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.
Who is the World Expert on Business School Presentations?
World Expert on Business School Presentations?
Assuming that there is one.
And depending, of course, on what we mean by “expert” and what we mean by “world.”
Those quibbles aside, that expert would be me.
Yes . . . me.
I’m the World Expert on Business School Presentations.
At least that’s what Google says.
And what Google says must be true, right?
The World Expert? What Bombast!
If you’re a regular reader – and there must be millions – then this assertion comes as no revelation. If you’re a new reader, this assertion likely strikes you as, at bare minimum, bombastic and riven with hubris.
Hubris of a sort that took down Dornish Prince Oberyn Martell.
On the other hand, it well could be true.
It could be true, because I Googled the search phrase “World’s Expert on Business School Presentations.”
My search results?
Of 1 billion websites worldwide, my site — this site right here —appears at the top of organic search results.
Go ahead, try it.
The World Expert!
So, what does this mean, practically speaking?
It strongly implies that I am the Best in the World at what I do. And what I do is train business school students to become especially powerful business presenters.
The World Expert on Business School Presentations?
Yes, that would be my first and quite natural inclination. I’ll savor that interpretation in my private moments.
But other than that it implies much about how we can create and develop a personal brand.
Especially Powerful Branding for Personal Competitive Advantage
Indeed, for didactic purposes, it shows the power of a consistent and focused brand.
And the power of brand-building over time.
It’s the same brand-building process I advocate in my seminars on personal branding as the foundation of your business presentation persona.
That brand-building process includes a big, hairy audacious goal – to become the Best in the World at what you do.
To become the World Expert on your subject matter, your skill, your service.
That’s a worthy goal and one you just might reach. And it’s a sure-fire way to build your personal competitive advantage.
An especially powerful stance can enhance your presentation
You want to project strength, competence, and confidence throughout your business presentation, and one important way to do this is with your presentation stance.
Your presentation stance fundamental to projecting the image of strength.
It’s basic to demonstrate competence and confidence.
But most of us never consider how we stand in front of an audience.
And this leaves aside the crucial point of how we ought to stand. Do we want to convey power? Confidence? Reassurance? Empathy?
Let’s investigate that now . . .
Stance for Power and Confidence
I assure you that I don’t expect you to stay rooted in one spot throughout your talk.
But at risk of sounding clichéd, let’s state forthrightly that it’s impossible to build any lasting structure on a soft foundation. This foundation grows out of the notion of what we call “power posing.”
Let’s build your foundation now. Let’s learn a bit about the principle of power posing.
How do you stand when you converse in a group at a party or a reception? What’s your “bearing?” How do you stand before a crowd when you speak?
Have you ever consciously thought about it?
How you stand, how you carry yourself, communicates to others. It transmits a great deal about us with respect to our inner thoughts, self-image, and self-awareness.
Whether we like this or not is not the point.
The point is that we constantly signal others nonverbally. You send messages to those around you, and those around us take their cues based on universal perception of the messages received.
Your Foundation – Power Posing
What is true in small groups is also true as you lecture or present in front of groups of four or 400.
Whether you actually speak or not, your body language is always transmitting. What’s the message that you unconsciously send people?
Have you thought about the silent and constant messages your posture radiates?
Seize control of your communication this instant. There’s no reason not to, and there are many quite good reasons why you should.
Recognize that much of the audience impression of you is forming as you approach the lectern.
Your listeners form this impression immediately, before you shuffle your papers or clear your throat or squint into the bright lights.
Especially Powerful Stances Abound Throughout History
They form their impression from your walk.
From your posture.
From your clothing, from your grooming, from the slightest inflections of your face, and from your eye movement.
This has always been true; speaking Master Grenville Kleiser said in 1912 that, “The body, the hand, the face, the eye, the mouth, all should respond to the speaker’s inner thought and feeling.”
Do you stand with shoulders rounded in a defeatist posture?
Do you transmit defeat, boredom, ennui?
Do you shift from side-to-side or do you unconsciously sway back-and-forth?
Do you cross and uncross your legs without knowing, balancing precariously upon one foot?
Is your free leg wrapped in front of the other, projecting an odd, wobbly, and about-to-tumble-down image?
Foundation of Your Presentation Stance
For any structure to endure, we must build on strength.
And I mean this both in the metaphorical and in the literal sense with regard to business presentations.
You must not only project strength and stability, you must feel strength and stability. The two are inseparable. A moment’s thought reveals to you why.
Think of the confident man.
To appear unstable and fearful before an audience, a confident man must take a conscious effort to strike such a pose.
Likewise, it would take a conscious effort for a man, who has planted himself firmly in the prescribed confident posture, to feel nervous, uncertain, or unsure of himself.
Maintain an Especially Powerful Stance for an Especially Powerful Presentation
That is, if he affected the confident pose and maintained it relentlessly against all of the body’s involuntary urges to crumple and shift, to equivocate and sway.
Think as well of the confident woman.
How does the confident woman’s demeanor different from that of the confident man? Virtually not at all.
The point and the goal is to establish a foundation that exudes strength, competence, and confidence to add to your personal competitive advantage.
Essential to this goal is that you know the difference between open body language and closed body language.
It’s the difference between power posing and powerless posing.
This strong personal foundation is your ready position, your standard posture for your presentation.
Business Jargon is not a family value . . . or is it?
I struggle with a macro-profession that cultivates its own vernacular, its discrete jargon . . . business jargon.
The arena is academia.
Academia fused with that of the larger battlefield of the business world.
The struggle is between those of us in a noble minority (we must posture as such) and those legions who wear smiling faces, furrow serious brows, and who are imbued with the best of intentions.
The Struggle with Business Jargon
The struggle is for clear and original expression against the encroachment of weasel-words.
The struggle is for meaningful distinctions between useful locutions and the vulgarity of “jargon.”
Every profession contrives jargon and then clutches it to its breast.
It’s useful, yes. Incredibly so.
Jargon is not necessarily a bad word
But some of the more Machiavellian among us contrive it as a second code for entry into a priesthood of the knowledgeable.
And so we have the conundrum – one man’s obfuscation is another man’s sharply drawn argument.
Both use “jargon.”
Who with compassion could strip a man of his outlet for facile expression, the utility of shorthand “jargon,” simply because there exist unscrupulous cads who abuse the privilege of a profession’s lexicon?
It’s a Noble Enterprise, this Struggle
So it’s a struggle, yes, but it’s also an internal struggle.
This struggle is waged within me – I’m torn, because it is my bane to be charged with teaching the lexicon, the “business jargon” to vulnerable young minds.
Minds to which the jargon sounds fresh and innovative, when it is actually already stale and reified. It’s an axiom that once something makes it into a textbook, it likely is already outdated.
“Business Jargon.”
But business jargon does perform valuable service. If used judiciously and properly and with clear intent to the purpose for which it was created.
If it is wielded not to obfuscate.
If it is wielded not to mind-taser the listener into a kind of numb dumbness.
