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I have just returned from a camping holiday in Dorset and whilst away I had the delight of lighting and then tending a camp fire every evening.   As I was gazing into the embers one evening it suddenly struck me that there are a number of similarities between lighting a camp fire and developing someone’s presentation or public speaking confidence.

As anyone who has tried to light a fire will know it is not always an easy job.   If the sticks are to thick or too damp, it is difficult to get the fire to take hold.   One has to look for a glowing ember and then feed and nurture it so that it glows brighter and brighter until it eventually bursts into flame.

Bringing out the confidence to speak in front of an audience requires the same approach.  Constructive criticism at too early a stage can have the same effect as putting damp wood on the fire - it puts it out!  Positive reinforcement and praise, on the other hand, fans the embers and causes them to glow brighter.

As a public speaking and presentation skills trainer I have often had to spend time undoing all the “good work” done by others who sought to help by telling their colleagues what they were doing wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that there is a place for constructive criticism but not in the early stages of the novice speakers career.

Why not tell me what you think

I had a fascinating conversation today over lunch which I thought I’d share with you.   I was speaking to a colleague who does a lot of work as a professional master of ceremonies and facilitator at conference and events  Our conversation covered a range of interesting things including voice projection and accents but we happened to stray onto the topic of what makes a great presenter and from there onto the question of can anyone be taught to present well.

After batting the argument back and forth we agreed that, technically at least, almost anyone could be taught to be a reasonably competent and confident presenter .  However  the time and  effort required may well be, in some cases, disproportionately large and in many cases it may make better sense to let a more confident and natural speaker deliver your messages.  In other words we should play to our natural talents rather than trying to become great at everything.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this controversial topic.   Do you agree or disagree post your comments and lets open up a lively debate.

As part of a recent presentation skills coaching programme for a large client, I have been reviewing videos of some of their top directors presenting at a company conference. Some presenters got it right and got great evaluations and others clearly didn’t and,as an external observer the reasons for the latter were clear

• Lack of connection with the audience
• Lack of clear purpose (as perceived by the audience)
• No obvious audience benefit
• Presenting only lists impersonal statistics, facts and figures with no clear structure, point or flow
• Wooden, unexpressive “professional” performances. If the presenter doesn’t appear to care about the subject why on earth should the audience?
• Boring word dense, image scares bullet point slides. Written text is a poor excuse for a visual aid!
• Lack of audience involvement

So if you have a presentation to give in the next few weeks or months what can you do to ensure that you win the audience attention and motivation stakes?

Preparation:

• Have a clear purpose for your presentation. What are you trying to achieve as a result of this speech and what do you want the audience to do at the end of it?
• Establish the relevance of your content to the audience early on in the presentation. What is in it for them? Why should they listen? And don’t forget to tell them early on in your presentation?
• Design your presentation as a story which has a logical flow and emotional content to support it.
• Keep your visual aids clean and simple. Ban the bullet point and have only one idea per slide. Replace those words with an attention getting or emotive photograph. Read presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds if you need some inspiration.

Delivery:

• Avoid reading a script or auto cue. This will reduce eye contact and therefore connection with your audience. It will also make you sound dull, stilted and boring. Spoken English is different from written English. If you must have a script, record your speech first as you would like to say it and then have the recording transcribed.
• Don’t be afraid to show your emotion, Yes it is a business environment but human beings are hard wired to be driven by emotions. If you don’t evoke an emotional response in your audience they will not be motivated to follow your recommendations.
• Use your full vocal range to engage and enthral the audience - Everything from a roar to a sotto Voce whisper is at your disposal. Don’t be afraid of exaggeration in order to stretch your comfort zone and show your passion , enthusiasm or disappointment. Oh yes and don’t forget the power of a well placed silence too.
• Use your body language to reinforce your messages and project confide3nce and the appropriate degree of gravitas. An open upright posture, large open gestures, plenty of facial expression. Make sure that your body is sending out the same messages as your words and voice otherwise your audience won’t believe you.
• Be willing to experiment and accept that as a result you will make a few mistakes along the way. Perfection isn’t connection and your audience will empathise with you if you show that you too are human.
• Be present and in the moment during your presentation. If you are remembering the past or worrying about the future then your mind is not in the here and now and the audience will notice it.

Good luck!

Gavin Meikle
The Internet Presentation Coach

Whether you a presenting to one person or one thousand, the ability to project authority and credibility is crucial.     The question is how do you do it?   

