When Is Too Little Information On A PowerPoint Slide A Problem?

Hopefully by now everyone at least knows that you can seriously damage your audience if you create and use poorly designed PowerPoint slides. The number one offence that everyone seems to be able to agree on is that a slide that has been overloaded with text and numbers (a) doesn’t work, and (b) puts your audience to sleep. Good news - this problem has been solved!

Olivia Mitchell who is a speaking coach out of New Zealand (was there ever a “Zealand”?) discovered a blog posting by Laura Bergells in which she laments the current state of PowerPoint presentations as we move into 2009.

Laura’s main point is that most people have gotten the message that too much information is a bad thing. However, she objects to the way that we are currently solving it - by removing basically all of the information from our PowerPoint slides and replacing it with pretty pictures.

She’s got a good point - I’ve started doing this over the past year or so. However, in my own defense, I only started doing it because I saw that Steve Jobs was doing it and everyone was just raving about his presentations.

I sorta don’t have the heart to tell Laura that it’s probably going to get worse (in her opinion) before it gets better. A new presentation format in which you only get twenty slides and can show each one for “only” twenty seconds (for a total of 6 minutes 40 seconds) is catching on. This presentation style is called Pecha Kucha, and was started by two architects in Tokyo as part of a designers’ show and tell.

So what’s a presenter to do? First off, I think that we all need to sit down and have a quick reality check. Why do we give presentations? These are actually pretty poor ways of teaching new material. Adults learn in all sorts of different ways and listening to spoken words (and looking at PowerPoint slides) doesn’t do it for most of your audience (especially the younger ones raised on multimedia).

What this means is that you’ve got to decide why you are REALLY there. The list is pretty short - convince the audience that your view is correct, get them to agree to take some action, educate them on some new piece of information, or simply to amuse them.

Keeping the “back to basics” concept in mind, we should remember that PowerPoint slides don’t deliver the presentation by themselves. Instead, their whole reason for being is to help the presenter. It’s when we rely on our slides too much that we start to lose our audience.

So can you use a slide that has a lot (but not too much) information on it? The answer is YES. However, you can’t spend too much time on it and your certainly can’t read the contents of the slide off to your audience. Remember, the slide is a tool, not the presentation itself.

As we enter 2009, what should the ideal PowerPoint presentation look like? In a nutshell, it should look like it was designed to support the words that are being spoken. This will involve a lot of visual imagery (”pretty pictures”) and SOME detailed slides if they are needed.

It’s how the detailed slides are used that will differ from presentations of old. Show the detailed slide, make your point in an unhurried manner, and then move on. Additional information can be provided on your web site, in handouts, or in pod-casts that your audience can use to learn more AFTER your presentation. Welcome to 2009!

Have you gone to the minimalist approach in your presentations or are you still using a lot of words and bullets? What do you think of presentations that you sit through that only use pretty pictures and few words? Do you remember more or less from these presentations? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Technorati Tags: audience, content, Pecha Kucha, PowePoint, presentation, presenter, slides, speech

Presenters Use Acting Tips To Keep Their Presentations From Becoming Boring

Previously we had discussed the fact that any presentation that you give is really sort of like a one person show - if you know how to act, then you’ll be more effective.

The challenge, of course, is that very few of us have been trained to be an actor. Additionally, we tend to think of actors as being “over the top” types of performers (sorta like Heath Leger in that Batman movie).  The truth is actually much different - acting is simply knowing what to say or how to move in order to influence your audience in some way. We’d all like to be able to do that, right?

Here are five acting tips that you can start using in order to improve your next presentation.

Speak In The Moment: In order to make your presentation more powerful, you need to fine tune it to your audience and their current mood. Great actors don’t just memorize their lines, they “stay in the moment” and are constantly reacting to what’s going on in their scene. You need to be constantly reacting to your audience’s feedback and using this to modify how you present your information.

Keep It Fresh: There is the old saying that “variety is the spice of life”. This is especially true when it comes to presentations. Anything that you do for too long will start to bore your audience. Today’s audiences have very short attention spans and you need to be constantly changing your presentation in order to keep them engaged. Ways to change your presentation include emphasis, movement, volume, energy level or material being presented.

