Power Presentations - Wednesday, February 22, 2012
“I” versus “You”
by Jerry Weissman
There’s an old joke about the opera diva who receives an adoring fan in her dressing room after a performance. The diva goes on and on about how magnificently she sang every one of her arias, about her dramatic acting, her expressive gestures, and her fabulous costumes. After about half an hour, the diva says to the fan, “But enough about me, what did you think of my performance?”
Joe Dator, a cartoonist for New Yorker magazine, did a variation on the diva joke. In his sketch, a man is speaking to a woman seated across a table. The caption reads, “Enough about me, but nothing about you just yet.”
This is no laughing matter in most other walks of life where self-centeredness is an obstacle to communication. In presentations, self-centeredness is manifested by a lack of relevance to the audience, and in sales by the lack of benefits for the customer. But to fully understand the negative impact of such one-way communications, let’s take a more universal view by focusing on self-centeredness in conversations, a social phenomenon otherwise known as “Having a ’versation.”
We’ve all been trapped by party bores who emulate the opera diva by delivering monologues all about themselves. One of the early indications that the one-way street is heading for a dead end is the ratio of declarative statements to questions. Bores speak with no question marks on their verbal keyboard.
Another indicator is the ratio of how frequently bores say “I” to how infrequently they say “you.” That simple metric serves as an early warning for you to excuse yourself to head for the bar and refresh your drink. But the role of pronouns in communication extends beyond chit chat into interpersonal relationships.James W. Pennebaker, a University of Texas at Austin psychologist, studies the connections between the frequency of words and feelings. In his book, The Secret Life of Pronouns,he writes:
Pronouns (such as I, you, we, and they)…broadcast the kind of people we are…By looking more carefully at the ways people convey their thoughts in language, we can begin to get a sense of their personalities, emotions, and connections with others.
Mr. Pennebaker conducted a variety of research projects ranging from Craigslist ads to Twitter messages to prove his point. One of the most revealing was a study on speed-dating which, according to a report in the New York Times, “found that couples who used similar levels of personal pronouns, prepositions and even articles were three times as likely to want to date each other compared with those whose language styles didn’t match.”
This post is not meant to help you improve your results at speed-dating, but to urge you to match closely with your listeners, to focus on the “co-” in communications, to have a conversation, not a ‘versation.
When you present, be mindful of your audience by offering them benefits; when you converse, be mindful of the other person by balancing your “I” to “you” ratio. When in doubt, err on the side of the latter.
Note: Mr. Pennebaker offers an opportunity to assess your compatibility with a friend by tracking your word usage in this online exercise: secretlifeofpronouns.com/exercise/synch.
Thanks for the post Jerry. I love your expression, "their verbal keyboard." I was curious about your opinion about using "you" versus "we" when trying to connect yourself (as the speaker) and your content to an audience. I tend to think that using "you"
helps audience members individualize the information to their own specific situation, versus getting lost in a universal "we." What are your thoughts? Kelly
After several high school and college courses, a few classes at Berlitz, and numerous trips to France and Italy, I have developed enough facility in their languages to get by in their restaurants, hotels, and shops, but not nearly enough to have full conversations. However, I have also developed a taste for French and Italian cinema, and so my Netflix queue is populated primarily by such films. Of course, when I watch them, I have to rely on the subtitles for translation and drop my eyes to the bottom of the screen every time they change. As I do, my ears pick out some of the spoken words but, because the actors are natives, they speak too quickly for me to follow them—except for the words at the ends of their sentences.
Therein lies a lesson for presenters.
Whenever actors, public speakers, clergy, or people in conversation, end a sentence or a phrase, they usually pause. The pause gives the listeners—the audience—time to absorb the words. But when a presenter stands up in front of an audience, the stress of the situation triggers an adrenaline rush which produces time warp that causes the presenter to speak faster and rush past the pauses.
Watch any Woody Allen film and you’ll see the effect of stress on speech tempo. Most of his characters—as reflections of his own public persona—are neurotic people who get into complicated situations. As soon as the plot thickens, the characters’ words accelerate like a Ferrari on the open road. This is amusing in a Woody Allen film, but it can damage a presentation because the rapid pace not only makes a presenter appear harried; it garbles the presenter’s words. The latter problem is heightened when—in our globalized world—presenters speak to audiences for whom English is a second language.
