Archive for February, 2009

When Presenters Run Out Of Ideas, It’s Time To Read A Book

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Presenters Can Get New Ideas By Reading More Books

Presenters Can Get New Ideas By Reading More Books

Sometimes when we are called on to give a presentation, we sit down to create the presentation only to find that our creative juices have somehow run dry. Oh, oh – this can be a big challenge. What always just seemed to “be there” can go missing just when we really need to draw upon it. What’s a presenter to do?

Despair not fellow presenters! This situation has happened to me and other presenters and we have a fairly simple solution that will get you out of this pickle: read a book.

Katherine Meeks is a New York City based speech consultant and language coach. She’s spent a lot of time with speechwriters and has made a not-so-amazing discovery: those of us who read a lot seem to have the best thoughts, the best style, and the most precise ways of using our vocabulary to make our presentations memorable.

I can hear you now: “Hey, I have a subscription to People magazine – I’m well read!” Umm, nope that’s just not going to cut it.

How often do you work on expanding your vocabulary? Probably  not all that often. It turns out that once we are out of school, the size of our vocabulary stops growing as fast as it once did. Reading turns out to be one of the most effective ways that as adults we can continue to grow our vocabulary. Once again, a word-of-the-day desk calendar is not going to get you to where you want to be.

If you want to become a great presenter, then you have to become a great reader. In order for this to happen, you need to discover interesting books. The best way to do this is to simply ask other people that you know what they are reading.  The key here is to find a way to filter the unending stream of books that are produced every year into a manageable trickle that you can have a chance of reading.

Other good ways to fette possible books for you to read include seeing movies and then reading the book. I was touched by the movie “Pursuit of Happyness” and just had to follow this up by getting and reading Chris Gardner‘s book that the movie was based on. Wow – the book was much different from the movie, I was very glad that I read it. Another way to pick out the books that you might want to read is to spend some time with the book review section of your local newspaper – this can be a great way to spot stinkers.

Once you’ve created a list of books / authors that you’d like to read in order to have your presentations become inspired, the next thing that you need to do is to get your hands on some books. This is actually quite easy to do, but you’ve got to remember that you’ve got a lot of choices. Remember when you used to go to the library as a kid? Well guess what – the library is still there. When was the last time that you went?

Other sources for books include your local used book store (why pay full price?), the local Borders / Barnes & Nobel, and your on-line friend – Amazon. It really doesn’t matter where you get your books from, just make sure that you get them and that you read them! Your audiences will thank you…

Do you think that you read enough books? Have you ever used some of what you’ve read in one of your presentations? What types of books do you think help your presentations the most? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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The Self-Published Presenter

Monday, February 16th, 2009
A Self-Published Book Offers A Way To Have Your Message Live On After Your Presentation Is Done

A Self-Published Book Offers A Way To Have Your Message Live On After Your Presentation Is Done

As a communicator, you’ve got a lot to say. Getting up in front of an audience is one way to get your message across, but it’s not the only way. We’ve talked a lot about slides, handouts, and summary sheets, but there is one even more powerful tool that you have at your disposal – the self-published book.

The best thing / worst thing about giving a presentation is that when it’s over, it’s over. If your audience got your message, then congratulations you made a difference. However, not everyone gets what you have to say the first time around. Providing your audience with a self-published book is a great way to either prepare them for your presentation before you speak or remind them what you spoke about after you are done.

The world of publishing can get quite complicated very quickly. In order to find our way through this new territory, we should talk with Patricia Fry who is not only an author, but also speaks on publishing topics.

Fry reminds us that there are multiple paths to get to where you want to be. Specifically, there are three different ways that you can get a book published. These include:

  • “Self-Publishing” Companies: These firms will, for a fee, work with you to create a cover, file for an ISBN number, format your manuscript for publishing, and then print on-demand as many copies of your book for you as you request.
  • You Self-Publish: basically this means that you set up your own self-publishing company and make all of the decisions. This requires more time and effort on your part, but it does give you full control over the final product.
  • Traditional Publisher: these are the guys who print all of those books that you see down at your local Borders book store. You provide the manuscript and then they take it from there – you have very little control over the final product.

Writing a book proposal should be your next step. Even if you plan on self-publishing your book, writing a book proposal BEFORE you write your book is a good idea in order to make sure that your book will line up with your target audience. A book proposal is basically a business plan: it discusses who you think will buy your book, what the competition is, and what’s going to make your book special.

If you decide to go the self publishing route, then you need to be prepared for the steps that you are going to have to go through to get your book into the hands of your audience. Once the book has actually been published, you will need to locate and strike a deal with a wholesaler / distributor who deal with the places that your target audience shops for books. This can be as diverse as a Borders or Barns & Noble or maybe even university bookstores.

