presentation coach

Common courtesy...

Over the years of coaching and conducting clinics on presentation skills, I’ve tried to calm some of my clients’ worst fears about public speaking by reassuring them their audiences are dependably tolerant and polite souls.

Don’t worry, I say, your audience won’t walk out on you.

I’m beginning to think I’ve been giving the wrong advice.

Could it be bad presentations are perpetuated because we audiences are so polite?

Is our genteel practice of sitting through to the bitter end ultimately giving permission to those who would fritter away our time with content that is pointless, PowerPoint slides that are spectacularly meaningless, stagecraft that is graceless?

What if we, as the audience, did indeed walk out?

Not in a huff, mind you. Just quietly rose from our seats and stepped through the door.

What if we started to make clear that we no longer would tolerate speakers who were blatantly unprepared, unrehearsed or unable to make a point?

I’m not talking about the performance of the painfully shy junior staffer who must deliver a report at the monthly managers’ meeting, or the reticent parent who’s been dragooned to summarize the committee’s work on the neighborhood school festival. For them at these frightful moments, we can only reply with tender mercy.

I’m talking about the folks who ought to know better, who ought to do better, when stepping in front of an audience.

The experts, the elected officials, and business leaders who, by virtue of their position, know they are going to be asked to speak before a meeting of Rotarians or Kiwanians or Soroptomists, or to colleagues at a conference or citizens attending a town hall.

The speakers who ask to be invited to make their case to a group, then consider their work done once the invitation arrives.

The speakers who blow off suggestions of help by declaring “I know this stuff; I talk about it all the time. Put up a few Excel graphs and bullet lists, and it’s a done deal.”

The speakers who seemingly work harder positioning their reputations than preparing their presentations.

So, what would the world be like if audiences gave themselves permission to slip away when threatened by a dreadful presentation?

Well, maybe, just maybe, some folks would begin to invest a little more time and thought into crafting a good presentation, rather than waiting until the last moment and then winging it.

Perhaps speakers would work smarter to prepare themselves (like learning how to use their digital projector, for instance), rather than prey on the gracious indulgence of the audience.

Perhaps speakers would make the effort to read through their remarks (at least once) in advance, solicit the honest critique of a colleague, even seek out a coach to polish some basic delivery skills… do something to protect the interests of the audience.

Perhaps we, as the audience, would get better value for the time we invest attending the presentation.

So, okay, rather than offering gentle reassurances, maybe I should start saying this instead to folks concerned about speaking in public:

“Your audience won’t walk out on you IF you’ve done your best to prepare and can demonstrate your readiness to present…

“IF you’ve structured a cohesive, rational narrative of your points and conclusions…

“IF you use only those graphics that help you clarify your point rather than lard it down with extraneous visual clutter and slideware whizbangs…

“IF you put your audience’s needs first over your own…

“IF you are authentic in the delivery of your message rather than detached and passionless…

“And IF your message is clear, succinct, memorable and not vague, meandering or weak.

“This isn’t about the audience agreeing with what you say. That’s a function of your persuasiveness in the case you make. It is about the audience sticking around long enough to hear you say it, and that’s a privilege you must earn by respecting their investment of time and attention.

“Otherwise, people will — and should — walk out.

“It’s up to you.”

So, what do you think? Would it make a difference?

Managing fear...

What distinguishes seasoned public speakers from the relatively inexperienced?

The veterans know the fear never goes away. They’ve also learned the first step to coping with — perhaps even conquering — fear is understanding what really motivates it.

Consider this question: What is the worst thing you believe will happen to you when you speak to an audience?

Think. The worst thing.

I pose this question to folks in my presentation skills clinics who tell me (and others) how much they dread public speaking. I ask them to probe their respective terrors.

Does anyone admit a fear of being shot or pelted with rocks or driven from the stage by sharp sticks?

No.

It seems their fears are much more prosaic.

They fear their minds will go blank and they’ll forget what they were going to say next.

They fear not being able to think on their feet and respond intelligently if asked a difficult question.

They fear not making a good impression.

