5 ways bullet-point slides damage your brand

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Your presentation style is part of your personal brand. If you’re still clinging to bullet-point slides, it doesn’t matter how dynamic you are as a presenter, your personal brand will be damaged.

That’s because when you use bullet-laden slides in your presentation, your audience will make five decisions about you and your presentation:

1. This is going to be boring

When an audience sees the first slide of your presentation and they see row after row of bullets they’ll sink just a little in their seats. They’ve had to sit though many boring bullet-laden presentations before and they’re thinking “Uh-oh - this is going to be boring.”

Just like Pavlov’s dogs it’s a conditioned response. Paylov’s dogs salivated when Pavlov rang a bell because they anticipated being fed. Audiences deflate when the presenter uses bullets because they anticipate being bored.

2. You don’t know your stuff

If you knew your stuff, why would you need a screen to prompt you every few seconds? One of our course participants summed it up:

“I’ve been burying my expertise in a barrage of bullets.”

When I see someone presenting with bullet-point slides, I often think that I could deliver the presentation better than they can - even though I know nothing about the topic. Bullet-point slides obviate the need for your knowledge.

So take your notes off the screen, and put them in your hand. Now you can show off your knowledge.

3. You’re not up-to-date

The PowerPoint revolution has happened. People have seen PowerPoint used to show images to inspire and amuse, to show diagrams to clarify and explain, and to show charts that make data meaningful rather than deadly.

So when you show slide after slide of bullets, your audience will make that mean that you’re out-of-date and that you and your organisation are stuck in the past.

4. You’re lazy

Bullet-point slides send the message that you’re not prepared to put the work in to transform your presentation. The audience may be thinking “If you’re lazy about preparing your presentation, what else are you lazy about?”

You may be overestimating the time it will take to transform your presentation slides. Many of our course participants are surprised by how quickly they can put together a visually interesting PowerPoint presentation. See this post about The best PowerPoint slide format to see how long it takes compared to the alternatives.

5. You’re wasting my time

When you sit through a lengthy bullet-point presentation, do you think to yourself  “The presenter could have sent me the slides for me to read and that would be a lot quicker!”

Your presentation is part of your personal brand and that of your organisation. If you’re still clinging to bullets, you’re damaging your brand.

3 Reasons not to use NLP to overcome fear of public speaking

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a controversial topic.

I started my research for this post with a relatively open mind.

I say relatively, because I do have some biases against NLP. Many NLP-trained people spout the nonsense about only 7% of your communication being based on the words you say. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll know that I like to have scientific research to back up what I say - my experience was that NLP doesn’t always meet this standard.

Nevertheless, I decided that I would have a fresh look at NLP and the research to see whether I could recommend it as a method to conquer your fear of public speaking.

My conclusion is NO.

Here are my reasons:

1. NLP methods are generally not scientifically proven

NLP consists of a collection of different models and techniques - some of which are supported by research and some of which are not.

NLP has its roots in psychological theory, but has developed in its own separate silo, and does not have a large body of independent research (ie: research carried out by non-NLP practitioners) to substantiate it.

I did find two research studies from the 1980s which tested NLP treatments for people who were nervous about giving a speech. The people who received the NLP treatments did no better than people who had sat in a waiting room for an hour (the control group).

However, some aspects of NLP cures for fear of public speaking seem to be well-grounded in cognitive psychology and some NLP processes have established counterparts in mainstream psychology (eg: anchoring is classical conditioning).

2. Some NLP techniques are just plain wacky

In some NLP trainings, “mind juggling” is taught to relieve anxiety. It involves throwing a heavy ball from one hand to the other (here’s a video demonstration of “mind juggling“). Some NLP practitioners make extravagant claims for it:

This is one very simple technique that cures panic attacks, anxiety disorders, sleep problems, chronic pain, grieving and/or obsessive-compulsive behaviors in a safe and non-intrusive way.

On the same website the supposedly scientific explanation for this cure is given:

It is a basic neurological process that resynchronizes the blood flow to both hemispheres of the brain which leaves you feeling centered and calm.