That is where we come full circle to the lesson from foreign films. Professional actors pay as much attention to the cadence of their speech as they do to the tone of their voices; and so, when actors end their sentences, they pause to punctuate the meaning of an idea. Presenters are not actors, but their ideas do fall into logical phrases. Presenters would do well to give their audiences—whether native English speakers or English-as-a-second-language speakers—a moment to absorb their information by pausing at the ends of their phrases. The best way to create a pause is to drop your voice at the ends of your phrases. Sadly, many presenters today do the opposite; they let their voices rise at the ends of their phrases, producing the dreaded “Valley Girl” effect (the subject of an earlier post.) If you concentrate on dropping your voice, you will not only sound more authoritative, you will add those valuable pauses.
I attended a presentation given by a Frenchman who started his pitch as fast as a racehorse bolting out of the gate. In the first moments, I heard him say “zee ontairpreez,” and didn’t understand. But later on in the presentation, when he settled down and began pausing (if nothing else than to breathe) he spoke the words again. Only then did I realize that he had said, “the enterprise.”
Learn a lesson from foreign films and from the classic Coca-Cola slogan, take “the pause that refreshes.”
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Siguranta datelor � HORECA MANAGER ofera siguranta datelor in sistem cu nivele de acces distincte pentru angajat si pt Administrator. Promptitudine si reactie rapida la comenzile utilizatorilor. Se pot utiliza un numar nelimitat de produse grupate in categorii.
Interfata foarte prietenoasa, customizabila pt fiecare client. Reducerea costurilor prin o corecta gestionare a materiilor prime, avand la dispozitie rapoartele de consum pentru a putea alcatui o comanda de aprovizionare. Controlul angajatilor prin informatiile
oferite de catre BORDEROUL DE INCASARI OSPATAR: Data si ora intrarii in tura precum si a iesirii,Numarul de comenzi servite,Valoare vanzari desfasurata pe categoriile de plata (Numerar,Card,Protocol) Softul functioneaza si pe varianta MONOPOST � un singur
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numele ospatarului care se ocupa de acea masa. Interfata de introducere a comenzii este foarte usor de utilizat. Doar prin apasarea zonei corespunzatoare categoriei, zona de produse se populeaza cu cele din categoria selectata. Se listeaza bonurile de comanda.
Apoi se elibereaza nota de plata si bonul fiscal. Raportul de vanzari ne ofera informatii complexe asupra vanzarilor cantitativ � valoric si procentual odata pe CATEGORII DE PRODUSE cat si amanuntit pe fiecare produs vandut in parte. -Calcul CONSUM Materii
prime pentru orice perioada selectata. (se poate defalca pe modalitati de plata!) Toate Rapoartele se exporta in EXCEL Interfata de Introducere Produse Meniu foarte usor de lucrat in ea. De aici se poate introduce un produs NOU sau modifica un produs vechi
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perioade de varf daca e necesar. Interfata de INCHIDERE ZI poate fi consultata oricand pentru a afla vanzarile in timp real, imparite pe metode de plata si fiecare pe gestiuni, precum si valoarea vanzarilor inclus MESELE NEINCASATE INCA. http://www.ab-soft.ro
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In a prior post on the art of developing your story, you read that Federico Fellini, the legendary Italian cinema director noted for his imaginative stories, approached the creative process with an open mind; considering any and all ideas fair game for his films. The equivalent of Mr. Fellini’s method in presentations is brainstorming, a step most presenters skip in their rush to prepare their next pitch. Instead, they begin by shuffling existing slides, and often at the last minute. They do this because, as results-driven people, they seek to impose structure at the outset. But every human mind, whether artistic or business, generates ideas randomly, and so an essential part of the creative process—and developing a presentation is a creative process—is to incorporate the randomness. Artists understand this fact of life and go with the free flow.