For those of us in the profession that is home to our jargon, it serves as shorthand for many thoughts already thought, not simply a comfortable refuge. Shorthand for many debates already concluded. Many theories already expressed.
Many systems already in place.
In fact, a deep vein of rich discussion lurks beneath the glib façade of most of our, say, business jargon.
And thus “jargon” presents us with a dilemma – if it were not useful, it would not exist. And anything that is useful can be misused.
It should come with a warning label.
A Warning Label?
I provide such a warning label. But only half-heartedly.
Half-heartedly, because it is my first obligation to ensure that my charges remember the “jargon” that I serve up to them.
They must imbibe deeply. And, at some point during a seemingly interminable semester, they must regurgitate the jargon.
They must feast heartily at the table of “core competency” and ladle large portions of “market failure” and “pioneering costs” along with a light sprinkling of what some consider the oxymoronic garnish of “business ethics.”
In praise of business jargon
More insidious than the standard jargon is the phalanx of “new” program buzzwords that march our way in endless columns, recycling ideas of old . . . and then recycling them yet again.
“Best Practices,” “Re-engineering,” “Six Sigma,” “TQM, “Benchmarking,” “Balanced Scorecard,” and on and on . . .
For those of us who bathe regularly in the sea of “competitive advantage” and “market saturation” and “pioneering costs” and “core competencies,” we cannot exercise the luxury of contempt.
Instead, we must labor as any wordsmith must labor.
We must not ban the hammer because some use it to bash their thumb instead of the nail.
We must ensure that tools are used properly.
Just as any writer seeks and secures precision in language, the business writer must labor likewise to secure our business jargon from misuse and abuse.
Constant vigilance is our only guarantor against the debasing of the language. This is true in business and in academia as it is true in the high-minded world of the literati.
High-minded? It might be also useful to exercise constant vigilance that high-mindedness does not become high-handedness.
Humility and the hunger for clarity.
Uncommon qualities in the business and academic worlds?
Perhaps, but surely they should be considered corollary to the business jargon that seems pervasive and inescapable and that nettles us so naughtily.
Cast all of this business jargon aside and consult The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting for entre into the high priesthood of the finest business presenters in the corporate world!
End self-sabotage in your business presentations with Positive Power Words!
We can remedy public speaking self-sabotage by the ready application of Power Words.
I think you already know that we sabotage our own presentations more often than we recognize.
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, and complete meltdown.
We concoct a destructive fantasy that we then dutifully fulfill.
The Negative Spiral Down Begins . . .
Negative self-talk begins with the most ubiquitous cliche in business school – “I hate presentations.” This is the chief culprit that leads to inevitably awful presentations.
It undermines everything we strive for in business school presenting.
How can we construct a positive presentation experience on such a spongy foundation?
Negative self-talk results in physical reactions.
We talk ourselves into failure.
Nervousness, trembling, faltering voice, shaking knees, sweating, and flushing.
Replace Negative Self-Talk with Power Words
Moreover, our sour and weak attitude ensures that we aren’t the greatest source of strength to our teammates if we happen to be delivering a group presentation.
The negative spiral guarantees that things get worse before they get better . . . if at all.
How could anyone succeed at anything with this type of visualization?
Let’s try something different . . .
Think Like a World-Class Athlete
The world’s elite athletes train the mind as well as the body. Visualization of successful outcomes is one of the techniques they use to prepare for competition.
At moments when confidence is most needed, many athletes go to their “power words.”
These are words that help visualize success and victory rather than failure and defeat.
The words can be anything that the athlete has found to negate nervousness. It can be something as simple as mentally reciting “Power!” or “Victory!” at a crucial moment.
Say, just before a critical service in a tennis match.
This technique works. And it can work for you.
I collaborate occasionally with sports psychologists and mental toughness coaches who train athletes in visualization techniques. These psychologists affirm the utility of Power Words.
They assert that power words can affect performance in positive ways.
All of them are of one opinion that the mind-body connection – healthy or unhealthy – impacts performance tremendously.
Positive Self-Talk with Power Words is an Especially Powerful Technique
Lets leave aside the specific techniques for a later time and the psychological underpinnings of it that go back more than a century.
Let’s say here that we must at least rid ourselves of the negative self-talk.
We do this to give ourselves a fighting chance of succeeding at business presenting.
So why do we talk ourselves down into the morass of self-defeat?
Quite possibly, it’s the widespread ignorance of how to deliver a powerful presentation. This ignorance can mean incredible uncertainty of performance.
Ignorance, uncertainty, and pressure to perform breed fear.
This fear of the unknown drives up anxiety and results in stage fright. So the key to reducing that anxiety is uncertainty reduction – thorough preparation and control of the variables within our power.
Instead, we plan everything that will go right, and we focus on that.
We leave to our own adaptability and confidence to field the remaining unexpected 10 percent.
Envision Your Triumph with Power Words
No one can win by constantly visualizing failure.
Envision this, instead – you deliver a tight, first-rate presentation that hits all the right notes. One that weaves a story that grips your audience.
A story that keeps the audience rapt, and ends in superb closure, a major ovation and a satisfying feeling of a job well-done.
When we take the stage, we focus mind on our intent, and we charge forward boldly and confidently.
We execute our presentation with masterful aplomb.
We mentally recite our chosen power words to squeeze out the doubts and anxiety, wring them dry from our psychic fabric.
The right kind of preparation means we can deal capably with the handful of unknowns that nettle us.
Positive self-talk . . . power words . . . is an essential part of your schema for preparing an especially powerful presentation and developing personal competitive advantage.
Passing the baton should be a regular part of your presentation practice
A big surprise for me is that the most-searched term that leads people to this site is this one . . .
“How to transition between speakers.”
It turns out that this is one of the most perplexing and yet easily fixed problems in group presentations.
Let’s fix it now!
How you pass the baton – the transition between speakers – is one of the least-practiced aspects of the group business presentation.
Yet these baton-passing linkages within your presentation are incredibly important.
They connect the conclusion of one segment and the introduction of the next.
Shouldn’t this connecting link be as strong as possible, so that your audience receives the intended message? So the message isn’t lost in a flurry of scurrying presenters moving about the stage in unpracticed, chaotic fashion?
It sounds absurd, but group members often develop their individual presentation segments on their own. Then, the group tries to knit them together on the day of the group show.
A formula for disaster.
The result is a bumbling game of musical chairs and hot-baton-passing.
Imagine a sports team that prepared for its games this way, with each player practicing his role individually and the players coming together as a team only on the day of the game and expecting the team to work together seamlessly.
Sports teams don’t practice this way. Serious people don’t practice this way.
Don’t you practice this way.
Don’t yield to the tendency on the part of a team of three or four people to treat the presentation as a game of musical chairs.
How to Transition Between Speakers?
This happens when each member presents a small chunk of material, and the presenters take turns presenting.
Lots of turns.
This ungainly dance disconcerts your audience and can upend your show.
Minimize the passing of the baton and transitions, particularly when each person has only three or four minutes to present.