They fear they will fail. Nothing specific, mind you, just fail in some general sense.

These are real, tangible concerns among many people, certainly.

And each of them can be managed.

For instance, are you afraid of your mind going blank in the middle of your presentation? Here’s what you can do:

Learn to use notes. Not a script (pleeeze), but brief memory joggers, bullets, keywords. Write them on an index card that can be held discretely in the palm of your hand as you speak (no lectern required). There’s no shame in using a “cheater.” In fact, audiences will appreciate you for making the effort to stay on track and thus give them better value for their time.

Afraid of a tough question?

Preparation is the best antidote here. Make and take the time to anticipate and talk through the most difficult questions that could be asked about your topic.

This is a tool I often use in my media clinics to prep spokespersons for an interview. After all, it’s not the easy questions you worry about. It’s the hard ones. So spend your prep time there, systematically reviewing your ideas, your positions, your responses. Be your own worst tormentor and interrogate yourself brutally. Give yourself no quarter.

As you formulate your potential replies, rehearse them aloud. Get comfortable with your choice of words. Find a mirror and become aware of your physical mannerisms (defensively crossed arms or timidly hunched shoulders, perhaps?) as you deliver your response.

Do this and when tough questions do come up, you may just avoid that horribly surprised and frightened look on your face and proceed to speak with calm and persuasive confidence.

(By the way, never be afraid to say “I don’t know” when you don’t know. Your candor will mean more to your audience than you trying to fake it with obfuscation and doublespeak. The first answer says you lack the answers. The second says you don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s a difference.)

As for leaving a good impression, ultimately that’s not as much up to you as it is up to your audience. They decide how well you’ve done. What you can do to influence the outcome, however, is be ready to speak, be dressed appropriately, deliver your message with clarity and confidence, and above all, respect your audience’s needs and time. Certainly that’s not beyond your reach.

Remember your purpose in speaking is not about you, it’s about your audience and what they hope to learn from you.

Being afraid is not in itself a bad thing … unless you fail to be honest and specific about it with yourself. Confront your fears by identifying exactly what you’re afraid of. Put a face to the beast so you can look it in the eye. That single act alone may just be enough to drain away much of your anxiety as you prepare to manage your fear and give your audience the presentation they expect and deserve.

Gettysburg...

As a speechwriter — whether you deliver the remarks yourself or ghost them for someone else — you command enormous power.

You can change the world.

Lincoln did it. His remarks dedicating a new national cemetery at Gettysburg, for instance, are widely credited with not only redefining the rationale of our Civil War, but re-framing the very nature and destiny of our nation.

And he did it in 263 words.

Consider this:

There are people in our society — in every society — we classify as opinion leaders.

Are they necessarily smarter than the rest of us? No.

Are they wealthier or taller or cooler than anyone else? Nah.

But they can articulate their thinking with words carefully chosen and themes carefully crafted.

Their power lies in their ability to influence how the rest of us view the world and interpret events.

Pick your topic: Civil rights. Abortion. War and peace. The words opinion leaders use to make their respective case — whether for or against — come from somewhere. They are not casual or arbitrary, but deliberate. Their language is crafted and shaped and honed so that each sentence, each phrase, says precisely the correct thing, triggers precisely the desired response, evokes precisely the intended imagery, invokes precisely the necessary action.

Your message may be weighty, life-changing, monumental … or not. Regardless, the mechanics of good speechcraft remain constant.

Abraham Lincoln knew that, intuitively, from a lifetime of studying the classic orators.

Franklin Roosevelt knew it, too. So did Martin Luther King. And Ronald Reagan.

We know of these people, what they believed and what they expected of us because of the words they used to talk to us. By the structure of their arguments that led us to intended conclusions. By the stories that converted abstract concepts like freedom or justice or national identity into meaningful examples each of us could feel and appreciate and assimilate.

Your words make a difference when you want them to. Whether advocating for global peace or an increase in your department’s budget, what you say and how you say it matters.

