What is this blog about?
At all about presentations I discuss everything related to making presentations. How to create meaningful content, how to prepare well, how to design slides and how to deliver confidently.
How about putting the audience in the driver's seat? Hand them the remote and let them choose the flow and content of your presentation. It would be the pinnacle of audience engagement, the epitome of customization. What I call "User-Controlled Presentations." A democratic presentation which is of the audience, for the audience & now by the audience.
A User-Controlled Presentation (UCP) is where every step is decided by the audience. From what they want to know to the order in which they want to know it.
You can use this style in any presentation you make. Some of the cases when I recommend this are: - the topics are so many that you don't know what to keep and what to remove (so you come with everything and let the audience decide),
- you want to take the audience by surprise, or
- you want to generate interest in a boring presentation
How does it work?
Let's take an example. A review presentation in office to showcase what you have done in the last month. You start with briefing the superior and then you put up this slide:
No this is not just an agenda slide. This is the dashboard of the UCP (User-Controlled Presentation). Each square corresponds to a topic. You start by asking the superior what he would like to discuss first. He chooses 'Problems'. Using hyperlink you go to the slides under Problems and then come back to the dashboard. He then choses 'Tasks Done'. You click on the box, present the content and come back to the dashboard and ask your superior again. Simple isn't it.
In a UCP, the audience decides the order of the presentation. In case of paucity of time, this method allows the presenter to present what the audience feels as priority. Makes a lot of sense. You can always at the end give away handouts which summarizes everything that you had on the slides. This method lets you discover what's priority for the audience.
In my next post on Feb 28, we shall discuss ways of making such a presentation. In the meantime, what are the questions that are coming to your mind? Where can you possibly use this style of presenting? What are the problems you foresee. Leave a comment.
Once a presenter asked me, "When should I use animation?" It was a presentation where he was proposing a relaxation of rules set by a government agency. I replied, "use it when you make your most important point."
I do not recommend much animation in business presentations. Some people think animation is silly and do not use it at all. Some use it so much that it becomes irritating. Point after point made with all kinds of animations. The right choice lies somewhere in the middle. Use it if your presentation needs it. Use it when you make the most important point.
How do you decide when to use animation?
Animation is a powerful tool. It brings your presentation to life. When slides after slides are static, animation comes in to break the monotony. It draws the attention of the audience and gets your point across very effectively. You should use animation when:
1. You want to draw the audience attention to an important point
2. You want to explain a complicated process
3. You want to share information in a phased manner
1. You want to draw the audience attention to an important point
You are presenting to investors that your company's sales grew the fastest last year when compared to competition. Assume this is one of your most important points. You show a graph with sales growth of all companies. At the end, you click and your bar graph goes shooting past the rest. Nails the point in the head of the audience vividly.
Use animation to make your most important points. Think of animation as your secret weapon. A weapon which you can only use a few times. Use it judiciously.
2. You want to explain a complicated process
You are explaining how steel is manufactured or how photosynthesis takes place. These are processes which have multiple steps. Use animation to show each process one after the other. After you are done, the entire process is there on one slide for all to see.
3. You want to share information in a phased manner
You want to share a lot of information but do not want to show all the points on a slide at once. You can then use animation to order bullet points. Do not use multiple animation effects (stick to one) and use something subtle.
Some words of caution:
1. Do not use animation in every slide
The very reason animation is used is to break the monotony and attract attention. If your animation comes again and again, its just adds to the monotony. Too much animation diverts audience attention from content to design. Use animation on very few occasions.
2. Do not use all types of effects
Use simple effects like fade, expand, compress, ascend, descend depending on suitability. Do not use all the effects in one presentation. A presentation should ideally have one or two types of effects.
How often do you use animation in formal presentations? What is your favorite effect? Leave a comment.
Olivia Mitchell in her post talks about how speaking can enhance your career. Perception is reality, hence a better speaker is considered a better leader and that takes you up the corporate ladder faster. I agree with this. If you talk well and present your ideas better, you will move up in life a lot faster.
What should people do then?
If you speak less in meetings because you think you might be interrupting / dominating or want to speak only when you can add value, it's time to change. Here are some of the tips she offers to increase what Olivia calls your "speak-up" rate:
1. Let go of perfection in your speech. Talks what comes to mind.
2. Set a goal for how many times you want to talk in a meeting.
3. Support what others say.
4. Don't shy away from interrupting other people.
Jan Shultink offers an interesting tip in his blog 'Slides that Stick'. Check out how you can get your point across in a very different manner. You can use this tip to highlight something really important. Check out his blog for other interesting stuff.