Starting to sound a little wacky here - but I dug deeper… and found the website of the apparent originator of this NLP cure - Nelson Zinc:

After researching the neurophysiology of anxiety and conducting experiments with anxiety sufferers, we concluded that anxiety was closely associated with a functional imbalance between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. It has been theorized that when the sensory and motor functions of the two hemispheres were uncoordinated, anxiety resulted.

If you have any psychological training - this will sound a little strange (the amygdala and hippocampus are the regions of the brain more often associated with the biological basis of anxiety). But further on he provides proof!

The March 1985 issue of Scientific American contained a vivid confirmation of the theoretical aspects of the technique. A photo of a positron emission tomography (PET) scan showed unequal blood flow in the brain of a victim of panic disorder. The left side of the brain is overactive, while in the right activity has decreased significantly. The photo made it abundantly clear that anxiety results from the isolation and imbalance of hemispheric activity.

This makes the basic mistake of confusing correlation with causation. I wasn’t able to go back to the 1985 issue of Scientific American to check out the original photo, but a 2000 review of Neuroimaging Studies of Human Anxiety Disorders does not support Zinc’s conclusions.

3. The competence of NLP trainers is highly variable

There is no uniform training and qualification system for NLP pracitioners - so it’s difficult to judge the competence and experience of a person who claims to be an NLP practitioner. In some places, you can do a 7 day training course and then call yourself an NLP practitioner.

I have met some people who have NLP training and claim to be able to help other people - and they are totally clueless. It horrifies me to think of the damage that they could do.

And the skill of the practitioner is key. Andrew T Austin an experienced English NLP practitioner says:

Well-meaning therapists and NLP practitioners will often attempt the phobia cure with an inadequate understanding of the process and of how and why it works.

In summary, I don’t write off NLP as a whole - after all its borrowed a lot from other more rigorous areas of psychology. And if I really wanted to use an NLP practitioner, I would find one with a proven medical or psychological background who also draws on NLP techniques as part of their toolkit.

This is the third post in the series “Review of the top ten methods to overcome fear of public speaking”. Previously I’ve looked at:

1. Affirmation and visualization

2. Hypnosis and Relaxation training

Six lessons in public speaking from Obama

America has elected the greatest political speaker for a generation.

You may think that there’s nothing for you to learn from Barack Obama’s speechmaking skills - that speaking to 200,000 people at Grant Park, Chicago is too far removed from the presentation you might give to your staff, to your management team or to potential clients. Here are six lessons you can learn from Obama’s acceptance speech at Grant Park.

1. Know your audience

It would have been easy for Obama to fall into the trap of talking to the 200,000 people before him in Grant Park. He didn’t. He spoke to Americans in their living rooms, he spoke to those who voted for McCain, he spoke to people watching him across the world - leaders and the poorest of the  poor. He knew who his audience was.

“And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.”

2. Envelop your point in a story

The long history of the campaign for civil rights in America made Obama’s election possible. Obama enveloped this point with the story of Anne Dixon Cooper, a 106 year old woman who was born the daughter of slaves, and has lived through the milestons of the civil rights movement.

“She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons — because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.”

That’s far more emotionally engaging than giving us a history lesson.

3. Paint pictures on the canvas of your audience’s mind

Obama used specific and concrete words to conjure powerful images in our minds. Here are some examples:

“Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.”

“Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.”

“And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years — block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.”

4. Get personal

Barack Obama told the whole world that he’s getting his two young daughters a puppy to take with them to the White House. And the world loved it. In his first press conference he remarked that this is the most popular issue on his website.

5. Wait for weight

Obama is not in a hurry when he speaks. He waits for the audience to process and react to what he has just said. And that gives his words weight. You can do the same.

6. Light and shade

Obama’s acceptance speech had different moods - joyful - humorous - serious - intimate - determined. The contrasts keep us engaged - build light and shade into your presentations.

Here’s the full transcript of the speech - it’s worth reading in its entirety.

