Posts Tagged ‘presentation skills’

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Personal Information: How Much Should A Presenter Reveal?

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

Speakers Can Sometimes Share Too Much Personal InformationHave you ever sat through a dry an boring speech? Of course you have, we all have. Did you spend any time trying to figure out why the speech was so dry? I’m going to bet that at least one of the reasons is that the speaker didn’t connect with the presenter – the speech content itself was impersonal. Did you know that it’s possible for a speaker to go too far in the other direction also?

A Speech That Nobody Wants To Hear

Once upon a time I had the misfortune to attend a speech that was being given by a presenter who had been married four times. Now the fact that he had been married so many times was no big deal, but the speech was on how to choose the correct investment plan for a 401k. During the speech, the speaker must have “revealed” aspects about his four different marriages at least 30 times. To this day I really couldn’t tell you anything about the different funds that one could use as part of their 401k plan, but I can vividly recall aspects of each of this guy’s marriages. This was a clear case of TMI: too-much-information. No the speech wasn’t boring, but the amount of personal information that was being shared overpowered the message. There’s got to be a balance.

So Where Do You Draw The Line?

All of us desperately want to avoid giving boring speeches. However, we also want to make sure that our speeches have an impact – and if we’re sharing too much personal information this isn’t going to happen. Here are some tips on how to draw the line between too much and too little personal information correctly:

  • Match Your Speech Type: certain types of speeches naturally lend themselves more readily to having personal information included in them. Speeches in which you are trying to persuade or entertain your audience are great vehicles for more personal information. Speeches to inform are not.
  • Match Your Audience: Who is in your audience (and why are they there)? If you have a business audience who are looking for ways to keep their business afloat during a severe economic downturn, then your childhood stories are not going to be appropriate. However, if your are speaking to a Garden Club filled with mothers, then perhaps a childhood story might be the perfect way to establish rapport.
  • Stay On Topic: Sharing personal information just because it makes a great story (like my 401k presenter did) is a bad idea. You need to make sure that the story ties in with what your speech is all about. If it doesn’t, then skip it.
  • Listen To Your Audience: In the end, it all comes down to what your audience wants to hear. If, while you are giving your speech, you start to detect that your audience is not staying with you, then cut back on the personal information and instead focus on your core content.

Final Thoughts

This is one of those tough areas where you are going to have to rely on your speaker’s judgement. Sometimes you’ll get it right and sometimes you might be off the mark and include either too little or too much personal information in one of your speeches. However, keep at it and refine each speech the next time you give it. In the end, you’ll know how much personal information to include in order to be able to intimately connect with your audience and make an lasting impact in their lives.

Questions For You

When was the last time you sat through a boring speech? Why was it boring? Would it have been better if the speaker included more personal information? Have you ever attended a speech where too much personal information was shared? How did that make you feel? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking. Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If there is one thing that presenters dread more than forgetting their lines, it’s having someone add to their speech without an invitation. What should you do when someone in the audience starts to deliberately take away from your carefully rehearsed speech? Start crying and go home is always a possibility; however, I’ve got some better ways to deal with this situation for you…

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Posted in stories | 7 Comments »

Dennis Quaid Gives A Keynote Speech – Real Life Speeches

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
Dennis Quaid Gave A Keynote Speech That Missed The Mark

Dennis Quaid Gave A Keynote Speech That Missed The Mark

I just got back from spending the better part of a week up in Chicago at a big health care conference (HIMSS09). This was an amazing opportunity for me to sit back and watch somewhere in the neighborhood of about 100 different presenters get up and do their very best job at communicating. One of these presenters was Dennis Quaid – the actor.

What was Dennis Quaid doing at a fairly boring health care IT conference you ask? Well it turns out that he has a heck of a story to tell about how his newborn children were given the wrong medicine. Everyone attending the conference knew about the story, and so roughly 15,000 – 20,000 folks showed up to hear Dennis give his speech.

So how did it go? Well, in all honesty, not that well. I mean, it was ok – but not what everyone was really hoping for. Generally when you show up for a keynote speech, you are expecting a great speech. When the speaker is a famous actor, your expectations are that much higher. Things didn’t start as well as you would have hoped that they would have.

