How to effectively present in English in the 21st Century

In the final part of how to turn a presentation in to a great presentation I want to focus on 5 tips you can use that will help you with the language you should be using when you present.

So, here are the five language tips you can use that will help turn your next presentation in to a great presentation.

1. Use short sentences.

In modern day English, the trend is for us to use short, simple sentences. The reason for this is that shorter sentences are easier to follow and also helps your presentation feel like it is flowing faster. Another advantage of using short sentences is that it helps you, a non-native English speaker, to remember the key phrases and sentences you need to use.

2. Use Action words

English is an action language, not a descriptive language. So always try to use an action verb or action phrase. Doing this will keep your audience interest high. For example. Use words like:

Developed, produced, created, designed, sold and shipped

Notice how Steve Jobs always begins his presentations with an ‘update’. By doing this he allows himself to begin his presentation with positive, action words that get his audience excited and amazed.

3. Tell personal stories

One of the biggest criticisms I hear from native English speakers when talking about how Korean people present in that Korean presenters always sound inhumane. It is as if they are not human. One way round this is to tell stories from your own life. It is possible that you are taught from an early age that you should not mix your personal life with your professional life. This is just BS! Business is human. Doing business is about human relationships and contacts. So, tell stories from your personal life.

Before is an example of a speaker at TED telling a personal story to begin his presentation. Doing this makes him sound much more human and allows him to connect with his audience

4. Use positive adjectives

In English we like to hear positive words. Positive words stimulate our minds and keeps our attention. A presentation full of negative adjectives is likely to send us to sleep. So, when you are preparing your presentation, check through it carefully to make sure that the majority of words you are using are positive. Examples of positive words are:
Brilliant, cool, excellent, fantastic, great.

WARNING! - Do not keep using the same words over and over again. If you do, you create a Mark Anthony situation (This situation comes from Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar where Mark Anthony repeated the words “for they are honourable men” over and over again during his speech following the murder of Julius Caesar, to the point where his audience began not to believe these words – they became sarcastic)
5. Use Emotional words

The best presentations create emotion. The emotion they create does not matter, it can be funny or sad. It really does not matter. Presentations that evoke emotion are always memorable and always get talked about.
To create emotion in a presentation get your audience to imagine a situation. For example:
“Imagine how you feel when you are stuck in a huge traffic jam and you are five minutes away from the most important interview of your life”

By asking your audience to ‘imagine’ how they would feel in a given situation, allows your audience to feel the emotion you want them to feel. It’s a great trick and it keeps your audience involved in your presentation.
By following the advice given here and in my previous two posts you can turn any presentation in to a great presentation. Good luck and stay positive.

This week I decided to go through the elements of making a great presentation. In part one I explained about how stories, whether they flow throughout the whole presentation, or they are simple short stories linked together by a theme can make a huge difference in your presentation. Today, I want to show you how by linking your words to the relevant images your story can contain the emotions of surprise, sadness and drama.

I grew up with BBC’s David Attenborough teaching me about wildlife and nature. In his early days, David Attenborough was in the video, but in his more recent TV shows he only does the voiceover (VO)

However, recently I have been watching BBC’s Life programme and I was amazed how the way the video and the voice work together to create stories that have drama, excitement and intrigue. Below is a clip that tells the story of how a Venus Fly Trap captures its food.

You can watch the video clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7eQKSf0LmY

If you took away the words, this video would not have the same dramatic feel, neither if you only heard the voice would you get the same sense of drama. This video works because both the visuals and the words work together as one to stimulate all the emotions.

When we are presenting, this is exactly how we need to present. Images alone do not make your presentation, if you are using images they need to be relevant to your subject and they need to follow exactly the flow of your words. When you marry your words with your images and you couple that to your story, then, and only then, are you delivering a great presentation.

This week I came across two TV ads that contain compelling stories, and little or no words. What it told me, and what you can learn from these ads is that a good story can turn anything into a great. Whether it is a TV ad or a presentation, by telling a story, or a series of stories you will turn your presentation into something great.

It does not matter how good your English is, many native English speakers produce terrible presentations, it does not matter how good your slides are, many presentations with professional quality images are bad. If you do not tell a story within your presentation it will be a disaster. The secret to a great presentation can be summed up in two words: “compelling stories”.

Take a look at these fantastic ads. They are short, but well worth your viewing.

While the music really helps to focus the story, the images alone in this ad tells the story of a woman going through the different stages of life. The story is compelling and really does keep your attention.

This video uses clips to tell stories, in effect there are many stories contained in just over two minutes. However, it is powerful, compelling and really gets the audience’s attention.
By changing your approach to your next presentation and focussing on stories, you not only will improve the quality of your presentation, you will also make it much easier for you to speak.

Over the last few days, there has been much comment of the slide that was featured in the New York Times newspaper regarding the slide that Gen. Stanley A McChrystal, leader of the American and NATO forces in Afghanistan was shown when took over the leadership in Afghanistan.

Gen. McChrystal was heard to comment “when we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war”.

