Today, I am proud to share with you the first in a monthly series of Slideshare.net deck debuts. The first (as I’ve noticed quite a few slide design decks but not too many presentation delivery decks) is Real Delivery. I’ll be breaking down the pieces to this acronym (Readiness, Engagement, Authenticity, Lasting Impression), but for now, check out the deck below. Happy Friday!
One of my goals for the month of February is to “tweak” and in some cases completely overhaul several of my decks for class, Slideshare, and the blog. This week, I’ve devoted 12 hours in class to discussing delivery, and another 16 hours on redesigning the deck that accompanies this slideshow. So far, I’ve only incorporated information from Garr Reynolds’ The Naked Presenter. I plan on moving back and forth between Reynolds’ ideas and Nancy Duarte’s approach via the Harvard Business Review’s Guide to Persuasive Presentations. The blending of these two approaches will be a challenge (in particular because the structure is built around the “naked approach” (agenda slides, color scheme, specific verbiage). However, I am confident that I can meet the challenge. Look for a debut of this deck on Slideshare in the next few weeks!
Two of the biggest barriers to fresh speech are jargon and complex language. We often fall back on big words either because we want to appear “smart” (or we think our audience expects it), because they are a natural part of our vocabularies, or because they are a natural part of our discipline. However, according to Scott Schwertly of Ethos 3, a presentation design firm, what set Steve Jobs apart as a communicator was not his ability to use tech speak, but his ability to communicate at a level that was understandable and impacting to everyone (Schwertly, How to Be an Online Presentation God Webinar). TEDster Melissa Marshall, fellow communications teacher shares her experiences teaching engineers how to communicate their ideas to a general audience. These lessons are not only simple and applicable to science folks, but they are delivered in an engaging and dynamic way. Check out Marshall’s equation to incredible and meaningful interactions below:
Yesterday, Alex Rister shared a new extra credit assignment with her class based on an article she wrote on comedian Kevin Hart. Rister outlines five lessons presenters can take from Hart–note that none of them are “be a comedian.” The lessons instead focus on strategies presenters can use to better engage with audiences and enrich their experiences. She then challenged us to develop our own “Lessons from..” article. I’ve begun the process (because for the past few days, tweaking and designing has been far more interesting than sleep) with one of my biggest inspirations, Etta James, whose magnificently versatile voice brought the jubilance of “At Last” to life as easily as she conveyed anguish and heart break in “I’d Rather Go Blind.” James was a dynamo her entire career. Weathering the now too common storms of stardom, she performed up until 2009, two years before she passed of leukemia. James’ live performances are mesmerizing, albeit often raunchy and bawdy. It’s this unbridled passion that inspires me as a presenter. I’ll be studying her performances over the next few days to prepare a more thorough analysis, but for now, I leave you with Ms. James and three lessons I drew from this performance.
Sources: Black History Album, black_man_hungry, Soul Portrait
Last week’s Mega-Double in Professional Communication and Presentation (that would be 8 hours of class…in one day…at once…) focused on the following topics:
That was a light day, actually. What always falls by the wayside that I just can’t seem to find a new place for are Cicero’s Five Canons of Rhetoric.
Seriously, I sneak this in during persuasion, but it should be part of the first day. It’s time to really have a heart to heart with the part of me that is willing to cut mercilessly like Ira Glass. Until then, I share my two cents on Cicero’s Five Canons with you here. Cicero, whom I refer to as the OG of oration, developed these canons or arts between 55-51 BCE as a means of further standardizing the work Aristotle had first developed in On Rhetoric in the 5th century BCE. Cicero, although a great orator, as a supporter of the Republic, struggled against the power-hungry First Triumvirate, Julius Caesar’s taking of Rome, and the Second Triumvirate’s power plays. He met his end at the hands of Mark Antony. Though currently not in fashion as a great rhetorician, Cicero’s study of the process of speech remains a staple of public speaking curricula. These are the five keys to any great speech, and they fit in nicely with Nancy Duarte’s presentation ecosystem of message, visual story, and delivery.
According to rhetoric god, Jay Heinrich’s, Cicero, who was considered the greatest orator of his time, believed that invention was more important than delivery. Heinrich’s quotes Cicero, stating that “eloquence without wisdom has often been a great obstacle and never an advantage” (Source). It is this searching out of wisdom, the seeking of knowledge that is applied via experience that characterizes invention best.