Just remember, it’s never a function of how many words you use, but of how you use the words — of the stories you tell, the images you evoke, the confidence you show in your own message and its meaning.

No matter how large or small your world, you have the power to change it.

Monday morning...

Two office co-workers meet while getting a fresh cup of coffee down the hall.

“Hey, how was your weekend?” asks one.

“Optimum,” replies the other. “Our family’s agenda commenced at 6:36 a.m. Saturday when we awoke from our overnight slumber. We then performed acts of personal hygiene, dressed and proceeded to consume foods of varying nutritional value with which to stimulate our energy levels for the as-yet undetermined but anticipated tasks to come.

“We then deliberated our options for how to utilize the remainder of the day and by consensus determined our time would be best occupied with a journey to the river, where we would attempt to capture a water-residing, gilled creature at the end of a filament line…”

Silliness? Yes, of course. It’s a Monday-morning conversation over coffee, after all.

So let’s try it again:

“How was your weekend?”

“Really great! We got up early Saturday and decided we needed to head down to the river to get in some fishing. Fantastic day!”

Same story. Same conclusion. Significantly different character, however.

The first version is pompous, passionless and inaccessible; the second answers a simple question simply, with obvious delight and enthusiasm.

The first reflects the speaker’s concerns with a process of presentation rather than its purpose. The other tells a story.

Which works better for the listener, do you think?

Presenters too often get all caught up in stuffy formalities. They fall into the darkness of thinking the act of public speaking means they must strip themselves of personality, of authenticity, of directness. Perfectly clear, wonderfully appropriate conversational language gets edited out of their remarks and replaced with colorless, passionless, stupefying memo-speak.

These folks approach their remarks in the flawed belief the more bland they are, the more seriously their message will be taken.

They figure, why not be safe by being boring?

Because boring doesn’t work.

Boredom gets in the way of understanding. What enables and encourages understanding, on the other hand, is style. Style engages the audience. It delights them. It speaks to them on a human level.

Style casts your message in a context that means something to most people.

Now, some folks use boring as a shield, an insulator, to protect them from their own fears of vulnerability. They reckon if they don’t reveal their emotions in any way, if they retreat behind the barrier of memo-speak, then any rejection by the audience will be directed at their remarks and not at them.

They’re mistaken, of course. When you bore an audience, you can expect their rejection to be very personal. After all, it’s you who made that 15-minute presentation seem like an hour. It’s you who made the message unnecessarily complex, the ideas unnecessarily difficult to grasp.

A presentation is not a data stream. It is one human speaking to other humans. Getting a message across is already enough of a challenge; don’t make it more difficult. Tell a story. Tell it simply. Tell it as if it’s worth telling.

And, please, try to enjoy yourself in the telling.

Speaking ahead...

Ever had to endure someone’s slide show of how they spent their summer vacation?

“(click) And here I am in front of Old Faithful… (click) And, oh, yes, here we are in front of the visitor’s center near Old Faithful… (click) And here we are with the park ranger… (click) And here’s a little deer that walked up to our car; isn’t she cute?… (click) And here I am putting a bandage on Frank’s hand from where the deer bit it… (click)”

It’s the stuff of nightmares: an endless rotation through the eternal slide carousel, with the happy traveler droning on in witless description of countless (boring) photos.

We laugh at the cliché it’s become, yet somehow we continue to tolerate it — indeed, perhaps perpetuate it — when the scene shifts from Aunt Molly’s living room to the corporate conference room or hotel meeting room.

Picture this: The presenter clicking through one image after another, waiting for the picture or diagram to appear on the screen, then describing it to the audience:

“(click) Here’s a graph that shows last month’s sales… (click) And here’s a photo of our latest product… (click) And here’s a table that lists the features of this product… (click) And, uh, um, here’s a graph that shows a projection for next month’s sales… Uh, you can’t read that from the back of the room, I know, so let me read it for you…”

Aaargh!

Here’s the question: Are you presenting information? Or simply narrating a slide show?

The images you use in a presentation have one job: to illustrate your remarks. They serve you, not the other way around.