Risky Business: If you are not taking any risks in your presentations, then you are not providing a dynamic presentation - it’s going to be the same every time and that’s boring. Trying out new things, interacting with audience members, these are all things that carry an element of risk. Risk keeps things interesting for both you and your audience.

Don’t Be Afraid Of Commitment: When you decide to add some acting to your presentation, do it full throttle. The worst thing that you can do is go at it half speed. It’s your passion and your commitment that will win your audience over in the end.

Concentration Is The Key To Relaxation: If you aren’t careful and you let your mind wander, then you will end up focusing on just how nervous you are. Do what actors do: focus your mind on how you have prepared, the words that you want to say, and your audience - basically anything but your nerves.

There you have it, all of the tips that you need in order to start using the skills that actors use in your next presentation. I can’t promise that you’ll bring home a golden globe award, but the greatest complement will be if your audience can’t wait to see your next show!

How do you vary your speech to keep it interesting for both you and your audience? When was the last time that you took a risk with a presentation? What risk did you take? How do you work to relax before starting a presentation? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Technorati Tags: acting, audience, body language, boring, communication skills, presentation, presenter, public speaking, tone, training, voice

Don't Scare Your Audience, But Do Use Acting To Capture Their Imagination

When you are asked to deliver a presentation, one way of looking at this request is that you are actually being asked to put on a one-person show. No matter if you are presenting at a college graduation or are simply reviewing last quarter’s sales figures, you are an actor who is there to put on a show for your audience. Do you know how to act?

Ed Brodow is a professional speaker who has also spent 12 years as a Hollywood actor. Needless to say, he know his stuff. He points out that the actors that we like to watch on the big screen or on TV were not born that way. They’ve studied their craft and that’s how they have become so good.

Brodow has worked with a number of acting coaches and he’s discovered the acting skills that speakers need to incorporate into our presentations in order to make them more memorable. No, you’re probably not going to win any Academy Awards for you next presentation; however, you might just do a better job of connecting with your audience.

Learn To Improvise: If you’ve delivered your presentation before or if you’ve spent the last month preparing for this presentation, then there is a chance that you are going to come across as “wooden” or “scripted”. Having the ability to improvise, or make it up as you go along, is the key to making your presentation fresh and making the audience feel as though you make it up just for them.

Stories That Are Personal: We’ve talked about this before, but what makes any presentation memoriable are your stories. Brodow reveals that the way an actor prepares for a scene with powerful emotions is to think back over their life and find a situation in which they were experiencing those emotions. They then substitute the scene that they are playing for their remembered scene and that’s how they are able to convey such powerful emotions.

When you are presenting, don’t just TELL a story. Instead, FEEL a story as you tell it. You audience will pick up on this and your stories will come alive for them.

What’s Your Drive?: This is one of my biggest complaints about so many presentations that I’ve sat though - the speaker didn’t have a point to make. When  you present you need to have a single point - what are you advocating that the audience should do after you are done? How are you hoping to change them? If you don’t have this, then you are just delivering a book report. Pick your position and then tell you audience why it’s the right positon for them also.

Be An Actor: Look, real life is rather boring - we see / live it every day. When you are presenting, you need to step-it-up-a-notch. You need to throw some drama into your words. You need to make your audience laugh. You need to stop being yourself and become an actor playing a role. Become larger than life and you will be able to put on a heck of a show for your audience.

Manage Your Energy: You are leading the show and so you need to be operating at a high level of energy. However, you also need to match you audience’s energy level - if they are to low (like if you were talking to bankers these days) and you are too high, then you’ll never connect to them. Instead, you need to sense their energy level and then start your presentation at an energy level that is just a bit higher then theirs. This way you’ll connect with them and they’ll follow you to whatever energy level you want to take them to.

There you go - this is a start. Anyone can stand before a group of people and deliver a boring presentation. In order to deliver a great presentation that will have an impact and will be memorable you need to become an actor!