In the invention phase, presenters seek out the means of best appealing to their audience; they determine counter-arguments, complete audience personas, conduct surveys, and conduct deep research into credible sources of information. In this phase of the presentation development process, the best rule of thumb is to resist the urge to cut and delete. This is about getting everything out and finding all connective points.
In class, I introduce them to a few more thoughts on invention, including those of Duarte, Reynolds, and Godin, as well as introducing them to Dan Pink’s concept of “A Whole New Mind.” I use Pink’s concept of thinking with a whole mind because this objective, creative and logical approach to planning a presentation taps into all of our strengths as humans. Great invention takes a whole minded approach.
Style in terms of language has less to do with overly flowery phrases, fancy jargon, and elaborate metaphors and much more to do with the speaker applying his or her natural strengths and the three rhetorical appeals to how he or she speaks and presents the information. An orator’s style arsenal depends on experience, comfort level, and intellect, but it often includes one staple–storytelling. Telling stories is a universal form of conveying evidence, emotion, and credibility that has been a staple of the human experience, since pre-literate times as Nancy Duarte explains. Stories not only help touch your audience emotionally (at least, well written stories chock full of relatable characters, concrete detail, and significance), but they also provide tangible evidence and proof (assuming you are not lying). Finally, stories also lend speakers credibility, illustrating a personal connection to the topic and similarity with the audience.
This is probably the canon I devote the least attention to in class, partly because it is each presenter’s responsibility to practice and prepare, but also because as I’ve learned, the best messages are not memorized, but internalized so that they are delivered as if they are from memory. Unlike the Romans, though, we don’t devote attention to the memory and internalization centers of our children’s minds. We increasingly rely on tools to help us remember, going so far as using a slideshow as a teleprompter. For Cicero, “memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.” It is the presenter’s task to internalize a message and know it as well as she knows her childhood home.
Check out my post on rehearsing a PechaKucha for some excellent internalization advice from Felix Jung of Avoision.com.
Cicero’s final canon is delivery. Delivery, while it may seem to be all about flashy hand gestures, projection, articulation, and eye contact, is so much more about conveying one’s natural passion for a subject. As Garr Reynold’s puts it in The Naked Presenter, presenting naked “means connecting and engaging with an audience…in a way that is direct, honest, and clear. …The naked approach embraces the ideas of simplicity, integrity, and passion” (Source). In class, we study his approach to delivering an engaging presentation–connect, engage, sustain, and end powerfully.
So, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Apply Cicero’s five canons of rhetoric to your next presentation and make one of history’s greatest orators (and your audience) proud!
As I round out this month’s batch of TED speeches, I am reminded of what draws me to TED in the first place. Yes, the ideas are brilliant and worth sharing, but if they were delivered in the same way many meetings, lectures, and “workshops” are, their power would be diminished greatly. No one would listen.
Alex Rister wrote an awesome post introducing novice presenters to s0me basic best practices when working to create a presentation that is memorable and impacting. One suggestion Alex has is that presenters watch TED talks in addition to practicing as often and in as many ways as possible, to develop their delivery prowess:
This is what sets TEDsters apart; one can tell they appreciate the wonderful moments of resonance they experience, and they want to create similar moments of their own. TEDsters practice because other TEDsters practiced before them. Practice is essential–even when you know your message, you live it, you are it. Practice is key. This is one primary purpose of making TED such a big part of the classroom experience. Students are inspired to know there is a forum for world-changing ideas out there that is not driven by money, power, or a select few.
Instead, TEDsters follow a set of commandments; I believe these are ideas we can all live by as presenters:
I round out my TED experience this month with three talks: Lauren Zalaznick, who embodies the second TED commandment by claiming that television has a social conscience, that it serves as a sort of barometer for social morality; Paul Nicklen, whose moving and raw fascination with the arctic fully fulfills commandment number six; and Charlie Todd, whose study of absurdity as a necessary human experience is a truly remarkable example of commandment three–the commandment that holds TED and TEDx and TED Prize, and TED Fellows, and the millions of us TEDsters together–reveal thy curiosity and passion.
Think TV is just a dismissible ”boob tube”? Think again. Zalaznick gives props to Hans Rosling and using moving, living data to show our movement as a society from moral certainty to ambiguity, our shift from comfort to irreverence and social commentary.
I am a big crier, so it’s no surprise that Nicklen’s love of the arctic, but more than that his love of untouched nature, has me in tears by minute two. Nicklen combines completely immersive imagery, music, storytelling, and raw emotion in a TED talk that truly fulfills the spirit of TED–ideas worth spreading. The big idea: we are quickly losing the species we take for granted as a part of our cultural collective, and it’s the disappearing ice, the result of our actions, that is erasing these wonderlands.
