Posts Tagged ‘story’

How Boys Can Talk To Girls (And Visa Versa)

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Reaching An Audience Of The Opposite Sex Can Be Difficult (c) - 2008 by Steve Hopson

Reaching An Audience Of The Opposite Sex Can Be Difficult (c) - 2008 by Steve Hopson

Man, as though giving a speech wasn’t hard enough already, then you go ahead and throw that gender thing in there and all of a sudden it gets that much tougher! It can be a challenge when you are asked to talk to an audience made up of members of the opposite gender. How can you not screw-up this speech?

Boys Talking To Girls

Male presenters need to adapt their speeches when they are presenting to a primarily female audience. Neil Chethik has a great deal of experience presenting to female audience and he points out that even in the enlightened age in which we are living, there are still differences between the sexes and a skillful presenter has to know about these differences and find ways to steer around them.

  • R-e-s-p-e-c-t: A male presenter needs to treat his female audience with respect if he wants to have any chance of the speech going well. Women are generally willing to learn from a male presenter; however, they have to feel as though they are being respected.
  • Down To Earth: A man who starts off his presentation by telling his audience how wonderful he is will instantly lose the connection with his female audience. There’s no problem with you being an expert in your area, you just don’t want to come off as being a know-it-all. You can connect with your audience by telling a story that points out a personal failing or error and a female audience will connect with you.
  • Evidence Counts: One of the biggest errors that male presenters make when they are speaking to an all female audience is that they give an emotional presentation and leave out all of the facts. Yes, women do like stories; however, they won’t believe what you are saying unless you can back it up with hard evidence – facts & stats.
  • Humor: talk about a minefield! Many a good speech to a female audience has gone wrong when the male speaker tried to interject some humor. Your best best is to let the humor naturally flow from the stories that you are telling. Trying to work in one-liners can only lead to disaster.

Girls Talking To Boys

Yes, men have it rough when they try to address an all female audience. However, women have it at least as rough and perhaps even rougher when they are called on to present to an all male audience. Once again, there are several ways to make sure that this type of speech goes well:

  • Stand Up: One of the simplest issues for a woman to solve when she’s addressing a male audience is to make sure that they can see her. All too often,  a lectern can overwhelm a speaker and hid her from her audience. Stand on something if needed and adjust the mic so that it works correctly for your height.
  • No Expression Is Good: Often women speakers will become flustered because no matter what they say, the expressions on their male audience won’t change. It turns out that this is very normal – men don’t tend to display their emotions.
  • Be A Straight Shooter: Whereas women tend to enjoy hearing lots of stories, men tend to be more “to the point”. Clearly communicating your main points and making sure that any stories that you do tell quickly come to the point will help to hold their attention.
  • Be A Professional: Men do a good job of dealing with other men. They will struggle with any presenter who comes off as being too “girlish”. This impression can be caused by clothing, gesture, or even a vocal tone that takes away from what you have to say. Ask a male friend that you trust for help in order to make sure that this is not a problem.

Final Thoughts

Giving any presentation can be a challenge. When it is complicated by the additional challenge of having one gender present to the other gender, it can get even more tricky.

The key to making this type of speech a success is for the presenter to acknowledge the situation and adjust the presentation to match it. Men have to make sure that they show respect to their female audience and women need to not get flustered by their male audience’s lack of outward emotions.

Speakers who take the time to adjust what they are going to say and how they are going to say it when addressing the opposite gender will be able to intimately connect with your audience and make an lasting impact in their lives.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Stop. How funny was the last speech that you gave? What – you were talking about how best to diversify a 401k basket of investments in order to incorporate more foreign exchange funds & there’s nothing funny about that? Wrong. You’re not trying hard enough. Stop being not funny.

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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.

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         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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Just How Do Those Politicians Do It?

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
Politicians Use Stories To Win Their Audiences Over

Politicians Use Stories To Win Their Audiences Over

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, politicians are by and large fantastic communicators. If you take a look at their technique they may be lacking; however, they sure seem to be very good at getting their point across and wining audiences over. Wouldn’t it be great if we could figure out how they do that?

There are a number of speaking techniques that politicians use, but the one that packs the biggest punch is our old friend the story. Caren Neile has done some research into just how politicians use stories and she’s discovered some things that we can use to make our presentations even better.

Ronald Reagan was known as the great communicator due in a large part to the numerous stories that he would tell. He wasn’t just telling stories to fill space in his speeches, rather he was trying to make points and emphasis parts of his speech.

For politicians, there are four main story-lines that they use over and over:

  1. We take care of our own.
  2. We must protect ourselves from our enemies.
  3. We can’t trust the people who are running government and business.
  4. Anyone can succeed.

The reason that these four story-lines are used is because they are time tested – politicians know that they work, audiences respond to them every time.

For us speakers, we can take advantage of the years of research that politicians have done for us and start to use more stories. We can use the four story-lines that have served our leaders so well for so long and create our own stories that flow in these well-worn ruts. By doing this we almost assure ourselves of being successful with our audiences.

Do you use stories when you give a speech? Have you ever told a story that fit one of these story-lines? How was it received? Do you have stories that you could make fit these story-lines? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Back To Basics: Presentation Tips 101

Monday, November 10th, 2008
We Can All Use Some Reminders On What Makes A Speech Great

We Can All Use Some Reminders On What Makes A Speech Great

So perhaps you’ve had the opportunity to do some public speaking in the past, shucks maybe this is how you are currently making your living. As with all things that we’ve done a few (or many) times, we have a tendency to start to become just a little bit, how shall I say this, complacent? I guess the word “lazy” would be just a bit too harsh, but I’m sure that you get the point. If our last presentation went over fairly well, then why rock the boat? Well, here’s the harsh reality – you can do better. If you stall now, then you’ll at best be as good as you were last time and in fact you’ll probably start slipping and that won’t be good for anyone.

