All posts by Stanley K. Ridgley

Stanley K. Ridgley, PhD is one of the country’s foremost experts on delivering Business School Presentations and is the author of the award-winning 2012 book, “The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting,” the authoritative guide to delivering powerful business presentations in the nation’s business schools. He is also the faculty instructor for the course “Strategic Thinking” in the DVD series TheGreatCourses.com. Dr. Ridgley brings to bear the most powerful instructional techniques from one of America’s great business schools and combines them with the lessons of military leadership and high strategy learned on the front lines of the Cold War as a Military Intelligence Officer.

Presentation Muse? A Christmas Tradition!

Especially Powerful Personal Competitive Advantage
Was Scrooge Especially Powerful? Or Just Miserly?

When asked if the university stifles writers, Flannery O’Conner quipped that the university unfortunately doesn’t stifle enough of them.

Indeed.

My naturally autocratic tendencies, which have held me back in the literary world for years, compel me constantly to cast a pall on the enthusiasms of my young charges, even as I reveal to them the secrets of the Presentation Muse.

To stifle the urge to ponderous first-person narratives sourced from an uncomfortable chair at an outdoor bistro on the Champs-Élysées.

To replace pedestrian visions from well-worn paths with clarity and precision and vision of things and places never once visited.

At this time of year, such endeavor might be considered . . . Scrooge-like.

But no.  You won’t find Scrooge in the Business School.  There is no such thing as a Business Scrooge.

Scrooge is commonplace, but not here.

It’s Time for Mind-Clearing

This is about shaking off medievalist bad habits learned over in the liberal arts college . . . about clearing the mind . . . scattering gnat-like notions to the winds . . .

Accordingly, as a business school professor, I urge my students to dispense with their fanciful flights picked up in undisciplined liberal arts courses.  To dispense with the bad and the ugly . . . and to embrace the good.

In class, my students look at me, expectantly.  Yes, we’re here – in class – now:

“You remember those idyllic scenes conjured by your imagination, back when you were young and unjaded?  High school seniors . . . or even freshmen here in university?  When college had its sheen?”

I roam the floor.

In the space in front of the rows of desks with their internet connections.

“Remember those scenes of professors and students out on the lawn under a late summer sun, students sitting cross-legged, perhaps chewing on blades of grass?  Your kindly bearded professor, a tam resting upon his head, gesturing grandly while reciting something beautiful?

“Perhaps a passage from Faulkner?  Perhaps a trope from Camus. Or verse from an angry beat poet?  The occasional angry finger-point at the business school with all its philistinism?  The house of Business Scrooge?”

One student speaks up.

Especially Powerful Personal Competitive Advantage
There’s no Business Scrooge . . . but plenty of pinched brows in liberal arts

“I saw a group out there last spring!  Why can’t we do that?”

“Because it’s winter now, of course.  But wouldn’t that be nice,” I respond.

Nods around the room.

Broad smiles.

“No, it would not be nice,” I say.  “That’s not genuine.  It’s not authentic.  Just actors performing for touring visitors and posing for publicity shots.  College isn’t like that.  Not at all.  There is no authentic college of your dreams waiting for you to discover.  Remember the lesson of Oliver Wendell Douglas.”

“Who?”

“Oliver . . . Wendell . . . Douglas.”

I’m concerned at this display.  This gross lack of essential preparatory knowledge of the modern college student at a major university.

Search for the Authentic

“The star of Green Acres, the greatest television show of all time.  Don’t you watch Nickelodeon or TV Land?  See Youtube.”

Green Acres.  I explain.

It was really an allegory, a metaphor for our time.

Mr. Douglas was forever in search of the authentic.  He had an idyllic conception of the rural experience.  He abandoned his big city lawyer’s life in a quest for authentic Americana.

Instead, Mr. Douglas found a bizarre world populated by characters that could have been confected by Stephen King.

Hank Kimball.The business scrooge myth

Mr. Haney.

Sam Drucker.

Eb.

Frank Ziffle.

Homer Bedlow.

Everyone was an actor in a surreal drama.

A drama staged for the sole benefit of Mr. Douglas’s dreams of the authentic rural life.

The unifying theme of the show was Sam Drucker’s general store, where many of the crucial insights were revealed.  Rural folk did not use oil lamps, “’cause we all got ’lectricity.”

The barrel in Sam Drucker’s general store was filled with plastic pickles.

The store was a magical place for Mr. Douglas, a crossroads for many of the strange characters who nettled him so naughtily.  For the most part, they gave Mr. Douglas exactly what he wanted to see, because in the immortal words of Sam Drucker:  “City folks seem to expect it.”

The idyllic outdoor-on-the-grass-communing-with-nature-scene.

Students seem to expect it.

High Expectations . . . Presentation Scrooge?

Expectations that inevitably collapse under the weight of real challenges, real work . . . and in the process of genuine labor, a true generosity of spirit takes root.

“I suppose that no one in this classroom has seen Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan?  The original, not the remake.”

“And if you have, I’m betting you completely missed the theme of Jeremy Bentham’s philosophy of Utilitarianism expressed by Spock throughout the film.  Never mind the obvious references to Melville’s Moby Dick?”

“Is this class Global Strategic Management, Professor?”

Again, those naturally autocratic tendencies assert themselves.

Business Scrooge?
Personal Competitive Advantage through Obsolete Pop Culture

“This class is what it is,” not unmindful of the evasiveness.  “And it is not about outdoor-on-the-grass-communing-with-nature instruction.  It’s about  . . authentic.”

I snap my fingers.

“How many people here believe in this . . . this muse?”

Silence.  No movement.

“You know.  This writing trope.  This muse.”

I squint.

“Anyone ever heard of this muse?  Don’t hide from me.  I know you were exposed to this . . . this muse over in that heinous liberal arts college.”

Hands begin to go up.  Cautious hands.  More hands than I expect.  More hands than are comfortable.

Time to disabuse them, time to explode their fantasies.

“There is no muse.”

A simple declarative sentence, but with the unsentimental power and imperious grandeur of a Thomas Carlyle proclamation.

Puzzled looks.  A few of them distraught.  Then, anger.

“But there is.  There’s a muse . . . there is!”

“Humbug!  There is no muse!  Get that Birkenstock notion out of your callow head.”

“But my English prof said—”

“Your neo-medievalist English prof is teaching because no one publishes her bad novels and because she cannot earn a living foisting this muse-myth on folks who live and breathe and work and play in the real world.  People who build bridges, harvest corn, make tires, feed hormones to beef, fly you home over holiday break, and who serve you every day at the 7-ll.  People who pay taxes and die.”

Gasp.

My voice drops low, just above a whisper, and I lean forward.

especially powerful personal competitive advantage“You must know only one thing.”

Pause.

“You must know only one thing.”

The students sense something profound coming.  They won’t be disappointed.

“Yes, there is a muse . . . I am your muse.  Your Presentation Muse!”

I smile.  A benevolent smile.  I see several people actually taking notes, writing this down.

Muse Whispers “No Business Scrooge Here”

“I am on your shoulder whispering to you in those moments when you lack inspiration.  I am your solution to the blank computer screen.”

My voice rises, I lean back and spread my hands wide, just as I have seen evangelicals do when working a crowd.

I am the muse, the answer to your writer’s block and the source of your inspiration.”

Titters of laughter ripple through the room, and I scowl.

“You think I’m joking . . . that this is a joke?”

I pace like a panther, my hands clasped behind my back.  I stalk the room, the entire space in front of the classroom and right in front of the giant PowerPoint projection screen.

I stop and face them, squaring my shoulders and flexing my jaw.

“I want you to remember that one thing when you’re up at night and time is trickling by, and you have an assignment but no ideas and no hope . . . .”

They are silent, and they watch me.

The Incantation . . .

“I will perch on your shoulder, and I will whisper to you just four words.  I want you to remember those four words.  Just four little words – just five little syllables.”

They are magic words!  An incantation!

“A mantra to warm you on those cold nights bereft of imagination, as you trek that barren wasteland of words without order, without discipline, without a point.”

I have their attention now.  They are rapt.

Will I win them over this time?  Can I break through?

Can I help them make the leap from soaring idealism to mundane responsibility?

“Remember these words:  Love … the … Value … Chain!”

Groans.

They’ve heard this before.  They sound disappointed.

Cheated.

So many fail to see the beauty of disaggregating the firm into its functional components . . . The Value Chain.  The analytic precision it provides, the world of discovery that it opens!  So many stop short of making that final connection . . . except this time . . .

“I love the value chain, Professor!”

“Really?”

I’m skeptical, jaded.  I search for signs of duplicity.  But detect only enthusiasm.

“Which part of the value chain do you feel most strongly about?”

“Since I’m chronologically oriented, Professor, I’m partial to Inbound Logistics!”

There is a general murmuring and uneasiness in the class.  Inbound logistics?

I nod sagely.  “That’s fine, MEspecially Powerful personal competitive advantages. Zapata.  It’s okay to privilege one segment of the value chain over another, if it gives you the key to identifying competitive advantage!”

A hand shoots up and a voice cries out before I can acknowledge it.

Operations!  That’s the ticket for me.”

And yet another!

After sale Service!” a voice in the back calls out.  “Professor, Customer Relationship Management has a symmetry and logic about it that outstrips anything we touched on in my basic philosophy courses!”

The dam had finally burst, and the classroom buzzed with talk of core competencies, competitive analysis, environmental scans, core products, strategy formulation processes, Five Forces analysis, and competitive advantage!

They are convinced – finally – that strategy and value chain analysis can be an art.

I even say positive things about accounting and accountants, observing that there is a bit of art and flair and imagination necessary to produce a product desired by the employer . . . or patron.  Think of Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel for his patron.

The Value Chain!

Inbound logistics, Operations, Outbound logistics, Sales and Marketing, and Service.

If ever there were a time for sentimentality and outright weeping, this was it!  For this is the key to wealth creation and the bettering of people’s lives in a thousand different ways.

It’s our cornucopia, the secret that has propelled civilization from the Renaissance to the Age of Google.

But then . . .

