Posts Tagged ‘training’

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Do You Look Presentable During Your Presentation?

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
How You Dress Can Have A Big Impact On How Effective Your Presentation Is

How You Dress Can Have A Big Impact On How Effective Your Presentation Is

Remember when your Mom said that looks don’t matter? She may have been right then; however, now is now and the better you look, the more impact your presentation will have.

Whether you realize it or not, you are always being judged by your audience. What you need is some advice to make sure that you come out on top when they judge you. If you take a moment and think about, you are representing a brand in how you act, walk, and talk. Your wardrobe plays a big part in the impression that you make.

Carmine Gallo is a communications coach who has spent a lot of time thinking about this topic. Here are some of his suggestions that will help you do this correctly:

  1. You MUST Look Better Than Everyone Else In The Room: If you remember nothing else from this post, then remember this – great presenters should always dress just a little bit nicer than everyone else who is attending the event. The classic example of this was Ronald Reagan (“the great communicator”) who always stood out because he was always the best dressed person in the room.
  2. Make Sure That Your Clothes Fit Correctly: How many of us wear clothes that are too short, too long, too tight, or even too loose? If you’ll take just a moment and list to what George Zimmerman, the founder of Men’s Wearhouse, says you’ll understand that you are making a mistake. Zimmerman says that the #1 most important decision that you need to make when buying clothes is that they give you a proper fit.
  3. Make Sure Your Clothes Say Nice Things About You: Make sure that you choose clothes that complement you – your skin tone, hair, and your eye color. The key here is to make sure that your clothes complement you, not fight you. Feel free to mix and match – just make sure that they look good together.
  4. Are You Well Heeled?: Assuming that you are not a puppy, it is still important that you pay attention to your shoes. It turns out that people really do notice the shoes that you are wearing. Make sure that you spend as much time on picking out your shoes as you do the rest of your outfit.
  5. Quality Is Worth It – Spend More: It turns out that you are not just paying for a fancy designer label. High quality fabrics and shoes not only look better, but they also last longer. Go ahead – spend more for better quality clothes and you’ll not only look nicer, but you will save money in the end because your clothes will last longer.

There you go – it’s not that hard to look great. Take the time to look good and your presentation will have that much more impact.

Do you take the time to look your best before every presentation that you give? Have you ever been giving a presentation when you realized that there was something wrong with your outfit? What did you do about it? Leave me a comment and let me know what’s on your mind.

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Posted in presentation tips | 2 Comments »

Make Your Audience Sit Up, Take Notice, And Learn At Your Next Presentation

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009

Understanding How Adults Learn Is The Key To An Effective Presentation

Understanding How Adults Learn Is The Key To An Effective Presentation

Some presentations are designed to simply motivate your audience. Some are designed to educate them. It’s this second batch that is tricky to do. It’s probably not that your presentations are lacking in educational material, but rather it’s the way that you are delivering it that really matters. You need to find a way to deliver the information in the way that adults learn…

So here’s the answer to this question right off the bat: research shows that adults learn best when information is presented interactively, using role-playing, and peer-to-peer dialog. The lectures that most presenters use are really only good for passing information along to an audience.

The last thing in the world that you want is for your next presentation to remind your audience of a high school or college class. Having you stand at the front of the room and drone on with no chance for interaction is not what today’s audiences are looking for.

The secret to making your presentation “stick” with your audience is to realize that the more active your adult audience is during your presentation, the more they will learn because they will be tapping into the knowledge and experience of their peers.

At different times during your presentation your role as the presenter should really be to be a “guide on a side” who facilitates discussions among audience members and offering feedback as needed.

We’ve all heard about left-brain / right-brain stuff. Our left-brain is set up for the way most presentations are delivered – logical, analytical, and subjective. It’s our right-brain, our visual & creative side, that is not being fed during most presentations.

Much of what it takes to make sure that a presentation appeals to how your adult audience learns has to do with how the presentation event is set up. Here are some key suggestions on how you can make your next presentation a powerful adult learning experience:

  • Use Round Tables: having your audience sit at round (or half round) tables that seat 8 or 10 people helps your audience to interact easily.
  • Schedule Break Time: make sure that your audience has time both before and after your presentation to meet and discuss what they are going to learn and what they have learned.
  • Use Comfortable Seats: Rarely do we have control over this, but if possible the more comfortable the seats are, the more learning will happen.
  • Lose The Lectern: This can be done as simply as making sure that you have a wireless microphone so that you are not tied to one spot and can move around and interact with your audience.
  • Handouts & Downloads Are Good: You audience is hungry for information that they can take back to the office. Giving them something that they can touch and hold is one way to do this.
  • More Brian Food: This is my favorite. Most food that is served during a presentation can be sugar or carb-heavy. If possible, provide healthful food options.

At the end of the day, you go to a lot of effort to get ready to deliver a presentation. You want your audience to be impacted by your words and you want them to be able to absorb and learn from the information that you are presenting. If you follow these tips, your audience will have a better chance of learning and retaining what you have to say.

What do you do today to help your audiences learn what you are presenting? Do you feel that you do a good job of getting your audience to retain what you are presenting? What was the best learning presentation that you have ever attended? What was it so successful? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in adult learning | 4 Comments »

Hey Good Looking – Are You A Presenter?

