Posts Tagged ‘presenter’

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Presenters Who Use Naughty Words – Good Or Bad?

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
Should Presenters Use Street Language In Their Speeches?

Should Presenters Use Street Language In Their Speeches?

If you are under 18 (or if you were at one time), please cover your ears as you read this posting.

Let’s talk about naughty words. What words do I mean you say? I’m talking about all of the common ones like $^#!, *&@^, &%$#, and of course &#&@. Just for good measure we should also throw in some of the up-and-coming modern phrases like $&^%$#@!%&.

If you watch TV, go to the movies, listen to top 40 music, or even read books that are on the top seller lists then you are being exposed to what we can call “offensive language” all the time. The big question is if there is so much of this in our daily lives, can we now start to work it into our presentations?

I say that the answer is “no“. I believe that there are several reasons why.

Gene Perret was Bob Hope’s head writer for 12 years and he’s spent a lot of time thinking about the use of street language in comedy and presentations. I agree with a lot of what he has to say.

The #1 reason why presenters should not use offensive language in our presentations is because it is the equivalent of taking the easy way out. Offensive words shock our audience when they hear them. It’s the same as if you zapped them with an electrical charge. However, it’s momentary and then it’s gone. It’s much harder (and more fulfilling) to use non-offensive words to capture and hold their attention.

Here’s an example: once upon a time Winston Churchhill was at a party when a woman who didn’t like him came up to him and said “Winston, if I were your wife, I would poison your tea.” Churchill responded by saying “Well, you can just go $%#@ yourself”. Oh, wait. No he didn’t. Instead, what he said was “Madam, if I were your husband, I would drink it.” If he had responded the first way, this incident would have been quickly forgotten. However, because of the words that he did use, it has been remembered to this day.

So the next time you are crafting a speech and you’re tempted to throw in some street language just to to show how hip and cool you are, don’t. Instead spend the time and find a way to instead show your audience how memorable you can be.

Have you ever used street language in one of your presentations? How did it go over? If you could give that presentation again, would you use the same language? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in speech writing | 3 Comments »

How To Present On The Worst Day Of Your Life

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
Sometimes You Still Have To Speak When You Are Having A REALLY Bad Day

Sometimes You Still Have To Speak When You Are Having A REALLY Bad Day

The real secret to giving a good presentation is for the presenter to be “up” and have a great deal of energy. Under the best of circumstances, this can be a challenge to do, if you’ve had a really bad day it can appear to be darn near impossible.

So what’s a presenter to do? Fran Capo is a motivational speaker / comedian who has had to face these types of situations. Ultimately it’s all mental – you’ve got to get yourself into the right frame of mind. Sounds easy doesn’t it? In reality if you don’t know how to do this, it can be quite hard.

Fran has a number of suggestions for how we can gather our wits about ourselves on the worst days of our lives and still deliver a knockout presentation:

  1. Breath Correctly: when things start to go bad for us we screw up our breathing – we take many short breaths. Realize this and stop, take a moment to focus on your breath, and take a few deep, long breaths. This will start to calm you down.
  2. Adjust Your Attitude: How you choose to view a situation is entirely up to you. No matter how bad the day has been so far, you are in control of how the rest of it turns out. Realizing this and forcing yourself to think positively is the key to making your presentation come off perfectly.
  3. Put It In A Box: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten bad news just before I was to go on and give a presentation. In order to prevent life’s little hand grenades from destroying your presentation, you need to learn to put your negative emotions in a box and slam it shut when you don’t have time to worry about them.  However, be sure to open it later on and process your emotions when you have the time.

We can’t prevent life from handing us lemons before, during, or after our presentations. However, with a little care and some understanding of how we deal with bad news, the show can still go on.

Have you ever had to give a speech when you were having the worst day ever? How did you collect yourself to get ready? Was the speech a success or a disaster? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in motivational | 2 Comments »

The Presenter Super Memory System – The Details

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
The Super Memory System For Presenters

The Super Memory System For Presenters

I recently had an opportunity to deliver a 45-minute keynote as part of a training session kick-off for a group of IT Mangers. I decided that in order to boost my creditability with this hard-nosed group, I needed to stay in eye contact with them and not be looking at my notes. This meant memorization.

Here’s how I did it:

  • I broke the speech up into sections – my speech resulted in 9 sections.
  • I then broke each section up into “ideas” – basically sentences.
  • I then picked a place that I had lived in the past (a school or any place that you know well would have done fine also). The only requirement was that it had to have multiple, distinct “locations” – in this case rooms.
  • Then I pictured myself in a room such as the kitchen. I could see myself sitting a the table in a particular chair.
  • Next I came up with a picture AND an action for the first idea / sentence that I wanted to memorize.

Here’s how I had written my speech to start out:

“I’d like to start out our time together today by asking you a simple question: where do you want you want to be at in your career 5 years from now? That will be 2014 – it’s just 1,825 days from right now. I have no idea what you will be doing in 5 years, but there is one thing that I know with 100% certainty – the job that you are doing right now will no longer exist.”

