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As Christmas approaches I’m hanging up my keyboard for a few days and looking forward to a relaxing break.  I just want to wish everyone a wonderful Christmas.   I hope that whatever you are doing over the holidays you have lots of fun and get a well deserved break.

2008 will be here before we know it and I am already looking forward to another amazing year helping people like you build your confidence and develop your presentation abilities. 

See you in the new year.

Gavin 

Tonight, after the regular Toastmasters meeting, a few of us met in the pub for a pre-Christmas drink and an expected turn in the conversation led me to my topic of this post.  It’s all about how you can use your presenting space as a metaphor  for some of the concepts you are conveying verbally.

Imagine for a moment that in your speech you are going to be talking about three time frames.  Let’s say that you are going to start talking about the past, when you will explain a little about the history of the project you are presenting on and how it got started. Then you will talk about the present day status of the project and what sort of results it is already delivering  before finally talking about the future and the exciting new developments of this project just around the corner.

One way you could use your presenting space is to use three different areas of the ’stage’ to talk about each of the three areas.   Let’s say you you decided to stand at the left hand side when speaking about the past, the centre when talking present, and the right hand side when talking about the future.   If you set up these spaces as triggers or anchors in your introduction, whenever you walk to that area of the floor, your audience will immediately and probably without being aware why, shift their focus and know the context of your words before you even start to speak.

There are lots more ways in which you can use this principle to great effect but I’ll keep those for another post.  In the meantime here are a couple of ideas to help you understand this concept.   Firstly, whenever you are looking at a professional speaker or presenter, look out for them using this technique and see how well it can work.   Secondly, why not try it out yourself.

Have fun and keep on raising your game, your audiences will thank you for it and it’ll pay dividends for you in all sorts of ways.

Gavin

At the end of November I posted an article on how to use mind mapping to help develop your presentations.  The example I showed used a piece of software called  MindManager.   In this post I want to discuss my first thoughts on FreeMind, a free Open Source mind mapping application.

 I have been a mind mapper since the mid ’80’s and to be frank, I don’t know how I would have survived without this powerful technique however, mind mapping on paper does have it’s downsides.  

• Unless you have really need handwriting (who does these days?) It’s difficult for anyone else to read your maps
• If you want to revise a hand drawn map, you need to re draw it all, wasting time we feel we rarely have.
• If you want to share your maps with anyone electronically, you need to scan them in as image files.

What we really needed was software that would allow us to retain the creative, organic map development process whilst adding in the ability to edit, drag and drop, recolour, email etc.     Thankfully a program called MindManager came a long that allowed us to do all that and over the years it has been refined and improved until it is a powerful, feature rich productivity tool that allows us to integrate our maps with multiple MS Office Applications.   The problem is that such sophistication comes with a hefty price tag these days. MindManager 7, the latest incarnation costs between £49 of the Lite version and £199 for the bells and whistles Pro version.

Thankfully there are other alternatives out there and one of them at least is free!   I’m talking about FreeMind, a Java based application that can be downloaded from the net.  Now when one of my readers suggested that I take a look at FreeMind, frankly I was sceptical.   I vaguely remembered trying it when it first appeared and, used to the power and flexibility of MindManager, being mightily disappointed with the new pretender.  

Still, never one to turn down a challenge, I brushed aside my prejudices and took another look and I have to say, after spending a little time becoming familiar with the inevitably different control layout and somewhat quirky terminology, I’m quite impressed with this little freebie.

As you can see from the attached image,  One can do quite a lot with FreeMind.  As well as creating basic “radiant thought” maps, you can change the branch colours and branch thickness’s, add icons and images, hide sub branches and create hyperlinks!.   And that’s just the features I’ve been able to discover in a few minutes playing.

So in conclusion, whilst FreeMind doesn’t have the elegance or power of MindManager, it does  offer a lot for free and you can even import Mind Manager Maps into FreeMind too.  So if you are interested in this powerful technique, take a look at FreeMind - it’s a nice little programme to get you started and for many, it may be all you’ll ever need.