Rather than tediously narrate your slide show (i.e, waiting for each slide to appear before describing it), let your slides support your narrative.

Set up your images with commentary, give them context, before you reveal them. Enable them to punctuate your narrative rather than dominate it. For example…

“Our sales last month were 22 percent above projections…” (click, show sales graph)

“We have good reason to be proud of our new product design. It’s really sweet…” (click, show product photo)

“Research tells us the customer is looking for five things in our product. With the new model, we deliver those and six more…” (click, show the table of features)

Lead into the images. Set them up. Speak to what they represent rather than describe what the audience can see for themselves.

Remain in charge of your presentation and let the images do their job — their only job — of illustrating your remarks.

Your audience isn’t there for a slide show, after all. They’re there to listen to what you have to say.

Grace under pressure...

We make mistakes.

We lose our train of thought, or our place in our notes.

We stumble over words.

We stumble over our feet on the way to the microphone.

It happens.

So what?

Here’s what you don’t want to have happen: You don’t want your awkward moment to be the most memorable part of your presentation. You don’t want to make a bigger deal out of it than it deserves.

I was emceeing an awards ceremony many years back and was to introduce a local venerable who would present one of the evening’s most coveted honors. He had an easy, one-syllable name, so naturally I managed to mispronounce it. But I just didn’t correct myself. I made a big deal about correcting myself, and how I should have known better, etcetera, etcetera. Meanwhile, the gentleman approached the stage gracefully, smiled at me graciously, then stepped to the microphone, gave his full attention to the audience and proceeded with his remarks.

I should have left it there. But I didn’t, of course. In my embarrassment for having made such a silly mistake, I kept referring to the gaffe as the evening wore on. These were intended as witty little asides, you understand; shining moments of my clever, self-deprecating humor. But the audience didn’t laugh. Why should they? It wasn’t funny. It was awkward and tiresome. I wasn’t letting them forget my mistake. From that point, events sort of cascaded into a dark place inside of me. My performance — and authority — as the emcee was compromised.

We learn from our mistakes. What I learned from that one was to give myself permission to goof up. And, more importantly, if and when I do goof, contain the damage briskly and move on.

Mangle someone’s name in an introduction? Stop. Say “I beg your pardon” or “Excuse me,” say the name correctly (if you can; if you can’t, don’t compound the error), then keep going.

Lose your place? Stop. Look at the audience, smile and say, “Excuse me, but it seems my mouth just got ahead of my brain,” or words to that effect. Then take a moment to find your place and continue. No need to panic. No need to rush. No need to make dramatic excuses or apologies.

Lose your train of thought and forget where you were going with your last comment? Stop. Look at the audience, smile and say, “My brain was so involved with what I was just saying that it pushed my other thoughts out of the way. Can someone help me find them again? Where was I?”

Trust me, someone will help you.

Then move on.

A simple, declarative acknowledgement. Then continue.

What’s important to the audience isn’t that you made a mistake, but that you continued delivering your message.

Audiences are very forgiving. They want you to succeed. And if you goof up, your audience may become as uncomfortable over it as you. You see, what they fear is not that you may stumble but that you will melt before their eyes, creating an awkward moment for everyone and diminishing the value of the presentation.

So make it easy for them. When you realize a mistake, just smile, correct the error, regain your composure, then complete your presentation.

By so doing, you will be informing your audience that your message is more important than the messenger. That you accept you’re only human. That you’re grown-up enough to get back up from your stumble, dust yourself off and return to the game.

Isn’t that a more pleasant outcome than the memory of a speaker (or thin-skinned, self-conscious emcee) who cannot accept that he or she isn’t perfect and proceeds to jabber incessantly about it?

One. Two. Three...

There’s something appealing about lists… checklists, top tens, favorite tips, to-do lists, don’t-do lists.

You’ve seen them: all of an author’s experiences and expert advice distilled to a series of brief, bulleted instructions.… “The Top Eight Things to Remember As You Rustle Your Notes and Clear Your Throat,” “The 12 Essentials for Correctly Opening Your Speech With a Funny Joke,” and so on.

