Every person needs a life-preserver at some point in his speaking career, and one of the most important is how to stop your presentation.
Here I reveal the best way to . . . stop.
Yes . . . stop your presentation.
Stop Your Presentation Now
I’ve tossed this rescue device out many times to students in trouble during a presentation.
At times, even the finest presenters get themselves in trouble, and having this rescue device near to hand can salvage a speech that is careening off-course, even flirting with disaster.
Occasionally we must be reminded of this simple and yet especially powerful device that can serve us well near the end of our talk.
Stop your presentation the right way and leave a lasting impression on the audience
When your talk winds down and you feel yourself suddenly spent . . .
When you begin to spiral out of control and can’t collect your thoughts . . .
When your pulse quickens and your mind goes blank . . .
Grasp for two words.
Your life-preserver.
“In conclusion . . .”
That’s it. Just two words.
Magic Words . . .
These two words have rescued thousands of presenters before you, and they’ll rescue you as well.
“In conclusion . . .”
These two words work a magic on your psyche that is almost inexplicable in terms that a logical, reasonable person would believe.
As soon as you speak them, the path to the end of your talk becomes clear. Your presentation opens up. Speak these magic words, and suddenly you know what to say and do.
You confidently add another crucial phrase . . .
“In conclusion, we can see that . . .”
“In conclusion, our recommendation makes sense for reasons just given . . .”
“In conclusion, this means that . . .”
See how it works? How incredibly easy it is to get out of the sticky wicket of a talk spiraling out of control!
“In conclusion” leads you out of the wilderness and back onto your prepared path. It leads you to restate your thesis in concise manner and then . . .
What’s this bookending and why is it so important to audience response?
Bookending brings your audience full circle, in a sense. 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 Structure Begins with This
The First Bookend.
This means to 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.
And then you 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 are about to 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.
The Middle of Your Presentation Structure
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 can serve you well as a framework for most any presentation.
As you wind to a conclusion, you then construct your second and final bookend.
Recapitulation of your Presentation Structure
You say these words: “In conclusion, we can see that—” Then . . .
Repeat your original situation statement. 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, and the audience gains a sense of completeness. 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 a satisfying circularity. You bring your audience home.
You bring you audience back to the familiar starting point, and 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, and giving psychological closure.
It’s an elegant technique that can pay big dividends in terms of audience response.
With regard to presentations, I deal with two large groups of people. For descriptive simplicity, let’s call these two groups “Natural Born” and “McTips!”
“Natural Born” and “McTips!” represent two extreme views of what it takes to become an especially powerful and superior business presenter.
Neither is remotely accurate.
And neither group is what might be called enlightened in these matters. Members of both groups are frustrating and irritating in their own ways and completely self-serving.
Here is why . . .
We often look for folks to excuse us from what, deep down, we know we ought to do, or what we can do. If we look hard enough, we find what we search for, and excuses are extremely easy to find.
Let’s look at these two excuses that hold us back from fulfilling our potential as especially powerful presenters.
The First View
The first view would have us believe that great speakers are born with some arcane and unfathomable gift, combining talent and natural stage facility.
That Bill Clinton sprang from the womb declaiming that he feels our pain.
That Ronald Reagan was born orating on lower capital gains taxes. That Oprah Winfrey began her talk show career in kindergarten.
If the first view holds that great speakers are born with a gift, then quite logically this view leaves the rest of us to strive with middling presentation skills.
It’s an excuse for us not to persevere. Why bother to try?
Why not, instead, hire some of these natural born speaker types to do the heavy presentation lifting? The rest of us can skate along and pretend that we’re not actually lazy . . . or frightened . . . or disinterested . . . or unambitious.
The Second View . . . Presentation McTips!
The second view is the opposite of the first.
This “McTips!” perspective would have us believe that delivering effective presentations is a snap. So easy, in fact, that one of my colleagues assured me confidently and with not a little hubris that he could teach his undergraduates “everything they need to know about presenting in 30 minutes.”
He also assured me that “all that other stuff you talk about is B.S.”
Has the presentation landscape changed so much that what was once taught as a fine skill is now mass-produced in 30-minute quickie sessions of speaking “tips”?
I actually saw a headline on an article that offered 12 Tips to Become a Presentation God! Have the demands of the presentation become so weak that great presenting can be served up in McDonald’s-style kid meals . . . “You want to super-size your speaking McTips?”
Hardly.
In the 1800s, public speaking was refined to an almost-art; “elocution” was the new science/art, and departments of elocution and public speaking flourished in universities throughout the land.
In Philadelphia, on Walnut Street in fact, the National School for Elocution and Oratory became a Mecca for would-be stars of the pulpit, the stage, the bar, and the political wars in the 1890s.
On into the first decades of next century, public speech was regarded with respect and a high-skill to be mastered with much study and practice.
The fact is that despite however much we might wish otherwise, today’s PowerPoint high-tech software multi-media offerings cannot change the fundamental truth that it is still you who must deliver the presentation.
So no . . . you cannot learn “everything you need to know about presenting in 30 minutes.” You cannot become an especially powerful presenter at the fastfood drive-in window, unless you want to ply presenting at the lowest common denominator of mundane slide-readers that populate every business and law firm from New York to Nashville, from Boston to Baton Rouge, from Savannah to San Diego.
Ask yourself . . . if learning to deliver top-notch presentations is so doggoned easy, then why are 9 out of 10 presentations such awful forgettable bore-fests?
The Third View – The Power Zone
There is a third group, and it is destined to remain small.
This group is privy to the truth, and once you learn the truth about presenting, you can never go back to viewing presentations the same way. Consider this pop culture analogy from the 1999 film The Matrix.
In The Matrix, humans live in a world that is not what it seems. In fact, everything they believe about the world is false. Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburn) offers to reveal the truth to Neo (Keanu Reeves) about his existence. Morpheus offers Neo a Blue Pill and a Red Pill. The Blue Pill returns him to his old state of ignorance. The Red Pill reveals the secret, and once he learns it, Neo cannot return to his old life.
The process of presentation discovery is much like the red-pill/blue-pill choice that Morpheus offers to the young computer hacker Neo . . .
You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Likewise, you can stop reading this article this instant – the blue pill – and return to the righteous and relaxing world of “Natural Born” or “McTips!” Both viewpoints allow the average presenter to remain mired in mediocrity with an excuse that sounds plausible.
One perspective means you don’t try at all, other means you offer token effort as befits a low-level pedestrian task. So, if you decide to take the Blue Pill, close this site and go your own way. Bon voyage! I wish you a hearty good-luck and Godspeed, and perhaps you will be happier for your choice.
But if you are one of the few who thinks for a moment . . . “Hmm. What if the Professor is right?”
Then . . . Take the Red Pill
Then you can read on to the
next brief paragraph – the red pill – and be forever shorn of the excuse for mediocrity. For the truth is in the Power Zone, and once there, you will never be satisfied with your old presentation life again.
You cannot go back.
That’s the paradox, the Curse of Freedom. It is completely within your power to seize the fruits of great presenting. It’s your choice.
You can launch an auspicious presentation career right now, right this minute. Or you can dismiss this site as yet another fraudulent claim to revealing secrets to you . . . only to have it exposed as a method that requires you to actually do something.
A method that transforms you.
Choose the Red Pill. Step boldy into the Power Zone.
The Power Zone is the province of the privileged few who understand the truth that anyone can become a great presenter, with the right kind of hard work and the willingness to become a great presenter.
To join this third group requires you to take on a new state of mind. If you already carry this view, that’s superb. If you don’t . . . you can decide now to adopt it or forever be relegated to the other two groups – believing you’re not good enough, or believing you are good enough when you’re actually not.
Public presentations – great presentations – require study and practice and preparation and technique. A deep philosophical, academic, and professional history undergirds public speaking. This history informs the very best presenters and their work. You dismiss it only to your great loss.
No, you need not become a scholar of public speaking. In fact, few people have that deep an interest in the subject and even fewer can claim that kind of knowledge today.
But what you can and should do is this: Open your mind and heart to the possibilities of found treasure.
You actually can become a capable presenter. You can become a great presenter. When you enter the Power Zone, you are both cursed and blessed with knowledge. This knowledge represents two sides of the same coin.
You are cursed with the knowledge that the only limitation you have is you. You are blessed with the knowledge that you can become a good – even great – speaker.