Dennis was introduced by a slick video that reminded the audience of all of the movies that he has been in. He then came out and took control of the podium. This is where things started to fall apart. His first few statements dealt with how he’s not really a doctor and how he really has never played a role in the health care industry. These are all true things, but what a lousy way to start a speech to folks who ARE in the health care industry!

Add to this a great deal of hemming and hawing, playing with his hands, and just all around nervousness and you end up with a speaker who is distracting his audience away from what is a very powerful message. So what was going on here?

I’ll never know the exact answer, but here are a few guesses. Dennis Quaid is an actor. He sure seems to do a great job of performing for a camera – in front a film crew of about 40 people or so. Put him in front of 20,000 folks sitting in chairs in a massive convention hall and he may feel the same way that any one of us would feel – incredibly nervous.

One other contributing factor may have been that the story that he was there to tell was a VERY personal story. It’s entirely possible that each time he tells it, the emotions that the story stirs up in him causes him to fall apart.

No matter what the cause, the effect was the same – a less than expected speech. Us mere mortals can learn much from Dennis Quaid’s challenges. First, practice, practice, practice – no matter how good you think you are, everyone is going to be able to tell if you try to “wing it”. Secondly, practice in front of people that you know – their feedback can tell you things that you can’t see yourself.

Questions For You

Have you ever seen a famous person give a speech? How did they do? What do you think that they could have done better? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Just in case you’ve forgotten it, the #1 question on the minds of any audience that is seated and waiting for you to begin talking to them is “Why should I even bother listening to you?“. This means that in order for you to have any hope of making an impact on this  audience, you’re going to have to answer this question right off the bat. But how…?

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Posted in keynote | 7 Comments »

Business Stories: Out Of Place Or On Target?

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
Stories Can Be A Powerful Part Of Any Business Presentation

Stories Can Be A Powerful Part Of Any Business Presentation

One question that I keep getting asked over and over by speakers that I am working with is if storytelling is such a powerful communication tool, then why isn’t it used more in business settings? It’s a good question, but the answer is a little bit complicated.

Where Did All The Stories Go?

I can’t tell you how many business presentations I’ve sat though that at the end I couldn’t have told you what was talked about if my life depended on it. It’s not that the speaker was necessarily bad, it’s just that nothing that they said caught my imagination and so nothing stuck.

This is where stories come in – people remember stories long after you get done talking. We remember them because it’s a fundamental way that humans have exchanged information for as long as we’ve been around.

For some reason, people have decided that stories don’t have a place in the environment of business – perhaps they don’t think that they are “grown up” enough and that facts and figures should only be used. This is completely wrong.

What Is The Value Of A Business Story?

Dr. Caren Neile has been looking into the use of stories in the workplace and she reports that Makingstories.net president Terrence Gargiulo has identified 9 key values to using a story in a business presentation:

  1. They empower the speaker.
  2. They can be used to create a particular environment.
  3. They can be used to bond individuals together.
  4. They can help your audience to engage in active listening.
  5. They can be used to resolve differences between both individuals and groups.
  6. They can encode information.
  7. They can act as tools to help with brainstorming.
  8. They can be used as weapons.
  9. They can be used to start or enhance a healing process.

The professional storytellers define the act of storytelling as being “… a face-to-face oral narrative that employs non-verbal communication and imagination“. One side effect of this definition is that when stories are told in a live business setting, they are much more powerful than when they are just written down.

What Kind Of Stories Work In Business Presentations?

Dr. Neile reports that Annette Simmons, who is the president of the company Group Process Consulting, believes that there are six types of stories that can be used in a business environment:

  1. Who I Am: this type of story is used to gain an audience’s trust by having the speaker explain where they are coming from.
  2. Why I Am Here: this story type is a way to communicate your agenda to your audience.
  3. The Vision: this story paints a vision of the future that the audience can see and can then decide that they want to be a part of it.
  4. Values-In-Action: this story shares the good things that can happen when the audience has shared values and the bad things that can happen when those values are violated.
  5. I Know What You Are Thinking: this story shows how connected the speaker is to the audience and that he/she has their best interests in mind.

