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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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 . . .
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Here 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.
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–”
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
What are presentation bookends, and why is this so important to audience response?
Bookending brings your audience full circle.
You first hook your audience with an intense introduction, and at then at the conclusion of your presentation, you recapitulate.
This provides a sense of closure and completion for the audience.
Presentation Bookends, the How
Start your presentation with an anecdote, cue, or visual image that hooks your listeners into the narrative. This is your “grabber.”
Your “hook.”
It can’t be a gimmick, or the audience will feel cheated.
Your grabber must startle and delight your audience. An interesting fact, a controversial statement.
A powerful phrase.
Bookend your Presentation!
You then follow with your situation statement, which flows naturally from your grabber.
Your clear situation statement of only one or two sentences tells the audience exactly what they will hear.
Start to finish.
One of the best grabbers/situation statements I’ve ever heard was this pithy formulation:
“There’s a deal on the table. Don’t take it. Here’s why.”
That grabber is direct and is almost enough for a situation statement as well. It pulses with power. If you’re the one associated with the “deal on the table,” how could you not want to hear what comes next?
In fact, it encompasses the entire presentation in three especially powerful sentences.
That’s your first bookend.
Your Middle
Then you offer your major points of your presentation, usually three major points.
Why three?
Because of the Rule of Three that I have spoken of in this space so many times. We seem to be hard-wired to receive information most efficiently in threes.
Whether it’s a slogan or a fairy tale, when information is grouped in threes, we respond well to it and we remember it better.
This three-part presentation structure serves you well as a framework for most any presentation.
As you wind to a conclusion, you then construct your second and final bookend.
Now . . . Bookend Your Presentation!
You say these words: “In conclusion, we can see that . . .”
Then, repeat your original situation statement.
With this simple technique, you hearken back to the original introductory anecdote, cue, or visual image that launched your presentation.
Finally, say: “We believe that our presentation substantiates this.”
You come full-circle, so to speak. With this, the audience gains a sense of completeness. Satisfaction.
This recapitulation of your theme knits together your segment into a whole. Your audience appreciates the closure.
Rather than a linear march, where nothing said in your presentation seems to relate to anything that came before, you offer satisfying closure with your presentation bookends.
You bring your audience home.
You bring you audience back to the familiar starting point. This drives home the major point of your talk in two especially powerful ways:
1) the outright repetition of your theme, cementing it in the minds of your listeners, and . . .
2) the story convention of providing a satisfying ending, tying up loose ends. Giving psychological closure with your presentation bookends.
It’s an elegant technique that can pay big dividends in terms of audience response. And it can imbue you with 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.
Rule of Three: for especially powerful personal competitive advantage!
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 well–known 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.
Most efficient use of resources over other expansion alternatives
Financial Analysis of the projected acquisition
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.
Especially Powerful Response to Your Presentation Can be Yours!
Do you face a listless, distracted business presentation audience?
Are your “listeners” checking iPhones every few seconds?
Texting?
Chatting in side conversations?
Do they sit with glazed, far-away looks?
The problem is probably you.
No way are you delivering what should be a passionate, especially powerful presentation.
Your Presentation Audience Needs You to Be . . .
In this video interview with Concentrated Knowledge Corporation’s Executive Insights Program, Andrew Clancy quizzes me on how to connect with an audience that seems disconnected and disinterested in what you have to say in your business presentation.
Here, I identify a remedy for you – how to hook and reel-in an errant audience.
Here is what you need to be for your audience.
It isn’t your listeners’ fault if you’re monotonous, unprepared, listless, nervous, or dull. It’s your job to entertain and energize your audience with your own enthusiasm.
Giving a business presentation is much more than just showing up in front of your long-suffering presentation audience and delivering a stilted talk. Much more.
Respect your audience and work hard to dazzle your listeners. They’ll appreciate it more than you know.
In addition to giving you solid counsel on your audience, I also suggest how you can energize your presentation by discarding one of the most common speaking crutches and by moving into the Command Position.
It’s not easy, but you can do it with several techniques developed over centuries of public speaking practice. And in the process, you can acquire personal competitive advantage.
Please overlook my bad hair day in this video as you take in this powerful advice on How to Engage With Your Presentation Audience for an especially powerful presentation.
Given that this election year has seen a raft of awful would-be presidential presenting, I devote to this space the second evaluation of the two political parties’ nominees.
In this case, the winner.
President-elect Donald Trump offers one of the strangest speaking styles I’ve ever witnessed on the public stage.