An especially powerful presenter.
Now, you have no other real excuse. It’s totally up to you.
For the ultimate guide to developing your personal brand as an especially powerful business presenter, CLICK HERE.
Befuddled! How to transition between speakers is the most-searched term on this site.
One of the least-practiced aspects of the group presentation is how you pass the baton – the transition between speakers.
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.
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. So that each of you acquires, incrementally, personal competitive advantage as you progress through your show.
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.
You are assigned the ToughBolt business case to analyze and to provide your recommendations in a business presentation.
Your task is to prepare the business presentation . . .
. . . the right way.
After all, you’re performing before the directors of the Toughbolt Corporation . . . and you get one shot to get it right. Shouldn’t it be your best shot?
Your group has produced a written analysis. It’s finished.
What now?
How do you “prepare?”
“Prepare” has such a sterile sound. Almost vacuous.
And yet too many students stumble over this most mundane of activities. They rush.
They fumble. They grope blindly. Perhaps you grope blindly . . . and decide at the end to “wing it.”
But here is where you tuck away one of the most important gems of wisdom necessary to giving a first-rate show.
Prepare the Business Presentation
Apply the sound method of correct Preparation – the second of the Three Ps.
Your task is clear. It’s time to present your conclusions to an audience in the most direct and cogent manner possible.
And in this task is embodied a verity for you to internalize.
Let me repeat that, because it is so misunderstood and ignored.
Your business presentation is a completely different product than your written report.
It’s a completely different mode of communication.
Do you wonder how this is possible, since you prepare the business presentation from a written report? How can the products differ significantly simply because one product is written and the other visual and vocal? But they are different.
Completely different.
It is different in exactly the same way that a film is a completely different product than a novel, even if the story is supposedly the same.
How Different?
It is different in the way that a play read silently from the page differs from a play acted out on stage.
You operate in a different medium.
You have time constraints.
A group is receiving your message.
A group is delivering the message.
You have almost no opportunity for repeat.
You have multiple opportunities to miscommunicate.
In short, you are in a high-risk environment and you are vulnerable, far more vulnerable than you might be in a written report, where the risk is controllable.
Look at the chart below.
These many differences between the written report and the business presentation are, to many people, seemingly invisible. Or, at least, they are not considered significant.
Many folks believe that there is no difference.
And this is why those same folks believe that delivering a presentation is “easy.” It consists of little more than cutting and pasting a written report’s points onto a half-dozen cramped slides, and then reading them in public.
As absurd as this might appear in print, it actually has currency. People believe this, because they’ve not been told otherwise.
Numbers Trump All?
Finance people are especially prone to this habit, believing that the “numbers tell the story.” As they prepare the business presentation, one thought trumps all . . .
The more numbers, the better.
The more obtuse the spreadsheet, the tinier the font, the more complex the chart, the more stuff packed on each slide . . . the better.
Such a vague, incomprehensible, numbers-heavy mess seems to be the currency of many business presentations.
It’s wrong, and it’s wholly unnecessary.
Part of your preparation is the crafting of clear, compelling, and on-point graphics that support your message . . . not obscure it. Rid your presentation of chart junk. Zero-in to achieve what I call über focus.
“How come I never get assigned an interesting topic?”
Perhaps you’ve said that? I’ve certainly heard it.
“How come I never get assigned an interesting topic?”
Now, whether any topic is inherently interesting or not is irrelevant to your task. It’s your duty to craft a talk that interests the audience. Cases are not assigned to you so that they will interest you.
Your tasks as a project manager or consultant don’t come to you on the basis of whether they interest you.
No one cares if they “interest” you.
That’s not the point.
We all would love to be spoon-fed “interesting” topics. But what’s an “interesting” topic?
I have found the following to be true:
The students who complain about never getting an interesting topic actually do get assigned inherently interesting topics. They don’t recognize them as interesting. And they invariably butcher a potentially interesting topic as they prepare the business presentation.
And they miss every cue and opportunity to craft a great show.
Moreover, it is your job to presenting an especially powerful and scintillating presentation, regardless of the topic.
Face it. If you don’t take presenting seriously, then you won’t prepare any differently for an “interesting” topic than you would for a “boring” topic. You simply want an interesting topic for yourself . . . not so you can do a bang-up job for the audience or client.
Let’s shed that attitude.
Great presenters recognize the drama and conflict and possibilities in every case. They invariably craft an interesting presentation whether the topic concerns tenpenny nails or derivatives or soap.
Crank up Interest
How do you generate interest? Public speaking master James Winans provides several suggestions:
[I]nterest is, generally speaking, strongest in old things in new settings, looked at from new angles, given new forms and developed with new facts and ideas, with new light on familiar characters, new explanations of familiar phenomena, or new applications of old truths.
Let’s go . . .
The typical start to a presentation project is . . .
. . . procrastination.
You put it off as a daunting task. Or you put it off because you believe you can “wing it.” Or you lament that you don’t have an “interesting topic.”
Let’s say that your task is to provide a SWOT within the body of a group presentation, and your time is 4-5 minutes. What is your actual task here as you prepare the business presentation?
Think about it.
How do you usually approach the task? How do you characterize it?
Here is my guess at how you approach it.
You define your task as:
“How can I fit X amount of information into this limited time?”
In your own mind, the objective is not to communicate clearly to your audience. Your only objective is to “fit it all in.” And if you “achieve” this dubious objective, then in your mind you will have succeeded.
Unfortunately, your professor might agree with you, since many b-school professors look only for “content.” They do not evaluate whether the content has been communicated clearly and effectively.
And this is what is missing – you don’t analyze how or why or in what way you can present the information in a public forum.
If a written paper has already been produced, this complicates your task.
You feel the irresistible allure of cut ’n’ paste.
The result is less than stellar, and you end up trying to shovel 10 pounds of sand into a five-pound pail. And this result is predictable.
Your slides are crammed with information.
You talk fast to force all the points in. You run over-time.
You fail.
You fail to deliver a star-spangled presentation for lack of proper preparation.
This Time, Procrustes has it Right
Take the Procrustean approach when you prepare the business presentation. This approach is named after Procrustes, a figure from Greek mythology. The Columbia Encyclopedia describes the myth thusly:
He forced passersby to lie on a very long bed and then stretched them to fit it. If they were too tall to fit his bed, he sawed off their legs. Using Procrustes’ own villainous methods, Theseus killed him.
Surely Procrustes was a villain, what with sawing off people’s legs or stretching them to fit an arbitrary standard. In modern-day parlance, it has retained its negative connotation with the term “Procrustean solution.”
“Procrustean solution” is the undesirable practice of tailoring data to fit its container or some other preconceived stricture.
A common example from the business world is embodied in the notion that no résumé should exceed one page in length.
But in this case, let’s give Procrustes a break.
Your Procrustean Solution
Take a Procrustean approach and make a better presentation. Consider this:
We have no choice in the length of our presentation. It’s four minutes. Or five minutes. That’s our Procrustean Bed. So let’s make the most of it and manipulate the situation to our benefit and to the benefit of our audience.
We’re not stretching someone or something. And we’re not hacking off legs.
We are using our mind and judgment to select what should be in our show and what should not be in our show.
And if you find the decision of what to include too difficult, then let’s do even more Procrustean manipulation. Pick only three major points that you want to make.
Here is your task now:
Pick three points to deliver in 4-5 minutes. If you must deliver an entire SWOT, then select one strength, one weakness, one opportunity, and one threat.
Why do we do this? Here’s why:
If you try to crowbar an entire SWOT analysis into a four-minute presentation, with multiple points for each category, you overwhelm your audience.
They turn off and tune you out. You will lose them, and you will fail.
Presenting too many points is worse than delivering only one point.
Especially Powerful Paucity
If you present, say, a total of 5 strengths, 3 weaknesses, 4 opportunities, and 3 threats, no one remembers it. None of it. And you irritate your audience mercilessly.
Your presentation should present the results of analysis, not a laundry list of facts on which you base your analysis.
The SWOT is, in fact, almost raw data.
You want the audience to remember how you massage the data, analyze it, and arrange it. You want the audience to remember your conclusions.
You take information and transforming it into intelligence. You winnow out the chaff and leave only the wheat.
You reduce the static and white noise so that the communicative signal can be heard.