Smooth transitions can bequeath personal competitive advantage to you and your teammates
I have also noticed a tendency to rush the transition between speakers.
Often, a presenter will do fine until the transition to the next topic. At that point, before finishing, the speaker turns while continuing to talk, and the last sentence or two of the presentation segment is lost.
The speaker walks away while still citing a point. Perhaps an incredibly important point.
Don’t rush from the stage.
Stay planted in one spot until you finish.
Savor your conclusion, the last sentence of your portion. It should reiterate your Most Important Point.
Introduce your next segment. Then transition. Then pass the baton with authority.
That’s how to transition.
Harmonize your Messages
Your message itself must mesh well with the other segments of your show.
Each presenter must harmonize the message with the others of a business presentation. These individual parts should make sense as a whole, just as parts of a story all contribute to the overall message.
“On the same page” . . . “Speaking with one voice” . . .
These are the metaphors that urge us to message harmony. This means that one member does not contradict the other when answering questions.
It means telling the same story and contributing crucial parts of that story so that it makes sense.
This is not the forum to demonstrate that team members are independent thinkers or that diversity of opinion is a good thing.
Moreover, everyone should be prepared to deliver a serviceable version of the entire presentation, not just their own part. This is against the chance that one or more of the team can’t present at the appointed time.
Cross-train in at least one other portion of the presentation.
Remember: Harmonize your messages . . . Speak with one voice . . . Pass the baton smoothly. Transition between speakers with authority and confidence for an especially powerful business presentation.
Personal Competitive Advantage . . . with the Pause
Coca-Cola’s 1929 slogan was “The Pause that Refreshes” and likewise we can use the public speaking pause to especially powerful effect.
So, make friends with silence so that you feel comfortable in its presence.
Public Speaking Pause Power
The correct pauses imbue your talk with incredible power. With proper timing and coupled with other techniques, the pause can evoke strong emotions in your audience.
A pause can project and communicate as much or more than mere words. The public speaking pause is part of your nonverbal repertoire and a superbly useful tool.
The comfortable pause communicates your competence and confidence. It telegraphs deep and serious thought.
Pause power for personal competitive advantage!
Pause Power is underutilized today, but has served as arrow-in-quiver of the finest presenters over centuries. It’s a key technique to gaining personal competitive advantage. Presentation Master Grenville Kleiser knew this and he put it this way in 1912: “Paradoxical tho it may seem, there is an eloquence and a power in silence which every speaker should seek to cultivate.”
When you use the pause judiciously, you emphasize the point that comes immediately after the pause. You give the audience time to digest what you just said. And you generate anticipation for what you are about to say.
So save the pause for the moments just prior to each of your main points.
How do you pause? When do you pause?
Silence is Your Friend
A truly effective pause can be coupled with a motionless stance, particularly if you have been pacing or moving about or gesturing vigorously. Couple the pause with a sudden stop, going motionless. Look at your audience intently.
Seize their complete attention.
Pause.
You can see that you should not waste your pause on a minor point of your talk. You should time your pauses to emphasize the single MIP and its handful of supporting points.
Voice coach Patsy Rodenburg says: “A pause is effective and very powerful if it is active and in the moment with your intentions and head and heart. . . . a pause filled with breath and attention to what you are saying to your audience will give you and your audience a bridge of transitional energy from one idea to another.”
Finally, the public speaking pause can rescue you when you begin to spiral out of control or lose your train of thought. Remember that silence is your friend.
Need a life-preserver? Need time to regain your composure? Try this . . .
Pause. Look slightly down. Scratch your chin thoughtfully. Furrow your brow. Take four steps to the right or left, angling a bit toward the audience.
Voila!
You just bought 7-8 precious seconds to collect your thoughts.
Remember the especially powerful effects you can achieve in your business presentation with the public speaking pause. It’s a sure way to build your professional presence on the podium.
Whether the finance presentation class is in Philadelphia . . .
. . . or Mumbai . . . or Cali . . . or Chennai . . . or Singapore . . . or Izhevsk . . . I hear the same universal and eerie refrain from finance students everywhere—
“Finance is different.”
“We don’t do all of that soft-skill kumbaya presentations stuff.”
“For us, the numbers tell the story.”
The Talisman of Numbers
Numbers seem to enchant business-people in deep and mysterious ways.
It’s as if numerical constructs are somehow less malleable than the English language, less subject to manipulation.
Where business presentations are concerned, finance folks are not different, special, unique. They are not otherwise gifted with special powers or incantations denied the mere mortals who toil in marketing or human resources.
We all are subject to the same demands placed upon us by the presentations beast. These demands nettle us equally and indiscriminately during the finance business presentation process.
As with most things, there is bad news and good news in this slice of life provided here.
The bad news is that modern finance presentations are a vast wasteland of unreadable spreadsheets and monotonous, toneless recitations of finance esoterica. It seems that there must be a requirement for this in finance.
Finance Presentation Hell
In fact, many finance business presentations crumble into little more than meeting “discussions” about a printed analysis distributed beforehand. The presentation is picked apart by jackals with nothing on their minds except proving themselves worthier than who might be unlucky enough to be the presenter du jour.
A presenter or group of presenters stands and shifts uncomfortably.
Everyone else sits and interrupts with strings of gotcha questions. These questions are usually couched to demonstrate the mastery of the questioner rather than to elicit any worthy piece of information.
Several finance business presentation cliches guarantee this sorry state of affairs a long life . . .
“Just the facts”
Exhortations of “Just the facts” serve as little more than a license to be unoriginal, uninteresting, and unfocused.
“Just the facts”
Folks believe that this phrase gives the impression that they are no-nonsense and hard-core. But there is probably no more parsimoniously pompous and simultaneously meaningless phrase yet to be devised.
It achieves incredible bombast in just three syllables.
What does it mean, “Just the facts?” Which facts? Why these facts and not those facts?
Events are three-dimensional and filled with people. They require explanation and analysis.
Mere “facts” are flat, unemotional, and unsatisfactory proxies for what happens in the real world. “Just the facts” masks much more than it reveals.
“The numbers tell the story.”
This is a favorite of folks who seem to believe that the ironclad rules of presentations do not apply to them. “We don’t deal with all of that soft storytelling,” finance majors often tell me. “We deal in hard numbers.”
There’s so much wrong with this that it’s difficult to find a reasonable starting-point.
Not only do numbers, alone, tell no story at all . . . if numbers were conceivably capable of telling a story, it would be an incomplete story.
A story with distorted reality.
The end result of these presentation shenanigans is mediocrity and outright bad presentations. If firms want nothing more than a group discussion about a handout, with the only thing distinguishing the “presenters” from the audience is that they are standing, then so be it.
It may be useful. It may be boring.
It may be morale-building. It may be team-destroying.
It may be time-wasting.
But whatever else it is, it is not a presentation.
“Cut ’n’ Paste”
This is the heinous data dump that all of us see at some unfortunate time in our careers.
