say so make them memorable. ‘Hope to see you again’, ‘Great to see you’, ‘ I have enjoyed speaking to you’.

Humour and laughter spreads quickly to create an upbeat climate. Lose you sense of humour and the world becomes grey. Spread humour and colour returns. Look around you for humour and reasons to be happy. If you woke up this morning you are way ahead of those that didn’t! year.

Paddy

laughter, humour, sense of humour, attitude

Imagine if you threw rose petals at people. At the end of the day your hands would smell like rose petals. On the other hand, what if you threw elephant poo at everyone you met. The magic of positive reinforcement is not well understood. Put very simply, what you reinforce is what you get more of. If you acknowledge and reinforce behaviour it is likely to be repeated.

There are two ways of reinforcing behaviour. Oh by the way, positive reinforcement is anything you say or do that the other person takes as positive reinforcement. It needs to be as close to the performance as possible.

Back to two ways of reinforcing behaviour. Positive reinforcement follows the performance – it can be a simple ‘thank you’, a gift, a note. The person is encouraged to repeat the performance. You noticed and you showed that you noticed.

Negative reinforcement also works.The person repeats the performance to avoid getting another negative reinforcement from you.This doesn’t work as well as the positive. They may only repeat the performance when you are around and they will only do enough to stay out of your bad books.

If you ignore good behaviour and only notice poor behaviour you run the risk of seeing the good behaviour disappear because it is not being noticed and seeing the poor behaviour reduced ‘when you are present’.

Have you noticed how careful people drive when they see a speed camera? No incentive to drive well, only punishment if you don’t. Same with seat belts. There is an immediate negative reinforcement- you need to take time to settle in and your clothing gets crumpled. The positive is in the future… if you have an accident. The negative is now and certain.

So… let’s get started on using positive reinforcement. Look for opportunities to apply positive reinforcement. When people behave well, comment immediately. Make your comment positive and as close to the performance as possible. Ignore poor behaviour, if you can, and wait for any movement in the right direction. Acknowledge and reinforce any approximations towards good performance.

Do you want your hands to smell like roses or elephant poo?

If you have any stories about the effectiveness of positive reinforcement, please send them to me. My most recent example was at a hotel. As I finished signing my name, the person at the desk commented ‘ lovely handwriting’. You won’t believe the care I took when signing for my meals.

Paddy

hand smell, elephant poo, smell like roses, good behaviour, bad behaviour

Do you ever find yourself say ‘um’ when speaking to a group. Some people use the filler ‘um’ as if it was a real word. It is just as loud and just as frequent as any other important word. Getting rid of ‘um’ is impossibly difficult as focusing on the ‘um’ will provoke it to stay longer. If you focus on getting rid of it, you will still be focusing on it and giving it too much attention.

The secret is to replace the ‘um’ with a pause. It really is a pause filler that is supposed to make you sound well informed. Gaps are filled with nonsense sounds in case people think that gaps indicate uncertainty or ignorance. In fact, a pause can make you sound very reflective and learned. If you pause before answering a question, providing you look like you are mulling over the best way to answer, you will look and sound well informed.

So remember… put more pauses in your speaking instead of nonsense sounds like ‘um’ and ‘er’ and ‘y’know’ and ‘kinda’. Replace the nonsense sounds with meaningful silence. If you are relaxed, a long pause at the start of speech will have the audience on the edge of their seats with anticipation.

pause, speaking nerves, um, er, speaking

Some years ago I heard a speaker advise the audience to identify the colour of a person’s eyes when first meeting. Of course, the colour doesn’t matter but if we are focused on someone’s eyes when we first meet, we will be giving them our full attention which will have a very positive impact.

My wife and I recently attended a sales evening for time share and it was very obvious that few of the sales people looked at the audience except for glances. The impression they gave was of passing interest not real interest. You will notice when people look closely at your eyes. You will certainly notice when they don’t.

So here is a very useful exercise that will improve your listening skills and help you build rapport very quickly with everyone you meet.

For the next day, look closely at people’s eyes and identify the colour of their irises. It is especially important that you do this as you are first meeting them. Really look deeply into the colour and see how it varies from the outside to the inside of the iris.

eye language, listening skills, building rapport, positive impact

I recently went to a conference where several speakers started with the usual personal details. ‘My name is …and I have done a lot in my life etc’. You know the stuff.

One speaker didn’t start with this predictable opening. This speaker started with a story about the courage of two people who started a company from a garage in 1976. It was a very different opening and had me wondering from the first words.

The other thing I noticed was that the speaker avoided using the personal pronoun ‘I’ and spoke in the present tense. The focus was on the story and the audience.  He  says to his partner ‘We need a marketing manager’. His partner replied’ What about the Marketing Manager of a large multi national company like Pepsi?’

Towards the end of the story, the speaker drew us into the story with the use of ‘You’. ‘What you can learn from such a story is that you need to believe in yourself’.

The lesson I learned was the powerful use of story to get a presentation  or conversation started and the importance of using ‘You’ to focus on the other person and their needs.

The company is Apple.