You are panning for gold, washing away the detritus so the nuggets can be found. When you buy gold, you don’t buy the waste product from which it was drawn, do you?
Do you buy a gold ring set in a box of sand?
Of course not, and neither should you offer up bucketfuls of presentation sand when you present your analytic gold to your client.
As you prepare the business presentation, you sift through mountains of information, synthesize it, compress it, make it intelligible, then present it in a way that is understandable and, if possible, entertaining.
Digest this Preparation guidance, try it out in your next presentation, and watch yourself produce and deliver the most powerful presentation of your young career.
Snippers have a verbal tic – they snip the ends of sentences during a business presentation.
You’ve probably heard these presentation snippers, too – they pinch the ends of sentences.
This is an unfortunate verbal tic. Tics can drag us down.
And it’s the elimination of these verbal tics that separate great speakers from good speakers.
Don’t Be a Snipper!
If you are looking for tangible evidence of individual tics and habits that bring speakers down to the level of, well . . . to the level of sounding amateurish, this is one of those clear cases.
The phenomenon that I speak of is the staccato voicing of the last word of a sentence.
Sometimes the voice drops, just like that of a child reading sentences from a story book. Each sentence is a great accomplishment, and the child celebrates by dropping the voice and snipping the last word.
As if each sentence is a story in itself.
For whatever reason, many folks who speak from a script or who read aloud become snippers. They cut the last word of a sentence short. As if in a race to get to the next sentence.
As if each sentence stands alone, unconnected to the sentences to follow.
One good source of bad speaking technique is to listen to commercials that feature “everyday people” giving testimonials.
Folks become snippers when they read from a script or speak memorized passages.
Tune in to this.
Make it a habit to listen closely to speakers you admire, but also the speakers who, for whatever reason, you do not like. Ask yourself why you like one speaker and not another.
Why all the Snipping?
Why do people snip their sentences? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s an unconscious desire to voice the period at the end of a sentence?
Perhaps it’s to get a quicker breath to start the next sentence, so that there is a little silence as possible between sentences?
You can acquire an additional patina of professionalism by simply not doing this. Refuse to snip. Refuse to be a snipper.
Give full voice to every word in your sentence. Especially the last one. Don’t draw it out unnaturally, but certainly don’t snip it off.
Regardless, I believe that it’s incredibly important to the speaker who wishes to become a great presenter to be aware of the pathology.
But you may not agree.
This may seem unimportant to you. Do you scoff at this? Are you a snipper and believe that it’s something too small, too unimportant to consider? Are you unaware whether you do this or not, and do not care one way or the other?
If so, then you handicap yourself with a bad habit whose cumulative effect over the course of any single presentation yields an impression on the audience. That this is an amateur speaker.
If so, then continue down that path. Good luck and Godspeed!
But your audience will be the ultimate arbiter, and it will judge you.
As with so many of the tics and habits and quirks of bad public speaking, the audience may not recognize them individually. But they know that they’re in the presence of the mundane and of the average.
If you wish to improve your business presenting in ways great and small . . . If you want to correct repetitive tics that drag you down, like barnacles slowing a ship, then listen to yourself.
Are your “listeners” checking iPhones every few seconds?
Texting?
Chatting in side conversations?
Do they sit with glazed, far-away looks while you deliver your presentation? Some call this the MEGO syndrome . . . Mine Eyes Glaze Over.
The problem is probably you.
No way are you delivering on what should be a passionate, especially powerful presentation.
How to Engage Your Audience in Your Presentation
In this video interview with Concentrated Knowledge Corporation’s Executive Insights Program, Andrew Clancy quizzes Dr. Stanley K. Ridgley (me) on how to engage your audience. An audience that may seem disconnected and disinterested in what you have to say in your business presentation.
Here, I identify a remedy for you – the secrets of how to hook and reel-in an errant audience. How to engage your audience for power and impact.
Here also are several tips on how to energize your presentation by discarding one of the most common speaking crutches and by moving into the Command Position.
The bar is so low with regard to business presentations that just making a few corrections of the sort discussed here can elevate your delivery tremendously.
Follow this advice to develop an especially powerful presentation.
Concentrated Knowledge Corporation produces Executive Summaries of many of the world’s great business books. You can review CKC’s site at www.summary.com
CKC also offers great short courses at no charge. This includes my favorite on business presentations, this one.
There is, of course, much more to delivering a powerful presentation. Conscientious presenters attend to all seven dimensions of the presentation – voice, expression, gesture, appearance, stance, passion, and movement.
Great speakers also leaven their presentations with poignant stories. Great speakers connect emotionally with their audience.
Do you begin confidently and strongly? Or do you tiptoe into your presentation, as do so many people in school and in the corporate world?
Do you sidle into it? Do you edge sideways into your show with lots of metaphorical throat-clearing.
Do you back into Your Business Presentation?
Do you actually start strong with a story, but let the story spiral out of control until it overshadows your main points? Is your story even relevant? Do your tone and body language and halting manner shout “apology” to the audience?
Do you shift and dance?
Are you like a turtle poking his head out of his shell, eyeing the audience, ready to dart back to safety if you catch even a single frown?
Do you crouch behind the podium like a soldier in his bunker? Do you drone through the presentation, your voice monotone, your eyes glazed, fingers crossed, actually hoping that no one notices you?
Here’s an example of a Lame Start
I viewed a practice presentation that purported to analyze a Wal-Mart case. The lead presenter was Janie. She began speaking, and she related facts about the history of the company and its accomplishments over the past 40 years. She spoke in monotone. She flashed a timeline on the screen.
Little pictures and graphics highlighted her points.
I wondered at what all of this might mean.
I waited for a linking thread.
I waited for her main point. As the four-minute mark approached, my brow furrowed. The linking thread had not come.
The linking thread would never come . . . it dawned on me that she had no point. At the end of her segment, I asked a gentle question.
“Janie, what was that beginning all about? How did your segment relate to Wal-Mart’s strategic challenges in the case at hand?”
“Those were just random facts,” she said.
“Random facts?”
Random Facts!
“Yes!” she said brightly.
And she was quite ingenuous about it.
Random facts.
She was giving “random facts,” and she thought that it was acceptable to begin a business case presentation this way. I do not say this to disparage her. Not at all.
In fact, she later became one of my most coachable students, improving her presentation skills tremendously, and has since progressed to graduate school.
But what could convince a student that an assembly of “random facts” is acceptable at the beginning of a presentation? Is it the notion that anything you say at the beginning is okay?
Let’s go over the beginning, shall we? Together, let’s craft a template beginning that you can always use, no matter what your show is about. When you become comfortable with it, you can then modify it to suit the occasion.
Set the Stage with Your Situation Statement
You begin with your introduction. Here, you present the Situation Statement.
This is key to setting up a Powerful Business Presentation.
The Situation Statement tells your audience what they will hear. It’s the reason you and your audience are there. What will you tell them? The audience is gathered to hear about a problem and its proposed solution . . . or to hear of success and how it will continue . . . or to hear of failure and how it will be overcome . . . or to hear of a proposed change in strategic direction.
Don’t assume that everyone knows why you are here. Don’t assume that they know the topic of your talk. Ensure that they know with a powerful Situation Statement.
A powerful situation statement centers the audience – Pow! It focuses everyone on the topic. Don’t meander into your show with chummy talk. Don’t tip-toe into it. Don’t be vague. Don’t clear your throat with endless apologetics or thank yous.
What do I mean by this? Let’s say your topic is the ToughBolt Corporation’s new marketing campaign. Do not start this way:
“Good morning, how is everyone doing? Good. Good! It’s a pleasure to be here, and I’d like to thank our great board of directors for the opportunity. I’m Dana Smith and this is my team, Bill, Joe, Mary, and Sophia. Today, we’re planning on giving you a marketing presentation on ToughBolt Corporation’s situation. We’re hoping that—”
No . . . no . . . and no.
Direct and to-the-point is best. Pow!
Try starting this way:
“Today we present ToughBolt’s new marketing campaign — a campaign to regain the 6 percent market share lost in 2009 and increase our market share by another 10 percent. A campaign to lead us into the next four quarters to result in a much stronger and competitive market position 12 months from now.”
You see? This is not the best intro, but it’s solid. No “random facts.” No wasted words. No metaphorical throat-clearing. No backing into the presentation, and no tiptoeing.
State the reason you’re there.
Put the Pow in Powerful Business Presentations!