PowerPoint slides crammed with data in tiny, unreadable font. The display of these heinous slides is accompanied by a sweep of the arm and the awful phrase: “As you can see . . . ”
The cause of this pathology is the rote transfer of your written report to a PowerPoint display, with no modification to suit the completely different medium. The result?
Slides from Hell.
The Finance Presentation Good News!
In every obstacle exists an opportunity.
Because the bar for finance business presentations is so low, if you invest your presentations with the powerful principles that apply to all business presentations, your own shows will outstrip the competition by an order of magnitude.
This, of course, implies that your content is rock-solid.
It should be.
Your ratio analysis, your projected earnings, your sophisticated modeling should all reflect the superb finance education you have received.
Swim against the tide of bad finance business presentations and imbue your presentations with power and brio
But how you present that content is the key to presentation victory.
All of the presentation principles that we discuss here apply to finance business presentations.
Particularly the parsimonious display of numbers and the necessity for their visual clarity.
If anything, finance business presentations must be more attentive to how masses of data are distilled and displayed.
A situation statement must be given.
A story still must be told.
Your analysis presented.
Conclusions must be drawn.
Recommendations must be made.
And external factors must be melded with the numbers so that the numbers assume clarity and meaning in an especially powerful 3D presentation.
If you do the above, and nothing more, then your finance presentation will outshine the hoi polloi with ease.
But you can push even further, delving even more deeply into the masterful techniques and principles available to you, learning to use your tools skillfully.
You can rise to the zenith of the finance business presentations world because you are part of the tiny minority who seizes the chance to deliver an especially powerful presentation.
Here, I point out what makes a pleasant communicative voice and what makes for annoying, weak, distracting voices.
A voice that undermines your credibility.
CAVEAT: Bad Voices . . .
Here I offer two examples from reasonably well-known personages.
Examples of heinous voices that irritate and grind upon the senses. They offer textbook instruction on what not to do if you are presenting.
The first video features actress Demi Moore, who is afflicted with two glaring voice pathologies that result in an incredibly bad voice.
Her first issue is a verbal grind that sounds as if she needs to clear her throat of something thick and unpleasant.
Her voice gurgles and grinds along. It sounds grotesque because she does not push enough air across her vocal cords to hold a steady, let alone mellifluous, tone.
Demi also is plagued with the infuriating verbal uptick – sometimes called the moronic interrogative – in which every declarative sentence is formed as a question. She sounds as though she isn’t sure of anything she’s saying. She seems to seek validation from you for everything she says.
The grinding and upticking go on interminably . . . truly painful to hear. It begins at the 60-second mark . . .
This second example is a young lady by the name of Danica McKellar — an actress, author, and “mathematician.” She is certainly not a public speaker, given her cartoon voice and her own vocal fry pathology.
She sounds suspiciously like a Disney Channel-trained former kid actor, possessed as she is with the tell-tale end-of-sentence rasp and shrill cartoon words. Words sourced direct from a pea-sized voice-box. Result? Bad voice.
If you find yourself afflicted with these pathologies, you can correct bad voice with a few minor adjustments. Push air across your vocal cords, use your chest as a resonating chamber, and stop inflecting your voice up at the end of each sentence.
With just a few changes, you can dramatically improve your presenting voice.
Especially Powerful Movement yields Personal Competitive Advantage
We’re all familiar with the droning voice of the numbing speaker who rarely varies pitch, tone, or pace of a talk and who quickly loses us in monotony . . . and who does not move.
In like fashion, you can be visually monotonous . . . when you do not move.
Visual monotony – either of repetitive constant movement . . . or of no movement whatsoever.
We know well the “rocker” and the “swayer.”
We know Mr. “busy-hands” and the “Foxtrotter,” who quicksteps in a tight little dance.
Perhaps you’ve seen the occasional great Stoneface, but he is a rarity today.
The Right Movement
Movement can enhance or cripple your presentation. But you must engage the right kind of movement. In other words, move well.
Before you begin agitated hopping about the stage willy-nilly, recognize that you should incorporate movement into your presentation for quite specific reasons. Your movements should contribute to your presentation by reinforcing your message.
At the risk over over-alliterating, you should mesh your movements with your message.
Conscious Movement . . . not Random Wandering
Remember that every single thing you do onstage derives its power by its contrast with every other thing you do.
If you move all the time, like a constant pacing jungle cat, it becomes the equivalent of white noise, and your movements contribute no meaning whatever to your presentation.
In fact, your movements become a distraction, leeching energy and attention from your message. It, too, becomes a form of visual monotony.
The Kiss of Sleep
Likewise, if you remain stationary 100 percent of the time, the result is visual monotony.
You lull your audience into inattention, especially if you combine verbal and visual monotony in a single presentation – The Kiss of Sleep . . . for your audience.
Those in theater know this principle well.
In his very fine Tips for Actors, Jon Jory intones that: “Your best tool to avoid this dangerous state is variety. Three lines of loud need soft. Three lines of quick need slow. A big dose of movement needs still. Or change your tactics.”
So, think of movement as one more tool in your repertoire to evoke feeling from your audience and to convey a powerful and persuasive message.
The secret is not Movement alone . . . the secret is keen, decisive, proper, and exquisitely timed Movement.
Integrate your movement with your message for an especially powerful presentation to achieve personal competitive advantage.
Vintage Whine: “This topic just isn’t interesting.”
“I never get an interesting topic.”
I hear this lament more often that I care to.
No more vintage whine or self-sabotage exists than this one, uttered in ignorance of its true meaning.
Here are two scenarios. Both are possible.
You’re assigned your case, and you skim over it.
Ugh. It’s not “interesting.”
And you find that you must write a memo on the case, analyzing it and teasing out its implications for the strategic direction of the firm, and then you must work with a group of folks you probably don’t hang out, probably don’t know . . . or even like.
You groan as you don’t recognize the company or the people in the case.
Such an “Old” Case
The case isn’t dated last week, so you think it’s “old.”
You complain that you don’t understand why you’re assigned this “boring” case instead of a “modern” case on something hip . . . say, an Apple innovation or a product you heard mentioned in a commercial during the latest Kardashian reality TV offering.
No, you don’t understand why it doesn’t seem to speak to you and your needs.
Now.
This minute.
Roll of the eyes.
“Whatever.”
Personal Competitive Advantage does not mean focusing on “me.”
Never pausing.
Never pausing to examine the central factor that your lack of understanding is the problem.
Your framework is so cramped, your context so self-circumscribed, your interests so few that it’s impossible for you to situate the case in its proper place with the tools at your disposal.
You complain that it’s not “relevant” and so you make no attempt to understand its “relevance.”
It’s not an “interesting topic.”
You never get an “interesting topic.”
That’s one scenario of how it goes.
Another scenario is the Embrace. Opening the heart and mind to the new.
Embrace the Un-interesting Topic
You’re assigned your case, and you skim over it.
And you must write a memo on the case, analyzing it and teasing out its implications for the strategic direction of the firm, and then you must work with a group of folks you don’t know and probably don’t hang out with . . . or even like.