Since you are self-publishing, it’s going to be your responsibility to contact and talk with each possible outlet in order to get them interested in your book. Once they are interested, then you can have them work with your distributor to get copies of your books.

Self-publishing is a great way to make sure that the message in your presentation lives on well beyond your delivery to your audience. It’s a lot of work, but the rewards make it all worthwhile.

Have you ever been published? How did you get published – did you self-publish? Do you think that you have enough material to write a book about what you talk about? How long do you think that it would take you to write a book? Leave me a comment and let me know what  you are thinking.

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Hey Officer, Book That Presenter…

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
Forget The Police, How About If You Write A Book To Get Your Message Across...

Forget The Police, How About If You Write A Book To Get Your Message Across...

We spend a lot of time talking about how to deliver your message verbally to your audience. However, there’s a lot more to communications than just the spoken word. For your typical do-it-once-and-it’s-over internal business presentation, the actual delivery is enough – do it well and then move on. But what about those presentations that you REALLY care about – the ones in which you’d like to change the world…?

There’s a lot of different ways to make your presentations have a life after you’ve gotten done giving them. Podcasts, videos, etc. are cheap and easy to do these days. However, I think that if you are really trying to get your message across, then the written word is your most powerful tool. That my friend means that you just might have to write a book…

Write a book you say? Not me! I’m no J.K. Rowling or Steven King. Hey, you don’t have to be – you just have to have something interesting to tell your audience and the words will flow out of you.

Neil Chethik is a published author who also works with others to help them get their books published. If you really care about the message that you are trying to communicate, then perhaps we need to spend just a few moments listening to what Neil has to tell us about getting a book published.

If you care enough about your message, then Neil says that there are three things that you need to think about when you are writing things down:

  1. What is going to make your book unique (there are a lot of other books out there!)
  2. What makes you so special that you are the best person to write this book (you are the best person, now figure out why…)
  3. What are you going  to do to make this book appear to have value for the audience of readers that you want to buy or obtain this book?

If you can make sure that your writing answers all three of these questions, then you are getting close having a published book. Once you have poured your heart out onto the (electronic) pages before you, the next step is to get yourself published.

Thankfully, Neil is once again here to help us out. He points out that here in the 21st Century there are a number of ways to get your message/book published. Its actually pretty easy to publish a book yourself. Somewhat tellingly this is called “vanity publishing”. However, let’s spend some time talking about the more difficult road to traditional publishing.

Neil tells us that here’s what you are going to have to do in order to get the attention of a traditional publisher:

  1. Do Some Research: off you go to your local Borders store. Find out where your book, once published, would be displayed. See what’s already there. How would your book be different? Make sure that it would be different!
  2. Propose!: Create a 10-25 page (double spaced) business proposal that tells a prospective publisher why they should publish your book. It’s good to get help on this and the book How to Write a Book Proposal is a good place to start.
  3. Do You Need An Agent?: This one is pretty simple – if you want one of the 25 biggest publishing companies to publish your book, then you need an agent. If you can live with being published by a smaller shop or a university press, then you can just send your book proposal to them directly.
  4. Pick An Agent: book agents get about 15% of anything that you make. Just like when finding a real estate agent, pick carefully.
  5. Personalize It: After you’ve picked the agent that you want, create a personalized letter to include with the manuscript that you are sending to them. It has to make them want to read your manuscript – make it interesting and watch your spelling!
  6. Get A Lawyer!: Because I know that you are going to be successful, please get a lawyer BEFORE you sign any agreement with an agent. You don’t want to get taken to the cleaners here!

Do you think that you could write a book about a topic that you really care about? How long do you think that it would take you to write a book? Would you know how to promote your book once you had written it? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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What Jack Welch’s Speech Writer Can Teach Us

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
Jack Welch's Speech Writer Knows What Made Jack A Great Communicator

Jack Welch's Speech Writer Knows What Made Jack A Great Communicator

So just about everyone out there knows who Jack Welch is – he was the CEO and Chairman of GE who lead them from a market valuation of $14B when he took over to a valuation of over $410B when he stepped aside. What many people may not know is that Jack is a great communicator.

Bill Lane who was Jack Welch’s speech writer for over 20 years while he was at GE has written a book called Jacked Up: The Inside Story of How Jack Welch Talked GE into Becoming the Worlds Greatest Company. In it, Lane spills the beans on just how Welch got to be so good at getting his message across.

Probably the most important lesson that Jack Welch taught his speech writer was that self-confidence was the #1 attribute of a leader. With self-confidence you could go out and do nearly anything that you put your mind to. Now this was truly impressive when you realize that Welch had started out as a guy who both stuttered and was very shy. Needless to say, in the beginning Welch HATED to speak in public.