For more perspectives, here are other posts on Barack Obama’s acceptance speech:

Bert Decker focuses on impressive aspects of Obama’s transformational speech.

Lisa Braithwaite comments on Obama’s speech and McCain’s concession speech.

Nick Morgan praises both Obama and McCain for their speeches.

Max Atkinson analyses Obama’s rhetorical techniques.

Review of top 10 methods to overcome fear of public speaking #2

This is Part 2 of a review of the top 10 methods for reducing the fear of public speaking. In Part 1 I reviewed affirmations and visualization. In this post I explore the use of hypnosis and relaxation training.

3. Hypnosis

I have no personal experience of hypnosis, and as I began my research for this review I was reasonably sceptical. But I have now been enlightened. It’s clear that hypnotherapy is an effective treatment for many issues, including anxiety. The British Psychological Society published an authoritative report in 2001 entitled “The nature of hypnosis”. In relation to its use in therapy they concluded:

Enough studies have now accumulated to suggest that the inclusion of hypnotic procedures may be beneficial in the management and treatment of a wide range of conditions and problems encountered in the practice of medicine, psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Many research studies also show that self-hypnosis can be effective.

What’s not so clear is how can you differentiate between the hundreds of different self-hypnosis tapes, CDs etc and their wild claims. I’ve spent many hours researching the effectiveness of self-hypnosis products and have found no independent sources to back-up their claims.

I did find this report on the effectiveness of different programmes of hypnosis, but was unable to find the original research:

Several investigators during the 1970’s and 1980’s provided clinical and experimental evidence about the effectiveness of hypnosis for smoking cessation, substance abuse, weight loss, phobias, depression, and anxiety. These results were summarized by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis as follows:

- Home study self-hypnosis: 2-5% success rate

- Group hypnosis session: 2-5% success rate

- Single individual session: 17-20% success rate

- Three individual sessions: 45-50% success rate

- Five individual sessions: 85-90% success rate

This data is old, but my overall impression is that a series of tailored one-on-one sessions from a professional hypnotherapist is a very different experience to listening to a CD you’ve bought on the internet. And likely to be much more effective.

4. Relaxation training

The fear that we feel about public speaking is the manifestation of the fight of flight response. The opposite of the fight or flight response is the relaxation response - first defined by Dr Herbert Benson.

So learning how to induce the relaxation response would seem to be a good antidote to the fear of public speaking. A review of 10 years of scientific studies of the effectiveness of relaxation techniques for the treatment of anxiety concluded:

The results show consistent and significant efficacy of relaxation training in reducing anxiety.

But here’s the thing. Suddenly trying out a relaxation exercise for the first time five minutes before your presentation is unlikely to work. You need to train your body to relax. The more you practice, the more easily you will be able to induce relaxation when you want to.

Here’s a list of sites where you can get information on relaxation training:

• Stress management at the Mindtools site
• Types of Relaxation Techniques from Stresscourse
• Relaxation techniques from the Mayo Clinic
• The Benson Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine

My next post in this series will be devoted to Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

Review of the top 10 methods to overcome fear of public speaking #1

There’s a ton of internet advice on how to overcome the fear of public speaking. Much of the advice is of the “what worked for me” kind. Or the advice is the first stage of trying to sell you a a hypnosis CD. So how do you decide what advice to follow? In this post series, I’ll be reviewing the 10 most recommended methods. Here’s the list (not in any particular order):

1. Affirmations
2. Visualization
3. Hypnosis
4. Relaxation techniques
5. Neuro-Linguistic Programming
6. The Lefkoe method
7. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
8. Medication
9. Just do it
10. Toastmasters

If you think there are others that I should be looking at, let me know. My aim is to look for evidence of effectiveness on a more than anecdotal basis. In this post, I’ll start with affirmations and visualization.

1.  Positive Affirmations

A positive affirmation is a statement stated in the present-tense which describes how you’d like to be. Here’s an example from the ThinkSimpleNow blog on conquering your fear of public speaking.

