How to effectively present in English in the 21st Century

Here is a re-post of a blog post I did about one year ago on my own personal site. The reason for the re-post is because I cannot emphasise enough how great story telling is the real secret behind a great presentation. This does not matter whether you are teaching a group of business people how to be more productive or teaching English to a classroom full of university students from Russia, telling stories is the secret to having your students remember you and remember what you are teaching them.

Now, I am very interested in presentations, spending most of days either preparing a presentation or delivering a presentation.

One of my sources of inspiration is TED.com a great website, full of high quality video of incredible people talking about incredible things.

One of the ‘secrets’ of a good presentation is the ability to ‘tell a story’ and in this presentation, Mike Rowe (of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs) tells an amazing story about lamb castration. (click here for 한국어) He also shows you that you do not need slides to do a fantastic presentation. Just be out there, front and centre talking to your audience

Lessons we can learn from this presentation:

1. You do not need to prepare a Powerpoint / Keynote presentation file to do a great presentation
2. The ability to tell a story, and to show some human element in the story, turns a presentation into a great presentation
3. Do not use a lecturn, table or podium unless you absolutely have to. Be out there front and centre and talk to your audience.
4. Show humility – do not try to show you are perfect – you are not
5. Be natural and be yourself

Today, on the Discovery Channel there was a documentary about Concorde’s last flight and the accident in 2000 that happened at Charles De Gaulle Airport. During the documentary, one British Airway’s Concorde’s pilots told the story of how Concorde was accepted to JFK Airport in New York – an airport vital to the success (and future) of Concorde.

Concorde was not a quiet plane. In fact Concorde was very noisy. I was very lucky to see Concorde several times landing at Leeds / Bradford Airport nearby the house I grew up in and I remember a staggeringly beautiful airplane that looked so graceful. But WOW! was it noisy. Because of this noise, there were many protesters and demonstrations at JFK Airport demanding that the airport refuse permission for Concorde to land there.

When Concorde flew in to JFK Airport shortly after a temporary ban was lifted in 1977, a press conference was called. Captain Brian Walpole of British Airways reported that the American media were very hostile towards the Concorde team. The press conference was being held in a hanger at JFK and shortly after the conference began Concorde was towed into the hanger behind the gathered media. As Concorde came in, the media and public went deathly quiet. All you could hear were people saying how beautiful the plane was. Shortly after this event Concorde was accepted and the vital link between London and New York was established and ran right up to the retirement of Concorde in 2003.

Captain Walpole states that had Concorde not come in to the conference when it did, Concorde would never have flown in to JFK and quite likely we would never have seen Concorde for the many years we did.

Never underestimate the power of real life visuals in your presentations. Words do have power, but if you can, and if the opportunity is there, alway use a real live product to show your audience. It carries more power than just spoken words.

On my recent trip to Ireland I became fascinated with the posters and billboards, as well as the scenery and nature. and this got me thinking. How can we improve our slide design and thinking when it comes to presenting.

One of the best ways to get inspiration for designing our slides it to just look around our everyday environment. Unfortunately, this can become a bit boring, particularly when our local environment does not change very much.

However, most people are fortunate enough to travel, whether that is a weekend away with our friends or family, or if you are very fortunate you may have to opportunity to travel abroad. Opportunities to travel to other countries can give you bundles of chances to gain inspiration for your next presentation.

Recently, I have been doing an environmentally friendly presentation course with a large company here in Korea. On my trip last week I had a stop in Amsterdam and I noticed that there where hundreds of wind turbines (see picture below) This gave me the opportunity to take some pictures that I can use in my slides later this week.

So whenever you travel, wherever you travel, always carry a camera with you and seek out opportunities to improve the way you design your slides and your ideas.

Too often presenters present their presentations in a formal, wooden way. This way of presenting is boring, uninteresting and shows little or no passion in the subject of the presentation.

The best presentations are ones where the presenter is having a conversation with their audience. Where the presenter has a real passion for what they are talking about and are not just doing their job because their boss told them to do it.

The above picture is taken from Bill Strickland’s talk at TED in 2002. He began his presentation by telling his audience that he had no notes, no script and that he just wanted to talk with them for a few minutes.

It’s a great honor to be here with you. The good news is I’m very aware of my responsibilities to get you out of here because I’m the only thing standing between you and the bar. (Laughter) And the good news is I don’t have a prepared speech, but I have a box of slides. I have some pictures that represent my life and what I do for a living. I’ve learned through experience that people remember pictures long after they’ve forgotten words. And so I hope you’ll remember some of the pictures I’m going to share with you for just a few minutes.

This is a fantastic opening. The audience can tell immediately that this is not going to be a poorly scripted talk about a subject the speaker is not really interested in. Just from this simple opening, the audience can that the speaker has something interesting to say, and more importantly, something worth listening to.

One of the other unique things about Bill Strickland’s talk is that not only does he have a conversation with the audience, he also employs the services of a pianist, Herbie Hancock, to play soft music throughout his talk. The atmosphere is like having a conversation in a really relaxing jazz bar. But the wonderful twist to this story is that Herbie is a part of the story

It is quite often difficult to control the atmosphere in a room. Most rooms where presentations take place are cold, boring grey rooms with bright lights and poor ventilation. But here, Bill Strickland has dim lighting, a pianist and the atmosphere perfectly creates that conversation feel.

So, the real secret to a great presentation is not great PowerPoint slides, a wonderfully memorised script, but a real passion for what you are talking about and stories told in a conversational way – oh and of course a pianist!

You can watch the video below, and if you would like to follow the script you can watch the video on the main TED website here.

프레젠테이션이란, 우리가 현재 진행하고 있는 것이나, 출시될 것 혹은 기획하고 있는 것들을 청중에게 보여줄 수 있는, 우리 또는 우리 회사를 위한 기회라고 모두가 생각합니다. 그래서 우리는 청중들에게 우리가 진행하고 있는 것들을 잘 이야기 할 수 있도록 눈에 띄는 색색의 테이블과 그래프들. 그리고 신중하게 쓴 문장들로 이루어진 프레젠테이션을 작성하기 위해 정말 많은 시간을 투자합니다.

하지만 우리는 현재 21세기에 살고 있습니다. 오늘날 우리에게는 유용한 툴들을 가지고 있습니다. 즉, 우리는 더이상 우리가 무엇을 하고 있는지 청중에게 전달하기 위해 단어나 말에 의존할 필요가 없다는 뜻입니다. 우리가 진행하고 있고, 기획하고 출시하게 될 것을 청중에게 실제 보여줄 수 있는 파워를, 현재 우리가 가지고 있기 때문입니다.

그러므로,

제품 시연이나 동영상은 여러분의 제품이나 서비스가 얼마나 좋은지 청중에게 보여줄 수 있는 좋은 방법이 될 수 있으니, 이제라도 말 대신 보여주기 위해 시도해 보시기 바랍니다.