Now, let’s add some Pow to it.
A more colorful and arresting introductory Situation Statement might be:
“Even as we sit here today, changes in the business environment attack our firm’s competitive position three ways. How we respond to these challenges now will determine Toughbolt’s future for good or ill . . . for survival or collapse. Our recommended response?
Aggressive growth. We now present the source of those challenges, how they threaten us, and what our marketing team will do to retain Toughbolt’s position in the industry and to continue robust growth in market share and profitability.”
Remember in any story, there must be change. The very reason we give a case presentation is that something has changed in the company’s fortunes.
We must explain this change. We must craft a response to this change. And we must front-load our intro to include our recommendation.
That is why you have assembled your team. To explain the threat or the opportunity. To provide your analysis. To provide your recommendations.
Remember, put Pow into your beginning. Leverage the opportunity when the audience is at its most alert and attentive. Craft a Situation Statement that grabs them and doesn’t let go.
Malcolm X was a Great Presenter. No more powerful example of a superb presenter can be found
Like snapping a towel to skin, you want to sting your audience in a good way. Malcolm X was a great presenter, and he used this technique better than most.
He could snap his audience to attention. He compelled his listeners to sit up straight, to focus on his message.
You can do this several ways, too. It’s up to you what method you choose, but it should fit your audience and your presentation.
One effective method is the use of a “grabber” line. This is a surprising and unconventional sentence or an unusual fact that immediately alerts the audience that its about to hear something special.
Not just another canned talk.
One of the finest public speakers – or presenters – of modern times was the late Malcolm X. Yes, Malcolm X was a great presenter, and his speeches are textbook examples of how to grab an audience, mesmerize it throughout his presentation, and then mobilize it with an especially powerful call to action.
The Effects of Rhetoric
Whether you agree or disagree with him is irrelevant to the point that he was a captivating communicator. He drew from a deep well of powerful presentation techniques.
Malcolm’s speeches are just that – speeches – and they are written for the ear and not the eye. As such, they are best read aloud so as to absorb the measured beats, to feel the repetition of key phrases.
And to learn the effects of certain rhetorical flourishes.
And when you read sentence after sentence, you sense the power and the deep moral outrage coming through, sometimes explicit but most often through a steady recapitulation of ideas using different phrases, but key words.
You gain a sense of the gathering storm. You almost hear rolling thunder in the distance.
Today, I mine his speeches for their cadences, their imagery, their use of allegory, anaphora, and turns of phrase.
With respect to grabbing an audience’s attention, too many presentations and speeches begin with routine thank-yous and ingratiation of the audience.
Bad presentations launch with a peppering of routine phrases, a gripping of the podium and a squinting at notes or jerky backward glances at an unreadable projection screen.
Remember that a speech is tremendously different from a written document. Pauses and repetition, tone and inflection are essential with the spoken word.
Especially Powerful Technique
Let’s look at the beginning of a typical Malcolm X speech and see how he grabs his audience. Read it with his spoken delivery in mind.
This speech – Message to the Grass Roots – was delivered in Detroit on November 10, 1963. Irrespective of the time and place and circumstance, which of course leavens our approach, note that Malcolm begins his talk by immediately establishing intimacy with the audience.
We want to have just an off-the-cuff chat between you and me . . . us. We want to talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand.
We all agree tonight, all of the speakers have agreed, that America has a very serious problem. Not only does America have a very serious problem, but our people have a very serious problem.
In the space of four sentences, Malcolm has drawn in his listeners. He has laid out a situation statement that, at that moment, captivated his audience.
He established a mood of confidentiality and rapport, and then makes a bold statement – “America has a very serious problem . . . We have a very serious problem.”
Who wouldn’t want to hear what comes next?
Malcolm X was a Great Presenter with Power and Depth
Notice that he did not engage in throat-clearing and chit-chat.
No “Thank you Mr. Chairman” . . . no “So good to see so many committed activists tonight and familiar faces in the crowd.” Notice also the use of repetition of key phrases: “Very serious problem.”
Straight to the point, and a bold point it is. See what comes next . . .
America’s problem is us. We’re her problem. The only reason she has a problem is she doesn’t want us here. And every time you look at yourself, be you black, brown, red or yellow, a so-called Negro, you represent a person who poses such a serious problem for America because you’re not wanted. Once you fact this as a fact, then you can start plotting a course that will make you appear intelligent, instead of unintelligent.
Has Malcolm studied his audience? Is he reaching out with a message that is directly relevant to his listeners?
Most of all, has he grabbed your attention?
He surely has.
Malcolm was expert at executing Presentation Snap, grabbing his listeners in a way that zeroed in on them . . . on their needs, concerns, desires, hopes . . . framing the issue in colorful language, and creating listener expectations that he will offer bold and radical solutions to real problems.
For now, focus on the grabber to seize the attention of your audience. Mull this excellent example from Malcolm’s talk. Ask yourself how he contrived it . . . and how it works.
In subsequent posts, we look at more examples from Malcolm X as he moves through delivery of his presentation and builds to his call for action at the end.
In earlier posts, we examined the lead-in steps for your case competition preparation – now your team is on the cusp of delivering a business presentation to win your case competition.
Recognize that your presentation differs from the written report.
Accept that your presentation is a wholly different communication mode than your final written solution.
Treat it this way, and your chances that you win your case competition increase dramatically.
How to Win Your Case Competition
The analytical competency of most case competition teams is relatively even.
Your analysis is robust and your conclusions are sound, as should be with all the entries.
With this substantive parity among competing teams, a powerful and stunning presentation delivered by a team of confident and skilled presenters will win the day most every time.
If a team lifts itself above the competition with a stunning presentation, it wins.
If you have reviewed the step-by-step preparation to this point and internalized its message, you understand that you and your teammates are not something exclusive of the presentation.
You are the presentation.
By now, you should be well on the way to transforming yourself from an average presenter into a powerful presentation meister.
You know the techniques of the masters.
You are skilled. Confident.
You have become an especially powerful and steadily improving speaker who constantly refines himself or herself along the seven dimensions we’ve discussed: Stance, Voice, Gesture, Expression, Movement, Appearance, and Passion.
Employ the Seven Secrets to Win Your Case Competition
When I coach a team how to win a case competition, the team members prepare all of their analysis, conclusions, and recommendations on their own. Here are some tips how to do this. Their combined skills, imagination, and acumen produce a product worthy of victory.
The team then creates their first draft presentation.
It is at this point that the competition is most often won or lost.
Powerful winning presentations do not spring forth unbidden or from the written material you prepare. The numbers “do not speak for themselves.”
The “power of your analysis” does not win your case competition on its own. You cannot point to your handout repeatedly as a substitute for a superb presentation.
Your case solution is not judged on its merit alone, as if the brilliance of your solution is manifest to everyone who reads it.
It is judged on how well you communicate the idea.
Powerfully. Persuasively.
Each member of your team must enter the presentation process as a tangible, active, compelling part of the presentation. And you must orchestrate your presentation so that you work seamlessly together with each other, with the visuals you present, and with the new knowledge you create.
You are performing, like a cast in a play. Ensure everyone plays the part well.
It’s always exciting to reprise a successful lecture, and Friday in Philadelphia I did just that with a six-hour seminar for business executives on Business Lessons from the Great Battles of History.
Three months in the crafting, the Great Battles seminar had its germination in the suggestion by one of my colleagues.
He had engaged me to deliver my earlier lecture series on Competitive Intelligence, which used historical military examples and multimedia, and thought that a full-blown seminar focused on the nexus between business strategy and military strategy might be well-received.
It was received well. It called for an encore
What follows is the gist of this powerful offering . . .
War, Conflict . . . and Business Lessons
In business, we have adopted the language of war and of conflict.
We talk of market penetration . . . we counterattack a competitor . . . we out-flank our opponents.
We get ambushed in office meetings . . . we form alliances and we battle against alliances . . . we conduct “hasty retreats” when facing a superior foe . . . we “make peace” with our enemies.
And we craft our strategy for our next campaign.
Perhaps it’s only natural that we should speak this way. Ours is a world of conflict and cooperation.
And sometimes the cooperation seems only a prelude to conflict.
But rather than simply adopt the machismo of war-words, we can go beyond the surface similarities.