It combines odd gestures, rhetorical discontinuities, and counter-intuitive inflections to flummox even the most partisan viewer.
I said in another space six months ago that Mr. Trump could be our first post-modern candidate. Nothing has changed that would cause me to modify this observation.
His repetition, flights of fancy, strange interjections at inappropriate moments, and infuriating inability to complete a thought all combine with a menu of off-putting gestures.
Gestures for Presidential Presenting?
Mr. Trump, like all public speakers, has a go-to gesture that sustains him on the stump. President Obama’s go-to gesture is the “lint-pick.”
He uses with aplomb and quite often.
The Obama Lint-Pick, his signature gesture for especially powerful presidential presenting
The “Lint Pick” is an excellent choice to exhibit precision and attention to detail. It gives the impression to an audience that you are sharing something minute yet important.
You cull out the telling point that brings everything together, and Mr. Obama has adopted this for his personal brand.
Mr. Trump’s signature gesture is what someone in a national magazine labeled the “Dainty Mobster Thing.”
In an Atlantic article by James Parker, the author observed Mr. Trump’s “dainty mobster thing he does with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.”
Dainty Mobster is simply a version of the Lint-Pick that we’ve seen the President and many others use for years.
Signature Gesture . . . the Dainty Mobster, which is similar to the lint-pick
This version, however, is certainly something I’ve never seen anyone else use except occasionally and to a specific purpose.
Mr. Trump uses Dainty Mobster repeatedly.
When we talk about public speaking, particularly that with a high stakes element, it’s always useful to go to the film to evaluate the product.
So, let’s have a look at a speech that I annotate to call attention to speaking tics that detract from the public presentation message.
Aspiring speakers should not imitate this particular style, although unique it may be and with seemingly grandiose results. Nor should one imitate the opposing candidate, Mrs. Clinton, as we saw in our previous post.
In fact, few political figures in our time offer styles that can teach us much of anything. One of the few articulate speakers of a new political generation is Florida Senator Marco Rubio, but his is an occasional case.
For especially powerful speakers worthy of emulation, the finest Hollywood actors offer us a strong example of how to combine emotion with substance in a powerful persuasive performance.
Coca-Cola’s 1929 slogan was “The Pause that Refreshes.”
Pauses can, indeed, be refreshing, and a judicious pause can refresh your business presentation.
Here’s how pausing can ignite, can inspire, can rivet an audience’s attention on the salient points that you want them to remember.
The prudent pause for reflection, for the audience to digest your message, for dramatic effect to emphasize what comes next . . . all add depth and richness to communicate to your audience gathered to hear something special.
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 evokes strong emotions in your audience.
A pause can project and communicate as much or more than mere words.
Your Pause can Refresh your Audience . . . give it a chance to anticipate what comes next
The public speaking pause is part of your nonverbal repertoire. It’s a superbly useful tool.
The comfortable pause communicates your competence and confidence.
The pause telegraphs deep, serious thought.
The Power Pause is underutilized today, but has served as arrow-in-quiver of the finest presenters over centuries.
Presentation Master Grenville Kleiser 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 comes next.
So save this technique for the moments just prior to each of your main points.
How do you pause?
When?
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 attention.
Hesitate.
Don’t waste this powerful technique on a minor point of your talk. Time your pauses to emphasize the single most important point – your MIP – and its handful of supporting points.
Voice coach Patsy Rodenburg says: “A pause is effective and 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.”
Pause . . . to Accent What Comes Next
Finally, the 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 . . .
Stop. Look slightly down. Scratch your chin thoughtfully. Furrow your brow. Take four steps to the right or left, angling a bit toward the audience. Look up . . . and continue your talk.
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.
Choose well, for an especially powerful presentation
To deliver an especially powerful presentation means that you must choose correctly more than 100 times . . . it means that you take the correct presentation choices from start to finish.
Of course, it may not be exactly 100.
It could be 120.
Or perhaps 80.
Regardless, every time you deliver a presentation, you choose repeatedly.
Dozens of times.
Invisible Presentation Choices
And most often, you’re unaware of the silent, invisible choices you make. Instead, your presentation simply unspools on its own, chaotic, willy-nilly . . . sometimes for the good, more often badly.
Rather than conceive of the presentation as a series of choices, many folks view the presentation as an organic whole.
As something we simply “do.”
It’s presented as something that can be conducted via a series of “tips.” You’ve seen the articles on presentation tips.