How Can We Use Stories During Business Presentations?

Stories that your audience can relate to are the best kind of stories to use. This means that you need to spend the time to uncover the true stories that already exist within the organization: the successes, the failures, and people behaving both badly and wonderfully.

The power of business stories is that they provide one of the most effective ways to achieve agreement about how to resolve issues and meet goals. It’s  no longer a question of IF they should be used, but rather a question of HOW MUCH they should be used.

Questions For You

Have you ever used a story in a business presentation in order to make a point? How was it received? Did you feel awkward using a story? Does your senior management use stories when they are discussing the company’s vision and goals? Does this make you buy in to what the company is trying to accomplish? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Click here to get automatic updates when
         The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

I just got back from spending the better part of a week up in Chicago at a big health care conference (HIMSS09). This was an amazing opportunity for me to sit back and watch somewhere in the neighborhood of about 100 different presenters get up and do their very best job at communicating. One of these presenters was Dennis Quaid – the actor…

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Posted in stories | 6 Comments »

Real Life Speeches: Alan Greenspan Gives A Keynote

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
Alan Greenspan Gave A Keynote Speech At The HIMSS Conference

Alan Greenspan Gave A Keynote Speech At The HIMSS Conference

Even if you don’t work in the world of high-finance, you surely know who Alan Greenspan is. He was the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006. There’s no question that this guy is smart, but can he deliver a good keynote speech?

Where It Happened

While attending the recent HIMSS health care show up in Chicago, I had an opportunity to watch Greenspan in action as he gave a keynote speech. Now you have to understand that he was speaking on the third day of a 3-day conference and generally the crowds would have thinned out by now, but that wasn’t the case. The hall in which he gave his speech had a seating capacity of between 15,000 – 20,000 and it was pretty much full.

What caught my interest was that people were not showing up because they thought that Greenspan was a good speaker. No, they were showing up because they wanted to hear the information that they thought that he would be communicating: how did the current recession come about and when will it end?

The Introduction

The lead up to Greenspan’s keynote speech was a spectacular Hollywood introduction. Lights flashed, the speakers boomed with an announcer’s voice, and a brief film played that showed all of Greenspan’s many accomplishments. This was followed up by the Chairman of the HIMSS organization coming on stage and reading a prepared introduction for Greenspan. What speaker could ask for a better intro?

The Speech

So I know that the question that you are dying to have answered is “how did he do?”. The answer is that Alan Greenspan is not a very good keynote speaker; however, the audience hung on his every word. Perhaps some explination is needed here:

  • Technical Knowledge: Greenspan knows his stuff. He was there to explain how the U.S. economy works and the introduction plus the words that came out of his mouth confirmed that he really knows his stuff.
  • Hands: Greenspan’s #1 problem with public speaking is that he, just like so many other speakers, has no idea what to do with his hands. During his keynote speech his hands spent the time traveling from his pants pockets to being clasped and back again. It was a big room and only his face was displayed on the jumbo-tron screens, but it was distracting none the less.
  • Technical Content: I’m not sure what the rest of the audience was expecting, but I was anticipating a watered-down speech on basic economics. I was flat out wrong. Greenspan held no punches back and used very technical economic terms in his speech about how the world’s economy operates.
  • Pacing: The stage that Greenspan was giving his keynote speech on was HUGE. He was equipped with a wireless mic and so he could go anywhere. Unfortunately, he did. He paced back and forth and moved from side to side. Now there is no problem doing this if it supports your speech, but there was no clear linkage between his movements and his speech.
  • Using Notes: The first 25% of Greenspan’s keynote was delivered pretty much how you would expect a keynote to be delivered – he had some notes that he referred to occasionally, but the rest of the time he looked at the audience and spoke. However, just a little bit of the way into his speech, something strange happened – he picked up his notes and started reading from them word-for-word. The impact of his speech went way down when it felt like he was reading a book to us.

What Was Learned From All Of This

I had been very excited to listen to Greenspan speak – he is basically a rock-star in the world of finance. I came away from his keynote speech feeling just a little bit let down. On one hand, I was amazed at just how powerful a reputation can be in drawing people to come to a speech just to hear what the speaker has to say. Substance over style so to speak.