The kinds of things Charlie Todd does make me nervous. I find the idea of being uncomfortable in public to be…well, uncomfortable. However, I love Todd’s sense of play, his use of absurdity to help us feel comfortable with discomfort. As Todd says, there no right or wrong way to play. Play is a forgotten element in many “formal” presentations, but play is what often keeps your audience motivated enough to listen to the end!
Note: I started this yesterday, then had to tweak me some visuals. Tweaking is exhausting!
I am as we speak sitting in my amazing class–this class is seriously great. It’s so inspiring to work with such a great bunch of learners and thinkers. Enough gushing, I am participating in today’s delivery workshop, which is led by the always engaging and energetic Alex Rister. Both Alex and I derive much inspiration for delivery from Garr Reynold’s book, The Naked Presenter. Reynold’s explores the delivery leg of the Presentation Zen system in this seminal text. What struck me most when I read this book, was just how empathetic to audience needs Reynold’s approach is. Think of how many boring, unengaging, forgettable presentations you’ve been forced to sit through. Think of just how many of those presentations you really could have done completely without because the presenter made him or herself irrelevant through plastic, robotic, frenetic, unpolished, and unclear delivery. At times, we fall back on ineffective delivery habits because we feel uncomfortable, we believe that effective speakers are all like Billy Mays and Tony Robbins (by the way, Tony Robbins is awesome–he just IS like that). Some of the speakers I admire most–Jill Bolte Taylor, Benjamin Zander, Randy Pausch– are natural and real. They are unafraid to show passion, to be almost overwhelmed by the emotion they feel towards a topic, whether it is joy, sadness, jubilance, or indignant determination. This is the essence of naked delivery–an intrepid and unafraid soul. Three lessons that I take from the naked approach are:
1. Be unafraid
As I’ve been exploring and learning from Seth Godin via Alex, our lizard brain, our old survival brain, uses fear to keep us alive. There is no bigger fear for most of us than the fear we perceive from public speech. Our lizard brain says we cannot do this, that people will laugh, or judge poorly, or reject us. Our lizard brain says we are going to screw it all up, that no one will like us, that nothing we say will truly break through that wall of resistance we perceive between ourselves and our audience. Our lizard brain is wrong, and the best presenters know when to tell that lizard brain to peace the ____ out. Excellent presenters are intrepid–they are unafraid to share their big ideas–what if Martin Luther King had been afraid to share his vision with ALL of America? What if he’d been afraid to face opposition, hoses, dogs, bullets, bombs? Excellent presenters are unafraid to be themselves, to share their true passion with others.
2. Keep the energy flowing
I teach for anywhere between 4 and 8 hours at a time–ONE class. I admit that the first few months, the thought of this scared me to death, and I found many ways to take the attention off of myself and put it on group work or in class activities. I quickly realized though, that without me, students quickly reverted back to their favorite 4-hour lecture habits which include Facebook, Tetris, checking NFL scores, texting, and generally not internalizing the ideas of the class. After learning the basics of Naked Presenting, and knowing that I had to be what I wanted others to emulate/mirror, I realized that the only way to keep my students energized and engaged, the only way to help them in developing their own skills was to be energetic, effusive, and idealistic–basically, I had to be ME, the me who works 55 hours a week and exercises 5 days a week; the me who dances like a monkey when someone has an aha moment; the me who bursts into random voices and songs; even the me who is moved to shiny Benjamin Zander eyes when I hear or see something inspirational. I had to keep my Chi energy flowing.
3. Make the audience part of the presentation
Reynolds quotes Confucius in discussing the importance of participation:
Your audience should always have a living representation of the content. Reynolds provides us with many different ideas for how we can keep the audience engaged–from discussion groups and polls, to videos and physical demonstrations. Because I am a cerebral college professor, I tend to fall back on Socratic discussion questions; however, one of my pedagogical goals for this year is to cultivate better application of in-class concepts. Find some way to make the audience a part of your speech–ask them questions, integrate their ideas, make them get up and monkey dance with you! Break down that fourth wall and create real resonance.
I’ll leave you with Alex’s take on Naked Presenting; this version is specifically geared towards delivery for online students. Below that is also is the rest of my naked slidedeck.
So, I love Pecha Kucha. I loved the word the first time I heard it, and the concept of a global network of communicators who gather to share ideas in a dynamic way spoke to the newly born public speaking nerd in me. I have asked my on campus and online students for the past two years to prepare and present their own Pecha Kuchas. Today, my class worked on developing (even finalizing) their slides, speaking points, and ideas. Presentations are Tuesday, and I am stoked.