What have you been reading on presentations this week?
What is the most important thing in a presentation?The content, the delivery or the design (the slides).
Have you ever pondered over this question before starting to make a presentation? Let's take an example. You are a business development manager and you are going to present to a prospective client. What's the one most important thing in your presentation?
It is not the content, the design or the delivery.
Realising what's most important will help you shape up the entire presentation.
You would know what to write (content), how to write (design) and how to talk (delivery). If you need to cut excess content, you would know exactly what to chop off.
The most important element in every presentation is the objective. For the business development manager, its getting the account, the business. Sounds common sense? It is not as simple as it seems.
I often come across presenters who miss the woods for the trees. They miss the bigger picture. They keep worrying about whether to write X or Y, whether to present it this way or that way... They know the objective but forget to give it the importance it deserves.
This post asks all presenters to focus on that most important element; 'the objective'.
Before you start making the presentation, ask yourself what the objective is. The answer is not straight forward. It's not always obvious. If there are multiple objectives, focus on the most important one.
Real life example: I recently made a sales presentation for a client. They sell a high-involvement product and the sales team was not able to communicate the product's USP (unique selling proposition) to the prospects very well. They were also unable to deliver the complete sales pitch to the prospects.
It was a sales presentation but the objective was not to close the sale. This presentation was the initial pitch and the objective was to deliver the correct and complete sales pitch to the prospect highlighting the USP. It was to make the prospect ask the right questions; to get them interested.
Once you are clear that the objective is 'highlighting the USP and making the prospect interested' you can now choose appropriate content and create a good presentation. Had the objective been closing a sale, the presentation would have been very different.
Once you know what your objective is, content, design and delivery will automatically fall in place. So, the next time you start conceptualising your presentation, take out time and zero in on the objective. The very reason you are taking the pain to make the presentation.
Remember: Everything that you can achieve is not the objective. Objective is the one thing you have to achieve.
Share this thought with people who make a lot of presentations.
Mosquitoes from Windows
Eric Alberston on slide:ology writes an interesting post on how Bill Gates released a jar full of mosquitoes on his audience while he was presenting to the TED community. A moment the audience will never forget. It is a remarkable trick which Bill has come up with. Read more on this here.
Know the ToastmastersAndrew Dlugan in his blog Six Minutes writes on the Toastmasters. It is a not-for-profit organisation spread across the world. The members who join Toastmasters get together once a week or two weeks to make speeches, presentations and improve their communication skills. This is a good way to tackle the fear of public speaking.
Read Andrew's informative post here.
If you go to the Toastmasters International's website you can find that it is present in 18 cities across India. Hyderabad, where I stay, has 10 clubs whereas Mumbai has 6, Delhi 5, Chennai 10 and Kolkata 3. You can check out a club near you on the website. It is not very big in India, but its popularity will keep going up as more and more Indians realise the need for it.
Most people get nervous before they make presentations. Talking to an audience creates in us a fear. We start thinking...
What if I forget?
What if I say something wrong?
What if I do a bad job?
What if the audience asks a tough question?
How does one get rid of this stage fright? By actually attacking the very reasons which breed it. I recommend 4 simple ways to reduce nervousness.
1. Practice
Why will you forget what to say if you know everything you have to say? Know your content and rehearse it well. When you know the content, the chances of saying something wrong, or forgetting something get reduced. If you prepare your presentation the night before, chances are you will mess it up. Preparing at the last minute is a recipe for disaster.
Worried about what the audience will ask?
Prepare for 2 possible questions which can emanate from each of your slides. Be ready with your answers. This will take care of audience questions.
2. Reach Early
Your presentation starts at 9am. You reach the venue at 8.55am. What do you expect after that? Of course, you will be tense unless you have delivered the same presentation ten times before.
Reach your venue early. Go to the stage if you can, take a small walk. If possible run your presentation once to preempt any worries of a technical snag.
3. Know Your Audience
A big reason of stage fright stems from presenting to complete strangers. But what if the audience is known to you? The fear goes down. Do you get very nervous every time you make your quarterly business review presentation to the same boss?
Your nervousness keeps going down as you make more and more presentations to the same audience.