Or business presenting is discussed as a “soft skill,” something you can pick up along the way. Perhaps in one of the ubiquitous and uninspired “communications classes.”
We receive vague instructions in a communications class, a place where mystification of the presentation is perpetuated, the myth of the “soft skill” is maintained, and presentation folk wisdom reigns . . .
“Make eye contact!”
“Move around when you talk!”
“Don’t put your hand in your pocket!”
Advice that is obscurantist at its best and can be downright wrong at its worst.
Not a “Soft Skill”
The delivery of the Business Presentation is not a “soft skill.” Approximately 80 percent of the presentation process is definable as a series of choices each of us must make.
And if you choose badly, you deliver a horrendous presentation.
How can you choose wisely if you don’t even know what the choices are? Much less the wise choice at each step along the way?
We seek easy solutions, the quick fix, the “secret” to turn a drab, staid, listless presentation into one that brims with vigor, zest, and elan.
An especially powerful presentation.
Failing that, perhaps just something that can flog a bit of life into our tired efforts.
One evening, we may see a memorable, delightful, scintillating presentation.
It’s a show that engages us, that sparkles with memorable visuals and that implants core ideas and powerful notions in our minds. A great presentation!
Why was it a great presentation?
Many folks answer with one – maybe two reasons. This is akin to medieval alchemists searching for a method to transform lead into gold.
A shortcut to wealth.
And so we contrive abstractions and unsatisfactory responses:
The speaker was interesting. The topic was relevant and au courant. Torn from today’s headlines!
It was the audience . . . he had a good audience!
But none of these easy answers yield something that we can actually use . . . something we can operationalize in our show. This is because no easy answer exists.
No one reason.
No single technique.
There is no business presentation alchemy. Except in the notion that we must get lots of things right.
The superb business presenter does 100 things right, while the bad business presenter does 100 things wrong.
What are the “100 Presentation Choices?”
Is it exactly 100?
Of course not, no more than great writing consists in getting exactly 100 things right, instead of getting them wrong.
For any talk, it could be 90, or it could be 150. Or something else.
The “100 things” trope suffices to convey that great presentations are planned and orchestrated according to set principles that can be learned, and those principles consist in proven practices.
Lots of them.
Practices that replace unthinking habits.
Techniques of posture, voice, syntax, gestures, topic, presentation structure, your expression, confidence, your movement . . . all of these done well or done poorly combine to yield either an especially powerful presentation . . .
. . . or a dud.
Scott’s Lessons: An especially powerful source for Abraham Lincoln
Go to Scott’s Lessons, the book that inspired and taught Abraham Lincoln as he grew into one of America’s great orators.
There, you’ll find a wealth of powerful techniques to transform even the most mundane of speakers into a champion.
More than 100 techniques?
Surely.
The important lesson is that great presenting is assembled from the verbal and non-verbal construction materials we select.
Lots of mistakes make for awful shows. But getting those 100 things right can yield a show that’s spectacular for no single, discernible reason.
That’s the power of synergy.
Take just one aspect of your show – the way you stand. Have you ever thought about it? Where you stand? How you stand?
If you’ve never given it thought, then you’re likely doing it wrong.
To learn how to adopt the perfect (for you) stance, go here and the secret shall be revealed. And you’ll have learned a handful of the essential 100 presentation choices to launch you on your way to deliver especially powerful presentations and to develop a personal competitive advantage.
The next step, of course, is to actually do it. In your next presentation.
More of the 100 Presentation Choices that constitute especially powerful business presentations here.
Long ago, when I was a young man in the army training at a base in Texas, I loaned a book to my roommate, Jim.
It was a foreign policy book by a controversial former president.
Jim read it . . . oh he read it.
It animated him and addled him, and it inspired him like no one else I had seen before or have seen since.
He would slap the page and exclaim, “That’s it. That’s it!”
Jim did this often in the course of his read. I’d hear him in the bunk below mine.
Slap!
“That’s it!”
And so it went.
That’s It!
I don’t recall that he ever returned the book, and that’s just fine, as I like to think of Jim slapping the page even now, somewhere in rural New England where I hear he ended up.
You don’t come across books like that often. I hear tales of poor, uninspired folks who never do.
Books that crack the carapace of cynicism.
I’m a self-appointed judge of such things, and it takes a heckuva book to crowbar me off the passive-aggressive rock of smug observation and get me hooting and hollering.
But I found a book like that. Yes, I found one.
You’re holding it.