I gave myself the challenge of preparing and presenting my own PK, which I presented at PechaKucha Orlando Vol. 2. I was scared to death. But, I also realized after it was over that I love speaking in front of others, and I couldn’t wait to do it again! I am working on my second PK, tentatively titled The Universe is Half Full: A Trekkie’s Guide to Life, which will be all about what I believe Star Trek can teach us about living and being.
Because PK is fast-paced and dynamic by design (presenters develop and present with 20 slides which automatically advance after 20 seconds–no exceptions), one must approach preparing and practicing a bit differently from other types of presentations. I give my students the following advice as they gear up for presentation day; thanks to Felix Jung for developing such an awesome guide to preparing, developing, and rehearsing a PK over at avoision.com.
#1: Be you, but kick it up a notch!
Presenting is performing to an extent. Dress like yourself, but show your audience you care by leaving the tattered jeans and booty shorts at home. While you don’t have to wear a suit to present at your best, there’s nothing like a little polish to give you that much needed boost of confidence.
#2: Focus most of your tweaking energy on the opening and closing.
At a typical PK night, presenters have to combat a noisy atmosphere, inebriated patrons, and our ever shortening attention spans. After watching thousands of student presentations over the past three years, I can sincerely say that my students have a tough job–presenting to their disinterested, nervous peers cannot be easy. In either context, it’s likely that the audience will quickly forget all but the opening and closing of the presentation, as these are the moments that, when successfully executed, strike an emotional chord with the audience. That emotion lingers far longer than a chart or statistic.
#3: Forget about the slides.
No, you don't have a clicker. No, you can't stare at your slides. The first means you have to practice. The second demands that you focus on your audience.
One of the biggest anxieties of this medium is the perceived lack of control over our pace and content that comes with the pre-timed slide. That anxiety is misdirected; if anything, a PK demands complete control over your pace and content. It is this control that enables you to narrow you subject down to what can be accomplished in the short time given. Control also allows you to adapt the message to the PK pace. Where you go, how long you stay there, and how you get there are entirely in your control.
#4: Write a speaking outline, not a speech.
Common sense indicates that if you write something out and practice only from that prewritten essay-turned-speech, when presentation day comes, you will sound robotic, even monotone, you will likely freak if you make a mistake, and you will lose that very important tool of engagement–eye contact.
These strategies helped me in shaping my presentation. When it came time to rehearse, I turned to Felix Jung’s excellent guide:
#5: Practice against a timed version.
You have no clicker on presentation day, so get your mind and body conditioned to this loss of manual control. Familiarize yourself with what 20 seconds sounds and feels like.
#6: Practice standing up and looking around the room.
Many of us have the tendency to rehearse sitting down in front of our visuals, but that’s not the way anyone should or hopefully would present the information, so why practice this way? Instead, find an audience of peers you trust to give you constructive feedback and practice making eye contact and building rapport with a live audience.
#7: Let the slides do some of the work.
I’ll let Felix handle this one…
One of the most important things I learned when practicing was that I didn’t need to fill in all the details. I didn’t need to give all the backstory – just enough to establish context, and enough to be able to make my point.
Remember that your slides can do a lot of your talking for you. As an example, let’s say you wanted to talk about your younger self, and your slide is a photo of you as a kid.
Instead of saying “This is a photograph of me when I was a child,” jump immediately to the point you want to make. When the image appears, assume that people will pick up much of what’s already in the photograph.
#8: Break your talk into sets.
Splitting your presentation up into manageable chunks (Intro. Body 1. Body 2. Body 3. Conclusion, for instance) is a good practice for any type of presentation, but it especially works when rehearsing for a PK. I practiced each of the chunks of my presentation separately, slowly ironing out my actual points. I then put them all together. Having a clear sense of how each section worked on its own helped me better connect each piece by looking for actual connections. The Romans used the concept of architectural structure to help break their speeches up into manageable chunks. They visualized their speech as a building or structure, and each part of the speech as a room in that structure. Creating a mental structure (in my case, I saw my presentation as a funnel, through which information trickled more narrowly as the speech went along until I arrived at the core of my speech, Sylvia Plath’s “Metaphors.”
#9: Practice cold.
If you can present well when you are at your worst (for me, that’s late at night–I am a daywalker), imagine what you can do when you have prepared, conditions are ideal, and you can turn those nerves into positive energy!