There are far too many problems with this slide to go in to here, but here is my take on the whole debate:

PowerPoint and Keynote are tools that can be used to enhance our presentations, and can both be useful in conveying our message in a stronger and more friendly manner than by words alone. However, over the years our presentation software has become the main focus of our presentation, and that is where we are going wrong. PowerPoint and Keynote were never developed to be the main focus of the presentation. They were developed to help the presenter.

The above slide is creating news now, but I have sat through hundreds of presentation with slides similar to this one. Presentations where the text was too small and there was far too much detail in the slides. This never enhances our message, this always confuses our message and our audience will just turn off.

During the Battle of Britain in World War II, there was no PowerPoint or Keynote software, and so the British airforce used a table, with models for aircraft and a map to follow the war. This not only simplified a very complex battle, it also enabled the leaders of the war to fully understand what was happening in a clear and accurate way.

While today we may not have access to tables with maps and models, we do have access to white boards and flip charts. When we are faced with describing a very complex situation, the use of flip charts and white boards can make the explanation much easier for our audience. We must always remember, that when it comes to presenting, PowerPoint and Keynote are just one kind of tool from many different kinds. The key to a good presentation is simplicity, not detail.

There is a lot of comment on this article. For more insights and opinions please see:

Nancy Duarte of the Slide:ology blog

Guy Kawasaki on the Holy Kaw blog

It seems everyone loves lists, and so in that spirit here is my top five list of things you can do to improve your presentations instantly:

1. Move Around

This one I have mentioned before, but it is so important when you are presenting to an international audience. Staying behind the lectern tells your audience to are nervous and that you are not used to doing presentations. Essentially, you tell your audience that you are an amateur. To make yourself look more confident, come out from behind the lectern, walk around on stage. Now you do need to be careful. Walking up and down aimlessly can cause you to distract your audience, the way to do this is to move to the left of the stage and speak to the audience members on that side, then move to the right (or centre) and speak to the audience there. This shows confidence and also helps you to connect better with your audience because they feel that you are speaking directly to them, and not to the back wall of the room.

2. Ask Rhetorical Questions

A rhetorical question is a question you so not expect to be answered. For example:

” When we developed our new cell phone we came across the problem of consumer expectation. How did we overcome this problem?”

What you are doing here is asking your audience a question, and then answering the question yourself. In English a rhetorical question is not answered, and you need not worry about your audience shouting out an answer as the trick is to answer your question immediately after you ask it. If you pause too long, there may be some members of your audience who will answer the question. So be careful, ask the question and provide the answer immediately.

Asking rhetorical questions involve your audience, it makes your audience feel that they are part of your presentation, and this can only help you deliver an interesting and memorable presentation.

3. Use Relevant Images

I often talk about using images instead of bullet points on this blog, but there is an important warning here. If you use images that are not relevant to the word or words you are using then the impact of your image is lost. Make sure that the image you use is relevant to your subject or point.

4. Speak In A Conversational Style

Too often we make our presentations too formal, this perhaps is a consequence of the differences between English and Korean. English is a neutral language because it does not have a formal and informal style. If you meet meet President Barack Obama you can say “Hello Mr Obama”. If you meet a little child called Sarah, you can say “Hello Sarah”, there is little difference. However in Korean there are three distinct styles of language depending on who you are speaking to.

To be more engaging with your audience and for your audience to feel part of your presentation, you need to speak to them as if you were speaking with a friend. Always look at your audience as your friends, they want you to succeed, not fail. They are your friends. A simple way to do this is to use pronouns such as “I”, “you” and “we”. Using these words softens your speaking style and makes for a more conversational presentation.

5. Keep Your Presentation Short

Here is an endemic problem. When we are asked to do a presentation, one of the questions we ask is “how long do I have?” We then prepare a presentation that lasts as long as the time we are given. If we are given sixty minutes, for some strange reason we thing we should speak for sixty minutes. This is not true. What that sixty minutes means is that we can speak for up to sixty minutes. Therefore if you can communicate your message in thirty minutes, then fantastic! Either your audience can have an extra thirty minutes break (and they will love you for that) or you will have much more time to answer questions.

Either way, your presentation should only last as long as it takes for you to communicate your message, and not a minute more.

BONUS TIP

6. Keep Your Presentation Fresh

Quite often companies have a standard presentation that was created two or three years ago that they use time and time again to introduce their company. Usually this presentation was made by an employee that no longer works for the company and used an old version of PowerPoint. Not only does this presentation look dated, it also looks bad.

If you are asked to do a presentation, and are given a copy of the presentation to deliver, go through the presentation, update old images, upgrade it to the latest version of PowerPoint, or Keynote and check to see if it is as relevant today as it was two or three years ago. There is nothing worse for an audience to have to sit through a presentation that is clearly out of date.

Being aware of your audience’s needs is the single most important factor when it comes to presenting. Too many times a presenter is doing to impress their boss, and they do not care at all for their audience. Your audience can tell this very quickly, and are never impressed. So forget your boss, you are not presenting to them, and really think about what your audience want.