There is a debate going on in the world of presenting about whether the use of “umm”, “errm” “kind of” and “I mean” etc in a presentation is good or bad. Some say that the use of these ‘filler’ sounds or words demonstrates a lack of preparation and sounds unprofessional, while others say that the use of these words help to make the presentation more ‘human’ and natural sounding.
Personally, I feel that as a presenter it is important to connect with your audience, to make your audience feel that you are having a conversation with them rather than lecturing them or talking at them. This means that I am in favour of you using words that you would naturally use when you are having a conversation in English with another person in a more social setting.
Dr Simon Raybould of the TellingPeople blog I feel has hit the nail on the head. In two recent posts. (part one here and part 2 here) Dr Raybould writes about this not really being that important and that in some cases it can help to humanise your presentation. In part two he talks about how you can overcome this problem (if you really want to) but that in trying to overcome this problem you can end up “becoming formalistic and scripted”.
So I say use the filler words, make your presentation more human and less scripted and have a real conversation with your audience. If you practice enough then these will come out naturally, but be careful of over practicing and sounding wooden and boring.
One of the best places to get ideas for presentation themes and designs is slideshare.net. It literally has thousands of presentations that you can view and in many cases download.
Many of these presentations have been designed by professional designers and these presentations can give you a lot of inspiration for your next presentation project. Many of the presentations can actually convey a simple message just by the images and few words that are contained in the slides.
So, below I have listed my top five favorite presentations on slideshare.net.
This presentation is not only well designed, with a great theme, contrast and background, it also can carry the message without the need of a presenter. While that is not always a good idea, for this presentation it works.
This is one of my favorite Garr Reynolds of www.presentationzen.com presentations. The message he gave was simple, clear and well thought out. The slides were beautifully designed and the color scheme, theme and images were just perfectly in sync with Garr’s message.
This little presentation was done for Bayer in Brazil (I think) the language I believe is Portuguese, but that really is not important. Just by flicking through the slide deck you can immediately get a feel for what the presentation is about and what the main message is. If you can do that with your presentations then you certainly are on the right track to building a great presentation.
What I like about this presentation is the fact that the images used are real images. Images that appear to have been taken by the presenter. I also like the way that the words used are simple, large enough to be viewed from the back of the room and interesting.
This one is long – very long, but what I like about the way Seth Godin presents is that he uses real pictures of real situations. Seth Godin has a very unique style – very little text in his slides, many illustrative pictures that actually capture the meaning of his words. His presentations are always humorous, but have a very clear message.
I hope you enjoyed looking through these presentations, if you have any others that you particularly like, please feel free to add them into the comments section.
Next week will see the launch of our book “스토리 프레젠테이션” [Presentation Story In English]
Two years ago I started this project and after I finished writing the English version my good wife spent just three months translating it into Korean.
There were many arguments about my crazy and often illogical English, but we finally got the whole book finished by the beginning of this year. In the book I have tried to show Korean people how to present not just like Steve Jobs, but better. We show you how to create the story, the most important part of any presentation as well as how to design great looking slides that convey the feeling of your words in a way that help you audience to get the deeper understanding of your presentation that is necessary for them to go away remembering what you said.
I would like to thank all those people who have helped in the creation of this book. Guy Kawasaki, Conway Stewart and of course our publisher, Dasan Books. Thanks guys for everything.
Details on how to buy a copy of this book will be published as soon as I get the details myself
We are pleased to welcome back Carl Pullein, presentations expert and trainer to many large companies here in Korea. We originally were planning to have a 15 minute interview, but Carl was so good that we talked for almost 30 minutes! So we decided to separate his interview into two parts.
The main reason we were going to do this interview was to get Carl’s opinion on the recent presentations given by Korea during the Winter Olympic bidding process. In particular, we wanted Carl’s opinion on Korean President Myung-Bak Lee and Olympic figure skating champion Yuna Kim’s presentations.
Koreans around the world were, I’m sure, very curious how good President Lee would be giving an English presentation and Koreans were likely equally curious how good their favourite daughter, Yuna Kim, would be. It would be one of the first opportunities to hear Yuna speak at length in English, so people were really excited.
Anyway, Carl Pullein gave us some great insights and presentation tips and we’re sure you will find his interview interesting and educational… Maybe even fun, as Liam and I are in this one together. Enjoy and let us know what you think and if you have any questions.
Beyonce is one of the best live entertainers around today. And her performances have given pleasure to thousands of concert goers around the world.
Last July Beyonce performed at the famous British music festival in Glastonbury and the performance received a lot of great reviews from many people in the media as well as from many of the 178,000 people who actually attended the concert.
What made this performance stand out particularly was the way that Beyonce reacted to the crowd. During her performance of Irreplaceable Beyonce gave the crowd an opportunity to join in the singing. Now, this is not unusual in most music concerts, it is actually a way that singers and bands can show the audience that they are not lip-syncing (not actually singing). However, at this concert Beyonce’s professionalism and ability to ‘read’ a crowd showed and she used that ability to give the audience exactly what they wanted.
It will always have been the plan to give the audience an opportunity to sing at this point in the concert, but what Beyonce did was to have the flexibility and courage to change that plan half way through because the audience wanted to sing much more than what had been planned for.