In order to stop all of this from happening, let’s take just a moment and see what David Brooks who once upon a time won the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking contest can suggest to help us get better. David has seven presentation tips for us to remember and learn from:

  1. PowerPoint Is Really Not Your Friend: Way too many of us spend more time working on the PowerPoint slides that we’re going to use instead of working on what we are going to say (business presenters please confess NOW!) No matter how beautiful your slides are, nobody is going to remember them once your presentation is done. Don’t hide behind your slides, instead let your slides support what you are saying.
  2. It’s A Speech, Not A Battle: All too often we approach a presentation just as though we are preparing to go to war with the audience. This is crazy – they are there because they want to hear what you have to say, not to throw stones at you. The most painful thing in the world for an audience is to sit through is a bad speech. Therefore, they are actually on your side. They may or may not agree with what you are talking about, but they want you to do a good job no matter what.
  3. Why Are You Doing This?: Look, why are you going to be willing to stand in front of a group of people and talk to them? What is that reason? It can always be put into one or more of four buckets: to entertain, to inspire, to persuade, or to inform. You need to know the answer to this question BEFORE you start to speak so that you can make sure that your words will accomplish what you want them to do.
  4. W.I.I.F.M.?: How long should your presentation be? Not too long! Your audience will be asking themselves What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) even before you open your mouth. The last thing that you want to do is to sound like a high school Spanish teacher who is going over the irregular verbs. Instead, you want to engage your audience in what you are saying and have them feel that you are having a conversation one-on-one with them directly that lasts just the right amount of time.
  5. It’s ALWAYS Story Time: Brooks makes a great point when he boils public speaking down to this very, very simple formula: make a point, tell a story, make a point, tell a story. When you are done talking, your audience probably won’t be able to remember your points. However, there is a very good chance that they will be able to remember your stories long after you are done. Don’t use other people’s stories, instead pay attention to your world and “see” you own stories.
  6. Write But Don’t Read!: If you want to get really good at giving a speech here’s the secret: write it out word-for-word. Don’t you dare read it to your audience word-for-word! Instead, edit what you’ve written over and over again until the words shine from being polished so much. Then practice, practice, practice. Once you’ve practiced enough, you won’t need to read your speech word-for-word, the words will simply tumble from  your mouth with only the slightest shove provided by notes on cards.
  7. Don’t Forget The “P” Word: That would be, of course, practice. In order to get the little things that make a speech great like pauses and your own natural rhythm correct, you need to practice your speech over and over again. Make sure that you say the speech out loud just like you’ll say it on that special day so that you can hear how you sound and make any needed changes.

How many of these tips do you already use when you are preparing to give a presentation? Do you take the time to write out your presentations or do you just create a quick outline and wing it from there? Have you ever had to give the same presentation multiple times and did you get better each time? Leave a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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What’s The Best Story That A Public Speaker Can Tell?

Friday, October 17th, 2008
Using A Personal Story Can Really Help Your Speech

Using A Personal Story Can Really Help Your Speech

Oh, this one’s an easy question to answer: your story. I don’t care if you are giving a speech about the company’s 3rd Quarter profits, or telling an audience about the best way to water-proof a roof, if you work a personal story into your speech it will instantly become a memorable speech. Now with that being said, if you do a bad job of working your personal story into your speech you will probably bore your audience to death. Hmmm, I wonder what the secret to doing this correctly is…

The first thing that you need to realize is that if you just up and tell a personal story, the odds are that it’ll fall flat. Although we might think that every story we have to tell is a great tale, this simply is not the case. Instead, your story needs to be taken out, sharpened, and perhaps even polished just a bit before you tell it to an audience. One way to get things started is to sit down and just write / type it all out. Don’t hold back here, just make it as long as it wants to be. Capture your story of overcoming a challenge, fighting a setback, dealing with a health issue, bad relationship, or financial disaster in all of it’s glory. Remember, your audience was not there so you need to remember what it felt like and communicate what all of your five senses were feeling.

Once you have it all written down, now is the time to start to shape it. Your story needs a good clear opening. Let your audience know why this is important. You also need to be aware of just how much time your have for your speech and your story within your speech. You’ll need to trim it down to fit the time available.

Once you’ve got your personal story sorta looking like it’s ready for prime time, now is the time to do some extra checking in order to make sure that it really is a good story to tell. The first thing that you can do is to be very clear about where and when your story took place. Instead of saying “back when I was in college” instead you need to say “12 years ago…” This will allow your audience to better identify with your story.

We all love movies and we’re use to watching them. Just like a movie, your personal story will “play” better if you are able to tell it as a series of connected scenes. Your words will paint scenes in your audience’s minds and these images will then blend together to create a complete movie of your story for them.

Create some drama by telling your story just like you felt it. If you hold back on some information and allow the audience to discover it just as you did, the tension in the room will quickly start to rise. The good thing about creative tension is that it means that your audience will be hanging on your every word.

Finally, you need a great conclusion that brings your audience back into the here and now. One way to do this to take just a moment and explain why the story that you told was so important to you. What did it all mean to you? Your personal story is yours and yours alone. You never have to worry about someone else telling it because it’s all about you. Good luck in adding a personal speech to your next public speaking opportunity and making it unforgettable!

Have you ever had a chance to work a personal story into a speech? How did that speech turn out? Do you take the time to practice personal stories or do you just wing it because you knew the story so well? Have you ever heard a speaker tell a personal story that was badly done? What was wrong with it? Leave a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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