We can study and learn something about planning and executing business strategy from the actual techniques of martial combat. Here, we look at some of the tactical techniques utilized by the military and codified in military manuals worldwide.
Some of techniques of maneuver and attack are familiar to most people. Others, not so well-known.
The best strategic maneuver, of course, is one that Sun Tzu recommended more than 2,000 years ago. Sun Tzu urged us to consider techniques that would yield bloodless victories.
He said: “To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”
Most of us are not blessed with the kind of acumen or situation that affords us the luxury to win without battle. And so we must make do with techniques that can yield victory, if applied judiciously and the proper place and time.
Business Lessons: Circumspection a Must
But we must be circumspect and shrewd.
We must observe certain principles, and the hallmark of a sound principle is its successful application, across time, to situations in which the terms and technology may change, but the principle still holds.
Principles serve as a north star to guide us, to keep us going in the right direction.
In conflict situations, The Principles of War offer us guiding ideas for executing any strategy against a determined opponent – Objective, Offensive, Economy of Force, Maneuver, Unity of Command, Mass, Security, Surprise, and Simplicity.
The point is to think strategically . . . to exert a measure of control over a chaotic world, a sometimes hostile world.
All smart and successful organizations make use of war principles but call them something else. We call them efficiency tools and such like.
But let’s call them what they are.
Let’s do call them “Principles of Competition” . . . because they can be utilized by anyone involved in any conflict, great or small . . . they can be used at the organizational level . . . and they can be used at the personal level.
Many countries and many theorists have devised principles of war over the centuries. This noble and venerable lineage stretches back to the time of Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Vegetius, Machiavelli, Clausewitz, Jomini, Foch, and many other notables. But regardless of the time and place and personality, the principles have always retained a sameness . . .
Principles may change at the periphery, but they maintain a steadfast core character.
Business Lessons: Principles of Competition
For this seminar on Business Lessons, we appropriate for ourselves a set of Principles of War distilled by British Colonel John Frederick Charles Fuller during World War One and into the mid-1920s and adopted almost immediately in a slightly different form, by the United States military.
These are principles that had been handed down less formally for centuries.
The lessons learned on the battlefield can help us in the boardroom and they can help us compete effectively against a determined and equally capable competitor.
Here, we examine business lessons from the great battles of history – General Pagondas at Delium in 424 BC, Hannibal at Cannae in 216 BC, Lee at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg in 1863. We look to Zulu Chief Cetshwayo at Isandlwana in 1879, Hitler’s Blitzkrieg of France in 1940, the Battle of Kursk in 1943, Israel’s Raid on Entebbe in 1976, and the First Gulf War, among others.
Was Friday’s seminar delivered with elan and panache? With brio?
Was it an especially powerful presentation?
One hopes, and we’ll see.
The jury is still out on this one and we await the verdict.
In 2002, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was widely ridiculed for his “what we do not know” convolution that tended to confound his critics.
But when analyzed, his succinct turn of phrase showed that his critics had much to learn.
Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns the ones we don’t know we don’t know.
Without going too deeply into the philosophy behind it all, let’s simply note that this construction dates back to Confucius . . . and perhaps earlier.
Broken down, it can be stated this way:
There are things we know.
There are things we do not know.
There are things we know we do not know.
There are things we do not know we do not know.
Much insight is bound up in this matrushka doll of logic.
In fact, lurking within this formula is a key to our business success, to our differentiation, to our personal brand. Understanding what we don’t know.
Rumsfeld’s trope is simply a call for humility and recognition that false certitude can be far more harmful than healthy skepticism. No, we don’t know at all.
In fact, there may be a great deal of what we know that isn’t so.
Take, for example, the following two experiences of people who have a fundamental misunderstanding of their own abilities.
“These Pictures Just Didn’t Come Out”
Photography – good photography – is a skill. The framing and composition of superb photographs is not “natural” or intuitive.
And yet, the vast majority of us believe that we can take spectacular photos. A professional photographer who worked for me years ago was tickled by a co-worker who believed he was an excellent photographer, even as evidence to the contrary was abundant.
She told how he repeatedly engaged in a fantasy.
His latest batch of photos of a reception would come in, and his coworkers would gather ’round him. He would thumb through the photos one at a time, and he would cast many of them aside peevishly.
“These pictures just didn’t come out,” he’d say with a shake of the head. “They just didn’t come out,” and he would invariably imply that some mechanical malfunction had ruined his photos.
This picture just didn’t “come out.”
Or hazy weather.
Or bad karma.
Anything but his own lack of skill.
Through it all was his inability to actually see and understand that the “picture did not come out” because of the most obvious reason in the world:
He did not know how to take photographs.
In fact, he was terrible.
But he claimed that out-of-focus, poorly framed, underexposed, overexposed photos were the result of some external problem, not his own lack of skill. This type of hubris borne of blissful ignorance has its counterpart in the innocence of children.
Who’s the teacher? That depends on your perspective . . .
A tennis instructor friend of mine tells the story of working with a six-year-old child.
You have to admire the chutzpuh of children, who, in their innocence, are unaware of the larger world and oftentimes unaware of their role as students in this world, subject to the instruction of teachers.
Upon starting the first tennis lesson, the child quietly watched the tennis pro demonstrate the basic forehand. Then, the child boasted to her: “This is how I hit the ball.”
And the youngster proceeded to demonstrate the proper technique to the tennis instructor, as if the two of them were accomplished tennis pros simply sharing pointers with each other.
The child was blissfully ignorant of the depth and breadth of the game of tennis. So the child speaks with a confidence and easiness that betrays that ignorance.
Honest ignorance in this case.
And what a wonderful confidence it is, the confidence of a child. A superb tennis instructor works with this raw confidence and molds into it an actual expertise and respect for the game without destroying it.
When you hear people dismiss public speaking as “easy” or a “cinch” or something that they’ll “wing” in their next class, remember the phrases . . .
“These pictures just didn’t come out.”
“This is the way I hit the ball.”
Many folks are simply ignorant of the depth and breadth of the public speaking domain.
So they wax eloquently and ignorantly about it, believing it to be something that it is not. Easier than it is.
Especially Powerful Presenting – What we don’t know
Powerful presenting is actually the judicious application of high-order skills of gesture, voice, movement, style, focus, elocution, and even intuition. This concept is alien to the “Easy Presenting” group.
Moreover, the very nature of these skills is foreign to them.
The skill set of the advanced and effective presenter is much akin to that of the actor, and these skills would seem irrelevant to someone with only a superficial understanding of the art of presenting.
After all, business is serious, right? Wheareas mere “acting” is . . . well, frivolous.
Acting is talent-based, right, with no role for learned techniques? Hardly. Acting coach Anita Jesse zeroes-in on the basic skills necessary to powerful acting, and they are as easily applied to the art of powerful presenting:
Almost any proficient actor will tell you that expertise [in acting] depends upon a short list of basic skills. Those building blocks are concentration, imagination, access to emotions, listening, observation, and relaxation.
Concentration, imagination, access to emotions, listening, observation, and relaxation. These are the qualities necessary to an actor’s powerful performances, and these are likewise qualities essential to the power presenter.
They are elements of Personal Presence, and they are essential to the delivery of an especially powerful presentation.
I often see posts on LinkedIn from people who perpetuate the “comfort” myth, who advocate personal comfort as the boundary line between who we are and who we hope to be in the realm of what we might call uncomfortable business presentations.
“I just don’t feel comfortable doing that” vies for one of the poorest excuses I hear for refusing to become a great presenter.
Sure, make me a great presenter . . . just don’t make me change what I’m doing now, because I might feel “uncomfortable.”
“Uncomfortable Business Presentations”
When did our “comfort” become the yardstick by which we measure presentation greatness? You think that you can become a great business presenter without changing behavior?
Odd as that sounds, many people believe it. Because they think the essence of great presenting exists somewhere outside themselves – in a software package or in some secret that’s been kept from them.
Just the other day, I saw someone post presentation “advice” in a major forum, urging would-be speakers to stick close to the podium if they “felt uncomfortable” moving more than a few steps away from it while speaking.
Say what?
What awful advice. Heinous.
If you’re a person who buys into the “comfort myth,” then stay away from me and don’t even talk to me about wanting to improve your business presenting skill.
If your presentations suck, if you’re stiff, and your voice grates, and you hide behind the podium, and you can’t look at people, and you get tongue-tied, and you slouch and dance, and you’ve made your presentations this way as long as you can remember . . . I guarantee that you’ll feel “uncomfortable” doing anything else.