Monday, January 12th, 2009
Presenters Need To Make Sure That They Look Good During Their Presentation

Presenters Need To Make Sure That They Look Good During Their Presentation

When we deliver a presentation, we need to make the best use of all of the tools that we have at our disposal. These tools include things such as hand gestures, using pauses, and vocal variety. All too often we forget that we have one more tool for us to use: our personal style.

Life is busy and all too often too many of us just don’t take the time to look our best when we venture out into public. The reasons for this are many – we don’t expect to meet anyone that we know, we don’t think that we’re going to be out for long, or maybe we just don’t care.

It turns out that this kind of thinking opens all sorts of doors for us as presenters. If we take the time to look our best then we’ll end up being the best looking person in the room. What this means is that everyone will be looking at us. If they are already looking at us, then we’ve got half of our task taken care of!

Carmine Gallo is a communications coach who has spent a lot of time thinking about this topic. Here are some of his suggestions that will help you use this tool to it’s fullest extent:

  • Keep The Bling To A Minimum: Over time we all build up a collection of accessories. Women have a collection of flashy necklaces and too-big earrings. Men have (also) too flashy necklaces, tie holders, bracelets, etc. Remember that accessories are designed to add value to your look – not to distract from the overall package. The rule is to keep it simple and suitable for your outfit.
  • Get Some Culture: This should be something that your research for any presentation reveals to you. A suit is always appropriate – except when it’s not. Make sure that you dress in a way that matches the event or the culture of your audience. Have your dress match the expectations of your audience.
  • Smile For The Camera: As long as you are going to the effort of getting all gussied up for your big presentation, take the time to make sure that all of the photographs that are taken of you show how good you look. We can never have enough photos of ourselves when we are looking our bests. Find a professional photographer and get a formal picture taken of yourself – this will be invaluable to you later on.

All too often we end up spending all of our time researching what we want to say, how we want to say it, and what we want our audience to be motivated to do once we are done talking.

If we take the time to plan out how we are going to look for our next presentation then we’ll be ahead of the game before we even show up. Sometimes just taking the time to look at ourselves in the mirror before we head out the door can do wonders for making our presentation that more effective…!

Have you ever discovered that you owned any accessories that were too distracting to wear while presenting? Did you ever deliver a presentation where you were not dressed to match the culture of your audience? Have you ever had a bad photograph of you taken while you were presenting? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in appearances | 9 Comments »

Why Your Audience Wants Bad Things To Have Happened To Their Presenter

Monday, January 5th, 2009
Presenters Need To Use Their Personal Stories About Facing Challanges To Reach Their Audiences

Presenters Need To Use Their Personal Stories About Facing Challanges To Reach Their Audiences

Today’s audiences are a jaded bunch. In fact, a Gallup Poll shows that just 16% of us have a favorable opinion of business executives. With all of the Wall Street failures and auto maker bailouts that are currently going on, this number will probably keep going down. What’s a presenter to do in order to cut through the fog of cynicism that we are all existing in?

One way that presenters are doing this is by sharing their own stories of adversity. These stories seem to be able to reach out to audiences and somehow make the presenter much more “real” than just another glib business success story.

If this is what your audience wants, what can you do to meet their needs? We all may not have survived a wild bear attack, but we may be able to find other types of material in our lives that will allow us to connect with our audiences:

  • Audiences Love Adversity: The bigger the challenge that you faced, the more they love it. Erik Weihenmayer is a mountain climber who is blind. He over came lots of adversity and ended up climbing Mt. Everest. His story shows his audience how to overcome adversity in their lives.
  • Tales Of Survival Match Today’s Business Environment: Today’s business environment is harsh and unforgiving and surviving is what most of your audience is trying do every day. Trisha Meili
    was assaulted and left for dead in New York’s Central Park. She now speaks to audiences about what she had to go through in order to recover.
  • Find The Metaphor: What your audience is really looking for is hope. They will be interested in your story no matter what you tell them, but it will have a real impact if they can understand that what you went through is similar to what they are currently going through. The fact that you survived (and hopefully thrived) is what is going to give them the courage to keep on trying.
  • Tie Your Story Into Business: A great story will keep your audience on the edge of their seats – but what happens when you stop talking? John Amatt survived a mountain climb 20 years ago that killed three of his climbing teammates. The only way that he survived that disaster and made it to the top of the mountain was to  make radical changes to his climbing route and tactics. This story is very well received by business people who are facing major changes in their business environments.
  • Use Humor Where Appropriate: These topics can be pretty heavy – life and death struggles are rarely something that anyone wants to joke about. That being said, if your entire presentation is dark and scary, then your audience will just be happy when it’s all over. Instead, use humor at the start and at the end in order to start and end on a lighter note. You audience will appreciate it and this will allow your message to sink in further.

We have not all faced life threatening situations. However, what your audience is really looking for is a good story that they can relate to. If you look back over your life, I’m sure that you can find points in which you were faced with a challenging situation that looked impossible at the time. Then all you have to do is weave a story that will grab your audience’s attention…

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Posted in motivational | 4 Comments »

Why Don’t You Act Like A Presenter During Your Presentation?

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
Presenters Use Acting Tips To Keep Their Presentations From Becoming Boring

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.

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Posted in communication skills, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

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