As presenters we need to have that built in flexibility to enable us to give our audiences exactly what they want.
So with this performance in mind – here are four things we can learn from Beyonce’s performance:
What We Can Learn From This As Presenters
1. The audience must always come first. For example, if you are delivering a presentation to a small group of people – less than 20 people – and they want to ask questions during your presentation, then be brave enough and flexible enough to allow them to ask questions.
2. Having a plan is good, but make sure that your plan has the ability to change. There could be technical difficulties with your computer or the sound system etc. Be prepared to change your plan and anticipate these events.
3. While it is good to allow the audience to set some rules, always remember you are in charge, and it is you, the presenter, who must maintain control at all times. In the video of Beyonce, you will notice that she took back control of the singing – she did that because she was always in control.
4. Beyonce’s concert was not just about her music and her performance, it was about the whole experience. The atmosphere, the emotion of the audience and of course the live sound. If you build your presentation around the experience your audience will receive, then your will much more likely perform a more memorable presentation.
The Joong Ang Sunday newspaper in Korea published an interview with the man credited with helping the Pyeongchang Olympic Bid Team to produce a truly fantastic presentation in Durban, South Africa, Terrence Burns
In that interview, when asked what was his number 1 tip for Korean people to improve their presentation skills Burns replied “speak slowly”. In a previous blog post I wrote about the reasons you need to speak slowly. When you are presenting you are not in a race to finish as quickly as you can, you are there to communicate your ideas, passions and or dreams. When you are speaking too fast your audience cannot keep up with you and they quite often cannot understand the English you are speaking. So consciously focussing on your speaking speed should be an essential part of your practice and rehearsal time.
Burns also said that the key components of any presentation is the “who” and the “why”. “Who” is your audience and “why” should they do what you are asking them to do. Many times on this blog we have written about the important of presenting for your audience and not your boss. What motivates your boss is not necessarily what motivates your audience. You must always put yourself in your audience’s shoes and ask yourself what will make my presentation resonate with my audience? GEtting these parts of your presentation just right will help your presentations become much more effective.
Sadly, the article is written in Korean, so for those of you who do speak Korean, you can access the full interview here.
One of my favourite designers is Dieter Rams, famous for his work at the German company, Braun. Dieter Rams retired in 1995, but his legacy lives on today in the work that Jonathon Ives does at Apple and many other designers around the world.
Dieter Rams had a very simple philosophy: “less, but better” (“Weniger, aber besser“) and this is something that all students of English can, and should, use in their study philosophy.
Most students of English I have taught over the years try to learn too much. As a consequence of this they either learn very little, or they simply give up because the task is far too big. And it is far too big – not even native English speakers can learn all the words in the English language.
One of my fundamental principles when I teach a class of students is: “master the English you already know”. Most students only learn the basics of each different scenario. Then, because they very rarely use the English needed for that scenario they never develop that part of their English, thus they only have a very basic set of phrases to deal with each situation:
For example: All Korean students learn to greet someone in English like this:
ENGLISH SPEAKER:
How are you?
STUDENT:
I’m fine thank you and you?
Now, grammatically this is absolutely fine, and occasionally you will hear a native speaker use this way to greet someone. But, it is boring! It is boring because almost every Korean English student I have ever met, taught or had a conversation with, has answered my question: “How are you?” with “I’m fine thank you and you?”
But there is a better way, and using it will make you stand out in a very positive way:
ENGLISH SPEAKER: How are you?
STUDENT: I’m very well thankyou. How are you?
This way is both polite and different and is formal enough for all occasions.
When you study English as an adult, you are studying English as a skill. You are no longer learning English to pass an exam (unless you are preparing to take the TOEIC or TOEFL test) and so you no longer need to study everything you might get tested on. What you need to do is to first work out the English you will need for your job, your hobby or your life.
Once you have worked out what English you will need, then you focus your attention on learning that part of English. But do not stop at the basics. Develop it, research it, ask questions about other ways of expressing your opinions, or asking the questions. Keep going until you know everything you need to know about it.
Learning less, but learning it better is one of the best ways to improve your English because it develops a much deeper understanding of the English you are using, you learn exactly what to say, when and in what situation. It helps you to make less mistakes and best of all it will make you sound like a much better English speaker
As everyone now knows, Pyeongchang, South Korea won the bid to hold the 2018 Winter Olympics. In order to win the final vote all candidate cities had to deliver a final presentation.
For South Korea two people stood out for me: President Lee Myung Park (이명박) and Olympic Champion Skater Yuna Kim (김연아) and I want to take this opportunity to show you why these two people really helped to put Pyeongchang at the top of the voting list.
First let us take a look at President Lee Myung Park’s presentation.
President Lee had a shaky start, he was nervous and he started out speaking a little too fast. But after about 45 seconds you can see he is into a nice rhythm and his speech has slowed down.
The words he used were wonderfully inspirational and he tells the story of South Korea’s first entry into the Winter Olympics with three skaters and one coach. The story is wonderfully inspiring and really gets your attention.