So, if “comfort” is your goal, just keep on keepin’ on. It’s one of the easiest “accomplishments” you’ll achieve in your life.
Comfortably Bad Habits
If your degree of “comfort” determines what you do in life, then resign yourself to mediocrity right now, this second.
“I just don’t feel comfortable mingling with people.”
“I just don’t feel comfortable training for a marathon.”
“I just don’t feel comfortable playing a difficult piece of music.”
“I just don’t feel comfortable practicing new presentation techniques.”
If that’s your attitude and your excuse, then prepare yourself to stay exactly where you are in life as you avoid uncomfortable business presentations. Settle in and get “comfortable,” because that’s where you’ll be 20 years from now.
Again, if your presentations suck now, if you’re stiff, and your voice grates, and you hide behind the podium, and you can’t look at people, and you get tongue-tied, and you slouch and dance . . . you’ll still be doing it 20 years from now, assuming that anyone in his or her right mind let’s you get up in front of an audience when the stakes truly count.
If you grow “comfortable” in your bad habits, they’re still bad habits. And you will break them only by adopting new habits . . . that discomfit you initially. They feel “uncomfortable” until they become “comfortable” for you.
So, if you want to remain right where you are, stagnant, never improving, I urge you to just stay “comfortable.”
Your more ambitious competition in the workforce will thank you.
For trenchant advice on how to deliver uncomfortable business presentations that can take you to your presentation greatness, consult the Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.
It can also be lucrative, as prize money for winning teams can be substantial . . . from $1,000 all the way up to $25,000.
Sure, you’ve presented in class in front of your professor and folks that you know, but you’ve not felt pressure until you’ve competed against the finest MBAs from other schools.
How do you and your school stack up against the best of the rest?
Business School Rankings are one thing, but MBA Case Competitions offer one of the few head-to-head matchups between schools.
And all the PR in the world can’t substitute for victory over your rivals.
Who Competes in MBA Case Competition . . . and How?
Let’s take, as an example, a Finance MBA Case Competition.
These are top-notch MBA students with work experience and especially powerful motivation to not only invest in a rigorous MBA program but to test their skills publicly in the fire of MBA case competition.
Substantively, this is a talented lot.
My colleagues, who specialize in the wizardry of finance, ensure that no idle comment goes unchallenged, no misplaced decimal escapes detection. That no unusual explanation goes unexplored.
MBA Case Competition Tests Your Mettle
At the higher-level finals competition, this fine-toothed comb catches few errors . . . because few errors exist to be caught. These are superb students, imbued with a passion for the artistry of a company’s financial structure and operations.
Along this dimension, the teams are relatively well-matched.
But stylistically, much remains to improve.
And if you believe that “style” is somehow unimportant, you err fatally with regard to the success of your presentation.
By style, I mean all of the orchestrated elements of your business presentation that combine to create the desired outcome – emotional involvement with your message, a compelling story, and acceptance of your conclusions. And all explained in an especially powerful way that transmits competence and confidence.
In this sense, style becomes substance in an MBA case competition.
So, while the substantive content level of the top teams in competition is often superb, style differentiates the finest from the rest and can determine the competition winner.
To enter that top rank of presenters, note these common pathologies that afflict most teams of presenters, both MBA students and young executives.
1) Throat-clearing
I don’t mean actual clearing of the throat here. Unfortunately, many teams engage in endless introductions, expressions of gratitude to the audience, even chattiness with regard to the task at hand. Get to the point. Immediately. State your business.
Deliver a problem statement . . . and then your recommendation, up-front. With this powerful introductory method, your presentation takes on more clarity in the context of your already-stated conclusion.
2) Lack of confidence
Lack of confidence is revealed in several ways, some of them subconscious. Uptalk, a fad among young people, undermines even the best substance because of its constant plaintive beg for validation.
Dancing from foot to foot, little dances around the platform, the interjection of “you know” and “you know what I mean” wear away the power of your message like a whetstone.
3) Unreadable PowerPoint slides
The visuals are unreadable because of small fonts and insufficient contrast between numbers/letters and the background. Ugly spreadsheets dominate the screen to no purpose.
This sends the audience scrambling to shuffle through “handouts” instead of focusing attention on the points you want to emphasize. You have created a distraction.
You have created a competitor for your attention that takes focus off your presentation.
4) Ineffective interaction with visuals
Rare is the student who interacts boldly with his or her slides, touching the screen, guiding our eyes to what is important and ensuring that we understand.
Instead, we often see the dreaded laser pointer. This is one of the most useless tools devised for presentation work (unless the screen is so massive that you cannot reach an essential visual that must be pointed out).
The laser pointer divides your audience attention three ways – to the presenter, to the slide material, and to the light itself, which tends to bounce uncontrollably about the screen.
I forbid the use of laser pointers in my classes as a useless affectation.
No time for Modesty or Mediocrity
The MBA Case Competition is your chance to demonstrate a wide range of corporate business skills in a collaborative effort. You receive recognition, valuable experience, sometimes monetary reward, and perhaps an open door to corporate employment.
Work on correcting the most common errors, and you have started the journey to competition excellence.
See The Complete Guide to Business Presenting for an entire chapter on winning case competitions. You can also sign up for the LinkedIn MBA Case Competition group. This is where folks from around the world congregate to share the latest information about competiting in the top contests.
Over the years, I’ve learned that the zombies of bad presentation advice never die.
We can’t eradicate bad presentation advice completely, because these zombies are impervious to every remedy known to 21st century civilization.
When Armageddon finally comes, cockroaches and bad advice zombies will be the only survivors.
But let’s give it a shot anyway.
Bad Presentation Advice
The process of becoming a great presenter is not so much prompting students to do something the right way. It’s getting you – yes, you – to stop doing things the wrong way.
And this is much tougher than you might expect, given that 1) people generally dislike the idea of change, and 2) I have discovered that most folks tend to think that the presentation is something that exists outside of themselves . . . in a PowerPoint software package, or in notecards, or in a book.
The notion that the presenter actually has to change is not welcome news.
Accordingly, I instruct students to stop what they’re doing now as a result of bad habits and bad advice. Just stop.
And I do not entertain or engage in lengthy discussions of various opinions of what constitutes good presenting or how people want leeway granted for their own tics or habits. All it takes is one film session to disabuse people of the notion that a bad habit is somehow acceptable.
Once they stop engaging in bad habits and misconceptions about presenting, they become de facto reasonably competent presenters.
That’s right.
Just stop the bad habits, and what remains can be downright decent.
But Bad Presentation Habits Die Hard
Bad habits can be perpetuated by exuberantly following bad advice.
The problem is recognizing what constitutes bad advice. This isn’t easy, because much bad advice paradoxically masquerades as good advice, and lots of these bad advice zombies stalk the land.
Here are some of the most common examples of awful, vague, or incomplete presentation advice you invariably hear during your business school career from the most well-meaning of folks.
ZOMBIE #1 “Don’t Put your hand in your pocket . . . it looks ‘unprofessional.’”
This is absurd and carries the stink of oral tradition about it. From presidents to preachers, the hand in the pocket – if done properly – conveys assurance and confidence.
For many speakers, it also removes one hand from the equation as an unnecessary distractor. Put that left hand in the pocket and you keep it out of trouble.
No more strange finger-play.
No more tugging at your fingers. No more twisting and handwringing. It leaves your right hand free to gesture, and those gestures themselves appear more decisive.
ZOMBIE #2 “Make eye contact.”
This advice is insidious in that it actually carries a large kernel of truth. It sounds reasonable. But it doesn’t tell you how to do it.
And, yes, there is such a thing as bad eye contact.
Too long, and you come across as creepy. Too short, and you come across as untrustworthy.
Make eye contact with people in your audience long enough to ascertain eye color, then move on.
ZOMBIE #3 “Move around when you talk”
This gem was given to me by a student, passed on from one of his other professors. This advice suggests that you wander aimlessly about the stage in hopes that it will improve your presentation in some unspecified way. Or it might mean to roll your shoulders as you step side-to-side.
It actually can mean most anything, and as such, it is terrible advice.
In this case the bad advice is worse than no advice at all. See my previous posts on movement for ideas on how to incorporate movement into your talk . . . and how to incorporate pauses for effect.