Authority, or “gravitas” as some people call it, is a desirable yet nebulous characteristic that is closely related to charisma.  We all recognise it but are hard put to identify what it is a person says or does that creates it.

Some people undoubtedly have more natural authority than others but I believe that everyone can learn some simple techniques to “turn it on” at will.

Having studied many different presenters I have identified 5 key cues that project a perception of authority and credibility.

1. Eye contact  - Practice making and holding eye contact for up to 5seconds
2. Maximising personal space through stance - Develop an open upright, relaxed stance
3. Head stillness when speaking - High authority figures keep their head still when they speak (helps with eye contact too)
4. Being comfortable and easy with using pauses of varying lengths.  If silence is golden then pauses are “nuggets of gold” to quote my friend Marian Way
5. Eliminating face and hair touching - These mannersims lower your percieved status so learn to eliminate them.

Don’t take my word for it though, test out this by experimenting with these techniques yourself and observe others who you consider to be high credibility speakers and you will see that they are universal.

NB: Lots of people comment on my posts and thus add value to the whole topic so please join them in sharing your views and examples because it will help all of us.

This post was promopted by a comment made by my wife Lyn after an early morning walk today.

It was a beautiful morning here in the South of Hampshire. The sky was just starting to colour up as the sun rose and the air was crisp and fresh. After a few minutes of silent contemplation we started to chat about anything and everything. In particular we gravitated towards talking about what it is that allows people to have the confidence to do amazing things such as present with confidence and conviction.

Self belief kept coming up in our conversation and then Lyn asked “How can we have more belief?”

My first answer surprised me when I said, “Maybe it’s not so much about doing something to havemore belief, but rather its about stopping doing things that erode our self beleif.”

As an example, a colleague I met at a networking event recently said, “the problem with me is that I don’t have sparkle” and so my talks are dull. This sounded to me like a limiting belief and when I asked them how they knew they didn’t have “sparkle” they replied “Somebody told me once, after a talk.”

So, based on the opinion of one person commenting on once example, they had generalised that comment to encompass every possible speaking situation across their whole life. How crazy is that?

Thankfully a few minutes after my response to their answer they suddenly said, “Well actually, I’ve just remembered that the speech I gave when I got married was really good and I got lots of praise for it afterwards.” When I asked them ” Did you sparkle on that occasion?” They said “Yes!” and I could see from the light in their eyes and the change in their expression that they had realised something very valuable.

So next time you put yourself down about your speaking abilities (or anything else for that matter!) remember my friend and his sparkle story. Do a reality check and see if you are really as bad as you think you are? Have you ever had good feedback? Have you ever been pleased with your own performance?

If you want to nurture your confidence one key step is to stop dwelling on your failures and putting yourself down.

Today I had the privilege of meeting up with my great friends and inspirational speakers Richard & Liz.     We talked about all sorts of things to do with success, self development and happiness and as ever, I left with a whole load of exciting new ideas and insights.

I could write several posts on the outcomes of this meeting but I just want to share one with you today.    We were talking about the ability of effective communicators to engage and connect with their audience.   Richard has an uncanny knack of coming up with a pithy, simple statement that is just bursting with meaning.  

Richard made the statement that “perfection isn’t the same as connection” and this got me thinking.   

Many presenters and speakers waste their time trying to create the “perfect” presentation and forget that the key to effective communication is connection not perfection.  In fact perfection tends to get in the way of connection.

Liz demonstrated this with a little story about a story that she heard on a personal; development CD recently.  The “guru” was telling the story of how a lady delegate had come up to him at the end of the break and asked “How can you possibly be happy all the time,”  Surely you must get just a little depressed sometime?”   To which the guru answered “no, I never get down any more.”   The immediate effect of this apparently perfect answer was to create a barrier between the lady and the speaker.   How could she possibly connect with someone who was so perfect!   

No I don’t know about you, but I have yet to meet anyone who is really that perfect.  We all have our down times but that doesn’t make us bad people, it just makes us human.   If we are going to connect with other human beings we need to be able to be authentic and honest.

One of the best ways of achieving connection is to share some of your own “story” with your audience.   And I don’t mean just the good stuff  either.   Let’s be real and by sharing our imperfections  connect with the rest of the human race who have imperfections too.

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!  

A couple of night’s ago I attended my local Toastmasters club and one of the guest’s comments got me thinking….When people come to the club for the first time most are nervous and not a little afraid.

Standing up and speaking in front of a group of strangers can certainly be scary, at least in our own imagination. So where does that fear come from and what are we afraid of?