But then, one of the most staid literary conventions of all time reared its ugly head.  Yes, one of the worst literary devices known to fictioneers.

I woke up.

I awoke from a dream.

A Sweet, Impossible Dream

It was nothing but a sweet dream.  Students excited at the prospect of writing a paper on value chain analysis . . . on identifying a company’s core competency and developing a strategic plan to gain sustained competitive advantage based on that competency . . .

Students who loved the value chain . . . who could see the art and creativity demanded of the accountant and financial manager.

Who could see the beauty in efficient operations management.

Who would strive for efficiency because it was the right thing to do!

It was all a sweet dream.

cruel dream.

I awoke to a cold, winter world where idealistic students still sleepwalk and irresponsible students still party and wiseacre students still wisecrack with a tiresome world-weariness and faux freshness.

Who write with an undisciplined lackadaisical casualness that drives me to distraction.

It’s the little things that do this.

I close my eyes and maybe . . . perhaps I can recapture a bit of the magic.  Recapture the dream.

I look up, startled to find a group of students gathered round my desk after I have dismissed class.  They are heading home in the cold for their winter break.

“What’s this?”

“A gift, Professor.”

Especially Powerful
Here’s a guy who knew about Personal Competitive Advantage

“Thank you.”

“Won’t you open it now?”

I peel the wrap away in a crinkle of coated Christmas paper.  It’s a book.  A copy of Peter Drucker’s Management.

It’s a first edition, and I feel my eyes tearing up.

“We know how much you like Green Acres.  And Drucker’s general store.”

Smiles abound.  I cock an eyebrow, as I am wont to do.

“You do know that it wasn’t Peter Drucker’s store?  It was Sam Drucker’s store.”

“Does it really matter, Professor?”

“In the grand scheme of things, I suppose that it does not.  Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas!”

Why do I offer a hearty Merry Christmas instead of something ecumenically blasé?

Well, because I can.  Because I’m authentic.  Because I have authoritarian tendencies.

Because I offer others a piece of my world.

And I heartily accept Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and Season’s Greetings from anyone and everyone else who cares to send ’em my way.

Now, I must go read Sam Drucker’s book on managing a general store in Hooterville.

No business scrooge here.  I’m such an idealist.

Bad Presentation?

That bad presentation is your fault.

You sabotaged it.

Screwed it up.

All of us sabotage our own presentations more often than we imagine.

And we do it through self-defeating behaviors.

These self-defeating behaviors come in many forms, but negative self-talk is one of the chief culprits.

We tell ourselves repeatedly that we’ll fail.

We envision humiliation, embarrassment.  Complete meltdown.

We Set Ourselves Up for Bad Presentations

Negative self-talk begins with the most ubiquitous cliche in business school.  That cliche is “I hate presentations.”  This culprit leads to awful presentations.  It undermines everything we strive for in business school presentations.

How can we build a positive presentation on such a spongy foundation?

Negative self-talk translates into bodily reactions of nervousness, trembling, faltering voice.

Shaking knees, sweating, and flushing.

Moreover, our sour and weak attitude can infect our teammates if it happens to be a group presentation.  The negative spiral down means things get worse before they get better.  If at all.

There is, in fact, no greater guarantee of failure.  How could anyone succeed at anything with this type of negativity?

Do You Think Like a World-Class Athlete?

The world’s elite athletes train the mind as well as the body.

Visualizing success is a technique they use to prepare for competition.  I work occasionally with sports psychologists and mental toughness coaches who train athletes in visualization techniques.

All of these experts agree that the mind-body connection – healthy or unhealthy – impacts performance tremendously.

Let’s leave aside the specific techniques and the psychological underpinnings of it that go back more than a century.  Just say now that we must at least rid ourselves of the negative self-talk.

Let’s give ourselves a fighting chance of success at delivering a good presentation.  Even a great presentation.

Bad Presentation is not especially powerful
Stop Negative Self-talk and Fix that Bad Presentation

So why do we talk ourselves down into the morass of self-defeat?

It could be the widespread ignorance of how to deliver a powerful presentation.  This ignorance means uncertainty of performance.

This ignorance and uncertainty breed fear.

It’s this fear of the unknown that drives up anxiety and can result in a bad presentation.  So the key to reducing that anxiety is uncertainty reduction.

And we can reduce uncertainty through preparation and by controlling the variables within our power.

Preparation is the second of the Three Ps of Speaking Technique – Principles, Preparation, Practice.

Can we foresee everything that might go wrong?  No, of course not, and we don’t even want to . . . instead, we plan everything that will go right, and we focus on that.

We rely on our own adaptability and confidence to field the remaining unexpected 10 percent.  This is one key to an especially powerful personal competitive advantage.

Envision Your Triumph

No one can win by constantly visualizing failure.

Envision this, instead – you deliver a tight, first-rate presentation that hits all the right notes.  It weaves a story that grips your audience, that keeps the audience rapt.  And it ends in a major ovation and a satisfying feeling of a job well-done.

When we take the stage, we focus.  We charge forward boldly, presenting with masterful aplomb and professionalism.  With this kind of psychological commitment, we squeeze out the doubts and anxiety.  We wring them dry from our psychic fabric.

We eliminate the bad presentation.

The right kind of preparation empowers us to deal with unknowns that nettle us.

Positive self-talk is essential to preparing an especially powerful presentation and developing personal competitive advantage.

Find more on how to eliminate the bad presentation in The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

Christmas Scrooge? Not Here!

No such thing as business scrooge

When asked if the university stifles writers, Flannery O’Conner quipped that the university unfortunately doesn’t stifle enough of them.

Indeed.

My naturally autocratic tendencies, which have held me back in the literary world for years, compel me constantly to cast a pall on the enthusiasms of my young charges.

To stifle the urge to ponderous first-person narratives sourced from an uncomfortable chair at an outdoor bistro on the Champs-Élysées.

To replace pedestrian visions from well-worn paths with clarity and precision and vision of things and places never once visited.

At this time of year, such endeavor might be considered . . . Scrooge-like.

But no.  You won’t find Scrooge in the Business School.  There is no such thing as a Business Scrooge.

Scrooge is commonplace, but not here.

It’s Time for Mind-Clearing

This is about shaking off medievalist bad habits learned over in the liberal arts college . . . about clearing the mind . . . scattering gnat-like notions to the winds . . .

Accordingly, as a business school professor, I urge my students to dispense with their fanciful flights picked up in undisciplined liberal arts courses.  To dispense with the bad and the ugly . . . and to embrace the good.

In class, my students look at me, expectantly.  Yes, we’re here – in class – now:

“You remember those idyllic scenes conjured by your imagination, back when you were young and unjaded?  High school seniors . . . or even freshmen here in university?  When college had its sheen?”

I roam the floor, the space in front of the rows of desks with their internet connections.

“Remember those scenes of professors and students out on the lawn under a late summer sun, students sitting cross-legged, perhaps chewing on blades of grass?  Your kindly bearded professor, a tam resting upon his head, gesturing grandly while reciting something beautiful?

“Perhaps a passage from Faulkner?  Perhaps a trope from Camus. Or verse from an angry beat poet?  The occasional self-righteous finger-point at the business school with all its philistinism?  The house of Business Scrooge?”

One student speaks up.

There's no Business Scrooge . . . but plenty of pinched brows in liberal arts

“I saw a group out there last spring!  Why can’t we do that?”

“Because it’s winter now, of course.  But wouldn’t that be nice,” I respond.

Nods around the room.

Broad smiles.

“No, it would not be nice,” I say.  “That’s not genuine.  It’s not authentic.  Just actors performing for touring visitors and posing for publicity shots.  College isn’t like that.  There is no authentic college of your dreams waiting for you to discover.  Remember the lesson of Oliver Wendell Douglas.”

“Who?”

“Oliver . . . Wendell . . . Douglas.”

I’m concerned at this lack of essential preparatory knowledge of the modern college student at a major university.

Search for the Authentic

“The star of Green Acres, the greatest television show of all time.  Don’t you watch Nickelodeon or TV Land?  See Youtube.”

Green Acres.  I explain.

It was really an allegory, a metaphor for our time.

Mr. Douglas was forever in search of the authentic.  He had an idyllic conception of the rural experience.  He abandoned his big city lawyer’s life in a quest for authentic Americana.

Instead, Mr. Douglas found a bizarre world populated by characters that could have been confected by Stephen King.

The business scrooge myth

Hank Kimball.

Mr. Haney.

Sam Drucker.

Eb.

Frank Ziffle.

Homer Bedlow.

Everyone was an actor in a surreal drama staged for the benefit of Mr. Douglas’s dreams of the authentic rural life.

The unifying theme of the show was Sam Drucker’s general store, where many of the crucial insights were revealed.  Rural folk did not use oil lamps, “’cause we all got ’lectricity.”

The barrel in Sam Drucker’s general store was filled with plastic pickles.

The store was a magical place for Mr. Douglas, a crossroads for many of the strange characters who nettled him so naughtily.  For the most part, they gave Mr. Douglas exactly what he wanted to see, because in the immortal words of Sam Drucker:  “City folks seem to expect it.”

The idyllic outdoor-on-the-grass-communing-with-nature-scene.

Students seem to expect it.

High Expectations . . . Presentation Scrooge?

Expectations that inevitably collapse under the weight of real challenges, real work . . . and in the process of genuine labor, a true generosity of spirit takes root.

“I suppose that no one in this classroom has seen Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan?  The original, not the remake.”

“And if you have, I’m betting you completely missed the theme of Jeremy Bentham’s philosophy of Utilitarianism expressed by Spock throughout the film.  Never mind the obvious references to Melville’s Moby Dick?”

“Is this class Global Strategic Management, Professor?”

Again, those naturally autocratic tendencies assert themselves.

Business Scrooge?

“This class is what it is,” not unmindful of the evasiveness.  “And it is not about outdoor-on-the-grass-communing-with-nature instruction.  It’s about  . . authentic.”

I snap my fingers.

“How many people here believe in this . . . this muse?”

Silence.  No movement.

“You know.  This writing trope.  This muse.”

I squint.