“I am a fantastic speaker and I deliver engaging presentations.”

You repeat the affirmation to yourself and stick it somewhere where you’ll often be reminded of it. It’s easy to find people who attribute their success to affirmations:

Before a sales meeting once, I was repeating similar affirmations to myself as I got ready in the morning, and in the car as I drove to the meeting. I sold with flying colors. That’s when I really learned the power of affirmation.

An article in Psychology Today ; Self-Help: Shattering the Myths says about affirmations:

Psychologists say this technique may not be very helpful. Changing how we feel about ourselves is a lot more complicated, explains William Swann, Ph.D., of the University of Texas-Austin…Self-affirmations, even when endlessly repeated, don’t make much of a dent — and when they fail to work, they may leave us even more demoralized.

Self-esteem research by Robert Josephs and Chris Jacobs indicates that people with low self-esteem don’t accept positive feedback from themselves - it has to come from someone else. The research is reported in Psychology Today in an article on affirmations:

Jacobs says the study’s results cast doubt on the value of self-affirmations, a self-esteem building technique found in many self-help books and programs. For people with a poor self-image, it seems, repeating the phrase “I am credible” won’t make it so.

This to me, is the critical issue with affirmations. An important component of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - a proven treatment method for depression and anxiety - is the believability of the new thought processes. Can affirmations really have an impact if you don’t believe what you’re saying?

2. Visualizations

There are two distinct types of visualization - one is supported by scientific research and one is not. But they’re often mixed up. The two types are:

a. Positive visualization, and

b. Mental rehearsal.

Positive visualization

In a positive visualization you imagine the results of giving a successful presentation. Here’s an example of a positive visualization:

You see yourself speaking to the audience. You’re doing a great job. The audience is leaning forward - they’re engaged, nodding and smiling at you. At the end of your presentation, they give you a resounding round of applause and people come up to you and complement you on how well you did.

I’ve been unable to find any scientific evidence that backs up the use of this type of visualization for effectively reducing your nerves or improving your performance. Here’s why I think that might be:

1. It’s not realistic - audiences are not always smiling and nodding. They’re not always fascinated by what you’ve got to say. Although this type of visualization may momentarily make you feel good, does it help your confidence when you’re faced with a more normal audience?

2. It has you experience the outcome of the presentation, rather than the process of delivering the presentation. Again that may make you feel good during the visualization, but it doesn’t deliver any other benefits.

Mental rehearsal

When you mentally rehearse your presentation, in contrast to the positive visualization above, you go through the whole process of giving the presentation - not just seeing the outcome. You see the audience reaction as you realistically think it will be. You imagine what might go wrong and rehearse how you will effectively cope with it. There is a large body of evidence that backs up the use of mental rehearsal (also called mental imagery, mental practice and coping rehearsal). Here’s a quote from the wikipedia entry on mental rehearsal:

Educational researchers have examined whether the experience of mental imagery affects the degree of learning. For example, imagining playing a 5-finger piano exercise (mental practice) resulted in a significant improvement in performance over no mental practice — though not as significant as that produced by physical practice and the authors of the study stated that “mental practice alone seems to be sufficient to promote the modulation of neural circuits involved in the early stages of motor skill learning.” (Pascual-Leone et al 1995).

This article on Imagining instructions: Mental practice in highly cognitive domains summarises much of the research. Mental rehearsal  is used widely by top athletes in many sports to improve their performance. It’s most effective at reducing your nerves when you use it to prepare for things not going well. Here’s a report of how Billie Jean King, a former top tennis player, prepares for a speech:

“She drives us crazy, absolutely crazy, planning for everything and anything to go wrong,” Kloss said. “She’ll say, ‘What about this? What about that? What if this happens?’ By the time Billie gets on stage or on the court, she’s laid out every possible scenario in her mind. And at that point, she’s totally calm.”

So using mental rehearsal to reduce your nerves is not about imagining everything going smoothly, it’s about imagining the things that might go wrong, and then visualizing how you will cope with this.