When you’ve given a presentation in the past, have you ever had to improvise? Do you tell stories as a part of your presentations and do you take the extra time to personalize them? How do you become “larger than life” when you are giving a presentation? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Technorati Tags: acting, actor, audience, energy, energy level, improvisation, improvise, presentation, presenter, public speaking, purpose

Creating A Keynote For A Graduation Dinner Required Careful Planning

Tis the season for college graduations and I was recently asked to deliver a keynote speech as part of an engineering graduation ceremony. The interesting thing about this speaking opportunity was that I was basically starting from ground zero - I didn’t have an engineering keynote speech in my bag of tricks. This meant that I needed to build one from the floor up quickly - they asked me just a week before the big day.

As I was pulling together my keynote, it dawned on me that lots of presenters often find themselves in a similar situation and may not know how to go about creating a keynote speech that will fit the occasion. In an effort to fill this knowledge gap, I’m going to share with you the steps that I went though to build my keynote speech and, because I delivered it last night, I can also give you some feedback on what worked and what didn’t.

1. Always Start With Your Audience: I followed this rule! I realized that I was going to be talking to a group of graduating engineering students, some of their parents, their professors, and various other people (dates, administrators, etc.). This gave me a fairly homogeneous group and that meant that I needed to work “engineering” content into my speech so that they would feel as though I was talking directly to them.
2. Start At The End: What’s the purpose of a keynote? You probably aren’t going to change any lives so you had better make sure that you don’t try to. In my case, I decided that I had two goals: to entertain and to provide motivation for the graduates to succeed as they moved forward (”We know that you can do it”).
3. Content Is King: So what to say? Since I knew that I was not going to be changing any lives with my speech, I decided to focus on two things: funny stories that have happened to me during my career and a discussion about what things the graduates needed to be aware of in order to have a great career. I mixed in several references to paying off student loans (everyone has those), homework (all engineers have too much of that), and dealing with professors. These were common elements that everyone could relate to.
4. Watch The Clock!: Early on I asked how much time I had for my keynote. I was told that 20 minutes would be perfect. It turned out that this was very important - I shaped my entire speech to fit in this time. It is instant death to the speaker who goes on too long especially in an after-dinner speaking situation like this was. People speak at about 150 words/minute and since I was going to be speaking for 20 minutes I knew that I had to limit myself to about 3,000 words which meant that I needed to…
5. Write It Out!: There is some controversy to this point, but here goes it anyway: I wrote my speech out from start to finish. There were two reasons that I did this. The first was to make sure that I could fit my speech into the 20 minute window - my written speech needed to be no more than 3,000 words long. The next was because I could remember reading somewhere that if you want to deliver a memorable speech, then you need to get your wording just perfect (”I have a nice thought” vs. “I have a dream”). In order to do this you need to write the speech out word for word. So I did it. Then I proceeded to revise it 1,000,000 times.
6. Memorize It!: So if you are never supposed to write out your speech, then of course you should never memorize it! However, that is basically exactly what I ended up doing. I practiced my speech over and over reading it as it was written. After about 5 times of doing this, I was able to spend more time looking at my (pretend) audience than looking at my written speech. Did I ever completely memorize my speech, no. I did get it stuck in my brain well enough so that I really only used my written out speech as an occasional reminder. This mean that I spent most of the speech making eye contact with my audience.
7. Use BIG Print: For the version of my written out speech that I had before me when I was delivering the speech, I made some changes to the written out speech. I increased the font size to a nice, easy to read 16 point Arial. I then turned every sentence into its own bullet point. Needless to say this resulted in a longer printed speech - it was 13 pages long in its final form! Oh, make sure that you put PAGE NUMBERS on each page of your printed speech - you just know that you’ll drop the whole thing as you walk to the podium!
8. A Highlighter Is Your Friend: As I read over my 13 pages of bulleted sentences, I found it difficult to keep my place. I ended up using a highlighter to highlight the one or two words in each sentence that were the key idea. This allowed my eyes to dance from highlighted word to highlighted word and that helped me to keep my place better.
9. PowerPoint Can Be Your Friend: I’m really good looking, but 20 minutes is a long time for an audience to spend staring at me. Since PowerPoint slides were already being used as a part of the graduation dinner, I decided to create some to use as part of my keynote. I ended up creating just 10 slides and none of them contained any words - each just contained a single photo. As I delivered my speech, I had written out [man with truck slide] and so I knew when to move to the next slide. Each slide reflected what I was talking about at the time in my speech so the two media, spoken word and displayed image, helped each other. Oh, and I have a Kensington wireless remote control device that I used to automatically advance to the next slide - much smoother than having to run over and hit the space bar (or say “next!”)
10. Have A Good Ending: Ultimately, this is what will stick in everyone’s memory. I took some extra time and carefully worded my last few sentences so that everyone would feel a warm glow of congratulations for the graduates and they would feel as though they had been recognized for their achievements.