“Anyone ever heard of this muse?  Don’t hide from me.  I know you were exposed to this . . . this muse over in that heinous liberal arts college.”

Hands begin to go up.  Cautious hands.  More hands than I expect.  More hands than are comfortable.

Time to disabuse them, time to explode their fantasies.

“There is no muse.”

A simple declarative sentence, but with the unsentimental power and imperious grandeur of a Thomas Carlyle proclamation.

Puzzled looks.  A few of them distraught.  Then, anger.

“But there is.  There’s a muse . . . there is!”

“Humbug!  There is no muse!  Get that Birkenstock notion out of your callow head. You achieve personal competitive advantage on your own, by virtue of the proverbial pulling up of the bootstraps. Your own bootstraps, never mind that it violates the laws of physics.”

“But my English prof said—”

“Your neo-medievalist English prof is teaching because no one publishes her bad novels and because she cannot earn a living foisting this muse-myth on folks who live and breathe and work and play in the real world.  People who build bridges, harvest corn, make tires, feed hormones to beef, fly you home over holiday break, and who serve you every day at the 7-ll.  People who pay taxes and die.”

Gasp.

My voice drops low, just above a whisper, and I lean forward.

The myth of business scrooge

“You must know only one thing.”

Pause.

“You must know only one thing.”

The students sense something profound coming.  They won’t be disappointed.

“Yes, there is a muse . . . I am your muse.”

I smile.  A benevolent smile.  I see several people actually taking notes, writing this down.

Muse Whispers “No Business Scrooge Here”

“I am on your shoulder whispering to you in those moments when you lack inspiration.  I am your solution to the blank computer screen.”

My voice rises, I lean back and spread my hands wide, just as I have seen evangelicals do when working a crowd.

“I am the muse, the answer to your writer’s block and the source of your inspiration.”

Titters of laughter ripple through the room, and I scowl.

“You think I’m joking . . . that this is a joke?”

I pace like a panther, my hands clasped behind my back.  I stalk the room, the entire space in front of the classroom and right in front of the giant PowerPoint projection screen.

I stop and face them, squaring my shoulders and flexing my jaw.

“I want you to remember that one thing when you’re up at night and time is trickling by, and you have an assignment but no ideas and no hope . . . .”

They are silent, and they watch me.

The Incantation . . .

“I will perch on your shoulder, and I will whisper to you just four words.  I want you to remember those four words.  Just four little words – just five little syllables.”

They are magic words!  An incantation!

“A mantra to warm you on those cold nights bereft of imagination, as you trek that barren wasteland of words without order, without discipline, without a point.”

I have their attention now.  They are rapt.

Will I win them over this time?  Can I break through?

Can I help them make the leap from soaring idealism to mundane responsibility?

“Remember these words:  Love … the … Value … Chain!”

Groans.

They’ve heard this before.  They sound disappointed.

Cheated.

So many fail to see the beauty of disaggregating the firm into its functional components . . . The Value Chain.  The analytic precision it provides, the world of discovery that it opens!  So many stop short of making that final connection . . . except this time . . .

“I love the value chain, Professor!”

“Really?”

I’m skeptical, jaded.  I search for signs of duplicity.  But detect only enthusiasm.

“Which part of the value chain do you feel most strongly about?”

“Since I’m chronologically oriented, Professor, I’m partial to Inbound Logistics!”

There is a general murmuring and uneasiness in the class.  Inbound logistics?

Business Scrooge

I nod sagely.  “That’s fine, Ms. Zapata.  It’s okay to privilege one segment of the value chain over another, if it gives you the key to identifying competitive advantage!”

A hand shoots up and a voice cries out before I can acknowledge it.

Operations!  That’s the ticket for me.”

And yet another!

After sale Service!” a voice in the back calls out.  “Professor, Customer Relationship Management has a symmetry and logic about it that outstrips anything we touched on in my basic philosophy courses!”

The dam had finally burst, and the classroom buzzed with talk of core competencies, competitive analysis, environmental scans, core products, strategy formulation processes, Five Forces analysis, and competitive advantage!

They are convinced – finally – that strategy and value chain analysis can be an art.

I even say positive things about accounting and accountants, observing that there is a bit of art and flair and imagination necessary to produce a product desired by the employer . . . or patron.  Think of Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel for his patron.

The Value Chain!

Inbound logistics, Operations, Outbound logistics, Sales and Marketing, and Service.

If ever there were a time for sentimentality and outright weeping, this was it!  For this is the key to wealth creation and the bettering of people’s lives in a thousand different ways.

It’s our cornucopia, the secret that has propelled civilization from the Renaissance to the Age of Google.

But then . . .

But then, one of the most staid literary conventions of all time reared its ugly head.  Yes, one of the worst literary devices known to fictioneers.

I woke up.

I awoke from a dream.

A Sweet, Impossible Dream

It was nothing but a sweet dream.  Students excited at the prospect of writing a paper on value chain analysis . . . on identifying a company’s core competency and developing a strategic plan to gain sustained competitive advantage based on that competency . . .

Students who loved the value chain . . . who could see the art and creativity demanded of the accountant and financial manager.

Who could see the beauty in efficient operations management.

Who would strive for efficiency because it was the right thing to do!

It was all a sweet dream.

cruel dream.

I awoke to a cold, winter world where idealistic students still sleepwalk and irresponsible students still party and wiseacre students still wisecrack with a tiresome world-weariness and faux freshness.

Who write with an undisciplined lackadaisical casualness that drives me to distraction.

It’s the little things that do this.

I close my eyes and maybe . . . perhaps I can recapture a bit of the magic.  Recapture the dream.

I look up, startled to find a group of students gathered round my desk after I have dismissed class.  They are heading home in the cold for their winter break.

“What’s this?”

“A gift, Professor.”

There is no such thing as the Business Scrooge

“Thank you.”

“Won’t you open it now?”

I peel the wrap away in a crinkle of coated Christmas paper.  It’s a book.  A copy of Peter Drucker’s Management.

It’s a first edition, and I feel my eyes tearing up.

“We know how much you like Green Acres.  And Drucker’s general store.”

Smiles abound.  I cock an eyebrow, as I am wont to do.

“You do know that it wasn’t Peter Drucker’s store?  It was Sam Drucker’s store.”

“Does it really matter, Professor?”

“In the grand scheme of things, I suppose that it does not.  Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas!”

Why do I offer a hearty Merry Christmas instead of something ecumenically blasé?

Well, because I can.  Because I’m authentic.  Because I have authoritarian tendencies.

Because I offer others a piece of my world.

And I heartily accept Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and Season’s Greetings from anyone and everyone else who cares to send ’em my way.

Now, I must go read Sam Drucker’s book on managing a general store in Hooterville.

No business scrooge here.  I’m such an idealist.

The Addled World of Uptalk

The verbal up-tic is a ubiquitous speech pathology afflicting folks under thirty.  Its most common manifestation is Uptalk.

Once it grips you, Uptalk won’t let go . . .

It’s maddening.

Everyone who is exposed to this voice experiences doubt, unease, and irritation, many of those persons not cognizant of where this unease originates.

It screams amateur when used in formal business presentations.

It cries out:  “I don’t know what I’m talking about here.  I just memorized a series of sentences and I’m spitting them out now in this stupid presentation.”

Uptalk Destroys Your Credibility

If you have this affectation – if you’re reading this, you probably do – promise yourself solemnly to rid yourself of this debilitating habit.  But recognize that it’s not that easy.

Students confide in me that they can hear themselves uptalking during presentations, sentence after questioning sentence.

But for some reason, they simply cannot stop.

So exactly what is this crippling uptalk?

Uptalk is also called the “rising line” or the “high rising terminal.”

Uptalk is the rhetorical scourge of the 21st century.

Uptalk is the unfortunate habit of inflecting the voice upward at the end of every sentence, as if a question is being asked.  Uptalk radiates weakness and uncertainty and doubt . . . and it conveys the mood of unfinished business, as if something more is yet to come.

On and on.

Sentence after sentence in succession is spoken as if a series of questions.

Uptalk  =  “I have no idea what I’m talking about”

You create a tense atmosphere with Uptalking that is almost demonic in its effect.

This tic infests your audience with an unidentifiable uneasiness.  At its worst, your audience wants to cover ears and cry “make it stop!”   . . . but they aren’t quite sure at what they should vent their fury.

In certain places abroad, this tic is known as the Australian Questioning Intonation, popular among young Australians.

The Brits are less generous in their assessment of this barbarism, calling it the “moronic interrogative,” a term coined by comedian Rory McGrath.

In United States popular culture, someone calling herself Kim Kardashian is the main carrier of this virus.  Listen for it in any interview you stumble upon in popular youth-oriented television.

Disney Channel is a training camp for uptalking.  Reality television females, as a breed, express themselves no other way.  Their lives appear as one big query.

But you can fix it.

And recognizing that you have this awful habit is halfway to correcting it.

For many young speakers, uptalk is the only roadblock standing between them and a major step up in presentation power and personal competitive advantage.  Evaluate your own speech to identify uptalk.

Then come to grips with it for an especially powerful presentation.

For more on correcting the uptalk pathology and building a credible business presentation, consult The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

Rule of Three

World's Expert on Business Presenting
Rule of Three

Apply the Rule of Three to the middle section of your presentation.

You have delivered your introduction, and you know your conclusion will properly mimic this introduction.

Now . . . use the Rule of Three to build your talk in stages.  In this,, the middle, you argue the case for your recommendation.

Through all of this, the Rule of Three is the best method you can use.  From it you gain personal competitive advantage.

The Latin phrase for it is “omne trium perfectum” (everything that comes in threes is perfect).

Yes, apply the Rule of Three . . . and apply it ruthlessly.

Here I offer controversial advice, and not every presentation guru will agree with it.  But it forms the basis for an especially powerful presentation.

With it, you never go wrong.

Think about that for a second.  How many things in life can you say that about?  You never go wrong.

What is this Rule of Three?

For a moment, let’s consider this “Rule of Three.”  This is always a successful method in structuring the staging portion of your presentation.