For example, let’s say you’re concerned about your mind going blank during your presentation. Visualize this situation as if it were happening to you right now. Now see yourself staying calm. Pause and take your time to look at your notes. Find your place and work out what what you want to say next. When you’re ready, look up at someone in your audience and start talking.

If you’ve practiced this in your head, should you suffer a mind blank during the real thing, you’ll have conditioned yourself to react in a calm and unruffled way, and you’ll be able to smoothly resume your presentation.

So unlike affirmations and positive visualizations, mental rehearsal is an effective method for reducing your fear of public speaking.

In the next post in this series, I’ll review the effectiveness of hypnosis, relaxation techniques and Neuro Linguistic Programming for reducing your nerves.

How to project your voice

A reader has asked:

I always feel that I am not able to project my voice and articulate the words properly. Is there any material / information on how I can improve these areas?

Presenters often want advice on projecting their voice. They see voice projection as a solution to not talking loud enough. But when I work with presenters who say they want to project their voice, I hardly ever end up teaching them that - because we solve the problem in other ways.

So I want to backtrack. First, let’s look at whether there is a problem.

Is there a problem?

There’s only a problem if people in your audience either can’t comfortably hear you or can’t understand you.

Maybe you speak quietly. That’s your natural style whether you’re having a conversation with one other person or speaking to a group. As long as people don’t have to strain to hear you, that’s not a problem.

You may have a friend or colleague who has advised you to speak louder or project your voice. This advice is well-intentioned but misguided. They think that a public speaker should speak at a certain volume.

But they forget that it’s more important to be yourself, than to try and aspire to some “model” of how a public speaker should be. When you try and be something other than yourself - you lose something far more important than what you might be gaining. You lose authenticity - that feeling that the audience has that they are seeing the real you.

So get some feedback from a range of people in your audience. Do people have a problem hearing you or understanding you? If they don’t, that’s great. If they do, let’s go onto look at the cause of the problem.

What’s the underlying reason for the problem?

There are three possibilities:

1. You don’t how to use your voice effectively to make it go louder.

2. Nervousness is subduing you, and as a result you’re speaking too quietly.

3. You’re not looking at the people you’re speaking to.

1. Can you use your voice?

Learning how to project your voice is obviously the solution to the first problem. The vast majority of people do know how to increase the volume of their voice. It’s a natural human skill. Sure, to be an opera singer you might need some technical training on voice projection - but not to be a presenter.

Most likely, you already know how to use your voice.

Have a play with your voice

Test this out in a large room with an honest, compassionate and playful friend. Stand at opposite ends of the room. Focus on your friend - can you make yourself heard across the room? Now have a play with your voice. Experiment. How soft can you speak? How loud can you speak? Can you make it boom? Can you make it squeak? Your voice is carried on your breath so experiment with your breathing - breath from your diaphragm (put your hand on your belly to check that you’re doing this) and see how your voice sounds.

Get feedback from your friend on how your voice sounds. In this stress-free environment, you’ll probably find you can use your voice just fine. If you are having problems (and your friend agrees ie: it’s not just your perception) then you might need more help from a voice coach or singing teacher.

2. Nervousness is subduing you

So you know how to use your voice, but when you’re in front of an audience that ability deserts you! Fear and nervousness are a normal part of public speaking for many people. And for you, it makes you go quiet.

Here’s what I speculate might be going on for you.

You might have a thought that goes like this:

“I must be approved by every person in the audience. If they don’t approve of me that would be awful.”

If you believe this thought, you defend yourself against the possiblity of disapproval by speaking quietly. After all, if they can’t hear or understand what you say, they can’t disapprove.

But this thought is untrue and irrational. I recommend using strategies from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to deal with thoughts like this. That means first challenging the thought and then replacing it with a more rational and empowering thought.