Deceptively slight of build, innocuous in its appearance, William Steele’s Presentation Skills 201 is presentation fissile material of the first order, glowing with power on every page.
Presentation Skills 201 – High Concept
This isn’t the Great American Novel, no. You hold in your hands, instead, the Great American Presentations Book.
Whoa! Have I gone overboard? About to slap the page with a robust “That’s it!”
You bet.
Let me explain.
I teach at a university business school in Philadelphia and have been coaching student presentations for years.
I own perhaps the largest vintage public speaking book collection in the United States, outside the library of congress – more than 3,000 volumes, going back to 1762.
Quintilian said it all 2,000 years ago . . . except for the 10 percent you learn here
I’m a student of Demosthenes and Cicero, Quintilian and Blair.
I study the great speakers of history to glean just one more nugget of wisdom from the wealth laid up over centuries. I buy presentation books even now to see if there is, indeed, anything new under the sun.
Most often, I am disappointed.
Until now . . .
Again, I say all of this by way of prelude, because I am not given to exaggeration at all.
When I read this book the first time, I entered the reading task methodically as I do for a welter of presentation books. And I skim many of them. Just to see if there truly is anything new under the sun.
Most of them huff-puff along, chugging in workmanlike mundanity.
They can stretch a nugget of technique across five anecdotes and across twice as many pages as needed. Not nearly enough for me to un-cock the skeptic’s eyebrow.
So . . .
High Praise, Indeed . . . and Deserved
What I say next, I utter with the sincerity born of many years laboring in the vineyards of bad presentations – Mr. Steele’s Presentation Skills 201 is, page for page, the finest book on advanced presenting I have ever read.
Surely it is the most succinct.
It froths with superb and utterly essential advice on every . . . single . . . page.
Distilled into powerful instructional nodes, Mr. Steele’s book is spot-on again and again. I thought that I had seen and heard the length and breadth of the presentation enterprise, given that I view and judge 300 individual and 75 group presentations each year – but not so.
Mr. Steele’s work is a reminder that there is always “one more thing” that each of us can learn to hone and improve our own presentation skills and develop our personal competitive advantage.
Here, however, there is much, much more than simply “one more thing.”
We all deliver presentations, every day of our lives. But we do not think of our many discussions as presentations. We deliver our points of view usually quite well in venues as disparate as church socials and local pub happy hours.
But when it comes time to deliver what we think of as a “real” presentation, well . . . many of us suddenly turn into zombies. Presentation zombies – stiff, mechanical, glazed-eye zombies.
We hear advice, sure.
And the proffered solution to much of the undead in the presentation enterprise comes as “communication theory” and a handful of vague apothegms passed down from an archaic and unquestioned oral tradition . . .
Don’t put your hand in your pocket!
Make eye contact!
Move around when you talk!
This, of course, is unsatisfying and completely inadequate, certainly for those steeped in the basics of powerful presenting and who want to, as they say in the vernacular of my bailiwick, “take it to the next level.”
So, this is one of those rare times that I recommend and endorse a book in the presentation genre; and in case you didn’t get it by now, I’m utterly delighted to craft a preface to this second edition of Presentations 201.
I have found wisdom on every page – every page – of Mr. Steele’s tome and it holds an honored place at my right hand. I reference it often, and you will as well.
You may even, as I have, slap the page on occasion . . .
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.
You can’t remember what to say.
Words fail you.
You Lose Train of Thought
Blank-Mind attacks all of us at one point or another during our business presentation career.
In fact, it happens so often that it might do us good to think ahead to how we react to this common presentation malady.
Presenters have developed trade tricks to help us past the rough spots.
Here is one stopgap solution for when you lose train of thought.
When Blank-Mind strikes, 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.
Look slightly upward and raise your right hand to your chin, holding your hand in a semi-fist with chin perched and resting on your index finger and thumb – perhaps with your index finger curled comfortably around your chin.
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 confidence and composure, to regain your thought pattern, and to cobble together your next few sentences.
If this brief respite was not enough to reset yourself, then shift to the default statement.
If You’re Thinking, then Look 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, then it should be no more than a small bump in the road for you to lose train of thought. A minor nuisance with minimal damage.
If you panic, however, it can balloon into something monstrous.
Remember the rescue techniques to regain your train of thought: 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 bails 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 meltdown by using the two rescue words I preach to all my students . . . “In conclusion . . .”
For more rescue techniques in the toughest parts of your presentation, including when you lose train of thought, consult the especially powerful The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.