This means that you select the three main points from your material.  Then you structure your show around them.

It’s that simple.

And it’s powerful.

Think about this for a moment.

There is something magical about the number three.

We tend to grasp information most easily in threes.

Consider these examples:

Stop, look and listen – A wellknown public safety announcement “Friends, Romans, Countrymen lend me your ears” – William Shakespeare Veni, Vidi, Vici (I came, I saw, I conquered) – Julius Caesar “Blood, sweat and tears” – Winston Churchill “Faith, Hope and Charity” – The Bible “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” – the Declaration of Independence “The good, the bad and the ugly” – Clint Eastwood Western “Duty – Honor – Country.  Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, and what you will be” – Gen. Douglas MacArthur

The Rule of Three in presentations is a standard structural model advocated  by many presentation coaches.  And with good reason.

It’s a powerful framework, incredibly sturdy.  Think of it as a reliable vessel into which to pour your superb beverage.

With the rule of three, you can – literally – never err with regard to your presentation structure.

Here’s an Example . . .

Offer substantiation for your thesis and ultimate recommendation in three main points.

Strip down all of your convoluted arguments, all of your evidence.

Restrict all of your keen analysis to the three major points that you believe make your case.

In the Toughbolt Corporation example above, note that in our thesis statement and ultimate recommendation, we mentioned three positive reasons for our chosen course of action:

“ . . . this presentation demonstrates that this course of action is fiscally sound, the best use of scarce resources among the alternatives, and a basis for rapid growth.”

These three factors serve as your basic Rule of Three structure for the middle of your presentation.

  1. Most efficient use of resources over other expansion alternatives
  2. Financial Analysis of the projected acquisition
  3. Projected returns and growth rate

Does this mean that other information is not important?

Of course not.

It means that you have selected the most important points that make your case and that you want to rivet in the minds of the audience.  The Rule of Three in presentations means that you select the major facts not to be “comprehensive” in your presentation, but to be persuasive in your presentation.

With respect to subsidiary points that appear in your written analysis, you have the opportunity to address those issues in a question and answer session to follow your show.

Follow the Rule of Three to gain especially powerful personal competitive advantage.

For more proven techniques like the Rule of Three in presentations, consult The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

How to Stop Talking

Most presenters don’t know how to stop talking.

Why?

Because they don’t know that it’s a technique that must be practiced.  Needless to say, they’ve never practiced it.

Do you practice stopping?

Have you even thought of it?

And yet the solution is so simple.  And it is incredibly satisfying to an audience.

How to Stop Talking

The first thing to recognize, as we’ve discussed here before, is that your conclusion is an almost verbatim repeat of your introduction.

“In conclusion, we can see that . . . ” and then repeat your introduction.

You bring your audience around to the initial points that drew them into your story.  We do this because the audience is stirred by the recognition of your initial points and is grateful for your repeating them.

personal competitive advantage
Stop Talking . . . for personal competitive advantage

Crescendo in your repeat of your introduction.  Bring it down when you reiterate your assertion of substantiation.

Slow your pace as you go.  Intersperse with pauses.

Then bottom out with your final words of appreciation and call for questions.

“I thank you for your attention.  We’ll take the first question now.”

Couple these words with an optional spread of arms to visually indicate that you welcome questions.

Some version of the above is all you need.  So simple and yet so forgotten and/or neglected.

Give it a shot and see how relieved you now know how to stop talking.

For more on achieve personal competitive advantage in your presentations, consult the Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

Audience Focus

Focus on your audience as a source of personal competitive advantage
Especially Powerful Focus . . . on Your Audience

Too often, we can find ourselves rambling or roaming in a presentation, and this usually means we’ve strayed from the hoary principle of audience focus.

Yes, focus on your audience.

Roaming aimlessly means that we haven’t established a tightly focused subject, and we’ve not linked it to a tightly focused conception of your audience.

Without tight focus on your subject, you can’t help the audience to visualize your topic or its main points with concrete details.  Without details in your message, you lose the attention of the audience.

So how do you include meaningful details in your presentation, the right details?  Audience focus.

The Devil’s in the Details

By reversing the process and visualizing the audience in detail.

This is akin to the branding process in the marketing world.

Your brand must stand for something in the customer’s mind.  And, conversely, you must be able to visualize the customer in your own mind.

If you can’t visualize the kind of person who desperately wants to hear your message, then you haven’t focused your talk enough.

Especially powerful personal competitive advantage
Especially Powerful Personal Competitive Advantage . . . by focusing on your audience

Go back and retool your message – sharpen and hone it.

Think of the various consumers of products and services such as Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, Whole Foods Market, Mercedes Benz, Pabst Blue Ribbon.  Can you actually visualize the customers for these products, picture them in your mind in great detail?

Likewise, can you clearly visualize the consumers for Greenpeace, the National Rifle Association, a Classic 70s Rock radio station?

Sure you can – you immediately imagine the archetype of the customer base for each of these.

Focus on Your Audience

Now, in the same way, can you visualize the consumers of Chevrolet?  Tide?  Folgers?  United Way?  The American Red Cross?

Of course you can’t, because these brands have lost focus.  The message is too broad.

The lesson here is to focus your message on a tightly circumscribed audience type.

Who is in your audience, and what do they want from you?

Prepare your talk with your audience at the forefront.  Visualize a specific person in your audience, and speak to that person.

Make that person the hero.

Talk directly to that person.

The upshot is a tightly focused message with key details that interest an audience that you have correctly analyzed and visualized.  You speak directly to audience needs in a way that they clearly understand and that motivates them.

Craft your message in this way, and you’ll be on-target every time to develop a powerful personal competitive advantage.

Find more secrets of especially powerful presenting in The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

Stop List-Talk Right Now!

Everyone knows about the atrocious speech pathology called Uptalk, but there’s another speech pattern that sounds much like uptalk and can be a more insidious bad presentation habit.

Let’s call it List-Talk.

Both pathologies must be fixed to lift your presentation skill to a professional level.

Here’s the difference between the two pathologies, both of which can sabotage your presentation.

No Need for Self-Sabotage

First, Uptalk.

Uptalk is the bad speech habit of inflecting the voice up at the end of each sentence, as if each sentence were a question.

Uptalk is usually a 24-7 transgression.  If you do it . .  you do it all the time.

Uptalk is breezy, addle-pated, and weak.  With uptalk, you sound air-headed, uncertain, ditzy.

Whiny and pleading.  Someone who doesn’t care.  Like a cartoon.

You could fix uptalk easily, if you wanted to.

But at this point, if you’re still doing it, you probably don’t want to fix it.

Now look at a parallel speech pattern that sounds similar to uptalk.  This pattern appears only on special occasions.

List-Talk only shows up when it can hurt you.

Break this Bad Presentation Habit  Now

What is List-Talk?

You engage in List-Talk only when you deliver your business presentation.

Exactly when it does you the most damage.

List-Speak is the lilting presentation voice we sometimes assume when we give a presentation.  It’s a form of “presentation voice.”

Presentation Voice is an artifice some people unconsciously adopt when speaking to a group in a formal situation.  Especially when we’re attuned to reading slides instead of simply telling our story.

List-Talk creeps in.  It replaces direct, declarative sentences.

Bad Presentation Habit kills personal competitive advantage
List-Talk can drive an audience crazy

List-Talk offers the lilting upswing of the voice at the end of sentences.

As if you’re reading from a mental list.

Each sentence needlessly telegraphs that there’s more to come, that you’ve not yet completed a thought.

Again.  And again.

And this goes on endlessly, until you finish the last point from your slide.  Only then do you mercifully let your voice drop in completion . . .

. . . only to have it go UP again as the next slide materializes.

This pathology is linked to your slide.  But it’s not the slide’s fault.

It’s not the fault of PowerPoint.

It’s your fault.

It’s 100 percent your fault.

Fix List-Talk Now

Is anything wrong with List-Talk?

No, not unless your audience enjoys the experience of listening to someone obviously not in possession of the facts . . . because this is the impression given.

What causes it?

Nothing more than tendency to read from your slides.  This is a bad presentation habit heinous in its own right, but more than that, when you read from your slides, your voice goes into List-Talk mode.

You inflect UP at the end of every POINT.  You move from bullet POINT to bullet POINT.  The slide itself drags you a-LONG.

This lilting presentation voice takes HOLD OF YOU, and you aren’t even aware of what you’re DOING.

Unharness yourself from the visual behind you, and free yourself to speak in declarative sentences.

Drop your voice at the end of each declarative sentence.

Speak with finality as you complete the thought.  As a hammer clanking down upon an anvil.

With confidence and presence.  Just as you do in routine conversation.

Your daily conversations, after all, don’t consist of lists.  Your sentences don’t consist of stating facts and opinions as if numbered on a list.

Break the bad presentation habit of List-Talk right now and gain personal competitive advantage.

And consult the Complete Guide to Business Presentations for more wisdom on delivering especially powerful business presentations.

I’m Going to “Wing It!”

personal competitive advantage
You lose the potential for Personal Competitive Advantage when you “wing it”

In business school, you will espy classmates who demonstrate a pathology of unpreparedness – they “wing it.”

People do this for a variety of reasons.

Many students tend to approach presentations with either fear or faux nonchalance.

No preparation, no practice, no self-respect . . . just embarrassment.

Almost a defiant contempt for the assignment and the audience.

Or real nonchalance.

It’s a form of defensiveness when you wing it.

You offer contrived spontaneity and a world-weary attitude that carries the day.

This means forfeiture of personal competitive advantage.

Wing it with the Curse of Hubris

Too many speakers across the spectrum of abilities never consider the needs of their audience or why they have gathered to hear the message.

Often, a presenter may simply offer an off-the-shelf solution message that isn’t even remotely tailored to the needs of the folks gathered to hear it.  Paradoxically, this occurs often when men and women of power and accomplishment address large groups of employees or conference attendees.

They are infused with the power and, too often, arrogance and hubris that comes with great success.  They believe that this success translates into powerful presenting.

It does not.

especially powerful personal competitive advantage
A crash landing is often the result when you “wing it”

And this kind of presentation abomination leaves the easy-out that the student “didn’t really try.”