  • I basically had three image / actions to create. Remember, these are highly personal – what you come up with just has to work for you.
  • My first image was of 5 calendars: one each being stuck to each of  the fingers on my right hand. I was shaking that hand very hard and they all flew off.
  • My second image was of a stack of those one-a-day calendar tear-off sheets in a really, really tall pile sitting before me. Just to make it more vivid I pictured it as being sheets from the Dilbert: 2009 Day-to-Day Calendar. I then pictured a card in front of this stack that said “1,825 days” and the stack falling over and making a real mess on the floor.
  • Finally, on the table in front  of me behind the stack of calendar sheets was a very small model of a worker in a cubicle typing away on a computer. All of a sudden a trap door built into the table swung open and the little cubicle vanished.

There you have it. When I went to give my speech, I didn’t even try to recall the words that I had written down. Instead, I had three pictures flash in my head – calendars stuck to my fingers, a stack of calendar pages, and a disappearing cubicle. Without looking at any notes, I was able to quickly and easily recall what I wanted to say without having to look at any notes!

Have you ever had to give a speech without using notes. How long was the speech? How did you memorize what you had to say? How did it go? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in memory | 3 Comments »

The Presenter Super Memory System – An Overview

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

Presenters Need A Way To Memorize Their Speeches

Presenters Need A Way To Memorize Their Speeches

Congratulations – you’ve been invited to speak for 30 minutes. Remember – don’t use any notes! If you got this offer could you do it?

As though standing in front of a group of people was not scary enough,  now you have to find a way to shove 30 minutes (that’s 1,800 seconds) worth of information into your head – and recall it under pressure. Given that we all talk at about 150 words/min, you’re looking at memorizing 4,500 words. Good luck!

I recently had an opportunity to deliver a 45-minute keynote as part of a training session kick-off for a group of IT Mangers. I decided that in order to boost my creditability with this hard-nosed group, I needed to stay in eye contact with them and not be looking at my notes. This meant memorization.

Now let me make a confession – I hate it when people memorize their speeches. When they do this, they have a tendency to deliver them in an automatic robot-like manner that has virtually no emotion because they are trying so hard to remember what they want to say next. I was determined to avoid this!

Here’s what I did to get ready for this speech:

  • I wrote the speech out word-for-word. This allowed me to create a 6,750 word speech (45 minutes) so that I would exactly fill my time slot.
  • I then “tuned” the words trying to drop in as many memorable phrases as possible. This is the real advantage of writing your speech out completely.
  • I then memorized the speech.

… and that’s what you really want to about. But, I’m out of space for now so I’ll share all of the secrets about how I memorized this speech with you next time.

Have you ever had to give a speech without using notes. How long was the speech? How did you memorize what you had to say? How did it go? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in memory | 1 Comment »

A Presenter’s Greatest Threat: Self-Sabotage!

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
Speakers Often Find That They Are Trying To Sabotage Their Own Speeches!

Speakers Often Find That They Are Trying To Sabotage Their Own Speeches!

A few years back I found myself in a situation where I had allowed myself to get roped into delivering a presentation to a university class. I was going to be talking about what I had learned during my IT career – a somewhat painful and introspective topic. My excitement level was at zero.

I put off creating the speech until the last minute. I threw together some slides the morning of the speech. I ended up showing up just a few minutes before the class started. All three of these actions are not how I do things – what was going on here?

The presentation ended up going ok (everyone clapped at the end). However, I was seriously troubled – why had such a simple speech come so close to being a disaster so many times? After running things through my mind a few times I came to realize that I had been a victim of self-sabotage!

I really, really didn’t want to do this speech. It turns out that because of this mind-set, I was working actively to make sure that the speech would never happen (don’t write the speech, don’t prepare the slides, don’t show up). Dang – what was going on here?

Kevin Hogan is both a psychologist and a speaker. His take on all of this is “Essentially, self-sabotage is consciously or unconsciously blocking yourself from succeeding or accomplishing some task or project.” Well there you go. It turns out that we all have some of this going on, but sometimes it can get out of hand.

What’s a presenter to do? First, you need to be aware that you are engaging in self-sabotage. Once you realize that it’s happening, you’ll be better able to deal with it. Next, use affirmations – tell yourself that you are good at what you are going to be doing. The simple act of saying this to yourself can go a long way. Finally, dig in – focus on what you want to get accomplished and shut out any negative noises that are coming from inside.

It turns out that I must have done better than ok on my presentation to that class because they’ve asked me back twice a year since then. I now look forward to this presentation because it the audience is always appreciative and it give me a chance to try out new material and techniques. I’m glad that I didn’t let self-sabotage do me in!

Have you ever found yourself trying to sabotage one of your presentations? What were you trying to do? How did you fight back? Who won in the end? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in passion | No Comments »

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