Challenge the thought

It’s not true that you must have everyone’s approval. Sure, you’d like it - but it’s not essential to your survival. Part of becoming comfortable with public speaking is becoming comfortable with the idea that you won’t always get approval from every person in your audience. I like this Bill Cosby quote:

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”

Replace the thought

Here’s a more rational and empowering thought to replace it with:

“I’d like people in the audience to approve of what I have to say, but I’ll be able to cope if they don’t.”

Note that this isn’t a positive affirmation like “Everyone will approve of me”. That’s not necessarily true - sometimes people don’t like you or what you have to say. And as a result it’s not believable. The replacement thought that I have suggested is truthful and believable. And it will make you feel more confident.

Check out my post on the Seven Thinking Sins of Public Speaking for more examples on replacing unhelpful thoughts.

3. You’re not looking at the people you’re speaking to

There are some people - and maybe you’re one of them - who don’t look at their audience when they’re speaking. Maybe you look at the screen, at the floor, at the ceiling, or into the middle distance.

When we speak one-on-one to someone, we naturally modulate our volume so that they can hear us. If they’re close, we speak softly. If they’re across the room, we up the volume.

This natural ability comes into play when you look at the person you’re speaking to.

I’m not talking fleeting eye contact. Choose one audience-member to talk to and imagine you’re having a one-on-one conversation with them. Speak just to them. Make a connection with them. Look for their reaction as you’re talking. Then choose another person to talk to. When you talk like this - with the intention of connecting with each individual audience member - you will naturally project your voice so that they can hear you.

You may be uncomfortable with this sustained eye connection. But what you’re uncomfortable with may be just right for your audience. You can test this out by gathering together a range of friends or colleagues. Experiment with eye connection. Then ask them to tell you whether it was uncomfortable for them.

Summary

You probably don’t need to learn how to project your voice. You can already do that. But do look at the thoughts that might be making you nervous. And use your natural ability to modulate the volume of your voice by speaking to each person in your audience.

Do you have a question?

This post was written in response to a reader’s question. If you’d like some advice on some aspect of  presenting or public speaking, write your question in the comments or send me an e-mail.

I wish I’d spoken at my father’s funeral

Being able to express yourself publicly at important ceremonies and celebrations - funerals, weddings, christenings and birthdays - is one of the greatest gifts.

My father died 10 years ago. I was going to speak at his funeral. But when we arrived at the church all I could see were the distinguished, CEO-looking men in the audience (my father was an international businessman).  I felt intimidated and chose not to speak. That’s something I regret.

I’ll never turn down an invitation to give a eulogy again.

Don’t make the same mistake I made at my father’s funeral. If you’re given an opportunity to speak at a funeral or other family celebration, think of your regret if you don’t express yourself and your love for that person. On one side you’ll have your anxiety urging to stay quiet. On the other, you have your love for that person that that you would like to express publicly. Focus on the love, not the anxiety.

Take the pressure off

Here is some advice for taking the pressure off yourself as you prepare a eulogy or a speech for a family celebration.

1. You don’t have to provide an outline of their entire life. The best eulogies are a snapshot or series of snapshots of the person’s life.  Comprehensive accounts of a person’s life are best left to written tributes and obituaries.

2. You don’t have to do a ton of research or talk to lots of other people. Give your own recollections and your own perspective about the person. In a forum thread on giving a eulogy the most repeated advice was to share your personal memories.

3. You don’t have to lie. Every person has some flaws. Don’t feel you have to avoid them. Be compassionately honest about the person - don’t idealize them. From the eulogy forum thread comes this beautifully written thought:

In the wan light of grief, annoying habits become endearing eccentricities; it feels good to honor the person who really lived, and not some idealized version that never existed.

4. You don’t have to make people laugh. Moments of levity and humour are fine, and even welcome during a funeral service. However, if humour doesn’t come naturally to you, don’t force it. A trivial detail which people can relate to is often all that is required:

The only thing I remember about my grandmother’s eulogy was the priest describing how he could always tell she was in line for the Eucharist, because he could hear the tinkling of the armful of bracelets she perpetually wore. It was such a wonderful detail that it captured so much about her — her faith, her style, her position in her church. It was a lovely detail and I remember how much we all smiled and laughed when the priest said it — a bit of joy in the midst of our grief.