It is obvious to everyone watching that you elected to wing it.

Why would you waste our time this way?  Why would you waste your time?

You have as much chance of achieving success “winging it” as a penguin has of flying.

Winging it leads to a crash landing of obvious failure, and whether you care or not is a measure of character.

The lack of preparation by any speaker conveys a kind of contempt for the audience and the time of people gathered to listen.

What we actually witness from presenters of this type is actually a form of contempt.

Presenters from 16 to 60 offer this up too often.

I Read my Own Press Clippings Now

For instance, I recall an occasion of a successful young entrepreneur who spoke to our assembled students about his own accomplishments in crafting a business plan for his unique idea.

He related how he pitched that idea to venture capitalists.

His idea was tremendously successful and, as I gather, he sold it for millions of dollars.

Now, he stood in front of our students dressed in “cool slob.”  He wore a ragged outfit of jeans and flannel shirt and sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup.

especially powerful speech for personal competitive advantage
You sometimes hear the Styrofoam Speech . . . the mark of someone “winging it.”

He might as well have delivered a “Styrofoam speech.”

He was ill-prepared to speak and offered-up toss-off lines.  He had elected to “wing it.”

His sage advice to our budding entrepreneurs for their own presentations?

“Make really good slides.”

That was it.

Make really good slides.

Just a few moments’ thought makes clear how pedestrian this is. What does it truly mean?  You need a millionaire entrepreneur to tell you this?

“Really good slides” means nothing and promises even less.

I guarantee that this youngster did not appear in his own presentations wearing his “cool slob” outfit.  Likely as not, he offered a great idea sharply defined, practiced many times.  It was presented knowledgeably by a well-dressed team that won the day.

And this is the lesson that our young presenters should internalize.  Not toss-offs from a character just dropping by to wing it.

So many of the dull and emotionless automatons we listen to could be powerful communicators if they shed their hard defensive carapaces.

If they accepted that there is much to be learned.

And there is much to be gained by respecting the audience enough to speak to them as fellow hopeful human beings in their own language of desires, ambition, fears, and anticipation.

Conversely, we all can learn from the people we meet and the speakers we listen to, even the bad ones.

The chief lesson to digest here is to always respect your audience and strive to give them your heart.  Do these two things, and you will always gain a measure of success.

You will gain personal competitive advantage.

But you never will if you “wing it.”

Explode Ambient Silence!

For public speakers, one of the most insidious destroyers of confidence is the silent room, a room flooded with ambient silence.

A room full of expectant faces, furrowed brows, and imagined hostility.

All wrapped in a cocoon of intimidating quietude.

A room filled with intimidating silence that is almost tangible, suffocating.

This ambient silence can undermine your presentation before you ever start, so recognize it now for the threat that it is and prepare yourself to grapple with and defeat this enemy of the great presentation.

Hostile, Ambient Silence

The tendency of every student presenter with whom I’ve worked is to match the energy of their presentation energy to the ambience of the room, whether imagined or real.

This can lead to presentation disaster.  Here’s why.

I introduce here the notion of ambient silence.  This is the kind of silence in a room that can clutch you by the throat, force you to speak in a squeak.

Ambient Silence
YOU control the room and breat ambient silence

That can force you to speak so no one can hear you, so that you need not worry about what you say.

In this case, ambient silence is the destroyer of presentations and the scourge of unprepared presenters.

While silence can be your friend, more often than not it is a bitter enemy of your presentation.

Ambient silence can impress itself on your presentation unless you are aware of its effect on you and your audience.

Silence as Oppressor

Ambient silence weighs heavy in the room.  The occasional cough can echo loudly.  Whispered conversations intrude and are quickly squelched.

It is a hostile landscape littered with mines that you will trigger if you don’t tread lightly.

It is into this landscape you march, fearful and defensive.  Ready to deliver yet another fearful and defensive presentation, because you let the oppression of silence dictate to you the terms of your presentation.

Especially powerful
Personal Competitive Advantage by Breaking Silence

Too often, you lose before you start, because you modulate your voice – both volume and tone – according to the ambient silence.

Your voice cracks.

It cannot be heard beyond the second row.

And it gets worse as you go, because you feel yourself failing.  Your mouth goes dry, your voice cracks and grinds along.  Your knees are weak.  Your fingers fidget.

You just mounted the stage, but you can’t wait to sit down.

All of this because you yielded, unconsciously, to the ambient silence of your room.

You Can Fix This Easily

You have two options to pursue simultaneously.

First remedy:  always have music softly playing during the lead-in to your talk, whether for 10 minutes or 100 minutes.  Select the music to set the mood.

Second remedy:  recognize the silence as a tool for you to use as you construct a presentation experience.

You set the tone of your presentation.

You break the silence when you choose and in the most effective way possible, with your standard introduction learned here on Business School Presentations.

Speak loudly and confidently, dictating the aural terms of the presentation rather than have them dictated to you by the mere absence of noise.

Crack the silence.  Dictate the terms.

This way, you launch into your presentation with confidence and brio.  Your voice is clear and strong.  And you have let everyone know that you are in charge.

Thus, you achieve personal competitive advantage from the first moments of your presentation by dissipating silence in a powerful way.

Remember the especially powerful effects you can achieve when you seize control of ambient silence in your business presentation .  It’s a sure way to build your professional presence on the podium.

For more superb business techniques like breaking ambient silence, consult The Complete Guide to Business

Charisma?

Executive Presence and personal competitive advantage
Especially Powerful Executive Presence

Business Presentations are filled with paradoxes, especially where executive charisma is concerned.

For instance, the Power Zone of presentation charisma . . . a place everyone wants to be, but where almost no one wants to go.

The charisma factor of executive presence is not so difficult to achieve, nor is it so mysterious as to be unfathomable.

Yet It always amazes me anew the reasons people concoct for not becoming powerful speakers and developing especially powerful executive presence.

The Power Zone of Executive Presence

The Power Zone is a metaphor for that realm of especially powerful business presenters, a place where  everyone is a capable, confident, and competent communicator.

Where every meal’s a feast and every speech kissed by rhetorical magic.

A place for larger-than-life presentation charisma.

A place where executive presence comes naturally.

Yes, you can go there.  And almost everyone claims they want to go to the Power Zone.

But even when people are told clearly how to reach the Power Zone of Presentation Charisma, most don’t go.

They find an excuse not to.

Disbelief . . .  Principle . . . Ideology . . .  Sloth . . . Disregard . . . Fear . . . even Anger.

They contrive the darnedest reasons not to, from ideological to lazy.

No Argument Here . . . Don’t go

In my presentations to various audiences, I am sometimes faced with the gadfly who knows better, sometimes vocal, oftentimes not.  The person who opposes what I say.  Usually for spurious reasons.

And it’s an exercise in futility for the gadfly.  I make no argument against the gadfly’s objections, whatever the source.

Because the choice to enter the Power Zone is personal and completely optional.

You need not step into the Power Zone if you choose not to.  I care not for the reason.  Explanations aren’t necessary.

Presentation charisma is yours for the taking.  It’s entirely up to you.

Ideological Objections to Charisma

Your Executive Presence

The latest batch of objections I heard sprang from one woman’s ideology.

You heard right.

She apparently believed in au courant social theory that dictates how people should behave and react to others based on . . .

Well, based on what she believed to be right and proper.

Or what ought to be right and proper.

In short, rather than communicate with people in the most effective way possible, she wanted to do something else.

And if the audience doesn’t like it?  Well, she’d then lecture her audience on why they’re wrong if they don’t like her way of presenting, whether based on appearance, voice, gestures, or movement.

She wanted to deliver presentations her way.

She wanted to blame her audience if they didn’t respond with accolades.  More . . . she wanted my affirmation that this was okay, too.

Just different.

That it was just a “different” way of presenting, if not altogether superior.

She complained that my presentation of techniques, skills, and principles that build presentation charisma “sounds like it’s from 100 years ago.”

And I say praise the Lord for that.

Charisma from 25 centuries of Practice

I draw on 2,500 years of presentation wisdom of Presentation Masters like Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, Quintilian, Webster, Bryant, and Roosevelt, so I’m not doing my job well if it sounds otherwise.

The woman in question complained that the gestures seemed “too masculine.”  She would feel “uncomfortable” doing them as she believed they don’t look “feminine.”

I replied to her this way . . .

Don’t do it.

Just don’t.

“Don’t do them.  Don’t gesture this way.  Don’t do anything that makes you feel ‘uncomfortable.’  Don’t utilize gestures proven 100,000 times to be powerful and effective.  Go ahead, substitute what you know to be better.  Do exactly what you have been doing all along, and emerge from this lecture hall not having been changed one iota.  Not having learned a damned thing.  And then . . . you can wonder at why you have’t improved.  At all.”

But if you choose to go that route, do it with the full knowledge that you leave the competitive advantage you might gain just sitting on the playing field.

It’s there for someone else to pick up.

Believe me, they will.

And all the ideology in the world cannot change that.

The principles of building charisma are gender neutral, and some folks have problems with that.  Too bad.  That’s how it is.

Consult Alix Rister for a female perspective . . . that is to say, a professional perspective on how to build presentation charisma and executive presence.

Your Comfort is Irrelevant to Charisma

Comfort?  You don’t feel “comfortable” utilizing certain gestures?

Since when did our “comfort” become the sine qua non of everything we try?  Who cooked this  “comfort” thing up?

When did it gain currency?

Has any greater cop-out ever been devised?

Of course you don’t feel “comfortable” doing something you’ve never tried before.

A baby feels anything but comfort as it springs from the womb and is forced to breathe air instead of amniotic fluid.  When it faces the cold  of a delivery room.

A child feels anything but comfort as he learns the periodic table and the multiplication table.  Or riding a bike or a new sport or meets new people and is forced to hear contrary opinions.

An athlete feels discomfort as she trains to develop skill, power, speed, and strength in the gym so as to perform at a superior level.

Does it feel “comfortable” to push forward and extend our capabilities into new and desirable areas?

