Your Presentation Best

How to Get Someone's Attention Have you ever seen a presentation that really caught your attention and kept it? Can you still remember the presenter and the message? If your like most people, this doesn't happen often. Think about all the presentations you've seen in the last year. How many were great and how many sucked? How many were a waste of your time? What's the single most important element in any great presentation? It gives your audience something of value. They leave your presentation knowing it was good for them. The take-away:  always make sure you are providing value to your audience. Make it about them . Give them a reason to remember you and your message.

The All Blacks get ready for action. Prepare, Practice, Ritual:  How to Manage Presentation Stress and Nervousness, Part III And now let's take a look at Ritual .  As anyone who's had to perform knows, there's always nervous energy before the big show. It doesn't matter if it's an athlete, a rock star, an experienced actor, or a presenter. The human body is hard-wired to automatically go into fight or flight mode at the first sign of danger. Now, genrally speaking, performing isn't dangerous, but the feelings we get before we perform send the same signals to the brain.   That means that no matter how prepared and practiced you are (and the more, the better), the brain will still swtich to fight or flight mode. The question is not do you have some nervous energy, the question is what do you do woth it? Do you let it rule you as fear or do you channel it into a productive way? A personal Ritual before you perform can help you to focus

Bull's Eye!  When Practice Pays Off Prepare, Practice, Ritual:  How to Manage Presentation Stress and Nervousness, Part II Today we continue our presentation stress management series.  In Part I we looked at Preparation. Now let's look at Practice . Once you've done your Preparation,  you are ready to get good and better. The basic concept is this:  the more you practice , the better you get. The better you get, the more you OWN it . You get better because you get more and more familiar with your message and  your content.   This raises your self-confidence.   It helps you to own it, to make it yours, and to feel good with it. Perfection is NOT the goal. Memorising is NOT the goal. The goal is to get so comfortable with it, that you could do it anywhere, anytime, and ultimately to anybody.  You want to be so comfortable with you presentation that you can have a passionate conversation about it. Take a good look at the gentlemen a

Stressed-Out Before your Presentation ? Managing Presentation Nervousness and Stress, Part I One of the most asked questions I get during my presentation workshops is: How can I get control of my nervousness and stress before I present? The good news is:  you are not alone.   Unless you are dead or drugged, the vast majority of presenters have this challenge.  It is your body going on "High Alert", the same basic as the "Flight or Fight" mechanism that automatically kicks in when faced with danger. Now, most presentations are not dangerous, although it might feel that way.  (thus the High Alert reaction).  In my 15-plus years of coaching, I've found that the driving force behind this stress is insecurity.   It could be that you don't know the material or message as well as you would like.  Maybe you have so many slides you "need" to present that you're afraid you might forget some key info. Or you simply have too

The Story Formula Communication experts all agree that the best way to transfer information is in story form.  There's something about the classic formula of Good vs. Evil that makes stories effective.   You can use the example below to develop the story line for your  next presentation. In Steve Jobs's iPhone presentation, he uses the Nokia, Palm and Blackberry as the villians.  The problems are the difficult to use keyboards, the overall difficulty of use, and the not-so-good software. The victim, of course, is the user:  you and me. The good guy then comes riding to the rescue:   iPhone solves all these problems and so much more. It's a simple but very compelling story arc.   The Story Structure Set up   Conflict   Resolution The Bad Guy Who’s the villain? The Problem What problem(s) does it represent? The Victim Who is affected? How are they affected? What are the tragic results? The Good Guy Who is the h

What the ?$%!§#?!%& is the message?! The Three Slide Test Try this:  show your 3 most important PowerPoint slides to someone  not on your team and count to three. Three seconds per slide. Ask if he or she got the message from each slide. Ask him or her if they can remember all of the messages. If not, your slides are too complex. If so, keep rockin' and spread the Gospel of Clean Slides.  Be Your Preseentation Best www.boswell-training.com

MY Friend, The Flip Chart One of the most under-used and forgotten presentation tools is the  Flip Chart .   The main reason for this is PowerPoint. Ever since PowerPoint and other slide mediums  rose to dominance in the world of corporate presentations,  communication has gotten worse, not better.   This is because PowerPoint tends to become the show, the whole show and nothing but the show.   Presnters lose contact with their audiences and audiences lose contact with the presenter. Throw into the mix that most slide decks suck, and you've got a recipe for turning off your audience and losing the chance to sell your message. How can a flip chart help?  In several ways. Way one:  it's different.  If you don't use slides, you stand out.   That always  gets peoples attention . Way two:  it let's you tell and spontaneously illustrate your story and your message.   (You don't need to be an artist, just able to draw simple things like a happy face or a stick

Is it easy to understand this message? Great visuals in presentation have several things in common: They give the viewer a quick and clear message . They could be used to initiate a story. They grab the audience's attention . In a word, they are effective .   They're effective because they help the presenter make a point. They help the audience remember the point. Think about your slides. Is their message easy to understand ?  Easy to remember ?

