I love this presentation. Chip Kidd is a different kind of presenter. Not boring, not pretending to be someone who he is not and most of all understanding that the most important people in the room are the audience.

Sit back, enjoy and see a master doing his work.

Over the last few months I have been training groups of employees at a large Korean company. All the students are non-native English speakers, and all the employees have differing levels of English.

In each 4 week course ( we do four hours per week) the students do two presentations. One at the beginning and one at the end.

These students are continuing their everyday work, and have to prepare their presentations in their own time, and, if they can find the time, during their working hours.

A number of interesting observations have come up that I would like to share with you.

1. at the beginning of the course, almost all students believe they cannot present in English. By the end of the course all students have the realisation that actually they can present in English. This has nothing to do with the course, or my teaching method – sadly. This has everything to do with confidence. At the beginning of the course, most of the students simply have no confidence in their English ability. Once they have completed two, short presentations in font of their peers they begin the believe in themselves.

This problem in endemic in Korea. Most business people are tested on their English ability before entering a company, then they spend the next ten or twenty years only speaking in Korean, with the occasional English greeting and a “thank you”. If you do not use English regularly, then you are not going to be confident using English in your professional life.

If you want to feel better at using English, then find every opportunity you can to use English.

2. Many students over prepare their short presentation and end up either memorising their words, or reading a script. These students are always the worst presenters. They lose their place during their presentation, they hardly ever look at their audience and they spend too long looking down at their notes / script that the words they are speaking sound muffled and unclear.

Doing a short presentation in class is not the same as doing a keynote presentation in front of a hundred English speaking journalists at the launch of a new product, but all the same, if the presentation is important, the way you communicate with your audience is vital. Reading a script will prevent you from connecting with your audience in a personal way and you will fail. Not only will you fail, but your whole presentation will fail.

You need to know what you are talking about. If you do not know your subject well enough, then you should not be presenting. Reading a script is unforgivable, and simply tells your audience that they are not important enough for you to prepare properly.

Preparing for a presentation is about knowing your topic, knowing your stories and knowing what it is you want to tell your audience. It is not difficult. Any presenter, who is presenting in a foreign language should have the necessary language skills already. If they don’t, they should not be presenting.

3. It is hard to let go of practices learnt in the past. Yet, letting go of 1990s style presentations is something we must all do if we are going to be great communicators in the twenty-first century.

Maintaining a love affair with complex charts, text and bullet points is damaging your ability to communicate effectively. A twenty-first century presentation is about presenting your ideas in a clear and concise way. It is not about presenting slide after slide of technical data. That simply does not work today. If your grandmother would not understand your presentation, then it is not simple and concise enough.

If your presentation is all about technical data, then consider preparing a handout with the details. Then in your presentation itself focus on the key points that you have pulled out from the data. Explain to your audience that the detailed data is contained in a handout.

On a side note here – I am shocked and amazed when students turn round and tell me that preparing a handout means more work! Unbelievable! If your presentation is important enough for you to be presenting it to an audience, then a handout should never be considered “more work”. It should be considered an essential part of your presentation for your audience’s complete understanding.

These are just three things I have picked up over the last few months. There are more and I will write about these over the coming weeks.

Apologising For “Poor English”

Many of my Korean students feel the need to apologise for their “poor English” at the beginning of their presentation. This is not a good idea. When you apologise for “poor English” at the beginning of your presentation, your audience immediately become nagative towards your presentation and expect a long, boring presentation.

Instead, if you feel the need to apologise for your “poor English”, say it at the end of the presentation. This way instead of getting a negative response, you will get yourself a positive response.

End your presentation with:

Thank you very much and I am very sorry for my poor English.

There are No Magic Phrases In Presenting

Recently, a company I have been working with, asked me for a list of words and phrases for doing a presentation. This shocked me. It made me realise that so many people simply do not get it. People still think that to do a presentation you need some unique forms of language.

This is not true.

A presentation has no set formula or groups of words, sentences or expressions. A presentation is simply a conversation with a group of people. If you start creating set phrases, words or sentences for a presentation, you are going to create a presentation that either nobody understands or make it so boring your audience is going to be asleep before you get to the five minute mark.

A presentation is a conversation with your audience. The only English you need for an English presentation is the English you use for every day conversations.

So, if you want to improve your English presentation ability, improve your English conversation ability. Stop complicating a form of communication that should be wonderfully simple.

Seth Godin writes about why reading your speech or presentation does not work. According to Seth, it is extremely difficult to read a speech and sound like you mean what you are saying.

“It’s extremely difficult to read a speech and sound as if you mean it.

For most of us, when reading, posture changes, the throat tightens and people can tell. Reading is different from speaking, and a different sort of attention is paid.”

When I am doing my presentation seminar, attendees have to do two presentations. The first is a brief self-introduction and the second is a final presentation on anything they like. What I find is that students, when given no time to write out a speech, actually sound a hundred times better, than students who are given time to write out a speech. They sound genuine, they sound like they really believe in what they are saying and above all they sound convincing.