You think developing Executive Presence and Charisma is easy and that you ought to wear it comfortably from the first minute?

It’s often a difficult process.  But we certainly don’t accept “discomfort” as a reason not to do something necessary to achieve a goal.

“I just don’t feel comfortable.”

Of course you don’t feel “comfortable” speaking before a group if you’ve never done it before or done so with no success.

Of course you don’t feel “comfortable” acting in charismatic ways.  Speaking with presentation charisma.  That’s the whole point of especially powerful presenting – expanding the speaker’s comfort zone to encompass powerful communication techniques that lift you into the upper echelon of business presenters.

personal competitive advantageAnd drawing upon 25 Centuries of wisdom and practice to do so.

But some folks scoff at this.  It requires too much of them.

Or it conflicts with the way they think the world ought to work.  Or the Seven Secrets for Especially Powerful Presenting aren’t mystical enough for them.

Secrets ought to be . . . well, they ought to have something akin to magic sparkles, right?

You may find this somehow unsatisfactory and unsatisfying or in conflict with your own ideology or philosophy.  If you believe the answer should somehow be more mystical or revelatory or tied to the high-tech promises of our brave new world, then I say this to you:  “Go forth and don’t use these techniques.”

Don’t fume over this or that nettlesome detail.  It’s completely unnecessary.  No need to argue about anything.

No one compels you to do anything here.

And this is what is so infuriating for the habitual naysayers – complete freedom.  The freedom not to travel into the Power Zone of Presentation Charisma and Executive Presence.

I show you the way to the Power Zone, where you can be one of the exceptional few who excels in incredible fashion . . . but you can choose not to go.

If not, good luck and Godspeed with your own opinions and philosophies and endless search for presentation excellence located somewhere else.  Let 1,000 presentation flowers bloom!

But if you elect to draw upon the best that the Presentation Masters have to offer, then I offer congratulations as you step onto the path to Presentation Charisma.  The path toward that rarefied world of especially powerful Executive Presence and personal competitive advantage.

For more on how to develop especially powerful executive presence, consult The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

 

Avoid Reactor Meltdown!

Especially Powerful Personal Competitive Advantage
Prevent Presentation Reactor Meltdown with a Simple Technique

Presentation Meltdown can strike at the oddest moments and leave us with shattered confidence.

You’re in the midst of an especially powerful presentation.  You’re really stoking the audience.

And then . . . your mind wanders for a brief moment.

It was just a moment.

But it was enough to sabotage you.

Your thoughts grind to a halt and you can’t remember what to say.  Words fail you.

You have lost the proverbial “train of thought” and you’re on the cusp of a presentation meltdown.

What do You do?

Blank-Mind attacks all of us at one point or another during our business presentation careers.

In fact, it happens so often that it might do us some good to think ahead to how we should react to this common presentation malady.

Too often, it leads to a presentation meltdown.  But it doesn’t have to.

Presenters have developed trade tricks to help us past the rough spots.  Here is one stopgap solution to get you over the speed-bump of lost train of thought.

When you lose your train of thought, don’t panic or you’ll spiral quickly into a presentation meltdown.

Instead, your first reaction should be a calm academic assessment of the situation – you know what’s happened, and you already know what your first action will be.  You’ve prepared for this.

Dodge Presentation Meltdown with This

Pause.

Flood the room with silence.

Look slightly upward and raise your right hand to your chin, holding your hand in a semi-fist with chin perch

personal competitive advantage
Especially Powerful Thought Pose

ed and resting on your index finger and thumb – perhaps with your index finger curled comfortably around your chin.  You know the posture.

Put your left hand on your hip.  Furrow your brow as if deep in thought, which you are.

Now, while looking steadily at the floor or slightly upward at the ceiling, walk slowly in a diagonal approximately four, maybe five steps and stop, feet shoulder-width apart.

Now, assume your basic ready position and look up at your audience.

Your Bought Time

You have just purchased a good 10 seconds to regain your composure, to regain your thought pattern.  Time enough to cobble together your next few sentences.

But if this brief respite was not enough to reset yourself, then shift to the default statement.

If you’re thinking, then look especially thoughtful

What do I mean “default statement?”

This is a rescue phrase that you craft  beforehand to get you back into your speaking groove.  It consists of something like this:  “Let me recapitulate our three points – liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Other phrases might be: “Now is probably a good time to look again at our main themes . . .”  or “We can see again that the issue boils down to the three crucial points that I began with . . .”

And then, you simply begin ticking off your three or four main points of your presentation.  In doing so, you trigger thought processes that put you back onto the correct path.

Think of this method as levering a derailed train back onto the track.

If you have prepared as you should, Blank-Mind should be no more than a small bump in the road for you, a minor nuisance with minimal damage.  If you panic, however, it can balloon into something monstrous.

Remember the rescue techniques:  Chin-scratch and Default Statement.

You can control the damage by utilizing the Chin-scratch, which buys you time to reassert yourself.  Failing that, the Default Statement can bail you out by taking you back over familiar material you’ve just covered.

If none of the above works, however, you can still stop yourself from going into total presentation meltdown by using the two rescue words I preach to all my students . . .

“In conclusion, we can see that . . .”

For more on avoiding presentation meltdown, consult The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

Touch the Cave Wall . . .

Touch your own cave paintings in your especially powerful business presentation
Take ownership of your business presentation and embrace 10,000 B.C. technology

It’s 10,000 BC, and you’ve painted a detailed graphic on your cave wall for your upcoming business presentation.

It depicts your keen analysis of the recent successful hunt.

Now, you offer to show it to your group, perhaps young hunters seeking essential knowledge.

How would you deliver your hunting presentation?

Would you stand to one side and gesture vaguely at your cave wall graphics as you give your presentation on how to take down a mastodon?

Would you?

More likely, you’d take ownership.

And if you did, you’d take your first step to achieving personal competitive advantage.

Here’s how you’d do it . . .

Own the Cave Wall Presentation . . .

You’d step over to the wall and run your fingers over the colored lines.

You’d trace the outline of the images as you shared the story that the painting illustrates.  You’d use the graphic to bring your presentation to life.

Likewise, in your own business presentations today, when you interact with your PowerPoint slides, I suggest that you use 10,000 BC technology – you should  “touch the cave paintings” to meld with your presentation.

Especially Powerful Mastodon Business Presentation
Breathe life into your Business Presentation!

Take ownership of your business presentation, and touch the cave paintings you’ve created to flesh out and support your message.

Step to the screen when you’re ready to refer to a chart or a graph.

Orient us to what we’re about to see.

Explain the vertical and horizontal axes so that we can quickly grasp the data.

By stepping to the screen and gesturing, you enhance your participation in the presentation, becoming the animation for the slides under review.

And you preclude using one of the most heinous devices ever created that can destroy potentially outstanding business presentations.

The Laser Pointer.

Think of the Laser Pointer as a Presentation self-destruct button.

That’s right . . . self-destruct button.

Don’t Self-Destruct!

Even the best of us occasionally thumb that laser pointer self-destruct button that is built into most remote control clickers.

Personal Competitive Advantage
Lose the laser pointer, Skywalker

But you want to deliver a Laser Pointer Presentation, don’t you?

You’ve waited your entire life for the chance to legitimately use that laser pointer!

Haven’t you?

You’ve pictured yourself be-suited and commanding the room . . . standing back, perhaps with a jaunty posture, as you sweep the screen behind you with the little bobbing speck of red light.  The meekest among us is invested with bombast and hauteur by even the most inexpensive laser pointer.

Don’t do it.

Put down the light saber, Skywalker.

The laser pointer is 21st century overkill technology.  It distances you from your presentation message at the exact moment you should meld yourself with it.

How so?

If something is so crucially important on your slideshow – perhaps a graph or a series of numbers – that you must direct audience attention to it, then step into the presentation.  Gesture to the data with your hand.

Use 10,000 B.C. Technology

Merge yourself with the data.  Step into the presentation so that you, in essence, become the animation that highlights your points of emphasis.  Don’t divide audience attention between you, the data on the screen, and a nervously darting red speck.

Instead, concentrate your audience focus on your major points, touching the screen, guiding us to the facts and figures you want us to internalize.

It’s a cave painting, so run your hands over the cave wall.

Show us what you want us to see with your hand.

Now, I issue a caveat here.

If the screen behind you is so high that you cannot reach it, then you might be justified in using the pointer.

But probably not.

Instead, if you want to highlight or draw attention to your points of emphasis, then utilize the highlighting animation available on most multimedia platforms.

Nothing is more gratuitous in modern business presenting than the laser pointer.  And few things more irritating than the laser pointer presentation.

Rid yourself of this awful affectation today.  Pledge never to deliver another laser pointer presentation in your business life.

Instead, run your hands over the cave wall, touch the cave paintings to meld with your presentation and communicate with your visuals in especially powerful fashion to gain especially powerful personal competitive advantage.

For more on Business Presentations, consult my book The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

Hand in Pocket? You Bet!

Put this Myth in Your Pocket!

Personal Competitive Advantagehand in pocket3Especially Powerful Personal competitive advantageHand in the Pocket for personal competitive advantageEspecially Powerful

What the Audience Wants – TOOTSIFELT

Your presentation audience for personal competitive advantage
Present what’s important to your audience

As much as some of us might seek the adulation of the crowd, it’s wise to remember that your presentation isn’t about you – it’s about your audience.

Your presentation is for your audience and you must address what it wants.  Get them to do what you want them to by demonstrating to them that it’s what they want.

Address their needs and fulfill their expectations in language they understand, with metaphors and examples that resonate with them.

Your objective must be expressed in terms of how it best connects with your audience.  Speak to their needs and fulfill them.

Your talk must speak to your audience with TOOTSIFELT in mind.  More on this in a moment.

Dazzle ’em with their own Dreams

The good news is that your audience’s generally low expectations mean that you can likely dazzle it with a merely above-average presentation.

This is because the level of business presenting is so dismally low that audiences dread listening to them as much as you hate giving them.

No one seems happy at the prospect of this afternoon’s weekly “finance update.”