His body language is perfect for such an important presentation. His eyes are on his audience and he is looking around at the whole audience not just a few in the middle. He is smiling (almost) and you can’t help but be charmed by this speech.
I accept his pronunciation is not perfect, but once he had slowed down, his words were clear and very easy to follow.
“During a 17-hour flight from Seoul, Lee said he practiced his English-language presentation so diligently his throat ached. From Sunday through Tuesday, Lee attended two dress rehearsals for the presentation and “sliced up his 24 hours” to meet as many IOC members as possible”
It really does take that kind of dedication and determination to achieve something like this and I take my hat off to President Lee Myung Park
Now, let us take a look at Yuna Kim’s presentation.
Yuna Kim’s English is very good. Her pronunciation and confidence when speaking here really comes across. She looks relaxed even though she really must have been nervous and she is smiling, looking at the audience and her natural charisma, charm and showmanship really comes through.
One of the best things about this presentation is the way she tells her story, how it inspired her, and how it can inspire future generations. She uses images from her own life to make the presentation much more personal and to touch the emotions of the IOC members. It worked and was truly inspiring to anyone who watching and listening to it.
If I have any criticism at all about her presentation is was that it sounded just a little too well prepared. There were no “umm’s” or “errr’s” which could have helped to make it sound a little more natural. But that maybe just me being a little too critical.
I know the final presentation was not about just these two people, but these two people really shone in my eyes. All the presenters for the Pyeongchang bid were excellent. They spoke in English and they clearly practiced very well. It is something that all Korean people can be very proud of.
It really does show that stories in presentations can help you to achieve great things, in this case winning an Olympic bid, but they can also help you and your company to achieve great things also. Make the stories personal – like Yuna Kim – or about your company (or country like President Lee) but make sure you put those stories into your presentation.
Always remember to smile, look at your audience (not bury your head into your notes or script), make your audience love you and if it really means a lot to you, practice like you have never practiced before.
Congratulations to everyone involved in the Pyeongchang 2018 Olympic bid, you were great.
This week sees the final presentations for the 2018 Winter Olympic bids in Durban, South Africa and the Korean team representing the beautiful resort of PyeongChang will be there delivering their final presentation.
Among the honoured members of the team will be Olympic Figure Skating Champion, Yuna Kim and President Lee Myung Bak. And they, together with the other members of the Korean Olympic Team will have the hopes of the entire Korean nation on their shoulders when they present their final presentation.
So, why should they present this presentation in English?
The main reason is that 99% of the International Olympic Committee do not speak Korean. Yet, almost all members of the IOC do speak English. If the presentation is done in Korean the presentation will have to be translated and when a translation takes place live, all emotion, enthusiasm and passion is lost. What might sound brilliant in Korean will sound dead and boring in English if it is translated. This is one area that the type of audience the presenters have must take priority over everything else, and the audience for the PyeongChang team do not speak Korean.
The PyeongChang team must connect with they audience and the only way to do that is to speak in a language all members of the IOC understand. Presenting their message in Korean is not going to connect them with their audience in this situation.
Finally, the rival teams from Germany and France will almost certainly present in English. The Germans and the French are all too aware of the importance of communicating on the international stage and whether they like it or not, they do accept that the international language is English.
So for the PyeongChang team to have the best chance possible of giving the nation of South Korea something to be proud of this week, they must prepare and deliver their final message to the IOC in English.
There is a very big misconception here in Korea, about the importance of pronunciation when it comes to speaking in English. Many people think that pronunciation is far more important than intonation, yet nothing could be further from the truth.
As a native English speaker living in Korea I find that many so called ‘good’ English speakers have an incredibly boring way of speaking, yet their pronunciation is very good. The reason for this is because the speaker has spent many hour practicing pronunciation and yet spent no time at all practicing their intonation. In many ways they sound like they are reading.
The English language has so many people from so many regions and countries speaking it, that pronunciation has lost much of its importance in recent years. Ask an American to say “aluminium” and they will say “Aluminum”, in just that word you have an almost completely different sound to the way someone from the United Kingdom would say it. Yet both people are speaking English. Other words such as “vitamin”, “tomato” and “water” have very different pronunciations between British and American English and quite simply we do not care.
As a presenter, your job is to make sure that your words are spoken in an interesting way. If you speak slowly, with varied intonation then you are 95% of the way there, even if your pronunciation is not perfect. However, if you speak fast, with a monotonous tone you are going to quickly bore your audience to death and nobody is going to give a damn about your ‘perfect’ pronunciation.
Who cares if you say “professor” with a ‘p’ sound instead of an ‘f’ sound? Personally, I quite like the ‘p’ sound – it gives your pronunciation a little character and uniqueness that is often missing from native English speakers. And I would beg all Korean people to continue to say “perrari” instead of “Ferrari” – to me that sounds absolutely wonderful and always makes me smile. And, hey! If you audience are smiling you must be doing something right (as apposed to snoring – when you must be doing something wrong)
So stop worrying too much about your pronunciation. Speak slowly and clearly and vary your intonation, that way you will make your presentations and your conversations much more interesting to listen to and when you achieve that, your audience are going to pay much more attention to you and the words you are speaking.