#10: Listen to yourself speak.
I know that the process of listening to or watching oneself can be torturous (I am painfully aware that I sound like Kelly from The Office), but there was no better tool to me when practicing this speech than recording my speech and then repeatedly listening to myself. By the time I presented (about a week after I began practicing), I had the pattern and cadence of my speech down. I knew what I wanted to say without worrying about the slides going faster or slower. I caught parts that were weak in my speech and bolstered them with better support, and when it came time for me to present, I was able to focus on maintaining engagement with my audience, as opposed to glancing at notes or the screen to keep my place.
I strongly encourage you to seek out a Pecha Kucha night in your city. Breaking through your death by Power Point comfort zone and into a place where engaging and dynamic presenting IS your comfort zone takes practice and consistent work. You are given a chance to talk about what drives you, what you care about, what you want others to join you in supporting. PK’s have even become vehicles for humanitarian aid and social change. Besides all that, Pecha Kucha nights are excellent opportunities to learn and know. PK Orlando Vol. 4 is December 2nd. See you there!
Today in Professional Communication and Presentation, my amazing students this month delivered their TED analysis speeches. This assignment has been a staple in my class since I discovered TED three years ago. I was and am consistently amazed by the humanity, passion, compassion, humility, energy, empathy, enthusiasm, innovation, genius, wisdom, and spirit of community embodied and lived by TEDsters (those of us who consider ourselves complete lovers of TED, those who present at TED, those who attend TED, and the geniuses who began–Richard Saul Wurman–and grew–Chris Anderson–the wonder that is today’s Technology, Entertainment, and Design Conference).
Courtesy of TED.com
TED has grown from a rather elitist, by invitation only, extravagantly expensive conference to a creative commons, open sharing, open conversing, education-driving, source for all ideas worth spreading. Either way, I love it. I love TED. Not only for what it teaches me and my students about the human condition, but also for its ability to transcend barriers–socio-economic, cultural, gender, racial, sexual, environmental, political, and ideological.
My students are given the task of choosing a TED talk to analyze. They must choose something that grabs their attention, resonates with them personally, and that embodies the TED Commandments, a set of unofficial rules or caveats given to TED speakers before they present (they also get copies of my two favorite books: Presentation Zen and Slide:ology by two of my gurus, Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte). This month’s students are an eclectic mix, a delicious spectrum of humanity–from the introverted intellectual to the deeply passionate, emphatic, (and vocal) extrovert.
Their chosen talks were a reflection of their personalities, interests, and whether they realized it or not, their needs and wants as audience members. Today, we discussed the harrowing child prostitution problem in India as eloquently and passionately told by Sunitha Krishnan; we explored how to truth seek with Pamela Meyer and heard the tale of Norden’s bombsight as told by master storyteller Malcolm Gladwell; we learned of John Francis‘ story, the story of a man who neither used motorized transportation nor spoke for 17 years, yet taught earned a PHD, taught at the college level, and worked as a UN Ambassador; and we marveled at Jae Rhim Lee‘s amazing mushroom death suit. Yup, TED speech days make me feel like dancing a jig…with some unicorns…on a rainbow….made of all my favorite cheeses.
The speech that stood out to me the most was not delivered by the gentleman who proclaimed to all of us that he only prepared for the assignment the night before, chose his TED talk at random, and explained that he would be “winging” his presentation and he hoped this would not result in lost points. Surprising? No, not really.
The speech that stands out to me the most was delivered by someone who, upon first glance, one might dismiss as the sort of pensive, shy student who rarely makes ripples or an impact (though I must admit, I was enamored with him right away–he is, after all, a self-proclaimed nerd, and I can never resist a nerd!). This student’s speech was well-prepared, exquisitely delivered with the right amount of humor, personality, and relevant content (he went so far as to reenact Ken Robinson’s excellent opening to “Bring on the Learning Revolution!”). This student included personal experience, used storytelling, revealed his passion for the topic of education, and wholeheartedly shared his reaction to Robinson’s point. But, it wasn’t any of this that created a truly resonant moment in class, not just for me, but for everyone else in the classroom. What was this amazing, mind-blowing epiphany aka aha moment?
That’s it? Really? I’ve said keep your presentation conversational for years! How could this mere nerd show us public speaking teachers up with something we tell our students day in and day out?
The answer is in how he framed it. He managed to say what I’ve been trying to show and teach for years. His idea resonated with everyone in that cold, sterile room today:
How do you have a conversation with someone?
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