You scratch your chin, metaphorically, and you roll up your sleeves (again, metaphorically) and you ask yourself questions like these . . .
“What can I learn from this process? How can I turn this whole process into an experience I can craft stories about to tell in my upcoming job interviews? How can I take this case, digest it, and make it part of my growing context of business knowledge?”
And as for the inevitable public group presentation, ask yourself:
A classic case and topic that initiates you into the business fold
“How can I work best with these folks in my group to produce a spectacular presentation that will then become part of my resume?
How can I help mask the internal disagreements and personality conflicts so that our audience does not suspect that several of us detest each other?
How can I make this presentation interesting for my audience?”
Remember that there are no inherently interesting topics. Every topic has potential for generating great interest, if you do your job right.
Because please understand . . . no one cares if the topic interests you.
As a professor, I certainly don’t.
I want to know what you plan to do with the topic and the case.
Your job is to infuse the topic with power and generate interest about it for your audience. And if you do that, you gain tremendous personal competitive advantage.
Crown Cork and Seal is an example of such a case that many students don’t find “interesting.” It’s a classic case that almost every MBA student must read and analyze.
The Crown Cork and Seal case is about making and selling tin cans. And how a firm with resources identical to the other major can manufacturers managed to outperform the industry by a stretch.
That’s a mystery, and a great one to solve.
And it’s an interesting topic . . . if only you embrace the case.
Finance Presenting offers special challenges, but it’s also a chance to increase professional presence and personal competitive advantage
Whether the presentations class is in Philadelphia . . . or Mumbai . . . or Cali . . . or Chennai . . . I hear the same universal and eerie refrain from finance students.
“Finance is different.”
“We don’t do all of that soft-skill presentations stuff.”
“For us, the numbers tell the story.”
Numbers seem to enchant business-people in deep and mysterious ways, as if numerical constructs are somehow less malleable than the English language.
As if they are less subject to manipulation.
In a chaotic world, a spreadsheet exudes familiarity, a firm valuation offers comfort, an income statement serves as anchor.
False Certitude, Faux Anchor
For some, numbers convey a certitude and precision unavailable to mere rhetoric.
And this illusion of certitude and precision exerts influence on finance folks to believe that, well . . . that the laws of human nature that stymie the rest of us do not apply to them in the coldness and hardness of objective numerical analysis.
But this is an illusion.
And the result is 2D presenting, full of voodoo and bereft of nuance and subtle analysis.
The illusion of precision can seduce the best
Where business presentations are concerned, finance folks are not different, special, unique or otherwise gifted with special powers or incantations denied the mere mortals who toil in marketing or human resources.
We’re all subject to the same demands placed upon us by the presentations beast.
These demands nettle us equally and indiscriminately during the business presentation process.
As with most things, there is bad news and good news in this slice of life provided here.
The Bad News
The bad news is that modern finance presentations are a vast wasteland of unreadable spreadsheets and monotonous, toneless recitations of finance esoterica.
It seems that there must be a requirement for this in finance.
In fact, many finance presentations devolve into basic meeting discussions about a printed analysis distributed beforehand, with the group of presenters merely standing while everyone else sits and interrupts with strings of questions.
Several presentation cliches guarantee this sorry state of affairs a long life . . .
“Just the facts”
Exhortations of “Just the facts” serve as little more than a license to be unoriginal, uninteresting, and unfocused.
“Just the facts”
Folks believe that this phrase gives the impression that they are no-nonsense and hard-core.
But there is probably no more parsimoniously pompous and simultaneously meaningless phrase yet devised.
It achieves incredible bombast in just three syllables.
What does it mean, “Just the facts?” Which facts? Why these facts and not those facts?
Events are three-dimensional and filled with people and powerful institutional forces; they require explanation and analysis. Mere “facts” are flat, two-dimensional, unemotional, and unsatisfactory proxies for what happens in the real world.
“Just the facts” masks much more than it reveals.
“The numbers tell the story.”
This is a favorite of folks who seem to believe that the ironclad rules of presentations do not apply to them. “We don’t deal with all of that soft storytelling,” finance majors often tell me. “We deal in hard numbers.”
There’s so much wrong with this that it’s difficult to locate a reasonable starting-point.
Not only do numbers, by themselves, tell no story at all . . . if numbers were conceivably capable of telling a story, it would be a considerably incomplete story, giving a distorted picture of reality.
The end result of these presentation shenanigans is an overall level of mediocrity and outright bad presentations.
If firms want nothing more than a group discussion about a handout, with the only thing distinguishing the “presenters” from the audience is that they are standing, then so be it.
It may be useful.
It may be boring.
It may be morale-building.
It may be team-destroying.
It may be time-wasting.
But whatever else it is, it is not a presentation.
“Cut ’n’ Paste”
This is the heinous data dump that all of us eventually experience.
PowerPoint slides crammed with data in tiny, unreadable font. The display of these heinous slides is accompanied by a sweep of the arm and the awful phrase: “As you can see . . . ” The cause of this pathology is the rote transfer of your written report to a PowerPoint display, with no modification to suit the completely different medium.
The result?
Slides from Hell.
The Good News for Finance Shows
In every obstacle exists an opportunity.
Because the bar for finance presenting is so low, if you invest your project with the powerful principles that apply to all business presentations, your own shows will outstrip the competition by an order of magnitude.
This, of course, implies that your content is rock-solid.
It should be.
It must be.
Your ratio analysis, your projected earnings, your sophisticated modeling should all reflect your superb finance education.
Build Credibility With an Especially Powerful Finance Presentation
But how you present that content is the key to presentation victory.
All of the presentation principles that we discuss here apply to finance presentations, particularly the parsimonious display of numbers and the necessity for their visual clarity.
If anything, finance presentations must be more attentive to how masses of data are distilled and displayed.
A situation statement must be given.
A story still must be told.
Your analysis presented.
Conclusions must be drawn.
Recommendations must be made.
And external factors must be melded with the numbers so that the numbers assume clarity and meaning in an especially powerful 3D presentation.
If you do the above, and nothing more, then your finance presentations will outshine the hoi polloi with ease.
But if you delve even more deeply into the masterful techniques and principles available to you, learning to use your tools skillfully, you can rise to the zenith of the finance presentation world precisely because you are part of the tiny minority who seizes the opportunity to deliver an especially powerful presentation and gain personal competitive advantage.
Especially Powerful Structure yields Personal Competitive Advantage
Beginning . . . Middle . . . End . . . that’s a winning structure every time.
Every presentation – every story – has this framework.
Let me rephrase. Your presentationought to have this framework, or you’re already in deep trouble.
Every presentation, whether individual or group, should be organized according to this presentation structure. Do this, and you enhance your personal competitive advantage in subtle ways that work at the subconscious level.
Beginning . . . Middle . . . End
If you’re engaged in a group presentation, each segment of the show has this structure as well. Your segment has this structure.
In fact, every member of a team has this same task – to deliver a portion of the presentation with a beginning, middle, and an end.