So how did it all turn out? I’d give myself a score of 90/100. The PowerPoint pictures that I used were very well received (here is one with a guy and a truck so you can see what they were laughing at) and so I probably should have used more of them. I explained how Milton Bradly’s “The Game of Life” had good lessons for all of us and that went over fairly flat (not enough laughs). I would make changes if I ever gave this speech again, but I received lots of compliments. Making a speech to engineers interesting AND funny is no simple task!

Have you ever been asked to give a keynote speech? How did you go about creating your content? Did you write your speech out or just speak from notes? Did you use any visuals? How did your speech turn out? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Technorati Tags: audience, communication skills, keynote, PowerPoint, presentation, presenter, speaker, speech, speech topics, speech writing

Saying The Wrong Thing During A Presentation Can Ruin A Good Speech

I’m sure that none of you would ever screw-up and make a verbal blunder during a presentation, right? There is an AT&T ad running right now that captures this concept - a guy has just told an office about an upcoming merger when he really was supposed to have not mentioned it (mayhem ensues). When giving a presentation, your best opportunity for a verbal blunder generally comes during the Q&A session. Here are some thoughts on how to cure yourself of foot-in-mouth disease…

During the recently concluded U.S. presidential race, both candidates were accomplished presenters. However, over and over again both sides said things that I’m sure they both really wished that they could take back. However, once said, your comments are what your audience will remember for better or for worse.

Experts at public speaking all agree on one thing: you can control what you say. Paul Sterman has done some research on this topic and has identified three things that you can do to prevent verbal blunders:

1. Think Before You Speak: It sounds like something your parents would tell you, but it really is that simple. We seem to get into the most trouble when we fire off our mouth without taking a moment to think about what we are going to say.
2. Practice, Practice, Practice: Even in a Q&A session, there is no reason for you to have not practiced responding to the questions that you knew were going to be asked. Remember: practice makes perfect.
3. Get Some Sleep: We end up saying the silliest things when we have not gotten enough sleep. Keep your mind sharp by making sure that you are well rested before giving any presentation.

When you are faced with a situation where you will be speaking extemporaneously, such as a Q&A session or when answering questions from employees, preparation is the key to not making a mistake that you might regret later on. Professional comedians are the ones who are best known for the practice that they put into making spur-of-the-moment statements seem to be not practiced. You want to be able to do the same.

Thinking through the questions that you might be asked and then creating a set of “talking points” that you would use to respond to such questions is the key to preventing a verbal stumble. Your goal is to create “sound bites” that people will remember just like politicians do.

Finally, although it may seem like you need to reply immediately when someone asks you a question during a presentation, there is no rule that says that you have to. You are in charge of how and when you respond to each question asked. Take a moment, think about what the person is really asking, and then provide them with an appropriate answer.

Of course the old saying that the more you do something, the better you get at it is also true here. Instead of fearing speaking opportunities where you might stumble over your words, instead view it as a learning opportunity that will make you stronger for the times that you really need to be at your best.

Have you ever been speaking and slipped up and said something that you regretted? How did you deal with the after effects of what you said? Have you done anything differently since then to prevent future slip-ups? Has that worked out for you? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Technorati Tags: audience, practice, presentation, public speaking, Q&A, sound bites, talking points, verbal blunder

Becoming A Professional Speaker Requires A Great Speech And Business Skills

Not everyone dreams of becoming a paid presenter; however, as we labor over a speech we have all had that thought that started something like “I am NOT being paid enough for all that I do”. Considering how many people are terrified of public speaking, if you can do it and do it well, why not give some thought to “turning pro”?