ZOMBIE #4 “Just the facts.”
Really? Which facts are those?
What does it mean, “Just the facts?”
Folks believe that this phrase makes them appear no-nonsense and hard-core. But a more pompous and simultaneously meaningless phrase has yet to be devised.
Again, it means nothing and is arrogance masquerading as directness.
“Facts” must be selected in some way, and context must be provided to give them meaning. “Facts” must be analyzed to produce alternatives and to render a conclusion. This is a euphemism for “I don’t like what you’re saying . . . tell me what I want to hear.”
ZOMBIE #5 “The numbers tell the story.”
This is a favorite of finance folks, who seem to believe that the ironclad rules of presentations do not apply to them.
“We’re special,” finance majors like to say. “We don’t deal with all of that soft storytelling; we deal in hard numbers.”
There is so much wrong with this, it is difficult to locate a reasonable starting-point.
Not only do numbers, alone, tell no story at all . . . if the numbers were conceivably capable of telling a story, it would be a woefully incomplete story, providing a distorted picture of reality.
Numbers provide just one piece of the analytical puzzle, important to be sure, but not sufficient by themselves.
Moreover, the business presenter who elects to serve the god of numbers sacrifices the power and persuasiveness that go with a host of other presenting techniques. Underlying this myth is the notion that you “can’t argue with numbers.”
You certainly can argue with numbers, and you can bring in a host of analysis that changes completely what those numbers actually mean.
ZOMBIE #6“You have too many slides.”
How do you know I have “too many” slides?
Say what? You counted them?
I assure you that you don’t know. You can conclude nothing about my presentation by looking only at the number of slides in it.
You will hear this chestnut from folks who believe that the length of a presentation dictates the number of slides you use.
Absurd on its face, people who use this believe that every slide will be shown a fixed amount of time.
They likely do some sort of calculation in their heads, dividing the time available by the number of slides to yield a number they believe indicates there are “too many” slides.
This is because they usually deal with folks unschooled in Business School Presentations methods.
If you follow the presentation principles laid down here in Business School Presentations, you will learn the glorious method of crafting frugal slides that pulse with power, surge with energy . . . slides that people remember, because they are smartly crafted and snap crisply, and they carry your audience along for an exciting and joyous ride.
And no one can tell anything about this by the number of slides in your presentation.
Bad Advice Zombies – these are just some that will come after you.
It’s probably not a good idea to argue with folks who give this sort of advice. What’s the use? Just ignore it and replace it in your own work with enduring and especially powerful presenting principles.
You can’t eliminate the zombies, but you can outrun them and outfox them.
And continue your upward trajectory toward becoming a superior business presenter.
Is there some law, somewhere, that dictates that the bad business presentation must reign in corporate America?
. . . or in the business school classroom?
Is there a Law of Bad?
Given the number of long, dull, pedantic, repetitious, boring, confusing – bad – presentations I see both inside and outside of the business school, I suspect that there must be.
This dullness seeps into the consciousness. It numbs us, and begins to legitimize itself. Bad business presentations can be a career-killer.
But of course, no one tells you this.
A conspiracy of silence surrounds bad business presentations and the people who give them.
And yet, these monstrosities sprout everywhere.
Ubiquitous Bad Business Presentations
Bad Business Presentations are everywhere . . . and because they’re everywhere, we think that bad business presentations must be legitimate.
They must be the norm. They must be bad, because that’s just the way it is. But this is myth.
And this myth perpetuates itself, like some kind of awful oral tradition.
You see a bad business presentation that some people praise as good. It looks like this . . .
Some Vice President from a visiting company stands in front of you hiding behind a lectern. He reads from slides with dozens of bullet points taken from a written paper and pasted onto PowerPoint slides.
Bad Business Presentations offer the Kiss of Sleep
The VP alternates looking at a computer screen and turning to look at a projection screen behind him.
He rarely looks at you.
Unreadable spreadsheets appear on the screen. Legions of tiny numbers march in cadence. The presenter reads slide-after-slide verbatim, his head turned away from you.
You realize, finally, that he is reading the slides together with everyone in the audience.
It’s boring.
It’s unintelligible.
The slides are unreadable or irrelevant.
It’s a bad presentation, and you can’t remember a damn thing except the three texts you received during the presentation as you checked your iPhone between yawns. You could legitimately ask yourself, “Is this all there is?”
If bad business presentations are the norm, you scratch your chin and perhaps you think “That’s not hard at all.” I can be as bad as the next person.
Just Cobble Together a Bad Business Presentation
Cobble something like that together, and you think you have a business presentation. And why wouldn’t you think that?
It seems to have all the elements: A speaker-reader of slides (you), a PowerPoint display on the screen with writing on it, some numbers, and a five-minute time slot to fill with talk.
Don’t bore your audience with bad business presentations
But what you actually have is something awful – just awful.
You don’t know what you want to accomplish . . . or why.
You have no idea what you should say . . . or why.
And you don’t view yourself as benefitting from the process in any way. Instead, you see it as something painful. Because it is painful. It’s painful and awful.
Let’s repeat, so there’s no misunderstanding . . . just awful.
It’s a bad business presentation that is painful and awful because of the way it’s been explained to you.
Because the explanations are incomplete. Because you never get the whole story.
Teaching you how to deliver a cogent, competent, powerful business presentation is always someone else’s job.
This can be a problem. A problem because your career often hinges on how well you can present. And if you present badly, you needlessly handicap yourself.
I Feel Your Pain
Sure, there are “presentation courses.” But it seems that the good folks who actually provide you some sort of presenting instruction in school are often disconnected from your business courses.
They teach you “How to give a speech” or “How to introduce yourself.” But you don’t have the opportunity to engage in a complex group business presentation.
Oftentimes, these folks aren’t even in the business school. They can’t show you how to incorporate business content into your presentations – things like the SWOT, value chain analysis, financial analysis, PEST, Five Forces, and such like.
And on occasion, professors in your business courses demonstrate the same malaise that plagues business at-large.
For most of your professors, presenting is secondary. This makes sense, as each faculty has a specialty or functional discipline he or she is charged with teaching. Business “Presenting” is no one’s functional discipline, and so it goes unaddressed, orphaned to expediency and neglect.
It is the same in the corporate world. Your presenting woes are the same woes that scourge the American business landscape.
Boring, dull, numbing . . . all of this is equated wrongly with “serious.” What what we get is the bad business presentation as the standard.
The Malaise in Corporate America
I attended a business conference on the west coast not long ago.
I had the occasion to dip my toes into some of the worst speaking I have ever heard coupled with use of incredibly bad visuals. Primarily PowerPoint visuals.
Monotone voices.
Busy slides with tiny letters.
Listeners shifting in their seats.
Motionless speakers planted behind a lectern.
Aimless and endless talking with seemingly no point.
No preparation and no practice attended these presentations.
Papers shuffling in the audience, because handouts were given prior to the talk.
This is more common than you might imagine. Communications consultant Andy Goodman conducted major research on the issue in 2005, surveying more than 2,500 public interest professionals and asking them to evaluate their presentation viewing experiences.
The average grade public interest professionals gave to the presentations they attended was C-. The average grade given to the visuals that respondents observed in presentations they attended was also C-. When asked to recall presentations they had seen over the last few months, survey respondents said they were more than likely to see a bad business presentation as to see an excellent one.
This is the current state of presentations in corporate America and in business schools. Is it uniformly bleak?
No, of course not.
Glimmers of Hope . . . Gigantic Opportunity
Generalizations are just that – general in nature.
I have seen a sufficient number of fine presentations to understand that, somewhere, superb instruction holds sway. Or, at the very least, young people whose early development has trained them for the stage have found their way to the business platform. Good for them. But for the most part, it is as I have described here.
And this presents you with magnificent opportunity.
Now that you understand the situation and why it exists, it’s time for you to join the ranks of superior presenters. Becoming a superior presenter means gaining incredible personal competitive advantage that is difficult to imitate.
By investing your presentations with passion, emotion, and enthusiasm, you deliver especially powerful shows with persuasive power.
Presentations that are anything but dull. So . . .
It’s time for your debut.
Time to break the Law of Bad Business Presentations.
Business Presentation Principles . . . the First Step to Superior Business Presentations
Overarching the craft of developing an especially powerful presentation is the guidance provided by the “Three Ps,” and the first of these Ps provides a solid foundation of powerful business presentation principles.