Especially Powerful Audience Excitement!
Especially Powerful

But remember this regardless of the topic of your talk, every presentation audience wants the same basic thing.  Deep down, all of us wants a chance.

Everyone wants to have a chance to be a hero.

No one wants to hear from Indiana Jones . . . everyone wants to be Indiana Jones.

Or at least we like to believe that we could do great things.

Touch Your Presentation Audience

This is a touchstone principle long known to professional speakers.  Kenneth Goode and Zenn Kaufman authored a book in 1939 called Profitable Showmanship, and their words resonate with stone-cold veracity over the subsequent 72 years.

They resonate right up to today and the next quarter earnings briefing:

The audience is always on the screen, at the microphone, in the prize-fight, or in the pitcher’s box.  You, the individual member of the audience, are the hero of the day.  No selling can ever be completely successful that forgets this principle: that the prospect is the Hero of the Show. And, in fact, the only hero! . . .  The minute you slide the spotlight off him, off his crazy ideas, off his pet peeves, particularly off his whims, your show is over.  You may as well go home, for your audience is gone.  . . . The hero of the [presenting] drama is the customer – or prospect.  His vanities, his hopes, his fears, his ambitions – these are the stuff from which your plot is spun and on him – and him alone – must the spotlight shine.

If this message is difficult to digest, a mnemonic aid can help you stay focused on your presentation audience.

Dr. John Kline developed this mnemonic aid, and he calls it TOOTSIFELT.  This is a contrived acronym, which stands for:  “The object of this talk is for each listener to . . .”

This captures the spirit of your presentation.  It embodies the audience-centered approach.  If you state this question repeatedly throughout the development of your show, you will always produce a tightly scripted and targeted message.

“The object of this talk is for each listener to . . .”

Although our self-indulgence can sometimes elevate our egos, we must remember always that it’s all about your presentation audience.  Remember this, and you’re on your way to incomparable personal competitive advantage.

You can learn a great deal more about focusing on your presentation audience in The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

The How of Presentation POW!

Especially Powerful Business Presentations mean personal competitive advantage
Powerful Business Presentation Skills Yield Personal Competitive Advantage

You can front-load your introduction and put the Pow! into Powerful Business Presentations . . .   seize your audience from the first second of your show.

Or you can tiptoe into your business presentation so no one notices you.

Which would you choose?

You’d choose the introduction with Pow, of course!

But many people don’t.

Many folks in business school, in fact, simply don’t launch powerful business presentations for one excellent reason.

Many folks don’t know how to begin a presentation.

Do you?

Do You Know the How of Presentation Pow?

“Of course I know how to begin a presentation.  What kind of fool does this guy think I am?”

But do you?  Really?

Does your intro have Pow?  Consider for a moment . . .

Do you begin with confidence and strength?

Or do you tiptoe into your presentation, as do so many people in school and in the corporate world?

Do you sidle into it?  Do you edge into your show with lots of metaphorical throat-clearing?

Do you back into it?

Powerful Business Presentation for personal competitive advantage
Do you poke your head out instead of delivering a powerful business presentation?

Do you actually start strong with a story, but let the story spiral out of control until it overshadows your main points?  Is your story even relevant?  Do your tone and body language and halting manner shout “apology” to the audience?

Do you shift and dance?

Are you like a turtle poking his head out of his shell, eyeing the audience, ready to dart back to safety if you catch even a single frown?

Do you crouch behind the podium like a spider in the corner of his web?

Do you drone through the presentation, your voice monotone, your eyes glazed, fingers crossed, actually hoping that no one notices you?

One major problem with all of this is that you exhibit horrendous body language that destroys your credibility.

Try this instead . . .

Set the Stage with Your Situation Statement

Begin with your grabber . . . then follow immediately with your Situation Statement.

The Situation Statement tells your audience what they will hear.  It’s the reason you and your audience are there.

What will you tell them?  The audience is gathered to hear about a problem and its proposed solution . . . or to hear of success and how it will continue . . . or to hear of failure and how it will be overcome . . . or to hear of a proposed change in strategic direction.

 powerful business presentations
POW! can Yield Personal Competitive Advantage!

Don’t assume that everyone knows why you are here.

Don’t assume that they know the topic of your talk.  Ensure that they know with a powerful Situation Statement.

A powerful situation statement centers the audience – Pow!  It focuses everyone on the topic.

Don’t meander into your show with chummy talk, thanking the board for the “opportunity,” thanking the conference staff, thanking the bartender for generous pours.

Don’t tip-toe into it.

Don’t be vague.  Don’t clear your throat with endless apologetics or thank yous.

What do I mean by this?

You Need Pow!

Let’s say your topic is the ToughBolt Corporation’s new marketing campaign.  Do not start this way:

“Good morning, how is everyone doing?  Good.  Good!  It’s a pleasure to be here, and I’d like to thank our great board of directors for the opportunity.  I’m Dana Smith and this is my team, Bill, Joe, Mary, and Sophia.  Today, we’re planning on giving you a marketing presentation on ToughBolt Corporation’s situation.  We’re hoping that—”

No . . . no . . . and no.

Direct and to-the-point is best. Pow!

Try starting this way:

“Today we present ToughBolt’s new marketing campaign — a campaign to regain the 6 percent market share lost in 2011 and increase our market share.  By another 10 percent.  A campaign to lead us into the next year to result in a much stronger and competitive market position.”

You see?  This is not the best intro, but it’s solid.  No “random facts.”  No wasted words.  No metaphorical throat-clearing.

No backing into the presentation, and no tiptoeing.

You have set the stage for a powerful business presentation.

Add Some Presentation Pow!

Now, let’s add some Pow to it.

Here, in fact, is the How of POW!

A more colorful and arresting introductory Situation Statement might be:

“As we sit here today — right now —  changes in our industry attack our firm’s competitive position three ways.  How we respond to these challenges now will determine Toughbolt’s future for good or ill . . . for survival . . . or collapse.  Our recommended response?  Aggressive growth.  We now present the source of those challenges, how they threaten us, and our marketing team’s  solution to regain Toughbolt’s position in the industry and to continue robust growth in market share and profitability.”

Remember in any story, there must be change.  The reason we give a case presentation is that something has changed in the company’s fortunes.

We must explain this change.  We must craft a response to this change.

And we must front-load our introduction with Pow! to include our recommendation.

That’s why you’ve assembled your team.  To explain the threat or the opportunity.  To provide your analysis.  To recommend action!

Remember, put Pow into your beginning.  Leverage the opportunity when the audience is at its most alert and attentive.  Right at the start.

Craft a Situation Statement that grabs them and doesn’t let go, and you gain incredible personal competitive advantage in your presentations.

For more on putting the Pow! into powerful business presentations, have a look here.

Put Magic in Your Presentation

Especially Powerful Personal Competitive Advantage
Magic Presentation Words can Cast a Spell to Deliver Personal Competitive Advantage

I know magic words.

Magic presentation words.

Words to help you deliver a magic presentation that rivets the audience’s attention and guides them along a path that you’ve chosen.

Magic presentation words that bring your audience to a conclusion that your listeners, themselves, believe they arrived at on their own.

In fact, I know a series of magic spells to use during business presentations.

These are spells to get you out of trouble, spells to dazzle the audience and lead them where you want to go.

But you won’t believe it’s magic.

Disbelief in Magic Presentation Words

You see, we may not know what magic is, but we do think we know what magic is not . . . and it’s surely not the seemingly mundane advice given in a blogpost about business presenting.

The trouble with offering folks a formula to help them deliver a magic presentation is that they don’t recognize that the magic isn’t for them.

Not at all.

Magic Presentation Words like an Incantation
Magic Presentation Words? Sure, and they can bestow personal competitive advantage on anyone who learns and uses them

The magic is for the audience.

The magic is for the effect it has on the audience.

And the effects are mostly subtle.

So, when I reveal the magic words, the subtle and especial incantations that move the audience en masse, it’s invariably the case that the people who hear them are not happy.

They feel somehow cheated.

They just know that whatever else these words are, they surely are not “magic.”

And they ignore the power of magic that they could acquire in their presentations, the subtle and powerful effects achieved by words so unobtrusive that the audience doesn’t even consciously register them when they’re spoken.  The audience simply reacts in ways you want it to.

Here’s an example.

At times, even the finest presenters get themselves in trouble toward the end of a presentation.  Having these magic words near to hand can salvage a speech that is careening off-course.  A speech flirting with disaster.

Your Magic Presentation Words

When your talk is winding down and you feel yourself suddenly spent . . .

When you begin to spiral out of control and cannot remember your train of thought . . .

When your pulse quickens and your mind goes blank . . .

Grasp for two words.

Your Magic Words.

“In conclusion . . .”

That’s it.  Just two words.

Conclude with Pith and Power

These two words have rescued thousands of presenters before you, and they’ll rescue you as well.

These two words work a magic on your psyche that is almost inexplicable to what a logical, reasonable person would believe.  As soon as you speak them, the path to the end of your talk becomes clear.

And your audience responds with keen attention, summoned to a state of alertness by this simple yet powerful formulation.

Speak them, and suddenly you know what to say and do.

And your audience is with you in spirit.

Here is what you do.  Confidently add another phrase to your magic words, this way . . .

“In conclusion, we can see that . . .”

“In conclusion, our recommendation makes sense for reasons just given . . .”

“In conclusion, this means that . . .”

See how it works?

You see how incredibly easy it is to get out of the sticky wicket of a talk spiraling down out of control?

“In conclusion” leads you out of the wilderness and back onto your prepared path.  It leads you to restate your thesis in concise manner and then . . .

. . . stop!

You’re done.

But you’re not done building your Personal Competitive Advantage by improving your business presentation skills . . . consult The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting for more on magic presentation words that spellbind your audience.

That Bad Presentation is Your Fault

Really bad presentation isn't especially powerful
Sometimes the Bad Presentation is bad for obvious reasons . . .

That bad presentation is your fault.

You sabotaged it.

Screwed it up.

All of us sabotage our own presentations more often than we imagine.

And we do it through self-defeating behaviors.

These self-defeating behaviors come in many forms, but negative self-talk is one of the chief culprits.