Woody Allen, a virtual one-man movie studio, having written more than 60 films during his long and illustrious career, is no exception. He revealed his creative process in a biographical documentary on the American Masters series PBS. In a scene shot in his apartment, Mr. Allen reached into a nightstand drawer, took out a large stack of cluttered papers and said, “This is my collection. This is how I start. It’s all kind of scraps and things that are written on hotel things. I’ll ponder these things.” Then, as he tossed the papers onto his bed, he added, “I’ll dump them here like this…I go through this all the time, every time I start a project. And I sit here like this… and I look at one… like that...and then …”
For your brainstorming, as your version of Mr. Allen’s hotel scraps, you can use 3-by-5 index cards, a whiteboard, Post-it Notes or one of the many software products on the market, among them Inspiration, MindManager and Microsoft’s Visio. Whichever vehicle you chose, consider any and all ideas—but be sure that you resist your results-driven instinct to impose structure during your free flow. If you impose structure too soon, you impose censorship, and could lose a fresh idea. Save the structuring for after the brainstorming is done.
Here, too, we find a lesson in the methodology of Woody Allen and Federico Fellini. Each of them is noted for his creativity in post-production, the period after the writing and the shooting, when the director assembles and structures the film. In fact, one of Mr. Fellini’s techniques was to cast actors who looked best for the filming and other actors whose voices sounded best for the sound track and overdubbed them in the post-production.
Let your mind do what it’s going to do during your brainstorming, and do your structuring afterwards. Use the right tool for the right job and in the right sequence.
Follow Woody Allen’s advice, “It’s not rocket science, this is not quantum physics. If you’re the writer of the story, you know what you want your audience to see because you’ve written it. It’s just storytelling and you tell it.”
Thanks Jerry, this is very useful -- we know that many presenters create a mishmash from their existing slides as you mentioned, and that a structured outline (compared to a script in movie-speak) is a better alternative. But as you rightly said, even
a structure can prevent productive brainstorming -- that's a great thought to remember!
The most
frequently asked question of presentation coaches is “What do I do with my
hands?” In a previous post, I cautioned against
choreography; I’ve seen far too many presenters attempt to illustrate their
narrative with specific gestures and wind up tying themselves into pretzel
knots. Instead, use your hands and arms
as you do naturally, to illustrate what you are saying. However, I do recommend
one gesture: to extend your hand and arm periodically, bridging the gap between
you and your audience (as AT&T says, “Reach Out”), while simultaneously
replicating the universal handshake.
Ronald
Reagan provides an alternative point of view. Throughout his career, The Great
Communicator rarely used any gestures. A commercial DVD called Ronald Reagan: The Great Communicatorcontains
clips from more than 100 public appearances during his eight years as
president. In all the clips, he made an expansive gesture with his hands and
arms only once.
Mr.
Reagan actually began to use this style during his formative years as a
presenter. Between the twilight of his days as an actor and the start of his
political career as the Governor of California, he spent eight years as a
spokesman for General Electric Corporation which gave him many opportunities to
present in many venues. One of them was as the host of GE Theater, an anthology
series of television dramas. In one 1954 episode, he delivered his introduction
standing, framed by stage lights, in front a blank wall of a movie studio.
Attired in a smartly-tailored tweed coat sprouting a natty pocket kerchief, he
had his right arm propped on a stage light and his left hand in his trouser pocket.
During the entire introduction, neither arm ever budged.
You
might call this the “Look, Ma, no hands!” approach, taken from the common
phrase that a child riding a bicycle might call out to its mother—and used in countless other variations. The style
worked—wonders—for Mr. Reagan. Would it work for you? The answer, as always, is
to do what comes naturally for you.
An
unnatural approach is to treat gesturing as performing. One variation of performing is to divide the
use of hands into two camps known as “Anchorperson or Weatherperson.” As we all
know from television news programs, Anchorpersons sit stock still at a desk,
rarely using their hands; while Weatherpersons
wave their hands and arms about broadly to indicate weather patterns on a map.
This division parallels the Ronald Reagan no-hands style vis-à-vis the
gesture-to-illustrate style, but it does so as performance.
If you
are reading this post, it is highly unlikely that you are a performer or that
you were auditioned for your position or that you were hired because of your
acting skills. You were hired on the basis of the personality you presented
during your interview and vetting process; and that personality was your natural style.
Heed the advice of Irving Berlin’s song in the
classic musical, Annie Get Your Gun,“Doin'
What Comes Natur'lly.”
(Thanks to Jeff Paine for sharing the “Anchorperson
or Weatherperson” concept.)