P.s. if you are a Mind Manager user and you want training on how to get the most of MindManager 7, I suggest you contact my friend Andew who offers 1:1 online tutorials

I’ve recently updated and revamped my first e-booklet.   

If you would like your own personal copy of this little booklet full of  proven techniques to improve your presentations and you haven’t already got one, then all you have to do is visit www.reluctantpresenter.com and sign up now!

It covers planning, preparing and delivering persausive presentations, and is the first ina series.   If you tell me what other areas of presenting you would like me to cover you could win a free presentation evaluation. 

 Sign up today and start to reap the benefits immediately

Recently my Google alerts filter has been flagging up lots of posts about the update the online presentation application Zoho Show so I took a look on your behalf and I have to report that not only is this application  a big improvement on the disappointing Google apps equivalent, it is a real alternative if you are presenting from places with a reliable high speed broadband connection.

As somebody who believes passionately in the power of presentation, I was hoping that those clever boffins at Zoho would have learned from all the feedback and research and aimed to create something better than PowerPoint. 
In other words, a piece of software that doesn’t just encourage you to create yet more boring, wordy, bullet point slides and in some ways they have stepped up to the mark whilst in others they still have a way to go.

1) Point one is that Zoho Show allows you to upload your own images quickly and easily, something those of you who watched my recent video blog , will understand I consider to be a must have feature! 

2) On the downside they have provided some built in clip art that is truly awful!  We live in a media rich society and clip art doesn’t cut it any more - Trust me!  If this is supposed to be a serious business tool guys don’t encourage people to use this sort of clipart please

3) Zoho allows users to upload and import a well designed PowerPoint presentation to Zoho Show, but beware. It’s not guaranteed that it will come out looking as good as your original!  I tried one of mine and, whilst some slides were fine, others suffered from text formatting problems and a loss of sharpness.

So, there you have it. Not an exhaustive review but a quick look which hopefully will save you wasting time yourself.  Is Zoho Show a world beater?  Not yet!  Is it worth a look? Yes!

Watch this space and I’ll let you know of further enhancements as it develops, this is certainly an application to keep your eyes on.

Once you get a bit of confidence under your belt it’s all too easy to think that you don’t need to practice …

A friend of mine is an examiner for the Institute of Advanced Motorists in his spare time.   He helps experienced drivers polish their skills  and unlearn some of the bad habits they inevitably pick up once they have passed their test.   Talking to him one day got me thinking about the thought that maybe we need the equivalent organisation for presenters so I did some searching on the web and discovered Toastmasters International.

Toastmasters is an international public speaking club that operates locally throughout the world and it gives both new and experienced speakers the opportunity to practice their speaking skills in a friendly supportive environment with lots of positive feedback (see by previous post!)

For more information about toastmasters in the UK visit the district 71 site

My own local club is Solent Speakers based in Fareham

For information about toastmasters in other parts of the world visit www.toastmasters.org

I’ve been training presentation and public speaking skills for more than ten years now and today I’d like to share one thing I learned which has had the biggest single impact on the results I get.   If you are curious to know what it it, then read on.

I still remember the first bit of feedback I got when I stood up to give a talk.   The giver, no doubt intending to be helpful told me that I had said “um” 42 times in my three minute talk.   It’s all too easy to be critical but the question is, does giving critical feedback work?  Does it have the desired effect of improving performance and changing behaviour?   I’ve been a manager and a trainer for more than 20 years and I have learned the hard way that most critical feedback, no matter how well meant, has the opposite effect.  

Why should this be?   Well I’d like you first to follow the instructions in the following statement.

What ever you do, - Do not think of a purple elephant!   Under no circumstances should you think of a purple elephant!

So what happened?  Of course you couldn’t do anything else but imagine a purple pachyderm.   It’s the way or mind works, we cannot not think of something.   Our attention inevitably goes to the thing that is unwanted or forbidden.  