One note of caution before we start this discussion: it’s been said that in the world of professional speakers, 1% of the speakers make 99% of the money. What that really means is that it’s not just enough to be able to speak in public, but rather you also need to have good business sense.

Jane Atkinson has spent two decades working in the professional speaking business and she knows a thing or two about what it takes to be successful as a pro. Here’s are a few suggestions that she has for those who are considering trying to make some cash from this speaking thing:

• Where Will The Money Come From? If you want to speak professionally, you are going to need to get paid. The key here is to find out who will be willing to pay you for your speech. You need to have unique information or a unique style that is going to help someone solve a problem. Once you know what problem you can solve, you need to find out who has that problem.
• Move From Free To Fee: Everyone would like to get paid for every speech that they give from day 1, but life doesn’t work that way. Instead, what you need to do is to start your professional speaking career by giving free speeches and then the paid gigs will follow.
• I.T.S.S.: It’s the speech, stupid! At the end of the day, it’s your speech that people will be paying to hear. It’s got to be the very best speech that you can give. What this means is that you’ve got to create the speech and then refine, refine, and refine it again.
• Well, Aren’t You Special: If you expect people to pay to hear you speak, then you had better come up with a bio that paints you as being a special person. Your bio should clearly state why anyone would want to hire you.
• Learn From The Pros: If you want to be a professional speaker, then you need to start spending time hanging out with other professional speakers. You will learn the most from those who are currently making a living speaking professionally.
• Mind Your Business: Although the speaking part is what people are buying, it’s really a small business that you are running. This means that you need to be taking care of sales, marketing, accounting, etc. Lots of speakers are great speakers but end up failing because they forget to run the business.

Have you ever thought about speaking professionally? Do you know what topic you would speak on? Do you spend time with professional speakers? What have they taught you about the business? What do you think I left off of my list? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Technorati Tags: audience, keynote, presentation, presentations, presenter, professional speaker, speaker, speech topics, topic

Senator Daniel Webster Became A Great Presenter Just Like You Can

So why do you care about how good of a presenter you are? Hey, if you’ve been able to keep from bursting into flames when you address a staff meeting, a department, or even bigger gatherings then haven’t you really done enough? For many people, the answer to this question is “yes”. And they just leave it at that. But, how about you - are you content to be just “ok”. Or would you like to be just a little bit better than everyone else out there?

No matter how well you’ve done in the rest of your life, how much money you’ve made, how far you’ve risen in your career, or how ever else you choose to measure success by, you can become a great presenter. The only thing that is holding you back is your desire to become better. If you are willing to make the commitment, then you will have made the first step toward presenting greatness.

I hate to say it, but you know what you need to do - you’ve got to tell someone that you want to become a great presenter. Yeah, yeah, this can be horribly embarrassing - they might think that it’s silly and what if you fail?

However, this is a journey that you are starting on and it can become easy to lose your way or to become disheartned after a presentation doesn’t go the way that you wanted it to. Having told someonw what you are trying to do means that you’ve made a public commitment and so you are much more likely to stick to it.

So now we move on to the next step: where to look for ways to improve our presenting skills. I’m hoping that I don’t have to remind you that Toastmasters is an orgainzation that you really need to join. Keep in mind that there are a lot of really good presenters out there that we can study from.

There are more books, CDs, DVDs, classes, webinars, etc. than you can shake a stick at just waiting for you to show some interest. Additionally, history has shown us who the great presenters were: Woodrow Wilson, Senator Daniel Webster, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, etc. Their words and even thier speeches have been recorded and are available for you to study. Learn, learn, learn!

I’m almost done, but the one final though that I’d like to leave you with is to realize that you are sitting on a gold mine of personal stories that can help you move your presentations from good to great. As you improve your technique for delivering presentations, you also need to improve the content of what you are presenting.

This means that you need to make it more interesting. The one thing that grabs everyone’s attention no matter what the topic that you are presenting on, is personal stories. These are stories that we’ve not heard before and so we want to know more.

No matter how boring you may think that your life has been, to others it will be a source of endless fascination. Write down the stories that make up your life and then start to study how they can be worked into your presentations. You’ll soon go from good to great!