The speeches that were being given at GE when Welch took over were the standard types of speeches that you hear at any company gathering: boring reports on the success of such and such a team / department / division. One day while coming up with the list of speakers for an internal event, Welch called a stop to everything. He spent a few moments thinking to himself, and then he announced that going forward all speeches would be ones that told people what they ought to be doing.

From that point on in GE, everything was changed. All speeches needed to contain a learning point, a warning to others, some sort of insight, or something useful like a new technique or the speech didn’t get made.

There was an amazing side benefit to this new speech policy. Almost across the board the presenters at these internal events became much better speakers. Why? Probably because they knew that they had something interesting to say. When they knew that the audience was going to be interested in what they had to say, they were filled with self-confidence and this just naturally made them better speakers.

So what does all of this mean to us accidental communicators? Simple, we need to stop giving boring speeches that are simply reports on what we’ve been doing. Instead, we need to look inside ourselves and discover what our audiences really want to hear about.

Keep in mind, what people want to hear most is your stories. The stories that tell them what you know, what you have done, what you have see, and what they might find useful in someway. Not only are your stories interesting to them, but hearing a story also helps people to remember and retain what you have told them. Instead of having your message go in one ear and out the next, now it will actually stick!

Lane makes one final point in his book: Jack Welch always insisted that speakers give their audience the very best of their thinking. If you can do this, then your audience will respond by taking your message to heart.

When you get up to give a speech, do you feel as though you are filled with self-confidence? How does this impact the quality of the speech that you are giving? Do you talk about things that you’ve learned or are you just giving reports to your audience? What could you do differently to make more of an impact? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in connecting with your audience | 2 Comments »

The Presenter’s Dilemma: 5 Ways To Make Your Training Stick

Monday, February 2nd, 2009
Presenters Need To Take Action In Order To Prevent Their Training From Slipping Away

Presenters Need To Take Action In Order To Prevent Their Training From Slipping Away

Ok, so it’s time to talk about an ugly little secret that nobody who does presentations really like to talk about. What’s the secret? Most of the time what we tell our audience goes in one ear and out the other. It just doesn’t stick.

In fact, if you are presenting training or a new way of doing business to an audience, some studies have shown that only 10% – 40% of what you tell your audience will ever be used by them on the job. Ouch! What are we doing wrong?

Dr. Harry Martin teaches at Cleveland State University in (of course) Cleveland. He is an expert in both management and labor relations. He’s got some thoughts on what is going wrong here…

Take heart – it’s probably not all about you. When we try to train our audiences, we are really talking about having them change their lives. Change has the unfortunate side effect of creating anxiety in our audience and they will actively seek to avoid change at almost any cost. So is this a losing game?

Good news – the answer is no. However, you’ve got to start doing some additional work. You need to make sure that a workplace environment that will actively encourage your audience to continue to change is set up and exists long after your presentation is over. In a nutshell, this means that the training can’t end when your audience walks out the door. So what’s the trick to doing this?

It turns out that there are five simple things that you can either do during your presentation or cause to occur after your presentation is over that will dramatically boost the use of the information that you delivered:

  • Write It Down!: Everyone should recognize this one from all of those goal setting / time management programs that we’re always studying – just getting your audience to write an action plan on how they are going to use what you’ve covered makes it more likely that they’ll do it.
  • This Will Be On The Test: If you tell your audience that they are going to be tested on the material that you’ll be talking about, then they are much more likely to use what you are talking about. The test doesn’t have to be a written test, it can be as simple as having them observed and given feedback on their performance. I like it best when the audience is measured before your presentation and then two times afterwords – this always seem to produce the greatest results.
  • Peer Pressure Is Good: It turns out that having your audience get back together in “peer meetings” is a great way to have them self-motivate to use what you’ve taught them. What’s even more interesting is that this works even better when your audience’s management is only lukewarm in their support for your message.
  • Boosting Bosses: Having managers who are both supportive and actively involved does a lot to increase the odds that your audience will retain and use what you’ve taught them. This, of course, means that you are going to need to make sure that the bosses are involved in your training.
  • Ask The Expert: Finally, having the ability to reach out and ask an expert for help in solving a sticky issue or resolving a problem goes a long way in helping your audience use what you’ve told them. More often than not, you are the expert – make sure that you make arrangements so that you can be contacted after your presentation is over and done with.

When you’ve been to a training class, did you feel as though you were able to apply what you had been taught? What helped / stopped you from applying your new knowledge? What would have made it easier for you to do more with what you had learned? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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