Now imagine you say to someone, “don’t keep saying um.  You have a habit of saying it at the end of every sentence and you must stop saying um if you are to improve.”   Immediately your attention is drawn to the very thing that you don’t want to do as an a result you do more of it!      “Energy flows where attention goes”

Now imagine i said to you this instead. “I want you to concentrate on saying nothing at the end of every sentence.  Put a pause in, as you think of the next thing you are going to say.”   Now notice what you focus on.

But there is more to it than this.   Critical feedback hurts! 

When I started teaching presentation skills I used to give lots of “constructive” feedback which inevitably meant pointing out things that people were doing wrong.    No matter how sensitively I gave this feedback, I could see the pain in the eyes of my students and despite their accepting nods, Is till saw the same unwanted behaviours repeated time after time.

 And then I went to America for an NLP trainers workshop. During those long hard three weeks we would all be expected to give lots of presentations but a the beginning of the course, Robert Dilts our tutor introduced the concept of “Positive Feedback Only”  He challenged us to focus on commenting solely on what we liked about the presenters delivery, structure or visual aids and other than that to phrase or suggestions for improvement in terms of  “what presenter could do more of that would make his talk even better”.

Initially we were all sceptical about this approach but we quickly discovered that it has a hauge impact on the presenter and people improved far faster than using traditional critical feedback techniques.  

When I got back from the States I incorporated this approach into my own one day workshops and the impact was huge!   The degree of improvement I started seeing over a day was at least 25% greater than previously.   So if you need some help with your presenting here are some suggestions to help you get the most change in the shortest possible time;

• Tell your audiences to keep any negative feedback to themselves but that you will be delighted to receive any amount of positive feedback.  My good friend Richard Wilkins does this at the start of every talk and it works a treat as well as getting a good laugh and lots of nods of agreement.
• Encourage others to confine their feedback to two areas - What specifically did I do that you liked or that worked?  What could I do more of that would make it even better.
• If you are looking for a trainer or coach, ask them how they give  feedback.  If the tell you that they will spend any more than 5% of the time telling you what you are doing wrong - walk away!  

Whether you are speaking one to one woth a prospective customer or one to many in the form of a group sales presentation you need to learn how to change their state…

By state I mean the the combination of thinking, emotion and physiology that characterises how we are at any given moment of time.  States are often given labels like fearful, sceptical, curious, excited etc.  Every good presenter and influencer, consciously or unconsciously takes their audience on a journey from a starting state to a desired state. 

So for instance if you know that you audience are initially sceptical about your idea, proposal or product, they won’t buy if they remain sceptical throughout the pitch.   You need to get them to a more resourceful state if they are going to say “Yes!”

If you feel that you need to get them from suspicious to enthusiastic before they will buy, that it quite a big change.   The likelyhood is that you may need to lead them through a number of intermediate statges in order to get to enthusiastic.

For example

1. Suspicious (starting state)
2. Curious
3. Interested
4. Open
5. Enthusiastic (desired state)

So far so good but how do you lead them on this journey?  Well there are a number of ways you can change an audiences state.  I’m sure you can think of lots yourself if you set your mind to it but here are a few to get you going.

• Model the state yourself  (if you want them to be curious at a certain point then you need to look and sound curious too)
• Get them to remember a time or a situation when they would naturally have been feeling the state you want them to feel now.  (I’m sure you can remember as a child seeing something interesting for the first time and wondering what it was and how it worked) Have I made you curious?
• Tell a story or give an example where the protagonist in the story demonstrates the state you want your audience to feel now.

Hi again

As you a reader of this blog, I assume that you enjoy finding interesting and thought provoking articles online.  Well I’ve just discovered a new service called RSSHugger which aims to help put blog readers in touch with bloggers who write about the topics they are interested in.   Take a look a their site and let me know what you think.

Gavin