Do you have someone that you could confide in that you are going to work on becoming a better presetner? Do you have a favorite public speaker that you think that you could learn from? Is there any historiacle figure that really impresses you with their ability to present? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Technorati Tags: audience, communication skills, Daniel Webster, presentation, presentations, presenter, public speaker, public speaking, Toastmasters

"Technical" And "Interesting" Can Both Be Parts Of The Same Presentation

So who among us ever really looks forward to sitting through a technical presentation? Collectively we’ve all sat through so many of these things that we almost defensively shut down before the speaker even has a chance to get started.

So when it’s our turn to talk about things that contain lots of financial details, construction details, manufacturing details, procedure details, etc. it’s quite common for our blood to run cold because we realize that now the shoe is on the other foot - we are going to be the ones who are boring the audience!

Why are these types of presentations so hard to do? In all honesty, the problem really lies with the presenter, not the audience. Specifically what they all seem to be doing wrong is that they’ve made the mistake of thinking that they are just having a talk with coworkers: they show up to share information. Big mistake.

Nobody ever shows up for a presentation hoping to have the presenter share information with them. Instead, they are showing up so that the presenter can tell them what they need to do. They may not agree with what they are being told to do, but that is what they are looking for.

What this means for the presenter is that he/she needs to understand that the goal of the presentation is for action to be taken by the audience based on the information that was in the presentation. It really is that simple!

Professional speaker Anne Warfield has come up with three ways to make your next technical presentation even more riveting (and I’ve added a suggestion of my own). Let’s take a look and see what you need to do in order to keep your audience on the edge of their seats next time you talk technical:

1. What’s The Next Step?: When you are creating your technical presentation, you need to start at the end. Once you are done with your presentation, what action do you want your audience to take or what conclusion do you want them to have reached? If you don’t have a clear understanding of this, then you’ll end up filling your presentation with a discussion about HOW you reached your results and that is what everyone will end up talking about.
2. What Question Do You Need To Answer?: If you’ve been able figure out what action you want your audience to take once you are done, then the next step is to understand what questions or objections might be preventing them from taking that next step either right now or after you are done. This is the question (or questions) that your presentation needs to provide answers to.
3. Make It Real: The technical topic that you are talking about may or may not be familiar to all  of your audience. If you can “map” it to something that they are all familiar with, then all of a sudden the audience’s comprehension of what you are talking about will go up dramatically.
4. Match Your Audience: The amount of technical detail in your speech and your use of technical terms and acronyms needs to be matched to your audience. If you assume to little, then they will quickly become bored by your too basic discussion. If you assume too much, then they will become lost in a sea of terms that they don’t recognize. Get it right and you’ll be connected to your audience from the get go.

Your next technical presentation does not have to be dry and boring. Use these tips BEFORE you give the presentation in order to ensure that your presentation will be riveting and talked about long after you are done.

Would you consider your last technical presentation a success or a failure? Had you taken the time to determine what you wanted your audience to do afterwards? Did people fall asleep or end up peppering you with nitty-gritty questions? Do you feel that you talked to your audience on the right level? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Technorati Tags: audience, boring, communication skills, presentation, presentations, purpose, questions, technical detial, technical presentation, technical topic

To Improve Your Presentations You Need A BAG And SMART Goals

So you’ve given a few presentations (or maybe you’ve give a lot of ‘em). You feel relatively comfortable when you stand in front of a group of people and talk. You may not really like doing this, but you are reasonably sure that you are not going to faint or burst into flames while you are doing it. What’s next? The key to getting better at giving presentation is to dig deep down inside of yourself and find the answer to one very important question: just what are you trying to accomplish?

The answer to this question can be any one of a whole bunch of things. These include acceptance by your peers, more money, a promotion, admiration, or even simply to be seen as being successful by others. There is no wrong answer here - you get to choose what will motivate you to become a better public speaker. Now it’s time to BAG it. Yep, we’re talking about crystallizing what drives you and using that to create a Big Audacious Goal (BAG). This is some big presentation goal that you have not yet achieved but that if you became better you could. This BAG goal will serve as a constant reminder as to what you are trying to improve towards with your presentation skills.