In other words, when you are the member of a 5-person team and you are presenting for, say, four minutes, during that four-minute span, you tell your story part that has a beginning, middle, and an end.
In the diagram below, each of the boxes represents a speaker on a five-person team delivering a group presentation. The first speaker delivers the beginning. The second, third, and fourth speakers deliver the middle. The final speaker delivers the conclusion or the “end.”
Note that each speaker uses the same beginning-middle-end format in delivering his portion of the show.
Your presentation structure should be simple and sturdy, smart and strong
This framework is not the only way you can build your presentation. You can be innovative, you can be daring, fresh, and new.
You can also fail miserably if you plunge into uncharted “innovative” territory just for a false sense of “variety” or “fresh ideas” or self-indulgence.
Sparkle and pop spring from the specifics of your message and from your keen, talented, and well-practiced delivery.
Sparkle and pop do not spring from experimental structures and strange methods that swim against the tide of 2,500 years of experience that validate what works . . . and what fails.
Beginning-middle-end is the most reliable and proven form, tested in the fires of history and victorious against all comers. I suggest you use it to build your presentation structure in the initial stages.
You may find that as you progress in your group discussions, you want to alter the structure to better suit your material. Please do so.
But do so with careful thought and good reason. And always with
Especially Powerful Personal Competitive Advantage is yours through effective bookending
the audience in mind and the task of communicating your main points concisely, cogently . . . and with über focus.
One way to think of your part of the presentation is material sandwiched between two bookends.
You should Bookend your show. This means to make your major point at the beginning and then to repeat that major point at the end.
Hence, the term “Bookends.” And in-between, you explain what the book is about.
Build your story within this presentation structure and you’re on your way to a winning presentation.
David Greenberg, President of L’Oreal’s Professional Products Division in the United States discusses idea implementation with Team DragonFire
New York, April 13 — Drexel University’s DragonFire team of three students met L’Oreal’s challenge to “Invent the Professional Salon Experience of the Future” and took top honors in the L’Oreal Brandstorm 2018 case competition in a field of 52 teams over a two-day competition April 12-13.
Drexel LeBow College of Business bested Harvard, Berkeley, Northwestern, NYU, Michigan, NC A&T, Texas, and Southern Cal in the top ten. Drexel is joined by co-champion Penn State in representing the United States in Paris for the L’Oreal World Championship in May.
Drexel LeBow College Seniors Shine
The Team of Drexel LeBow seniors Amalya Boulajouahel, Bianca Fernandes, and Laura Sturzeneggar pitched its concept for a sophisticated technological solution that links salons, customers, and L’Oreal in a way that utilizes big data to benefit all three.
Top Ten in the Nation Compete in L’Oreal Finals
L’Oreal’s talent acquisition executives, as well as David Greenberg – the President for L’Oreal’s Professional Products Division in North America – quizzed the team for at least an hour after the competition with questions about development and execution of the idea.
“The team’s commitment to develop their ideas and their dedication to learn and to grow as powerful and expressive business people was a major factor in their success in the competition,” said team faculty mentor Stanley Ridgley, associate clinical professor of management at LeBow. “Our team offered L’Oreal a strong, scalable core concept that L’Oreal loved. Now it’s on to Paris for the world championship!”
Drexel LeBow is off to Paris for the World Finals
Drexel LeBow Management Department Chairman Murugan Anandarajan added “These young women represent the business spirit we inculcate in all our students as they learn the wealth-creation process – they exemplify the qualities of leadership, imagination, and technical savvy. I’m truly proud of these young women, who are sterling ambassadors for LeBow. Bravo!”
Let’s move from the realm of what you do and say in front of your audience to the realm of your appearance.
How you appear to your audience.
Likewise, let’s immediately dismiss the notion that “it doesn’t matter what I look like – it’s the message that counts.”
In a word . . . no.
This is so wrong-headed and juvenile that you can turn this to immediate advantage by adopting the exact opposite perspective right now.
I’d wager that most folks your age won’t, particularly those stuck in liberal arts, for better or worse.
Much more dramatic to strike a pose and deliver a mythic blow for “individuality” than to conform to society’s diktats, eh?
Well, let those folks strike their blows while you spiff yourself up for your presentations, both in public and in private job interviews, and gain a superior competitive advantage.
The Upshot – Slob Cool, Isn’t
Here is the bottom line. Your appearance matters a great deal, like it or not, and it is up to us to dress and groom appropriate to the occasion and appropriate to our personal brand and the message we want to send.
Spiral down, if you like, with personal competitive disadvantage
“Slob cool” may fly in college – and I stress may – but it garners only contempt outside the friendly confines of the local student activities center and fraternity house.
Is that “fair?”
It certainly is fair.
You may not like it. It may clang upon your youthful sensibilities.
Tough.
You’re on display in front of a group of buyers. They want to know if your message is credible. Your appearance conveys important cues to your audience. It conveys one of two chief messages, with little room to maneuver between them.
First, your appearance telegraphs to your audience that you are: sharp, focused, detailed, careful, bold, competent, prudent, innovative, loyal, energetic . . .
or . . .
Your Appearance? Important at All?
Your Brand is key to your personal competitive advantage
Your appearance telegraphs to your audience that you are: slow, sloppy, careless, inefficient, incompetent, weak, mercenary, stupid.
Is that what you want? Really?
Moreover, you may never know when you are actually auditioning for your next job.
That presentation you decided to “wing” with half-baked preparation and delivered in a wrinkled suit might have held in the audience a human resource professional recommended to you by a friend.
But you blew the deal.
Without even knowing it.
Think . . . How many powerful people mentally cross you off their list because of your haphazard, careless appearance? How many opportunities pass you by?
How many great connections do you forfeit?
Granted, it’s up to your discretion to dress in the first wrinkled shirt you pull from the laundry basket, but recognize that you may be paying a price without even knowing it.
Your appearance on the stage contributes or detracts from your message. So, as a general rule, you should dress one half-step above the audience to convey a seriousness of purpose.
For instance, if the audience is dressed in business casual (sports coat and tie), you dress in a suit.
Simple.
Personal Branding should occupy you every day in some way
But beyond your presentation, you’re always on-stage.
You’re always auditioning.
And you are creating your personal brand one wrinkled shirt at a time, one exposed pair of boxers at a time.
Or . . . clean, sober, professional, serious, decisive, thoughtful, competent, and bold.
Personal appearance overlaps into the area of personal branding, which is beyond the scope of this space, but two books I recommend to aid you in your quest for appearance enhancement are You, Inc. and The Brand Called You.
Both of these books are worth the price and filled with stellar advice to propel you into delivering Powerful Presentations enhanced by a superb professional appearance.
What’s in it for your audience? It had best be something interesting!
This catchphrase comes loaded with a freight-train of wisdom for your business presentation.
And no, it isn’t about you . . . it’s about your audience.
Always ask yourself this question with regard to your audience . . . from the point-of-view of your audience.