I know, for most people presenting in a foreign language, having a pre-written speech is like a comfort blanket. But it really does not help you to deliver you message in the most convincing way.

Having a few “errm”s and “arrh”s in your speech is fine. It shows that you are genuine and it shows that what you are saying comes from the heart and not the head.

So next time you are preparing a presentation, do not write out a script. Make few notes by all means, but keep it natural aand allow the natural flow of your conversation to take over. If you cannot do that, then accept Seth Godin’s advice:

“… don’t bother giving a speech. Just send everyone a memo and save time and stress for all concerned.”

Decker Communications have released their 2011 top ten best / worst communicators list, and I could not agree more with their list.

However, there was one omission that I would include in the list and that would be the Pyeongchang Olympic bid team who presented in Durban, South Africa last July.

These guys were outstanding and their communication was brilliant. It would be great to see more Korean people effectively communicating globally in 2012, and I hope that I will be able to help this wonderful country (South Korea) to be a nation of global communicators.

Here’s a little presentation I did recently for CBC News here in Korea about my cultural journey – coming from the United Kingdom to Korea, and some of the things I have noticed that are different.

It is a light hearted look, but I hope it can show you how to keep a presentation natural, and how to use good quality slides to help your audience to fully understand what you are saying.

With the passing of Steve Jobs, there has been a lot of comment about his life and his presentation philosophy.

In the recent biography by Walter Isaacson, there are numerous references to Steve Jobs’s thinking on presenting and one in particular stood out for me. The quotation:

“I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking,” Jobs later recalled. “People would confront a problem by creating a presentation. I wanted them to engage, to hash things out at the table, rather than show a bunch of slides. People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.”

This has always been a bug bear to me too. I simply cannot understand why anyone would want to use PowerPoint in a meeting. PowerPoint kills conversation, it puts slides at the centre of attention and it creates an atmosphere of staleness and boredom. The very things that prevent any kind of solution or idea being found.

The best meetings I have attended were where there was a proposal, typed on paper and given to all meeting participants before the meeting, and then everyone had an open and frank discussion about the subject. Often, new ideas were found or new angles were discovered about the original proposal, but one thing that happened was that people actually talked and discussed the idea.

The opposite meetings were where the organiser spent the first ten minutes trying to get his or her computer working, then completely dominated the meeting with slide after slide of boring text and poor quality clip art and pictures. There was no discussion and quite often a lot of confusion. The meeting ended and nobody knew what they were supposed to do.

PowerPoint and Keynote have their place, a product launch to a few hundred journalist, a training seminar where the slides are used to inform and teach. But a meeting to discuss a proposal or to come up with a solution to a problem is not the place.

Take a look at the video below. Here you see Steve Jobs talking to employees from Apple about the problems Apple was facing in 1997, and the solution. Note there are no slides, just Steve up front and centre talking to his staff, and then a video at the end. Had he used PowerPoint,it would have killed the effectiveness of what he had to say.

올해는 대규모의 다국적 기업부터 국내 중소기업까지 여러 다양한 회사에 계시는 많은 분들을 대상으로 프레젠테이션 강의 세미나를 진행해 왔습니다. 세미나에 참석하시는 분들은 영업부에서 인사부까지 다양한 부서에서 근무하시는 분들이었습니다.

허나, 한가지 제가 놀랐던 점은, 세미나에 참석했던 분들 중 상급 관리자는 단 한 분도 없었다는 것입니다. 수업에 참여한 분들 대부분이 각 부서의 하급직원들로 회사 내에서 프레젠테이션을 할 기회가 극히 드물거나 아예 없는 사람들이었습니다.

저는 속으로 “왜 그런걸까?” 하고 물었습니다.

영어로 중요한 프레젠테이션을 발표해야 하는 사람들, 이 사람들은 왜 프레젠테이션 트레이닝을 위한 세미나나 강의 혹은 워크샵에 참여하지 않는 것 일까요? 이런 강의나 워크샵에 참석하기엔, 자신들의 실력이 너무 뛰어나다고 생각하는 것일까요? 아니면 너무 바쁜 탓일까요?

이건 좀 말이 안 된다라는 생각이 들었습니다. 오늘날 이루어지는 대부분의 프레젠테이션들이 얼마나 형편없는지는 누구나가 다 알고 있습니다. 일부 프레젠테이션들은 점점 나아지고 있는 추세이지만, 또 프레젠테이션 소통방식에 있어 개선이 필요하다는 것을 이해하는 경우도 더러 있지만, 대부분의 사람들은 여전히 프레젠테이션란 지루하고 쓸모 없고 무의미한 것이라 생각하고 있습니다.