What if you are presenting for the first time to an audience? How do you get to know them? Try two things.
1. Find out more about the background of the audience.
2. Mingle with the audience before you have started presenting. A few known faces will make your job easy. You will start addressing them more and it will make you feel better.
4. Realize
Realize that stage fright is natural and even the most experienced speakers go through it. Being slightly nervous keeps you on your toes and gets the best out of you. The next time you are nervous, tell yourself "It is perfectly natural and will only help me deliver a better presentation."
Follow these 4 techniques to 'PERK' up your delivery every time you present.
What makes you nervous when you present? How do you plan to deal with it? Leave a comment.
In Part I we discussed what does engaging the audience mean and why is engagement required. Before we find out how to engage the audience, let us recap what engagement means.
get audience attention
hold the attention
induce involvement
which will lead to:
understanding &
recall (audience remembers what you told them)
In Part II we will discuss how to engage your audience when you make a presentation. What should you do to get attention, maintain attention and involve the audience.
We can learn from the book Made to Stick which talks about what makes some ideas sticky. The book talks about two emotions; surprise and interest. Surprise gets attention and interest maintains it. To surprise, you need to break a pattern. Unexpected, unpredictable events attract attention. Remember the New Zealand cricket umpire Billy Bowden. Do you think anyone who sees his 'actions' the first time will ever forget him? He does something totally unexpected.
So how can you start engaging your audiences. In order to do that I propose what I call the '10 tools of engagement'. You can start using these tools right away. They are simple and are used by every good presenter.
1. Start well - An unexpected and solid start sets the tone of the presentation. Rather than starting with an agenda slide, start with a story, a problem or a visual. If you are proposing something new, write down a problem statement on slide 1 and then move on to proposing your solution.
2. Tell stories - Stories are perhaps the best way to get attention and aid recall (you cannot forget a good story). If you have a story, always begin with it. Avoid stories at the end.
3. Q&As - Take questions all the time. Acknowledge good questions posed by the audience. An ideal technique for trainers & teachers who make long presentations is to reward students who ask intelligent questions. This will ensure students pay complete attention.
4. Make the audience dance - Make your audience shout, stand or write something. Seek a volunteer or a show of hands. Make them do some activity. The last time I heard Stephen Covey in Hyderabad he made audiences stand, shout "hee haw" and write down a few things. This engages the audience very well.
5. Use relevant videos - Videos breaks the monotony and explain your point well. You must use videos when you have a long presentation. Do not use two videos back to back.
6. Repeat important stuff - Repeating important stuff does not mean keep saying the same thing again and again. It means you link back every idea to the core message. This helps recall.
7. Use images - Text has a soporific effect on the audience. To keep them awake use images. Images that supplement the idea. A good image reinforces understanding.
8. Use props - This is my favorite tool. Using a prop well makes it very dramatic for the audience. If you are talking of conserving water, how about pouring a glass of water on the stage and asking the audience "Do you want to continue wasting water." This is better than saying "Please do not waste water." (Read point 7 on how Stephen Covey uses Props).
9. Ask a question - Who says only the audience can ask questions? Trainers and teachers use this technique all the time to gauge the level of audience understanding. Why don't you use this in your next presentation?
10. Be enthusiastic - Enthusiasm is contagious. Be passionate and the audience will love you.Your body language is a precursor of how your presentation is going to be. Start with a smile and maintain eye contact with the audience.
You need not use each of these 10 tools in every presentation. Depending on your objective and your comfort level choose your tools of engagement. If you are not a story teller, try out props or make the audience dance.
Which of these 'tools of engagement' are you already using? Which are the tools you would like to adopt? Drop in a comment.
Recall the last presentation you attended. What do you remember? What was the topic and what was the core idea? Were you excited during the presentation or waiting for the speaker to finish. If the answer is in the negative, then the presenter was unable to 'engage' you.If you search 'how to engage your audience' Google will throw 1.2million search results in 0.07 seconds flat! But what do you mean by audience engagement during a presentation?
understanding?involvement?attention?
Are you sure? Think about it before you read on.
This two part post is an exploration in audience engagement. In Part I (which is now) we will understand what engagement means and why is it needed? In Part II I will discuss how to engage your audience.
So, what is audience engagement?
Did you think about it?
Most people assume that we all know what 'engagement' means. Yet if you ask 5 people what engagement means to them, you are likely to get atleast 3 different answers.