On the other hand, the reading word-for-word from notes really disappointed me. Then an interesting thing happened, I think that I figured out why he did it. Greenspan seemed to be a perfectly competent speaker. I don’t think that he NEEDED to read his speech from his notes. However, I now think that he is such an important person that the words that come out of his mouth can still move markets.

This means that, just like the President of the Unites States, he has to be very careful about what he says (and how he says it). If he had said that “… the recession is going to last for another 5 years…” then the stock market would have plunged the next day. Perhaps reading his speech was a way to protect us all from words that are too powerful…!

Questions For You

Have you ever attended a speech because you really wanted to know more about what was going to be talked about? Did you attend because you knew that the speaker was good or despite who the speaker was? How did it turn out – did you get what you wanted? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Click here to get automatic updates when
         The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

One question that I keep getting asked over and over by speakers that I am working with is if storytelling is such a powerful communication tool, then why isn’t it used more in business settings? It’s a good question, but the answer is a little bit complicated…

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Posted in keynote | 4 Comments »

Real Life Speeches: George Halvorson, CEO Of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc.

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
George Halvorson Gave A Keynote Speech That Can Teach Us All A Lot

George Halvorson Gave A Keynote Speech That Can Teach Us All A Lot

We can talk about how to be a better communicator all we want, but in the end it comes down to learning – and we all do this in different ways. One great way to discover what a speaker should (or should not) do is to watch ‘em in action. This time around we’re going to take a look at how a powerful CEO, George Halvorson, did during a recent keynote speech.

Halvorson is the Chairman and CEO of the Kaiser Permanente health system. There’s no question that he knows his stuff, the challenge will be to discover how well he can communicate it.

While attending the recent HIMSS health care show up in Chicago, I had an opportunity to watch Halvorson in action as he gave a keynote speech. How did he do? Overall – not bad, but it could have been better. Let’s find out how.

  • Nerves: First off, this was a big presentation. In the audience were approximately 10,000 – 12,000 eager listeners. We all talk about getting butterflies in our guts before we talk, but just image how Halvorson must have felt?
  • Introduction: That being said, the lead in to Halvorson’s speech was spectacular. A professionally produced video and well done sound track listed all of his accomplishments. It was rock show quality stuff and everyone was pumped up and ready for a good speech by the time he took the podium.
  • Opening: That’s when the ball got dropped. The first words out of your mouth have to be grabbers – they have to convince your audience to pay attention to what you are going to be saying. Halvorson’s were, unfortunately, forgettable. He started by thanking people and commenting on the convention – pleasant talk that went nowhere.
  • Humor: It turns out that Halvorson has a great sense of humor. Although this was a high-stakes keynote speech, he was able to work his humor into it and this really allowed him to connect with his audience. He came across not as an aloof CEO, but rather as a real guy who is trying to solve problems.
  • Notes: Reading from your notes is always a bad idea. Halvorson did a lot of this and it showed. Now I’ll grant that this was a big speech and there were multimedia issues – he had to synch up with the folks who were controlling the slide show. Still, when you read your speech word-for-word you lose that connection with your audience.
  • Hands: what to do with your hands during a speech is always a big question. Halvorson did pretty well, but he still struggled at times. As we all have a tendency to do, he put his hands on the podium and even leaned on it at times. When he made gestures with his hands, they were down low and couldn’t be seen by the people in the back of the room. However, there was one point in time in which his right hand was used in a hammering gesture that drove home the point that he was making.

We can practice our public speaking by ourselves as much as we want, but having the opportunity to watch and learn from others is, as the folks at Visa tell us, priceless.

Questions For You

How do you like to get introduced – is there any multimedia involved? Do you have the courage to use your personal sense of humor in your speeches? How much effort do you put into having a great speech opening? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Even if you don’t work in the world of high-finance, you surely know who Alan Greenspan is. He was the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006. There’s no question that this guy is smart, but can he deliver a good keynote speech…?

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Posted in keynote | 2 Comments »

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