아마도, 이건 순전히 제 추측이지만, 자신에게 좀 더 트레이닝이 필요하다는 것을 이 상급 관리자들이 절대 인정하려 들지 않는 게 이유라는 생각이 들었습니다. 그리고, 이렇게 자존심을 굽히지 않는 데서 바로 문제가 생기는 것이라 생각됩니다.

제가 참관했던 대학생 프레젠테이션들은 대부분이 정말 훌륭했습니다. 디자인과 메시지, 그리고 스토리가 모두 담겨있었습니다. 대다수가 최종 프레젠테이션에 있어 약간 다듬어질 필요가 있긴 했지만, 프레젠테이션들 모두 전반적으로 좋았고 창의성이 돋보이며 명확하고 명료한 메시지를 담고 있었습니다. 하지만 이와 반대로, 제가 보았던 고위 간부급들의 프레젠테이션은 고리타분한 텍스트들로 꽉꽉 차 읽기 어려운 슬라이드에 메시지는 완전히 엉망진창이었습니다. 결과적으로 이들이 보여준 프레젠테이션은 명확한 요점도 없고, 종국에는 청중을 혼란시키는 마치 90년대에 만들어진 프레젠테이션처럼 보였습니다.

비즈니스 업계의 소통방식은 90년대에 멈추지 않고 진화와 발전을 거듭하였으며, 2000년대에 들어 급진적으로 거세졌습니다. 청중은 이제 간결하고 명료한 메시지를 요구하며, 또 이들을 20분 이내에 전달받기를 원하고 있습니다. 그리고 자세한 사항들은 편리하고 알아보기 쉽게 유인물로 받길 원합니다.  청중은 더 이상 낡아빠진 스타일로 간부들이 내뱉는 말을, 즉, 끝날 때까지 몇 시간 내내 재미없고 상상력을 찾아볼 수 없을 만큼 지루한 그런 말들을 들으며 앉아있을 시간이 없습니다. 이들은, 최상의 이미지와 영상을 통해 핵심 메시지를 전달받기 원하고, 쉽게 알아듣고 이해할 수 있는 팩트와 수치들을 원합니다.

 고위 간부급의 사람들이 이 점을 인지하고, 21세기에 걸맞는 방식으로 프레젠테이션 하는 법을 배워야 할 필요성을 느끼지 못한다면, 프레젠테이션은 계속 지루한 이미지로 밖에 남을 수 없습니다. 제가 부탁하고 싶은 것은, 만약 여러분이 상위 관리자급 직원이라면, 제발 자존심을 낮추고 주위에 도움을 요청하시라는 겁니다. 이는 여러분 자신을 발전시킬 수 있도록 도와줄 뿐 아니라, 현재 우리의 프레젠테이션이 받고 있는 이미지를 회복시키는, 즉 프레젠테이션이란 메시지를 소통하는 가장 최고의 훌륭한 방식이라는 것을 인정받을 수 있도록 도와줄 것이라는 것을 꼭 아셨으면 합니다.

This year I have done our presentation seminar with a large number of people from many different companies. Some were large international companies, others were smaller domestic companies. On each occasion the students attending were a mixture of people from various departments ranging from the sales department to the human resources department.

However, one thing that has surprised me is that none of the students attending were senior managers. Almost all of them were junior members of their departments who, when questioned, did little or no presenting in their companies.

I find myself having to ask the question: why?

Why is it that the very people who have to do important presentations in English are the very people who do not attend presentation training seminars, courses or workshops? Do they think they are too good to attend? or is it that they feel they are too busy?

In my mind this is a crazy situation. Everyone knows that that the state of presentations today is terrible. In some places it is getting better and in some cases there is an understanding that presentation communication needs to improve, but the perception of the humble presentation is still that they are largely boring, useless and pointless.

My guess, and this is only a guess, is that these managers are too proud to admit they need further training. And it is here where the problem arises.

Most presentations I see done by university students are fantastic. The design, the message and the stories are there. It most cases the final presentation is a little rough around the edges, but on the whole their presentations are good, creative and have a clear, simple message. On the other hand most presentations I see done by senior executives have difficult to read slides, are full of boring text and are a complete mess when it comes to a message. The end product looks like something created in the 1990s., with no clear point and at the end a very confused audience.

Business communication did not stop evolving in the 1990s. The evolution of Business communication exploded in the 2000s. Audiences now demand simple, clear messages that are delivered in twenty minutes and the details are handed to them in a clear, convenient handout. Audiences no longer have time to sit in a meeting room listening to an old style executive spew word and boring word in a dull, unimaginative way for hours upon end. Audiences want to the point messages with great illustrations and simple easily digested facts and figures.

Until these senior executives get it and begin to understand that it is they that need to be taught how to present in the twenty-first century, presentations are going to continue with the same boring image. All I ask is that if you are a senior executive, please lose the pride and get some help. It will not only help you develop, but it will help restore the image of the presentation into something it should be. A great way to communicate a message.