This strikes at the heart of a powerful and well-received presentation, as speaking master James Winans noted back in 1915:
“The young speaker can do nothing better for himself than to fix firmly in mind that public speaking is a dialogue and to emphasize constantly the part of the audience, anticipating and watching for its response.”
This speaking basic also runs under the tag of Know Your Audience.
Know Your Audience = WIIFY?
To achieve its greatest effect, your story must focus on the needs and interests of your audience.
At its best, your presentation should focus on the deepest desires of the audience, but should do so subtly and with great skill.
Your story should fulfill a need in the audience with regard to your presentation topic and the stories you choose to illustrate that topic.
Ask yourself these questions:
A key to personal competitive advantage
Why have they come?
What is it that motivates these persons to gather in one place to hear me?
How can I speak to the audience as a group, and yet speak to each person individually?
How can I make the persons in the audience feel like a hero?
The hero of your story must be in the audience. The CEO. The Stockholders. Employees.
The people who are praised, instructed, lifted, motivated, excited must be the heroes of your story.
Aim your story at them and ask the question WIIFY. Make them feel good about themselves, and they’ll surely feel more disposed to feel good about your message.
Speak with them as individual people, not as a group.
WIIFY? Your Audience is the Hero!
The members of your audience do not attend your talk as a group, so do not address them as a group.
They come to hear you as individuals, because they have goals and aspirations and hopes.
hey hope that your talk will benefit them in some way as an individual person.
Moreover, you must understand your audience. You must understand their wants and needs, interests and desires.
Find what motivates them.
Find what shames them.
Find the common thread among them, then speak to that common thread as they are individuals.
Build your story with WIIFY in mind.
If the idea of corporate storytelling strikes a chord with you, note that three entire chapters of The Complete Guide to Business School Presentationsare devoted to the craft of business storytelling and answering the question WIIFY.
Power posing leads to especially powerful business presentations
I truly don’t mean to be a pain to my long-suffering students, but one exercise that probably elicits more scorn than it deserves is called “Especially Powerful.”
It consists of everyone rising to a standing position to strike a confident stance with feet shoulder-width apart and arms outstretched to either side, palms turned upward.
Then visalize a slight tilt of the head up and, in unison and in the best tradition of the deep-voiced Darth Vader, everyone repeats after me . . . “I feel especially powerful today!”
Several times.
Feeling Especially Powerful?
“I feel especially powerful today!”
I’m not satisfied until the room reverberates with the appropriate tone and volume, indicating a robust and vibrant embrace of the exercise and what we’re trying to accomplish.
Which is . . . what?
Why do I engage in what, to some, might appear gimmicky or cute?
First, I don’t do cute. Second, the exercise accomplishes several superb physiological goals that improve a range of characteristics associated with business presenting. Voice . . . stance . . . posture . . . confidence . . . poise.
In short, much of what we call body language.
Body Language
We hear in some circles that nonverbal communication – your body language – comprises more than 50 percent of your message.
Some studies contend that it comprises more than 70 percent.
For good or ill, especially powerful posing has played a large role in history
For no other reason than this, we should be concerned with the messages we transmit with our posture, our expressions, our gestures.
Yes, body language is critical to conveying your message.
But it is essential for another equally important reason.
It’s a reason not generally well-known or understood, and it constitutes a secret that I’ve utilized with my presentation students for years to invest them with confidence and new-found presentation power.
Its core idea stretches back well more than a century, to one of the world’s first theories of emotion: James-Lange Theory.
William James and the Danish physiologist Carl G. Lange developed the theory independently of each other in the 1880s.
Here’s a taste of the real thing from Mr. James himself:
“My theory … is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion. Common sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. The hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of sequence is incorrect … and that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble …
Without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colorless, destitute of emotional warmth. We might then see the bear, and judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it right to strike, but we should not actually feel afraid or angry.”
We generally believe that our emotions affect our body language, and we ourselves have experienced the effects of stage fright.
Emotions influence the way you stand, the way you appear to your audience.
They influence what you say and how you say it.
So if we feel stage fright and lack of confidence, our body language telegraphs that. Moreover, once we become conscious of the effects of our fears, they worsen, and we get caught in a downward spiral of cause-and-effect.
But what if we could reverse that cause-and-effect? What if we could, say, strike a confident pose and suddenly find ourselves infused with confidence and personal competitive advantage?
Impossible, eh?
But James-Lange Theory suggests that very thing, that you can reverse the process.
You can consciously affect body language associated with the emotion you want to experience – namely, confidence – and so gain confidence.
You can control to a large extent how you feel by affecting an especially powerful pose
This means that we should lay the groundwork for our emotions to reflect our body language and our posture.
Consciously strike a bearing that reflects the confident and powerful speaker you want to be.
This may sound too easy and leave you asking “what’s the catch?”
No, there’s no catch. Unless it’s this:
You actually must do it for it to work.
And now that recent research has scientifically confirmed the dynamic I just described, the secret is out.
Several theories later and after many attempts to debunk James-Lange Theory, the most recent research at Harvard University and the Kellogg School of Business would seem to give Mr. James and Mr. Lange the proverbial last laugh.
A 2010 Harvard study substantiated James-Lange Theory and found that power posing substantially increases confidence in people who assume them while interacting with others.
The Kellogg study yielded the same findings.
In short, the way you stand or sit either increases or decreases your confidence.
The study’s conclusion is unambiguous and speaks directly to us.
Our results show that posing in high-power displays (as opposed to low-power displays) causes physiological, psychological, and behavioral changes consistent with the literature on the effects of power on power holders — elevation of the dominance hormone testosterone, reduction of the stress hormone cortisol, and increases in behaviorally demonstrated risk tolerance and feelings of power.
This finding holds tremendous significance for you if you want to imbue your presentations with power.
Especially Powerful posing is the norm among the powerful figures of history
In our 21st Century vernacular, this means you should stand the way you want to feel. Posing with power – “I feel especially powerful today!” – improves your entire presentation delivery tremendously and in ways you’ve likely not imagined.
Power Posing can flood your system with testosterone and can suppress stress-related cortisol.
You actually do invest yourself with confidence and relieve the acute anxiety that presentations sometimes generate.
The lesson here is to affect the posture of confidence. Square your shoulders. Fix a determined look on your face.
Speak loudly and distinctly. Extend your arms to either side and take up lots of space.
Seize the emotional energy flow and make it work for you.
Use Microsoft PowerPoint Correctly for Personal Competitive Advantage
Microsoft PowerPoint multimedia software has gotten a bum rap, and this unfair reputation springs from the thousands of ugly presentations given every day from folks who don’t know how to use it.
And yet, Microsoft PowerPoint is a brilliant tool.
But just as any tool – say, a hammer or saw – can contribute to the construction of a masterpiece . . . or a monstrosity, PowerPoint can contribute to the creation of an especially powerful presentation.
Or it becomes the weapon of choice to inflict yet another heinous public-speaking crime on a numbed audience.
Microsoft PowerPoint is not the Problem
PowerPoint isn’t the problem.