I'm a public speaker with some amateur acting experience. I usually use gesturing and hand movement more than Reagan did, though I know it can easily become bothersome. Great article, thanks!
John Doerr, a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is in great demand as a speaker. His repute is attributed to his diverse and successful involvements in for-profit companies (Google, Groupon, Zynga, Amazon), not-for-profit organizations (NewSchools Venture Fund,), and public policy (The President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness). Mr. Doerr is often invited to share his experiences, insights, and best practices, and he does so in an unorthodox way: rather than stand and deliver from a canned deck of PowerPoint slides, he asks his audiences what they want to hear and then fulfills their requests.
Whenever Mr. Doerr steps up to the front of a room, be it a conference center stage or a university auditorium, he polls his audience for the subjects they’d like him to address. He annotates what they say on a large whiteboard—his version of the classic academic “chalk” talk—then proceeds to discourse on each subject. The nature of the organization or event enables Mr. Doerr to anticipate the key themes he might be asked about. To support his discussion, he brings along a few PowerPoint slides to illustrate the themes, and he accesses the slides as he makes his way through his whiteboard list.
In doing so, he provides a role model of three important presentation best practices:
1. Elevate the audience’s primacy. One of the most common faults that salespeople make is to sell features rather than benefits. This fault has its parallel in presenters who focus on their message without regard for the audience (witness the one-size-fits-all “Corporate Pitch”). The results, respectively, are the failure to close the sale or to achieve the goal of the presentation. Mr. Doerr’s approach rights the balance.
2. Relegate the slides to their proper secondary role. Undoubtedly, another common fault is to multi-task the role of slides; presenters use them not only as illustrative graphics, but also as speaker notes, send-aheads, and leave-behinds. As you read in a prior blog, this approach produces images of encyclopedic detail that serve none of the functions. Here, too, Mr. Doerr’s approach rights the balance.
Moreover, in accessing his slides randomly, he employs a useful, but little-known, [entity display="Microsoft" type="organization" subtype="company" active="true" key="microsoft" ticker="MSFT" exchange="NASDAQ"]Microsoft[/entity] PowerPoint technique:
3. The “Go To” Command. When PowerPoint is in Slide Show mode, Mr. Doerr—or you—can go directly to any slide in the deck by entering the slide number (prompted by a printed outline of all the slides) and pressing the “Enter” key. These simple strokes will jump the slide show directly to the desired slide.
This technique has three benefits:
The presenter appears in complete command and control, sending the subliminal message that the presenter is an effective manager. [entity display="Management" type="section" active="true" key="/management"]Management[/entity] is the primary investment factor.
Instant gratification for the audience; nice to have for any human being, vital for every audience.
The “cool” factor.
In his primary role as a venture capitalist, Mr. Doerr sees many presentations from many companies that pitch him to invest many millions of dollars. Surely, he measures what he sees and hears through the filter of his own best practices.
Power Presentations - Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Words that Inspire Confidence
by Jerry Weissman
In response to a prior blog about meaningless words, commenter Brett wrote, “It would be interesting to see those words and phrases that do inspire confidence and trust. That would be a great follow up.” Here you go, Brett (and Aggressive Reader, who seconded Brett’s suggestion). This discussion of meaningful words is primarily about replacements for weak, meaningless ones, while the prior discussion was about the complete elimination of condescending, insulting or self-deprecating ones.
Attorneys have long cautioned officers and employees of corporations to avoid forward-looking statements. The financial scandals of the past decade have made those attorneys even more diligent about language. As a result, corporate presenters now fill their pitches with sentences formed in the conditional mood. Phrases containing “we believe,” “we think,” and “we feel” pervade presentation narratives to such a degree that they spill over into sentences where caution is unnecessary. More to the point, the spillage weakens what should otherwise be assertive language, as in the following sentence:
With this large opportunity and our superior technology, I think you’ll see that our company is well-positioned for growth.
The words “I think” introduce doubt, even if only subliminally, in the minds of your audience. As a presenter attempting to persuade an audience, your job is to provide them with as much certainty as you can. The way to get from doubt to certainty is to switch from the conditional to the declarative mood by eliminating the offending words:
With this large opportunity and our superior technology, you’ll see that our company is well-positioned for growth.