I wonder what is the worst thing you could possibly imagine happening to you in a presentation? Now imagine that you worst nightmare came true! What would be the real impact?

• Would you die? - Not really!
• You would get the sack? - Unlikely
• Would people laugh at you? Well possibly but most would be sympathetic
• Would they remember you? Yes!
• Would you learn something from the experience? - I hope so.

One of my students once described a situation where she actually fainted in the middle of an important business presentation. She was certainly embarrassed at the time but afterwards, when I asked her what had happened, she said that her boss had been very sympathetic and supportive and so had the client! She still worked for the same company and had learned a lot from the experience. No next time you are fearful of a presentation, ask yourself the following questions;

1. What am I really afraid of?
2. What is the worst thing that could happen?
3. How likely is it to happen in reality?
4. Even if it did happen, would it really be the end of the world?
5. What would you like to have happen instead?
6. What would it look like, sound like and feel like if you gave a positive, confident and well prepared presentation? Hear the applause, feel the good feelings and see yourself successful.

Today being Friday, I’d like to share some practical thoughts on assertive communication. This follows on nicely from yesterdays tip on negotiation skills because, successful negotiators always negotiate in an assertive rather than aggressive or non-assertive manner.

The good news is that Assertiveness is not a personality trait, it is a set of learned behaviours that revolve around our ability to state our wants and feelings openly, whilst respecting the wants and feelings of those we are talking to, even if they differ from ours.

Next week I’,m going to give you some practical tips as to how you can behave more assertively however today I don’t want to put the cart before the horse. Before we look at behaviours, we need to address what drives our behaviours, i.e. our thinking.

In order to use assertive behaviours effectively we need to be thinking assertively first - make sense? By thinking I mean the scenarios we are “seeing” in our minds eye, the dialogues and self talk we are “hearing” in our head, and the mental strategies or programmes we are running.

For example, people who are behaving assertively are not seeing themselves being steamrollered by the other person in the conversation. Nor are they telling themselves “I’m not important.” “I don’t have the right to say no.” or “If I ask for what I want they’ll not like me.”

In my experience, assertive people “see themselves as equals who have certain rights and respect that the others they are dealing with have the same rights too.

• The right to say no.
• The right to change their mind.
• The right to make mistakes.
• The right to express their feelings and opinions honestly.
• The right to disagree or put forward an alternative interpretation.
• The right to choose to be assertive.

So here’s a little exercise to help you with this:

1. Think about a time in the past where you would like to have acted more assertively than you did.
2. Now take a moment to recall what you were thinking just before, and during the exchange.
3. As you recall that thinking now, how did those thoughts make you feel?
4. Notice how these feelings affected your behaviour and influenced you to use non-assertive language, voice tone and body language.
5. Now go back to step two and ask yourself, if I could have re-written my mental script, what could I have thought about myself, the other person or the situation, that would have helped me be more assertive?
6. Now imagine the feelings that you would have felt then, now if you had been thinking these new thoughts? What are you feeling? Whereabouts is that feeling in your body? Notice how it is different from the feelings in step 3.
7. Finally, If you were feeling these new feelings, how would you behave differently? What sort of language would you use? What would your tone of voice sound like? How would you be holding yourself? How much eye contact would you make if you were feeling these new feelings now?

That’s it, experiment with this and let me know how you get on.

The other evening I was watching the BBC Programme on Climate Change, anchored by veteran broadcaster Sir David Attenborough.

Listening to him made me wonder, why is he such successful and authoritative presenter and what can we learn from his style?

Well for me there are two key factors.
Firstly he is authentic - He looks and sounds like he is speaking from the heart. Technically he breaks a few of the “rules” of good presenting yet he gets away with it because his words, his vocal delivery and his non verbal signals (body language), all send the same signals. In other words he is an extremely congruent presenter. If you aren’t feeling passionate about your material it will show through, no matter how good a presentation you have prepared. You’ll need to work on convincing yourself of the importance of your message first before you try to convince your audience.

Secondly he has authority - He looks and sounds like he knows what he is talking about plus, he has an established track record. Now thinking deeper, I started to wonder, how much does he really know about climate change and the complex science behind it? Probably relatively little compared to the experts who wrote his script but how important is that really compared to the fact that he is perceived as an “expert.”

Now Sir David doesn’t have to work hard these days to establish & maintain this status, but he did in the beginning. All good speakers need to establish their credibility at the beginning of their presentation if they want to play the “authority card” to help them present. How good are you at doing this?

Have a great week and remember to post your thoughts/comments on any of my articles.
Gavin