Folks love them and often depend on them.

Checklists and guidelines can be terribly important to helping craft a message. No question. They can provide structure and cohesion. They contribute to cogency. For some speakers, they also offer a sense of security, a reassurance of order, a bulwark against the jitters (known by some as the “I won’t be so nervous if I know just what to do” method).

Checklists have their downsides, however.

For instance, too heavy a reliance on rigid guidelines, on lists of rules, can bleed the organic qualities out of your presentation.

You become so focused on faithfully observing “the Rules” that you forget about “the Game.”

You end up reciting rather than speaking, concentrating on satisfying a list of must-do bullets in your head at the expense of giving voice to the passion in your gut.

“Wait a minute!” you say. “I’m not giving a sermon about fire and brimstone. I’m just reporting on my project to the management team. Why should I want passion?”

Okay, you may not think it appropriate to bare your soul and emote while delivering a status report at the weekly staff meeting. But dryly conforming to a performance checklist won’t register too many more points on your audience’s comprehension meter, either.

You see, there is an important middle ground — a purposeful balance between high-order theatrics and mind-numbingly rigid droning — that’s appropriate in any presentation. To occupy that ground, to make it work for you, requires you to invest yourself in your message.

So, for those who respond well to rules, allow me to summarize with this one: The audience is the reason you are there. They expect you to serve them in some useful manner and — here’s the key — to make the experience a memorable one.

Being memorable — giving your audience a reason to remember, perhaps act on, what you tell them — is less a function of what you say than how you say it.

A checklist of things to do or not do when speaking may help you organize your content, but it should not and cannot be a substitute for your personality, your conviction, your emotional presence once you step before your audience and become a speaker.

The non-verbal factor...

How do you communicate with an infant?

In sentences?

No. You do it through behavior and physical signals.

A smile.

A frown.

Comforting sounds.

A caress.

All are calculated to stimulate a sense of care or trust or disapproval.

There is a part of our brain that continues to decode communication the same way it did when we were infants: non-verbally, intuitively, instinctively, viscerally. These are what form the critical impressions about what we just heard.

It is this part of the brain you must focus on as a speaker, for it is this part of the brain that is the gateway to successfully communicating.

Audiences want more than facts. They seek from you warmth, humor, feelings and intuition. They crave feeling; some sign that you are invested in your material in some real, human way. That you care about what you’re talking about.

People yearn for emotional contact, not competent detachment.

Does this mean you should cry when presenting the quarterly financials? Of course not. But neither should you be an automaton. Audiences can read the data for themselves. Your job is to give the data context and depth, and you do that more through how you speak — your confidence, your authority, your sincerity — than by what you say.

An infant knows instinctively whether to feel comfortable or uncomfortable with someone, whether to giggle or cry. So do grownups. Give an audience reason to feel comfortable with you. Don’t be afraid to be human. It will make your message more memorable.

Dependencies…

It was the big presentation of the national conference. The speaker was widely known for his provocative views and keen insights, all delivered with refreshing, iconoclastic frankness.

The hotel auditorium was at capacity for what promised to be quite a ride.

Armed with nothing more than an overhead projector and a small pile of transparencies, he opened with confidence and high energy. He established his premise cleanly, slapping on the first couple of overheads to illustrate his points. Then he moved to his problem statement, accompanied by another few transparencies.

His movements were fluid, practiced, a compelling display of passion and assertiveness. He was Lord of the Room, and with confident flings of his wrist, overhead after overhead would slide onto the projector’s glass stage to reveal clever illustrations and telling graphs that punctuated his remarks.

It was turning out to be quite a ride, after all.

Then the projector’s bulb burned out.

The screen went blank.

The speaker stopped abruptly, surprised by the interruption. He glared at the projector, glanced at the audience, smiled painfully, then proceeded to crash all that he had accomplished up to this point.

He fiddled with the projector. He started apologizing to the audience. He called out for someone from the hotel staff; there was no one there to answer.

He escalated a minor mechanical inconvenience into the central feature of his show.