That simple nip and tuck strengthens the impact of the entire sentence.
This is not to say that, when the outcome is uncertain, you should make forward-looking statements or forecasts. That’s risky business. In such cases, you must use the conditional mood, but instead of the weak words “think,” “believe,” and “feel,” try these stronger options:
We’re confident . . .
We’re convinced . . .
We’re optimistic . . .
We expect . . .
With this large opportunity and our superior technology, you’ll see that our company is well-positioned for growth, and we’re confident that growth will translate into significant revenues.
From the sublime of persuasive words to the banal of airline travel, think of the announcement you typically hear on the public address system when your flight touches down at your destination:
I’d like to be the first to welcome you to San Francisco.
Sound familiar? It’s boilerplate; not just in airline travel, but also in political speeches, college lectures, church sermons, award ceremonies, acceptance speeches, wedding toasts—the list is endless. In business presentations the sentence sounds vague and indefinite. Besides, if you’d like to do it, why not just go ahead and do it?
Welcome to San Francisco
And then there is this often-used phrase:
What we’re not is…
Huh? Well then, what are you? Negative statements fail to provide information. Tell your audiences what you are, not what you are not. Moreover, negative statements sound defensive. Always make positive statements.
As you read in a prior blog, one of history’s most famous negative statements was President Richard Nixon’s infamous defense of himself in the Watergate scandal, “I am not a crook.” Had he framed his statement positively as “I am an honest man,” history might remember him more forgivingly.
Meaningful words stated in the declarative mood, assertively, and positively are more likely to beget meaningful actions.
If you want to buy a house, you will have to get the mortgage loans. Furthermore, my sister usually uses a auto loan, which seems to be the most reliable.
This post has me thinking about this a little deeper than I might reverse cell phone lookup have because of what I have just gathered from digesting the meaning contained within the words of this post. And this can't be anything but a good thing, in my view.
Power Presentations - Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Trying to Channel Bill Clinton
by Jerry Weissman
Scenario #1: Silicon Valley, an Executive Briefing Center at a major IT company. One of the company’s product managers finishes a presentation about a product upgrade to a group of existing customers and then opens the floor to questions.
The first question comes from the CIO of a large financial institution: “We’ve spent millions of dollars on the first version of your solution and it gave us nothing but problems—crashes, down time, glitches, and endless repairs—and now you want us to upgrade to a new version. We’re still having problems with the earlier version. What are you folks going to do about it?”
The product manager responds, “Quality is important to us…”
Scenario #2: New York City, a hotel meeting room during a financial conference. A CEO of a public company finishes the company’s management presentation to a group of investors and then opens the floor to questions.
The first question comes from an analyst at a leading mutual fund: “Your revenues are flat, your stock is down, and your outlook for the next quarter is guarded. When are you going to turn this sucker around?”
The CEO responds, “Performance is important to us…”
Scenario #3: Chicago, a conference room at the headquarters of a national retail chain. An account executive of a manufacturing company finishes a presentation about the status of a current product and then opens the floor to questions.
The first question comes from the vice president of sales: “Your last product was late and the one before that was late. Now you tell us that this one will be late. You know that our sales are seasonal and if we miss that narrow window we lose revenues and market share. When are you guys going to get your act together?”
The account executive responds, “Promptness is important to us…”
Sound familiar? No doubt you’ve probably heard the “_______ is important to us” phrase countless times. It has become boilerplate in the Q&A trade.
The problem with the phrase is that is the blinding flash of the obvious. Of course quality, performance, and promptness are important—each of the questioners just got finished saying that! Therefore, when a presenter states the obvious in a paraphrase, it sounds patronizing to the audience.
Why would any presenter do that to any audience? It is probably a misguided attempt to echo Bill Clinton’s famous words, “I feel your pain.” Mr. Clinton coined the phrase during his run for the presidency in 1992, in response to a question from an AIDS victim. The phrase was to become a campaign slogan that sent a broader message that Mr. Clinton hears and understands every voter.
As presenter, it is vitally important that you send the message that you hear and understand every questioner, but do so without saying that you feel your audience’s pain—especially when, by the challenging nature of the question, you or your company caused the pain in the first place. Instead, paraphrase the key issue neutrally, with no emotional value.