The word 'engagement' does not only mean to 'get attention' but it also means to 'hold attention'. You cannot let go of what you have already got! You can start your next business review presentation by dancing on the podium (you get attention) but you will lose all of it (and much more) after you have stopped being Micheal Jackson.
The word engagement means all of the following:
get attention
hold attention
induce involvement
which will lead to:understanding &
recall (audience remembers what you told them)
Why do you need engagement?
I don't think there is any debate on that. You can present to inform, entertain, educate, discuss, decide, seek or change. To fulfil each one of these objectives, you need to ensure the audience is engaged. They are attentive, they are involved, they understand and they remember. Next time when you are conceptualizing your presentation and designing your slides remember to ask yourself these questions:
Is this making sense?
Is this going to generate interest?
Is this going to be understood in its current form?
Will this induce people to think / to ask / to discuss?
If the answer to these questions is a NO then remove that content from your presentation.
Before you go to Part II and find out 'how you can engage the audience' I would like you to answer a simple question?
What do you currently do to engage your audience? Leave a comment.
What do you do immediately after you change a slide in your presentation?
What do you do after your PowerPoint is ready?
These two questions have been answered during the last week. A week which has seen a lot of activity on presentation and public speaking blogs. So lets get down to the answers.
Jerry Weisman, a guest blogger on slide:ology, tells us what we should do immediately after changing a slide.Pause.
This is a very simple yet immensely powerful idea. When you read the question, you would have not thought the answers was so simple. Yet how many speakers remember to 'pause'? They keep talking while the audience is busy reading what's on the slides.
Olivia Mitchell, author of Speaking about Presenting, takes us through 9 steps of how we can edit a presentation. Very often we finish the PowerPoint in a hurry and do not get enough time to edit it. Following these simple steps will not only help reduce unnecessary content from your presentation, it will also prepare you for delivery.
Have you read anything else on presentations lately which you have liked? Share it with me.
All About Presentations started in January. Last month I wrote on presentation tips, lessons from real life presenters (Obama & Honda) and a couple of learnings for making sponsorship proposals. Here are the 3 most popular posts of January:
Jan 18: 'Yes We Can' learn from Obama (review of LK Advani's website)
Jan 25: Honda 'Kicks out the ladder' (learning from the latest Honda corporate video)
Jan 14: Checklist for Presentations (a short and useful list for every presenter).
I attended the Knowledge Forum of Dr. Stephen Covey recently in Hyderabad. It was a one day gathering of 500 people so Dr. Covey presented with four large screens in a big hall. There were 7 good things he did which other presenters should learn from.
1. Repeat the important stuff. Dr. Covey did repeat important phrases/statements throughout the speech and kept connecting it back to the core message. This is a good practice for long presentations.
2. Keep inviting questions throughout the presentation. He did not have a question and answer session at the end. It is better to clarify doubts and answer questions on an ongoing basis.
3. Use videos. Since it was a day long presentation using videos keeps the audience attentive and interested. Videos that are relevant, which help explain every important point you make. Before any video was played he also used to mention what was the objective of the video so that the audience knows what to watch out for.
4. Effective use of humor. His speech and videos were well garnished with humor. Whenever the topic became too serious Dr. Covey used to infuse humor and win over the audience.
5. Giving handouts before the start. While explaining important concepts, he would direct the audience to open the handout and see the diagram rather than looking at the PowerPoint slides. Whenever your audience has come to learn from your presentation (and also to make notes) giving handouts in advance makes their life easier.
6. Enhance audience understanding. While explaining a concept, Dr. Covey would refer to some character from an earlier video so that people can relate better. He also made the audience write a few times in their notebooks. This I feel enhances retention and understanding.
7. Use Props. This was something I liked the most in Dr. Covey's presentation. He was asking us to 'find our voice' (find out what we really like to do in life) and then 'inspire others to find their voice'. To explain this he lighted up a matchstick (find our voice) and then used this matchstick to light up another matchstick (inspire others to find their voice). It was dramatic but it worked! You could see it in the audience.
Which of these habits are you already following? Which are the ones you would like to try out in your next presentation? Leave a comment.
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Dashboard
Step-2: Under 'Mouse Click' choose Hyperlink -> Drop down to 'Slide' -> Choose Slide 2 -> Ok (In our presentation, the dashboard is on slide 2)
Step-3: Format this button by changing its color and borders to suit your slide
