Posts Tagged ‘ Presenting tips

Presenting Charts

Often when we have to do a regular business presentation, we have to present data in the form of a chart. These charts are typically filled with either text or numbers. Because of the nature of many charts, these words or numbers are usually squeezed into small boxes in the slides and most of the audience cannot read the small text.

The question I am often asked is: how do I make these charts more audience friendly?

The thing to remember is that a presentation is never for the convenience of the presenter. A presentation is always for the convenience of the audience. Because of this you, the presenter, have a duty to make your slides more friendly for your audience and therefore you have a lot of work to do so your audience doesn’t have to.

Let us look at a couple of different examples of showing charts using Stephen Covey’s Time Matrix chart:

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This first example is the way 90% of bad presenters would show this chart. Everything placed into one slide, whereupon the audience will inevitably begin reading the whole slide from left to right immediately it appears on the screen. The audience stops listening to you, and they just read. A completely useless way to explain or demostrate this chart.Alternative 1

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Rather than showing all the data at once, bring in each item one by one. The downside to this method is time. It will take quite a few minutes to go through each item and explain it. If you are on a tight time schedule this method will probably take too long. However, if this chart is the main point of your presentation, it is probably worth taking the time to explain it in detail.

Alternative 2

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Fade out the areas of the chart you are not talking about and only leave the area you are focussing on highlighted. This method would overcome the issue of time and allow you to go through each section step by step. The advantage of this method is that it keeps your audience’s attention on the part of the chart you are discussing.

Alternative 3

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Zoom in the area you are speaking about so that it fills the slide. At the same time fade out the rest of the chart so that it is almost hidden away in the background. This is really a matter of aethetics rather substance and is essentially just a variation of alternative 2, but it does give you an idea of another way to show data in a chart.

Alternative 4

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You could introduce the full chart briefly at the beginning of this part of your presentation, then as you introduce each part you move on to the next slide which only shows one of the boxes. This would then allow you to introduce each part line by line. At the end of the fourth box, you show the full chart again, but longer to allow your audience to absorb the full data. Again, the issue of time would come up, but it is another alternative of showing this data in a way your audience can follow.

The take away of this is that when you are presenting charts you need to avoid putting too much data up there on the screen at once. Charts and slides with too much text cause your audience to turn off their attention on you, and place their attention elsewhere. The best case scenario is they stop listening and start reading, the worst case, and often the most common case, they just simply stop listening to your presentation altogether. Your job as the presenter is to keep your audience’s attention on you. These alternatives can help you to do that.

Presenting To Your Co-Workers

Recently I had a meeting with a General Manager of a large foreign company in Korea. The General Manager is a native English speaker and we were talking about the communication difficulties he has with his Korean staff.

When it comes to presentations, one of the problems he experiences is that many of his Korean staff stick rigidly to a set formula. Even though they are presenting to their own colleagues, people they work with every day, they still give a full introduction of themselves before they get to the point of their presentation.

A good introduction is great when you are presenting to people who you have not met before. They want to know who you are. However, when you are presenting to your co-workers, the introduction is not necessary. They already know who you are. You are wasting their time.

Presentations to your own colleagues are largely less formal than presentations to people from outside your company. As these presentations are usually contained in a meeting, your colleagues want the presentation to be short and to the point. So do just that. Get straight to the point.

Thank you. Today I want to share with you our department’s plan of action for 2013

That’s it. You thank your audience for allowing you to speak and then get straight to it. There is no need to introduce the members of your team and there is no need to introduce yourself.

Presentations are a business tool that needs to be adapted for your audience. Sticking to a ‘one size fits all’ formula is wrong, you need flexibility and you need to create a presentation that meets your audience’s needs.

On a separate point. You do not need to put your company logo on ever slide when you are presenting to your own colleagues! They know you work for the company.

Simple Way To Improve Your Slides

Here’s a quick New Year tip to help you instantly improve the look of your slides.

Often, presenters like to include a quotation or perhaps their company’s mission statement or some other form of ‘motivational text in their slides. The problem is that making simple text look interesting on a slide is actually quite difficult. Or, perhaps the presenter does not think about the aesthetics of the slide when they create it and ends up having a slide that looks unprofessional.

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The above slide is typical of a presentation slide where the presenter has not thought about the design and look of their slides. All they have done is used the default typeface and the default place holder and simply typed in the quote that they wanted to use. It is really not very inspiring.

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In the second slide above, you can see that although the words are exactly the same, the way the words have been arranged, the use of large and small letters and a different typeface helps to bring the slide to life. It makes the whole slide much more interesting and it also gives the audience the feeling that the presenter has given some thought to their content and that they actually care about their slides.