The correct paraphrase for each of the three tough questions above is:
“What we’re doing to assure quality is…”
“What we’re doing to improve performance is…”
“What we’re doing about on time delivery is…”
From this neutral start you can move forward into an efficient answer as to how you are going to address the questioner’s problem. And, regardless of the verbiage, you’d better have an answer, regardless of the paraphrase.
If you want to channel Bill Clinton’s undoubtedly effective presentation style, follow the advice of his campaign slogan, “Put People First.”
Power Presentations - Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Leave the Acting to Actors
by Jerry Weissman
Ever since Texas Governor Rick Perry entered the race to become the Republican presidential candidate in the 2012 election, he’s learned the importance of presentation skills—the hard way. Right after he announced his candidacy in mid-August, he soared to a double digit lead in the public opinion polls, ahead of all the previously-announced candidates. But as you read earlier, after a poor showing in a debate among all the candidates in September, and another poor showing in another debate in October, Mr. Perry’s ratings did a double digit drop to fall behind the front runners, Mitt Romney and Herman Cain.
The criticism of Mr. Perry’s debate appearances—even from other Republicans—was primarily about his halting delivery and lack of energy. NBC’s Saturday Night Live parodied his behavior in a skit in which actor Alex Baldwin did an impression of Mr. Perry bumbling and yawning.
In response, Mr. Perry shifted gears for the next debate and went after Mitt Romney, his chief opponent, with a vengeance, hurling charges at him with aggressive body language and voice. Mr. Romney responded with equal aggression that devolved into a virtual food fight.
Feeling his oats, Mr. Perry continued the animated delivery style in his media appearances and stump speeches. In one particular speech—to a group of conservative supporters in the key primary state of New Hampshire—he let out all the stops, mugging, giggling, winking, and gesturing broadly. An eight-minute video digest of his performance went viral on the Internet with over a million and a quarter views, followed by countless blogs, tweets, and another parody on Saturday Night Live that attributed his dramatic change to alcohol, drugs, or medications.
The video was perfect fodder for Jon Stewart’s satire. He commented, “Best case scenario, that dude's hammered. Worst case scenario, that is Perry sober and every time we've seen him previously, he's been hammered.” Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post was more balanced, questioning whether Mr. Perry’s speech was “Playful or plain odd.” In my opinion, it was the former. Mr. Perry was not under the influence, but was overcompensating in response to the earlier criticism.
His shift in delivery style was reminiscent of Al Gore’s reversals in his debates with George W. Bush during the 2000 election campaign. In the first of their encounters, Mr. Gore repeatedly expressed disdain for Mr. Bush with frowns, eye rolls, head shakes, and sighs, but this arrogant behavior immediately boomeranged. The television producers had a camera isolated on Mr. Gore for reaction shots, and their directors edited the videotape of his expressions into a rapid-cut sequence. When the news broadcasts ran the sequence, public and professional criticism rained down on the vice president. In response, Mr. Gore made a sharp about face and, in the second debate, came out like a lamb. During the 90 minutes, Mr. Gore expressed agreement with his opponent seven times on major issues. (You can see this “sigh” sequence in my DVD, In the Line of Fire.)
The lesson for Mr. Gore, Mr. Perry, and you is to be natural, be yourself. Don’t try to perform when you present. Instead, consider every presentation a series of person-to-person conversations.
As Mr. Perry said in response to all the ado about the video, “I've probably given 1,000 speeches. There are some that have been probably boring, some that have been animated, some that have been in between.”
Be in between. Be yourself. Leave the acting to actors.
Power Presentations - Wednesday, November 02, 2011
Writers Block II
by Jerry Weissman
In a prior post on writer’s block, you read about how to get past the proverbial blank page with a step-by-step process that is as applicable to presenters as it is to writers. But another method to break through the mental barricade is to just start talking.
Writers have long known that speaking aloud what they have written in silence helps them to shape their ideas. In a Wired Magazinearticle on voice recognition, Clive Thompsontells of 16th-century French essayist Michel de Montaigne and 19th century American writer Henry James, both of whom wrote by dictating their work to their secretaries. Moving to the present, Mr. Thompson citesthe example of writer and critic Tim Carmody who “found himself staring at an empty page, not knowing where to begin. He had no problem talking to friends about his ideas, so Carmody booted up Dragon, (voice recognition software from Nuance) talked aloud for hours, and got past the block.”