The first P is Principles, and there are seven of them.
These Seven Principles of Especially Powerful Presenting constitute the building blocks of your presentation persona. And you’ll not find a PowerPoint slide in sight.
Elsewhere, I have characterized these principles as “secrets.”
Business Presentation Principles are Secret?
They are secrets. In fact, they could be the most open secrets that mankind has ever known.
But they are difficult secrets.
They are difficult, because they require you to actually do something. I think that perhaps when we think of a secret, we tend to equate it with magic. We automatically believe that there is some magic involved that will help us circumvent hard work.
But that’s just not so.
The good news is that these secrets actually are secrets that truly work. They also constitute the dimensions along which we can gauge our speaking ability and judge how much we improve.
This is the most important aspect of these business presentation principles – they allow us to tear away the veil from those who pose as merely talented and to understand this beast called The Presentation.
Now, let’s plot our dimensions on a 7×7 Chart.
Break-Down of Business Presentation Principles
Take, as an example, the chart below, which is labeled across the top with our seven dimensions and along the vertical axis with a seven-point scale of value:
Unacceptable, Below Average, Average, Good, Very Good, Superior, Professional.
The chart plots the seven dimensions against a seven-point scale and provides a thorough evaluation of the presenter’s level of skill. From the chart, we see that this speaker carries a professional-grade stance and is superior with his gestures.
All other dimensions indicate work is needed. The advantage of this chart, is that it disaggregates your various speaking tasks so that you can manage them.
It separates them out, so that you can identify your weaknesses in a logical and comprehensive way. It also informs you of your strengths, so that you may build upon them.
Business Presentation Principles for Power and Impact
The upshot is that this First P of Especially Powerful Presenting – Business Presentation Principles – guides us to master the Seven Secrets, to transform ourselves into truly adept presenting instruments. To put us at home in front of any audience and able to connect across a range of subjects and and in a multitude of venues.
Elsewhere, I have addressed the Seven Secrets in detail, and I’ll revisit them again soon.
For now, let’s remember that the especially powerful presenters of the past 50 years have used these Secrets – Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King. They don’t announce that they’re using secret techniques and tricks of the trade, of course.
They simply let you believe that they were gifted with special talents. Not a chance.
The Three Ps of Business Presentations can greatly enhance your presentation delivery for a winning show every time
It’s always helpful when the key words that describe your especially powerful program all start with the same letter, and in this case we speak of the Three Ps of Business Presentations.
If you have spent any time at all in this space, you already know about the “Seven Secrets of Power Presenting.”
Now, you might be head-scratching and wondering how the “Seven Secrets” mesh with the “Three Ps of Business Presenting.”
A fair question.
Implement the Three Ps of Business Presenting
The “Principles” referred to are the Seven Secrets, the pillars of your transformation into an especially powerful presenter.
Learning and improving on the Seven dimensions of power presenting is essential to your presentation quest in a broadest sense. You don’t improve on the seven dimensions of presenting overnight . . . it requires application and adoption of the proper habits of behavior.
This may appear intuitive, but too often I see students who appear to understand the seven secrets but do not apply them for a host of reasons. Perhaps good reasons, in their own minds.
And yet, the choice cripples them in their presentations.
When it comes to individual presentations, you must apply your principles. And this means preparation.
It means practice.
Don’t assume that you know what I mean by preparation and practice, because we likely have different conceptions of both, and I’m betting you’ll like the results you get from the approach presented here.
So, settle in . . . and for the next couple of days, we will explore the Three Ps of Business Presenting and how their assiduous application can transform you into the Especially Powerful Presenter that you always knew you could be.
Her now-famous 2010 Harvard study of MBAs demonstrates conclusively that we can, indeed, control our emotions to a certain extent with regard to our delivery of business presentations.
In short, we can make ourselves feel confident and powerful . . . just by striking a powerful pose.
This is heady stuff, and Dr. Cuddy herself explains the process in the video below.
Power Posing Works
Dr. Cuddy’s findings are revolutionary to the extent that she substantially confirms a theory of emotions developed more than a century ago and since discarded for supposedly more au courant notions. Psychologists William James and Carl Lange conceived of a new way of understanding our emotions and how they work.
They reversed the prevailing dynamic this way . . .
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.
So if we feel stage fright and lack of confidence, our body language telegraphs that, 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 engage in power posing and create our own confidence?
Power Posing can Create Confidence?
Impossible, eh?
But James-Lange Theory suggests that very thing, that you can reverse the process.
And Dr. Amy Cuddy’s research proves it. Have a look . . .
Dr. Cuddy offers powerful instruction for us in the realm of nonverbal communication and in the area of self-motivation and inculcation of power-generating behavior.
But . . .
There are aspects of this video that are instructive in verbal communication as well.
As a caveat, lest we learn other less salutary lessons from the video, I call attention to aspects of Dr. Cuddy’s unfortunate verbal delivery.
This is not to gratuitously disparage Dr. Cuddy, for I am one of her biggest fans, and I advocate her approach to power posing whenever and wherever I speak.
Let’s learn a few things about verbal delivery from the video.
Three Tics to Eliminate
First, her voice often collapses at the end of sentences into a growl-like vocal fry. This results from pinching off the flow of air before finishing a sentence, delivering the last syllables in a kind of grind.
Second, Dr. Cuddy engages frequently in uptalk. This is a verbal tic that pronounces declarative sentences as if they are questions or as if they are statements in doubt. It consists of running the last word or syllable in a sentence up in tone instead of letting it drop decisively. The difference to the ear is dramatic, with uptalk conveying self-doubt, indecision, a quest for validation.
Third, Dr. Cuddy unconsciously laces her talk with words such as “like” and “you know” as filler. Perhaps to maintain a steady drumbeat of verbiage? Who knows the reason people use these crutches.
Eliminate these fillers from your own talks to gain power and decisiveness. Instead of fillers, use silence. Develop the technique of pausing instead of filling every second of your talk with noise.
And so . . . learn the lessons of power posing and engage them in your presentations to imbue them with energy. But eliminate the verbal tics that can leech away that energy from your talk.
It takes a long time to become a powerful and effective business presenter . . . and it takes much more effort than simply reading the occasional article offering presentation “tips.”
This should be an intuitive point.
Nonetheless, such articles sprout unmolested over the landscape.
And I suppose they can serve a purpose . . .
If perchance they help even a single person elevate their presentation game, then let a thousand presentation tips articles bloom.
We’ve all been there: an Excel spreadsheet smeared across a presentation slide and someone mumbling into a microphone while you check your email just to stay awake. It’s presentation hell. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In How to Be a Presentation God, Scott Schwertly shares effective step-by-step secrets for delivering transcendent presentations with an easy-to-implement approach focused on engaging content, personal storytelling and effective design elements — the holy trinity that leads to godly delivery.
What chutzpuh, if nothing else.
I think not.
If presenting were that easy, wouldn’t we have a whole lot more “presentation gods” striding our corporate corridors?
That said, I recognize that much of the hype in such headlines is simply to get folks to read the piece.
And the over-promise of a headline does not obviate the fact that likely some good advice might be buried somewhere inside.
You simply must dig for the gold . . . and then do something with it.
Presentation Tips Gold
Here is one such article, in which the author details the struggles of his son giving his first major talk in front of hundreds of investors. We all respond well to uplifting stories. Stories in which the hero overcomes great odds.
And those of us in the business presentation enterprise face great odds with every presentation. And if we don’t recognize the stakes for what they are and prepare accordingly . . . we have already lost the game.
As with most such pieces, it over-promises. The title alone gives it away:
How To Go From Being a Disaster—To a Great Speaker
You know or you should know that you don’t go from disastrous speaking to becoming a “great speaker” from reading one article on presentation tips.
But . . .
This article does offer powerful and effective advice grouped into eight points to get you on your way.
As with most of these things, the article is fun to read and satisfying.
We read. We nod. Scratch the chin.
“I can do that,” we think.
But to follow the advice, ahhhh . . . that is the rub!
It requires behavior changes, and this is the most difficult thing for people to do.
I have seen it time and again in my classes . . . students know the information. They internalize it. They receive instruction.
But nothing happens.
They don’t change.
They continue plying their unconscious bad habits, even when those habits are pointed out and become part of the realm of the known.