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Finally, the above slide is taking it another step further. By adding an image that relates to the words, the presenter has given the slide a completely new life. The image helps to convey the feeling the presenter wants the audience to feel and it helps to give a stronger meaning to what the presenter wants to say.

It really is quite easy to improve the design of your presentations with just a little thought. It does not take a creative genius to create more compelling and interesting slides.

People talk a lot about ‘telling stories’ in your presentation and a quick simple way to tell a story is to allow your audience to create their own stories by using images with your words. Each audience member will interpret each image in their own way based on their own experiences, and this will make your presentation resonate with each person in your audience. All it needs is a little thought and a little application.

That thought and that application is what your audience deserves.

Typefaces:

Slide 1 – Times New Roman

Slide 2 & 3 – Helvetica Neue Light

Using Your Voice

Your voice is arguably the most essential tool you need when you present. Without your voice, you are not presenting. So developing a good strong voice is something you will need to do if you present regularly.

For most people who are presenting they experience nervousness. This nervousness effects your voice by raising their pitch (low voice or high voice) and speeds up the words you speak. In some cases, when you are especially nervous your voice can break and ‘shake’ in a way that makes it sound like you are crying or highly emotional.

The key is to be able to project your voice to the back of the room. This is fine if you are presenting in a small room with a small group of people. But when you are in a large room with a larger group of people and you do not have the assistance of a microphone, then this can cause major problems for the people at the back of the room.

So, here are a few tips that can help you to project your voice more clearly:

1. speak from your diaphragm, not your throat


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Your diaphragm is a thin layer of muscle positioned just below your lungs. This muscle assists your breathing and is actually the cause of hiccups. Most people speak using their throat, and we naturally do this when we are speaking softly or quietly. However, to improve the volume and pitch of your voice you should use your diaphragm to project your words. To do this you need to make sure that your breathing and voice comes from your stomach area. It is a lot easier than you think, and with practice you will soon be able to do this naturally.

2. Stand up!

Presenting while sitting down suppresses your voice by making your voice volume much lower. To avoid this you should always stand up when you are presenting and keep your head held high. Avoid looking at your shoes!

3. Position your notes / computer high up

Most presenters on stage place their computer on the floor and then spend the rest of their presentation looking down at the computer’s monitor. When you look down you automatically lower the volume of your voice. The best place for your computer is on the podium / lectern. This ensures that your head is always high up.

4. Relax!

Okay, I know this is difficult. Most people are very nervous when they are presenting, but it is important to try and relax before you speak. Try rotating your shoulders and neck a little before you begin. Drink a little warm water to relax your throat and focus you mind on keeping relaxed.

I hope that helps a little when you are next presenting. Please feel free to add any other tips you find useful in the comments section.

Dressing to Present

A question I am often asked when I am coaching a presenter, is what do I wear?

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A simple guideline to follow is to wear clothing that is slightly more formal than what your audience will be wearing. Finding out what your audience will be wearing is part of your research and planning. It is not difficult to work out.

If you are presenting to a TED like audience on a weekend, then you can be sure that your audience will be wearing casual clothing. Therefore it would be a mistake to wear a formal business suit with a tie and all the trimmings. A better clothing combination would be a pair of trousers, a sports jacket or blazer and a buttoned shirt. whether you wear the jacket or not will depend on the temperature in the room. Feeling comfortable when you present in the priority here.

On the other hand if you were presenting the financial performance of your company at your shareholders annual general meeting, then a formal business suit would be the right choice. Preferably dark in colour with a white shirt, black shoes and a tie.

If you were asked to present at a company retreat or workshop, then a more casual approach should be taken. Wearing the type of clothing you would wear for a TED like presentation would be appropriate.

It is also worth bearing in mind any cultural differences. In many parts of Western US, informality in clothing style is normal, whereas in many parts of Asia, such as Japan and Korea, business attire is still largely formal (although I do accept this is beginning to change) Finding these things out should all be part of your research when you are preparing to do a presentation.

The key thing to remember when you are presenting is that the clothes you are wearing should not detract from the main message of your presentation. So, leave the bright yellow socks at home, and wear something that does not stand out. Always keep in mind that you are not presenting to promote yourself, you are presenting for your audience and they really do not want to be distracted by your fashion statement no matter how good or bad it is.

Information overload

We often think we have to fill our presentations with data and lists in an effort to give our audiences all the information available. This forgets a very important change in the way we get our information. When we are interested in something, we go away and Google it – or in Korea, we Naver it.