If your BAG is where you are trying to get to, then it’s time to come up with a way to get there. You may have heard this before but one of the best ways to make measurable progress towards an objective is to set SMART goals for yourself. What does S.M.A.R.T. stand for you ask? Why that must be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-lined. Perhaps a bit of an explanation is required:

• Specific: You need to be very clear on exactly what you want to accomplish. “I want to be a better presenter” is too vague. “I want to give 5 more presentations” is very specific.
• Measurable: Business loves metrics these days and so do your goals. How are you going to track your progress? If you want to give 5 presentations, then you need to track how many you are giving each month. If a month goes by and you have not presented, then you are falling behind.
• Attainable: I call this the Tony Robbins syndrome. If you set a goal to be as good/successful as Tony Robbins, then you are probably going to fail (how many Tony Robbins does the world really need?). However, if you set a goal to be the best presenter in your department, then you just might be able to do this.
• Realistic: Once again, let’s keep your goals real. If you want to get paid $1M to give speeches to your company, then perhaps you should create a more realistic goal.
• Time-Lined: What do you need to accomplish by when in order to make this goal a reality?

There you go - with a BAG and SMART goals you now have the ability to become the presenter that you always dreamed that you could be!

Have you ever created a BAG for yourself? Are you still working towards it? Have you set SMART goals to reach this BAG? Were you able to stay with those goals? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Technorati Tags: audience, BAG, goals, presentation, presentations, presenter, public speaking, SMART, Tony Robbins, training

Presenting On TV Requires 4 New Public Speaking Skills

Perhaps you have managed to overcome your fear of speaking to groups of people. Maybe you even have developed ways to deal with difficult questions and keep a presentation on track no matter what happens while you are speaking. However, are you ready to take your skills to that ultimate broadcast medium - television? Probably not, because there the rules are all different. It turns out that there are four simple things that you can do to make sure that you shine on the “boob tube”.

Jo Jo Harder is a fashion designer who found herself being asked to appear on television shows after she started her “America’s Top Dog Model” contest. Talk about being unprepared! Through her struggles and learning she has come up with four top tips for how a presenter should prepare to appear on television. Here they are:

1. Know Your Subject & Be Prepared To Talk About It: So this sounds sort of silly, but in the end it’s really the reason that you are on television in the first place - you are the expert. One thing that you need to understand about television is that it’s all about time management: you need to speak in short, crisp statements that leave an impression. Your time on camera will be very short and knowing your stuff will help you to make the most of it. I’m hoping that it goes without saying that you should spend some serious time practicing answering probable questions.
2. Study Your Customer - The TV Show: Even if you’ve never seen the show that you are going to be appearing on before, you had better spend some time coming up to speed on it. You need to know the names of the hosts, the name of the show’s producer, and of course the basic format of the show. You need to know EVERYTHING that you can find out about the show including what time of day it is on, how long it’s been on the air, where taping is going to be taking place. Of course, you also need to know WHAT you are expected to be talking about and just how long you will be expected to be speaking.
3. Looks Count (A Lot!): No matter what your mom told when you were growing up, on TV looks really do count for a lot. It’s not so much about your looks (you look maaavvolous darling), but rather it’s all about the clothes that you choose to wear. What you want to wear are bright, rich colors. What Harder recommends that we stay away from are white, ivory, and pastels with the exception of women’s blouses and men’s shirts worn under a jacket. Hopefully it goes without saying that EVERYONE needs to stay from bold prints, plaids, and check patterns. If you show up early enough and have a pleasant personality, you just might be able to get some attention from the show’s makeup artist. This can be critical because without some help, we all have a bad habit of looking “washed out” under bright lights. Now just make sure that you’ve combed the hair and trimmed the nails and you should be good to go!
4. Maintain Your Cool: Remember that television is all about ratings and so the show is having you on in order to try to boost their ratings. That means that anything can happen (”That’s interesting, but let me now introduce your long lost father…!”). Sit with your hands in your lap, your feet crossed away from the camera and look into the eyes of the person who is interviewing you. Smile as much as you can without seeming too weird. Help the show to manage its time by keeping your answers short and to the point. Always be prepared for the host to do something unusual and keep your cool at all times.

So what do you think about this list? Is there anything on the list that you don’t think is important? What should be added to the list? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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