We tell ourselves repeatedly that we’ll fail.

We envision humiliation, embarrassment.  Complete meltdown.

We Set Ourselves Up for Bad Presentations

Negative self-talk begins with the most ubiquitous cliche in business school.  That cliche is “I hate presentations.”  This culprit leads to awful presentations.  It undermines everything we strive for in business school presentations.

How can we build a positive presentation on such a spongy foundation?

Negative self-talk translates into bodily reactions of nervousness, trembling, faltering voice.

Shaking knees, sweating, and flushing.

Moreover, our sour and weak attitude can infect our teammates if it happens to be a group presentation.  The negative spiral down means things get worse before they get better.  If at all.

There is, in fact, no greater guarantee of failure.  How could anyone succeed at anything with this type of negativity?

Do You Think Like a World-Class Athlete?

The world’s elite athletes train the mind as well as the body.

Visualizing success is a technique they use to prepare for competition.  I work occasionally with sports psychologists and mental toughness coaches who train athletes in visualization techniques.

All of these experts agree that the mind-body connection – healthy or unhealthy – impacts performance tremendously.

Let’s leave aside the specific techniques and the psychological underpinnings of it that go back more than a century.  Just say now that we must at least rid ourselves of the negative self-talk.

Let’s give ourselves a fighting chance of success at delivering a good presentation.  Even a great presentation.

Bad Presentation is not especially powerful
Stop Negative Self-talk and Fix that Bad Presentation

So why do we talk ourselves down into the morass of self-defeat?

It could be the widespread ignorance of how to deliver a powerful presentation.  This ignorance means uncertainty of performance.

This ignorance and uncertainty breed fear.

It’s this fear of the unknown that drives up anxiety and can result in a bad presentation.  So the key to reducing that anxiety is uncertainty reduction.

And we can reduce uncertainty through preparation and by controlling the variables within our power.

Preparation is the second of the Three Ps of Speaking Technique – Principles, Preparation, Practice.

Can we foresee everything that might go wrong?  No, of course not, and we don’t even want to . . . instead, we plan everything that will go right, and we focus on that.

We rely on our own adaptability and confidence to field the remaining unexpected 10 percent.  This is one key to an especially powerful personal competitive advantage.

Envision Your Triumph

No one can win by constantly visualizing failure.

Envision this, instead – you deliver a tight, first-rate presentation that hits all the right notes.  It weaves a story that grips your audience, that keeps the audience rapt.  And it ends in a major ovation and a satisfying feeling of a job well-done.

When we take the stage, we focus.  We charge forward boldly, presenting with masterful aplomb and professionalism.  With this kind of psychological commitment, we squeeze out the doubts and anxiety.  We wring them dry from our psychic fabric.

We eliminate the bad presentation.

The right kind of preparation empowers us to deal with unknowns that nettle us.

Positive self-talk is essential to preparing an especially powerful presentation and developing personal competitive advantage.

Find more on how to eliminate the bad presentation in The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

Stay out of the Tall Grass

Especially Powerful personal competitive advantage
Cut through that Presentation Tall Grass!

All of us do it, some more than others – we insert empty, distracting phrases that take us into what I call the Presentation Tall Grass.

You know the feeling of walking through tall grass.  Tall grass, as in knee high.

It slows you down.

Think of wading quickly through knee-deep water . . .

Right, you don’t wade quickly through knee-deep water.

You push forward.

Sluggish.

Likewise, tall grass tugs at you, brushes your legs.

Holds you back.  And in this case, it holds your audience back too.

It’s so unnecessary, too, so let’s see what to avoid and why to avoid it.

Presentation Tall Grass Phrases

In the business presentation, we sometimes enter the tall grass needlessly.

We insert qualifying phrases that add no necessary substance but do distract the listener from our main points.

These phrases do not cripple your presentation.  But if you can eliminate them, you move out of the tall grass.

Your presentation becomes cleaner.

Crisper.

So what do these Tall Grass phrases look and sound like?

personal competitive advantageHere is one of the most common tall grass phrases.  And it seems innocent enough.

“Now, I want to talk a little bit about . . .”

Say what?

No, you aren’t here to “talk a little bit about” anything.  You’re here to deliver powerful, even stunning information in a tight, direct presentation that grips your listeners.

The affected breeziness of “talk a little bit about . . .” conveys a chattiness that is anathema to most business presentations.

In some public speaking venues this toss-off line might be acceptable, but I find it difficult to think of any presentation of my own where I would say something like this . . . except by mistake.

Because it’s a phrase that creeps into our show at times when we aren’t careful.  I know that if I use it once, it’s bound to show up again.

And again.

As an affected filler.  So I train myself to avoid it.

Perhaps you should, too.

References to Repetition – Ugh!

“As my colleague mentioned before . . .”

“As I said earlier. . .”

We tend to say this from an over-cultivated sense of honesty.  It springs to the lips, unbidden, when we poise to deliver a point . . . and then we suddenly remember that another presenter said something similar earlier.

We believe that someone in the audience is ready to pounce, to call us on our repetition if we don’t confess.

So we feel compelled to “fess-up” and give credit to our teammate.  We inject this wholly unnecessary comment:  “As my colleague mentioned before . . .”

Uh-oh.

Suddenly, the audience is jolted into thinking back, tugged back to several minutes earlier, trying to remember if someone actually said this thing earlier and wondering why you’re saying it again.  In other words, you have injected all sorts of unneeded distractions into audience minds.

Suddenly, you’re in the presentation tall grass, qualifying and interjecting, distracting.

It’s discordant.

Don’t be discordant.

Simply deliver your point.  Don’t refer back to a teammate or to yourself, for that matter.  Simply repeat the information.

Are these small points?  Sure they are.  They’re like individual brushstrokes.

And that’s how any master paints a masterpiece.  A single brushstroke at a time.

Deliver enough bad brushstrokes because you believe that each stroke by itself is inconsequential, and soon enough you’re giving just another routine, bad presentation.

You don’t want that.

So stay out of the presentation tall grass.

For more on the smart choices in your business presentations and how to achieve personal competitive advantage, consult The Complete Guide to Business School Presentations.

A Spectacular Presentation Launch!

Powerful presentations require powerful openings for personal competitive advantage
Blast into the mind . . . start your presentation with a hook or grabber, a lead sentence that seizes your audience’s attention.

Some experts estimate that you have an initial 15 seconds – maybe 20 – to hook and hold your audience as you start your presentation.

And with a kaleidoscope of modern-day distractions, you face an uphill battle.

In that short window of less than a minute, while they’re sizing you up, you must blast into their minds.

Get them über-focused on you and your message and you can gain incredible personal competitive advantage.

So how do you go about hooking and reeling in your audience in those first crucial seconds?

An Explosive Presentation Launch

Think of your message or your story as your explosive device.  To set it off properly, so it doesn’t fizzle, you need a detonator.

This is your “lead” or your “grabber.”

Your “hook.”

This is your detonator for blasting into the mind.

This is a provocative line that communicates to your listeners that they are about to hear something uncommon.  Something special.

Start your presentation with this provocative line, and you create a desire in your audience to hear what comes next.  The next sentence . . . and the next . . . until you are deep into your presentation and your audience is with you stride-for-stride.

But they must step off with you from the beginning.  You get them to step off with you by blasting into the mind.

“Thank you, thank you very much . . .”

You don’t blast into the mind with a stock opening like this:

“Thank you very much, Bill, for that kind and generous introduction.  Friends, guests, associates, colleagues, it’s a real pleasure to be here tonight with so many folks committed to our cause, and I’d like to say a special hello to a group of people who came down from Peoria to visit with us here this evening, folks who are dedicated to making our world a better place, a more sustainable world that we bequeath to our children and our children’s children.  And also a shout-out to the men and women in the trenches, without whose assistance . . .”

That sort of thing.

Folks in your audience are already checking their email.  In fact, they’re no longer your audience.  And you’ve heard this kind of snoozer before.  Far too many times.

Why do people talk this way?

Because it’s what they’ve heard most of their business lives.  You hear it, you consider it, you shrug, and you think that this must be the way it’s done.

Perhaps you come to believe that dull, monotone, stock-phrased platitudes comprise the secret formula for giving a keynote address, an after-dinner speech, or a short presentation.

You believe that a listless audience is natural.

Not at all!  The key is to do a bit of mind-blasting as you start your presentation.

A Mind-Blasting Presentation Launch

You must blast into their minds to crack that hard shell of inattention.  You must say something provocative.  But relevant.

You must grab your listeners and keep them.  You must arrest their attention long enough to make it yours.

Something like this:

“The gravestone was right where the old cobbler said it would be . . . at the back of the overgrown vacant lot.  And when I knelt to brush away the moss and dirt, I could see my hand trembling.  The letters etched in granite became visible one by one.  My breath caught when I read the inscription–”

Or this . . .

“There were six of them, my back was against the hard brick wall, and let me tell you . . . I learned a hard lesson–”

Start your Presentation well for personal competitive advantage
The opening of your business presentation should be explosive . . . metaphorically speaking, of course

Or this . . .

“I was stupid, yes stupid.  I was young and impetuous.  And that’s the only excuse for what I did.  I will be ashamed of it for the rest of my life–”

Or this . . .

“At the time, it seemed like a good idea . . . but then we heard the ominous sound of a grinding engine, the trash compactor starting up–”

Or this . . .

“She moved through the crowd like a shimmering eel cuts the water . . .    I thought that she must be a special woman.  And then I knew she was when she peeled off her leather jacket . . . and, well–”

You get the idea.

Each of these mind-blasters rivets audience attention on you.  Your listeners want to hear what comes next.  Of course, your mind-blaster must be relevant to your talk and the message you plan to convey.

If you engage in theatrics for their own sake, you’ll earn the enmity of your audience.  And that is far worse than inattention.

So craft an initial mind-blaster to lead your audience from sentence to sentence, eager to hear your next one.

And you will have succeeded in hooking and holding your listeners in spite of themselves for outstanding personal competitive advantage.

For more on how to start your presentation, consult The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.