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With this in mind as presenters we do not need to cover as much detail as we used to do in a presentation. What we need to do now is to give enough information to spark enough interest to get our audience to want to learn more.

The way I see presentations today is that they are an opportunity to create a ‘buzz’. Whether that is to stimulate interest in your product or service or to explain a new plan for your company. What your goal should be is to induce a spark that gets your audience wanting more. Fill your presentation with a the facts and data and you not only bore your audience, you lose their interest in whatever you are talking about.

Company reports, SOPs and other detailed explanations are, and if they are not -should be, available for your audience members. So you do not necessarily concern yourself with every single little piece of information.

Of course presenters need to give some details, the overview if you like, but the boring nitty gritty can be left for the audience members to look up if they have enough interest following you presentation. And this presents a unique challenge to a modern day presenter – how to spark the interest.

To do this you need to be able to show that audience that by taking an interest in what you are saying, it will improve their lives in one way or another. For example, if you are presenting your company to a group of potential new clients, you need to show them that your company can improve the way they do business. Your potential clients do not want to listen to you spend five minutes talking about the history of your company since its foundation – that is information that can easily be found doing a simple search in a search engine. They want to know what you have achieved and how you can use that achievement to help you become a better company. You potential clients do not want to know how your management is structured. They want to know which manager will be looking after them and how he or she will help their company become a better company.

Think about it. When you are sat in a presentation, are you really interested in how a company structures its management? Even worse, why are you talking about your CEO / Chairman / woman when they haven’t even bothered to turn up to the meeting?

The way it works in the twenty-first century is you give three or four key pieces of information and allow your audience time to ask questions on the parts that they want more information. That way you are presenting to your audience needs and not your need to squeeze in as much boring, irrelevant information as possible – in an effort to keep your antiquated boss happy.

Keeping it simple, relevant and short is the way to present in the twenty-first century.

Learning From… Professor Robert Winston

Professor Robert Winston is a British professor of medicine and science, as well as a member of the British House of Lords, a TV presenter and pioneer in human fertility treatments.

It is as a TV presenter that Professor Winston has become a household name in the United Kingdom, because of his ability to take a very complex subject, science and medicine, and to simplify it through the use of stories.

As presenters we can learn a lot from Professor Winston’s style.

The key element to Professor Winston’s style is to use words and descriptions that everyone would understand. He does not use medical jargon or difficult to pronounce latin words, he uses every day common words such as “the heart”, “the brain”, “the liver”. This is language that is understandable to everybody.

Using jargon in any presentation is bad. Even if you are sure all members of your audience will understand what you are talking about, but you can never be 100% sure. It is far better to avoid jargon altogether and keep the words you use to everyday phrases and expressions.

Professor Winston communicates his message by making data interesting. For example, when talking about the number of people who die in the UK each day, he expresses it by saying “by the end of this programme, 60 people will have died in the United Kingdom” this number is easy to understand and appreciate, and is simple to understand. It is also remarkably memorable.

Taking your presentation subject and turning it into a story with easy to understand examples and data sets, really does make a difference to your presentation. It makes it memorable, and actionable. And that is what you want to achieve.

Professor Winston’s voice is also a strong factor in his speaking style. It is not monotonous and he varies his tone and inflection. He speeds up when he needs to and slows down when pointing out something that is important.

You too need to vary your tone and speed when speaking. It will help you to sound much more natural and much more human. Far better than speaking with one tone – then you just sound like a robot.

Your Duty To Entertain

One of the biggest complaints that come from attendees of presentations is that the presenter was boring. In today’s world being boring when presenting is just going to turn your audience off you and on to their smart devices.

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No matter what your subject is, there really is no excuse for boring your audience. You are not presenting for your own good. You are presenting for your audience, you are in effect giving something to your audience and you have a responsibility to give them that in a way your audience will find stimulating and interesting.

A good presenter today is an entertainer. I know the traditionalists will disagree with me, but the truth is audiences want and expect to be entertained when they attend a presentation. It is no longer acceptable to say “but our business is a serious business” that is the excuse of a 20th century management nobody who has not moved in to the twenty-first century.

If you want your presentation to have impact, to be remembered and acted upon then you need to present your message in an entertaining and logical manner.

Failing that, you can continue to bore audiences, but do not expect your message to be acted upon, remembered or even you being asked back to speak again. You lost your opportunity – you lost.

The Reason For Never Reading Your Presentation.

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.”

Using Umm, Errm and other ‘Filler’ Words

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.

(HT to Dr Simon Raybould for his excellent posts)