Mr. Carmody was experiencing the front end of a spectrum of benefits that comes from combining the written words with the spoken. At the back end of the creative process—reviewing and polishing—speaking aloud provides perspective. Many professional writers read their work to themselves (rather than to their secretaries as Messrs. Montaigne and James did.)
Giving sound to what had been a silent process puts writers in the role of their readers. This extra step gives writers an objective view of their content. Bestselling author Nicholson Baker calls his version of the verbalizing process “speak-typing,” in which he dictates to himself and types as he speaks. In an interview with the New York Times about his new book, House of Holes, Mr. Baker explained that “the words come out differently. The sentences come out simpler, and there’s less of a temptation to go back and add more foliage. I’m trying for a simpler kind of storytelling.”
Presentations are all about speaking aloud, and preparing for them should involve talking too. As a coach, I recommend that presenters rehearse their presentations by displaying their PowerPoint slides in the Slide Sorter view (also known at Storyboard) and then running through their narrative aloud, assuming the role of their audience.
But giving voice to ideas also helps that challenging front end of the creative process. Just as Mr. Carmody did, you can jump start your own creative process by speaking your presentation aloud and recording it using Dragon software or the voice record function on your smart phone. Play back the recording afterwards to shape or reshape your ideas and words, but the key to breaking the logjam is to start talking. (If this technique sounds familiar, I referenced it in the prior post as a method to eliminate meaningless words. The same approach helps you develop meaningful words)
Writer’s block occurs because the prospect of starting from scratch is daunting. Even if a writer has a clear idea of a new story—or a presenter has a clear idea of a new presentation—the prospect of choosing which of all the available ideas to include or how much detail to provide, overloads the writer’s mind. However, writers and presenters alike, having lived with their subject matter, know it intimately and have no difficulty chatting about it. Extend that facility into having a conversation in private with your recorder. You’ll find the process liberating and productive.
Mr. Thompson’s article tells us how much Mr. Montaigne valued the process: “‘The things I say,’ Montaigne dictated, ‘are better than those I write.’”
For the more than two decades I have been a presentation coach, the question most frequently-asked of me has been, “What do I do with my hands?” So frequent, I devoted a prior post to answering it. But that was then and this is now.
Of late, the most frequently-asked question is, “How do you deal with audiences who are fixated on their smart phones?” The question, asked by distraught presenters, refers to a chronic malady known as “CrackBerry Addiction.” Compounding the problem, those very same presenters, when they become audience members themselves, proceed to exhibit the same severe symptoms of the disease. The addiction is at epidemic proportions.
Quite frankly, I’m stumped for an answer. I’ve tried every technique I know—pregnant pauses, steely stares, provocative questions, innocent questions, polite requests, forceful demands, gentle nudges, outright pleas, periodic breaks, and even making a demonstrative point of shutting down my own smart phone—to no avail. The addiction persists.
Therefore, I’ll approach the problem from a different angle; instead of trying to help presenters, I’ll cast a wider net by recommending how anyone can escape the hypnotic allure of those glowing LCD screens. Admit it, you know that you are hooked, too. My hope is that if I can help move the needle only slightly, clearer minds might become more attentive audiences.
Professional writers, for whom concentration is critical, are often derailed by the double-edged sword of the Internet: they use it to find material, but they often go off on search sidetracks that interrupt their creative process. In an article for the New York Times Book Review, travel writer Tony Perrottet described one of his lengthy web detours, and added that he is not alone in literary circles, “everyone I know acknowledges the problem of digital distraction.” Mr. Perrottet then went on to note that some writers “have made gestures toward enforced self-denial,” and gave the example of author Jonathan Franzen who wrote his bestselling novel, The Corrections, “in a dark room wearing earplugs, earmuffs and a blindfold, and confessed to blocking his Ethernet port with Super Glue.”
Extremes measures, but not as extreme as those of Rolf Dobelli. Mr. Dobelli, the driving force behind the popular business book summary website getAbstract, is a writer in his own right. In an online essay titled, “Avoid News,” he recommends going cold turkey:
Make news as inaccessible as possible. Delete the news apps from your iPhone. Sell your TV. Cancel your newspaper subscriptions. Do not pick up newspapers and magazines that lie around in airports and train stations. Do not set your browser default to a news site. Pick a site that never changes. The more stale the better. Delete all news sites from your browser’s favorites list. Delete the news widgets from your desktop.