Welcome to Prison.  PowerPoint Prison  "Oh my God!  It's like being trapped on Alcatraz!" Be the first to break out of the PowerPointPrison Think about the millions of corporate presenters who turn their audience into brain-dead PowerPointZombies by showing slide after slide  filled up with data, bullet points, graphs and text fields. Their colleagues, customers, and anyone else unfortunate enough to come to their meeting fight to stay awake. After the fifth slide, the brain gives up and tunes out. The Blackberries come out, the texting begins: "OMG!! I'm trapped in the meeting from Hell!  All the slides look the same and the stupid presenter is reading them to me aaaaaa!" Think about how much you would hate to be trapped in that kind of presentation. Ask yourself if what it would be like to break out of the PowerPoint Prison. While you may not be able to stop others from using PowerPoint as an instrument of Evil, you can make sure  your own pre

Are You Creating More PowerPoint Zombies? A common question I get during my presentation workshops is:   How do I get and keep my audiences attention?   How do I keep them from turning into PowerPoint Zombies? I think the best answer has always been:  Give them a reason to listen!  This usually means addressing their priorities, needs and/or problems in some concrete way. I would add to this a truly radical idea in the corporate world:   give your presentation WITHOUT PowerPoint .  That's right, no PowerPoint.  You will totally capture them right from the start because presenting without PowerPoint rarely happens.  You will be a freak, and freaks always get people's attention. They'll listen to you just to see "What the hell is this guy/lady doing?!" They'll stay tuned in becase you will be so much better able to plug into them (and they to you) if you don't have to compete with your slides. If you have done you homework and are presenting a me

You Stole Two Hours of My Life!  I Hate You! And that's two hours you will NEVER get back... What do you want out of a presentation when you are in the audience? It's a good question to ask yourself the next time your preapring your presentaiton. Think about what you hate when watching others present. Then do the opposite. Maybe it's endless PowerPoint slides filled with lots of text that the presenter is reading to you,  a presentation that bores you to death because there is nothing in for you, or any number of other things  that drive you crazy, put you to sleep, or make you pray that it would just end. If you hate wasting your valuable time at a presentation that sucks,  make sure you aren't making the same mistakes.

No Escape WASTEDTimeWASTEDMoneyWASTEDLives Have you ever been in a meeting that didn't have a point? Worse, it goes on and on because each presenter has way too many slides  for his agenda point? You look down at you watch and the meeting which was scheduled for 45 minutes is now running 45 minutes too long.  And you, your boss and that guy from legal still  haven't made their presentations... If this sounds at all familiar, consider taking a page from a V.P. who had taken over the next-generation development project of a luxury car company's flagship model. When he had his first cross-functional project team weekly meeting, each member of his senior mangement team came armed to the teeth with long slide decks defending what they were doing in micro-detail.   Sure, some of this PowerPoint -Palooza was because German automotive engineers are ultra-perfectionist.  But the other big influence was what we see every day at big companies:  a PowerPoint culture that t

Would You Buy From This Guy? "You can be the smartest person in the world, you can have the best ideas,   but if you can't sell them, you're not going to succeed." ~ Hank Paulson, former CEO, Goldman Sachs, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Remember, every time you present, you are selling.  Ideas, concepts, numbers, even "just information" requires that the audience buys into your message. The best presenters give their audience a clear reason to buy.   If you don't give them a reason, who will?

Visual Confidence Humans are visual animals.   Every presenter is, therefore, judged first on their body language. Body language speaks loudly, does not lie, and always registers (consciously or unconsciously) so it sets the tone for whatever follows. Once that tone is set, it can be difficult to change. If you are confident about what you are presenting, your body language will show it. If you believe in what you are presenting, your body language will show it. If you are so comfortable with your message and content that you could do it anywhere at any time, your body language will show it. If you are not, your body language will show that, too. Either way, your audience will know.   And they react to you and your message accordingly.

The More You Sweat in Training,  The Less You Bleed in Battle This is the motto of the Navy SEALS.   And it is relevant to ANY skill.   Presentation is a skill like any other.   If you invest the time and energy and do the hard work it takes to get better,  you will get better.  If you don't, you won't.  That's it.  It's your choice. Are you willing to do what it takes?