Clueless presenters are the problem. And many of them have no idea that there is a problem. But that’s not their fault. They just don’t know.
Let’s fix this now. Or let’s get a start on it . . .
So just how do you use PowerPoint?
How do you craft slides and then work with them to show ownership, to invest your visuals with power and surprise?
This short video reviews several of my own techniques that provide basic guidance on sound Microsoft PowerPoint use that can yield for you significant Personal Competitive Advantage.
Tell a Powerful Story and you can increase your personal competitive advantage
I advocate storytelling in your business presentations.
Stories can capture powerful ideas in a few robust storytelling strokes.
Stories involve your listeners better than any other competing technique.
But in telling a story, we can sometimes veer off-course. We get so enamored with our own words that they build a momentum of their own, and they draw us along with their own impetus.
That’s why we should stay tethered to our main point.
Professional storyteller Doug Lippman calls this the MIP – the Most Important Point.
Storytelling and Your MIP
Christopher Witt is a competent coach for today’s executives, and he makes a powerful point about a story’s MIP. He calls it the Big Idea:
A good movie tells one simple, powerful story. If you can’t sum it up in a sentence or two, it’s not a good story – and it won’t make a good movie. The same is true for a speech. A movie tells one story. A speech develops one idea. But it’s got to be a good idea – a policy, a direction, an insight, a prescription. Something that provides clarity and meaning, something that’s both intellectually and emotionally engaging. It’s got to be what I call a Big Idea.
What is your Most Important Point? Your MIP?
Decide!
Decide and make that point the focus of your story. Rivet your attention on that salient feature!
Let this be core of your story and build around it.
I urge you to focus on one point, because our tendency as business people is to include everything initially, or to add-on infinitum until the story collapses under its own weight. The military calls this “mission creep,” and we can call it “story creep.”
Simple awareness of story creep is usually sufficient guard against it.
Your MIP Permeates Your Story
Your MIP should run through your story, both directly and indirectly. It informs your story and keeps you on-track as you prepare your presentation.
At each stage of your presentation preparation, ask yourself and members of your group if the material at hand supports your MIP.
If it does not, then it does not belong in your story.
Storytelling does not mean that you rely upon emotion only. You must have substance.
There must be a significant conclusion with each supporting point substantiated by research and fact and analytical rigor. This should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway.
Actually, Ralph Waldo Emerson said it much better than I can:
Eloquence must be grounded on the plainest narrative. Afterward it may warm itself until it exhales symbols of every kind and color, and speaks only through the most poetic forms; but, first and last, it must still be at bottom a statement of fact. The orator is thereby an orator, that he keeps his feet ever on a fact. Thus only is he invincible. No gifts, no graces, no power of wit or learning or illustration will make any amends for want of this.
And so we gain incredible personal competitive advantage when we imbue our presentation with the drama inherent in an especially powerful story, told well.
Your Presentation Appearance sends a Powerful Message
Oftentimes, we don’t consider that our physical presentation appearance transmits messages to those around us.
Most certainly, the presentation appearance of a speaker before an audience conveys non-verbal signals. This happens whether you are conscious of it or not.
Your appearance sends a message to your audience, and you cannot decide not to send a message with your appearance.
You cannot tell an audience to disregard the message your appearance transmits. And you can’t dictate to an audience the message it receives.
What message does your presentation appearance transmit to people?
“Ageless Rebel” battling the “Man”?
That you don’t care?
That you’re confident?
That you are attentive to detail?
That you care about your dignity, your physique?
Presentation Appearance that Hinders your acquiring of Personal Competitive Advantage
Is your appearance one big flip-off to the world because you fancy yourself an ageless rebel, shaking your fist at the “man” and refusing to “conform” to the “rules?”
If so, then you pay a dear price for so meager a prize.
That price comes in the form of ceding personal competitive advantage to your peers, who may want to spend their personal capital for more luxurious rewards.
Many young speakers seem unaware of the messages that their appearance conveys.
Or worse, they attempt to rationalize the message, arguing instead what they believe that the audience “ought” to pay attention to and what it “ought” to ignore.
Presentation Appearance – Your Destiny?
You simply cannot dress for lazy comfort and nonchalance and expect to send a message that conveys seriousness, competence, and confidence.
This is the lesson that so many fail to grasp, even on into the middle management years.
“I’m a rebel and exude confidence and independence!” you think, as you suit up in the current campus fashion fad.
The message received is likely much different: “You’re a slob with no sense of proportion or clue how to dress, and I’ll never hire you.”
The best public speakers understand the power of presentation appearance and mesh their dress with their message.
Take former President Barack Obama, for example. He was and is a superb dresser, as are all presidents. On occasion, you will see the President speaking in open collared shirt, his sleeves rolled up in “let’s get the job done” fashion.
And that’s usually the message he’s trying to convey in such dress: “Let’s get the job done . . . Let’s work together.”
Politics, Schmolitics . . . He’s a Sharp Dresser
You never saw President Obama address the nation from the Oval Office on a matter of gravity with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled-up.
The messages must mesh.
The lesson here is that your dress ought to reinforce your message, not offer conflicting signals.
Here are suggestions to ensure a minimum pleasing presentation appearance . . .
Eliminate Stick Puppet Presenting and you’re on your way to achieving personal competitive advantage
If experience is any guide for us, we can say that approximately 90 percent of our business presentations are delivered in 2-D fashion . . . we become a stick-puppet presenter.
No, I don’t mean this literally in the sense that people become stick figures.
The potential richness, energy, vigor, and power that is provided by purposive movement is absent.
The Pitiable Stick-Puppet Presenter
We are left with cutout figures, like stick puppets. You’ve seen stick puppets – crude, flat little figures pasted onto sticks and then used in a child’s display to convey a story.
This is truly an ineffective form of entertainment. This is as rudimentary as it gets.
The puppets shake and move up and down as someone voices dialogue from somewhere offstage.
Today’s business presentations are sometimes no better than stick-puppet presenting delivered in 2-D fashion.
Think of this, quite obviously, as “Stick-Puppet Presenting.”
Stick-Puppet Presenter is a zombie-like figure crouched behind a lectern, gripping its sides.
Or a speaker who reads from a laptop computer and alternately looks at a projection screen behind him, reading it verbatim.
If any movement occurs, it is unconscious swaying, rocking, or nervous happy-feet dancing.
Move the right way for personal competitive advantage
Perhaps there is a bit of pacing back-and-forth to fulfill some ancient advice mumbled to the speaker years earlier: “Move around when you talk!”
And so the stick-puppet presenter aimlessly wanders about the stage.
This is worse than no movement at all as it adds one more irrelevant distractor to an already deteriorating situation.
But we want movement . . . the right kind of movement.
We want to accelerate from 2-D to 3-D presenting, and one powerful step in that direction is the addition of proper movement.
The addition of proper movement to your presentation can imbue it with energy, depth, richness, and enhanced meaning.
So in the next series of posts, we’ll analyze this component – “movement” on the stage in support of your presentation.