As admirable as Mr. Dobelli’s goal is, it is also unrealistic. Ever since Adam, humans succumb to temptation, and so are virtually incapable of going cold turkey. Why do you think there are so many diet books on the bestseller lists?
A more realistic approach to CrackBerry Addiction is to follow the model of other established substance abuse solutions: one step at a time. Mr. Perrottet tells of two authors, Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)and Nora Ephron (I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections),who use a computer program called Freedom that blocks Internet access for up to eight hours. Just as airlines require passengers to turn off their mobile devices for the duration of the flight, the withdrawal is confined to a limited period.
This is the first step toward self-control, and if self-control ever catches on, perhaps your next audience will take their eyes off their CrackBerries and focus on you.
Great post -- I think we all have a desire to stay connected at all times, and this was a human need before blackberries that technology has found a way to fill. It's a reflection of human neediness.
Great post -- we can try to distract ourselves from the digital world, but you really cannot win that battle. So if you cannot beat them, you could join them -- or even better, you can just ignore. The sad part is that not everyone is just worried about
themselves -- just a small part of the audience distracts the speaker by using their crackberries, and they also distract others in the audience. And if a speaker gets distracted by these crackberry folks, trust me that the audience will also get more distracted
-- after all the rest of the audience is still focused on the speaker and they will naturally focus on whatever the speaker is attentive too. At this point of time, the speaker just needs to ignore the crackberry phenomenon (this is very, very difficult but
not impossible) -- treat the addicted ones like furniture that makes a creaking sound. You cannot help the furniture from creaking, and you cannot help the crackberries from cracking!
Jerry - I take a little different approach to the starting point of this post - “How do you deal with audiences who are fixated on their smart phones?” Just because you're looking at the top of an audience member's head, does not necessarily mean that
the audience member isn't paying attention to you as the speaker. More and more of us are using our electronic devices for our note taking. In fact, Twitter has become my note-taking mechanism of choice. I tweet out meaningful information that the speaker
says and spread the love of the speaker's message. If the speaker has a twitter handle, I include their twitter name as I quote them, thereby giving them some more exposure for willingly sharing valuable information with me. If there's a conference hashtag,
I include that in the tweets too so the organizers get twitter love and hopefully more attendees at the next event when those who didn't attend get a glimpse into what they're missing. As a speaker, I find it extremely valuable to look into the minds of my
audience. Think about it, you can see what they're thinking about your content while you're speaking it! For an example, check out tweets from @dawngartin (http://twitter.com/dawngartin) in the afternoon of January 21st. Dawn was attending a workshop on storytelling
that I facilitated. I can see which points resonated enough with her to share them with her 13,000+ followers! Oh, yeah, and it doesn't hurt my feelings if a portion of Dawn's 13,000 followers now happen to know who I am! I've written several blog posts on
using Twitter as a presenter http://speakingpractically.com/category/twitter-presenting/. I also recommend @OliviaMitchell 's ebook How to present with Twitter (and other backchannels) http://speakingaboutpresenting.com/wp-content/uploads/Twitter.pdf and @CliffAtkinson's
book The Backchannel. Olivia and Cliff inspired me to look at the tops of heads in a whole new way! If you haven't considered this perspective before, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for your great content on presentations - I loved "Presenting to Win"
and have added "The Power Presenter" to my reading list! Kelly
There’s an old joke about the opera diva who receives an adoring fan in her dressing room after a performance. The diva goes on and on about how magnificently she sang every one of her arias, about her dramatic acting, her expressive gestures, and her fabulous costumes. After about half an hour, the diva says to the fan, “But enough about me, what did you think of my performance?”
The most
frequently asked question of presentation coaches is “What do I do with my
hands?” In a previous 
In a 
For the more than two decades I have been a presentation coach, the question most frequently-asked of me has been, “What do I do with my hands?” So frequent, I devoted a 
Comments
helps audience members individualize the information to their own specific situation, versus getting lost in a universal "we." What are your thoughts? Kelly