The audience became visibly uneasy. All the momentum of a great presentation had been brutally arrested and replaced by the awkwardness of a speaker floundering vainly over a piece of disabled equipment.

Although this event happened a decade ago, I remember it vividly for the simple lessons it taught:

First, a single spare bulb could have fixed the problem (and saved the program) in less than two minutes. So could a spare projector.

It quickly became obvious that the speaker had thought of neither.

He had put his faith entirely in the presumed capacities of the hotel’s audio-visual “technician” (in this situation, regrettably, a bellhop handed a bundle of microphones and cables and told, “You are now today’s A-V tech.”), who was nowhere to be found.

The presenter did not anticipate mechanical failure as part of his presentation, so naturally, mechanical failure happened.

Second, he made his presentation, and by extension, his audience, a victim of his problem. It now became clear that he had so tightly integrated his remarks with his visuals that when the projector failed he didn’t know how to finish. And since there would be no fix for the projector (the hotel staff never did show up), his presentation essentially ended there, frustratingly incomplete.

From what I witnessed, however, it didn’t need to conclude this way. This speaker could have recovered. He could have continued without his visuals to complete the program.

True, several of his graphs did good work illustrating complex data points, but the content still could have been explained verbally. As for the other overheads, they were clever cartoons and photos that helped keep the narrative structured but were not essential.

The story itself was good enough, important enough, strong enough to be told without illustrations and cartoons.

The speaker would have had to adapt his remarks a bit, put more emphasis on explanation and context, but it could be done.

He clearly hadn’t prepared for that.

The irony, of course, is that the audience wanted to hear this speaker because of his message, not because he had clever overheads.

The speaker thus failed his audience because he had become overly dependent on his overheads to tell his story.

For the sake of a projector bulb, an opportunity to tell an important story was lost.

For want of preparation, the lingering memory of this presentation was not a thought-provoking message that could change minds, but of a speaker helpless in the throes of an otherwise minor and entirely preventable glitch.

post script: Witnessing this experience taught me to make sure I have two projectors— a primary (usually my own) and a stand-by (the hotel’s or meeting center’s)— on hand whenever I teach or present. If a second projector isn’t available, then by all means I make sure there is a spare bulb in my kit. It’s cheap insurance.

Who are these people? (continued)…

A presentation is a gift.

Your audience is giving you their time and attention. In return, they hope to realize some form of benefit, some value from the information you provide.

So here’s one rule for success when speaking to an audience:

Have something to say that can make a difference in their lives.

Make your talk about them and their agenda, not you and yours.

Consider the case of the sales rep from the seed company. He gets the chance to talk to a room full of new homeowners, potential customers for a new grass seed product. With energy and enthusiasm, he talks about the new seed. He tells how much money the company invested in its research, describes the convenient packaging, relates how the company is poised to dominate the market.

The audience remains impassive to his remarks.

Finally, a hand appears in the back of the room.

“Yes?” acknowledges the salesman, pausing in his carefully crafted narrative.

The homeowner stands.

“Excuse me,” he begins, “I'm glad your product's such a success but I didn't come tonight to hear about your lawn seed. I want to hear about my lawn and what you can do to make it better.”

What’s your topic?

Is it grass seed? Or how it can improve lawns?

Is it a new software product? Or improvements in productivity?

An investment opportunity? Or creating and protecting wealth?

Perhaps it’s advocacy for a social cause. Or why helping feed the hungry or house the homeless can benefit the entire community.

No matter what your topic the principle still applies: Know your audience. Recognize why they are there, what’s important to them, what might stimulate a choice or decision or action on their part.

Then craft your message and engineer your remarks accordingly.

Now you don’t want to push your audience. You don’t want to pull them, either. You want them to journey with you to your destination. You want them to want to go, with willingness and open minds.

How to do this?

It’s not complicated.

Give them a compelling reason. Show how the journey benefits them, meets their needs, solves their problems.

Demonstrate you know the difference between your agenda and the audience’s.

You’ll end up selling a lot more grass seed.