5. You don’t have to get it exactly right. The exact words that you use and whether they come out right or not - is not important. This is not a business presentation. Nobody’s taking notes.

6. You don’t have to have a complicated structure. Here’s an easy formula for your eulogy or speech. Think of three qualities the person has. Talk about each quality with a short story or anecdote to illustrate each one.

How to get through a eulogy without crying

1. Rehearsal is critical. The hardest thing about giving a eulogy is coping with the effect your words will have on you. Rehearse your speech several times so as to desensitize yourself to your own words. During your first rehearsal, you’ll probably find yourself tearing up. The second time it will happen a little less. The third time, hardly at all. Eventually, you’ll be able to give the speech without emotion welling up.

2. Have two sets of notes. I normally recommend against a full script - but a eulogy is one time where it can be very useful. The beauty (and normally the downside) of a script is that you don’t have to think about what you’re saying. In a normal presentation or speech this is deadly for the audience. But for a eulogy it maybe just what you need to carry you through it. So have brief bullet-point notes that you intend to use. And a fully-scripted set that you can fall-back on, should you get stuck.

3. Have a back-up. Despite the rehearsals you may find that in the highly-charged atmosphere of the funeral, emotion overcomes you. Allow yourself some silence to gather yourself. But arrange a back-up person to read your speech if you find yourself unable to carry on.

Other eulogy advice

In doing research for this post, I found a lot of impersonal rubbish about writing eulogies. But then I stumbled across this gem How to give a Eulogy by Tom Chiarella. I highly recommend reading this moving and insightful essay in full. But here are two of the insights that hit home for me:

1. Think of your audience in concentric circles. Your primary audience are the people most closely related to the deceased:

Standing there on the dais, consider the world as a series of concentric rings of loyalty. The people in the nearest ring, those in the front row, are owed the most. You should speak first to them. And then, in the next measure, to the room itself, which is the next ring, and only then to the physical world outside, the neighborhood, the town, the place, and then, just maybe, to the machinations of life-muffling institutions.

2. Think small.

The writing and reading of a eulogy is, above all, the simple and elegant search for small truths. They don’t have to be truths that everyone agrees on, just ones they will recognize. This can be surprisingly hard, to take notice of the smallest, most unpolished details of a life and set them up for us to stare at in the wonder of recognition.

There’s one piece of advice he gives that I disagree with: “You must make them laugh”. I don’t think there’s anything we “must” do in a eulogy. And putting that sort of pressure on yourself could put you off doing it altogether. It’s far more important to give an imperfect eulogy, than not to give a perfect eulogy.

My latest opportunity to speak was at my daughter’s 21st birthday party. I was in charge of preparing vegeterian canapes for fifty, so I didn’t have time to sit down and prepare.

But I knew that in this particular context, what I said was not critical, and given the superb 50 year old brandy that we were toasting her with, unlikely to be remembered.

What was important was the emotion. My words were only a vehicle to express that emotion. And only one member of the audience really mattered - my daughter. And all I had to get across to her was that I loved her.

How to go from good presenter to great presenter

There is one thing that will take you from being a good presenter to becoming a great presenter.

I’ve recently returned from 5 weeks travelling overseas. The first week back in New Zealand we ran a one-day presentation skills course. This is routine stuff for me. I’ve delivered the same material two to three times a week for five years.

I didn’t even think about rehearsing.

I wasn’t terrible. But sometimes my sentences didn’t quite go where I wanted them to. I didn’t click to go to the next PowerPoint slide at just the right moment. My timing was just a little off to get the biggest laugh.

I was good, but I wasn’t great.

For me the difference between being good and being great is rehearsal.

And a new study of competitive chess players reveals that this might be the case for many people. The more hours of practice a chess player puts in, the better they are. And that’s not because they’re more talented. The study compared two groups of competitive chess players - the first group were good, the second group were great. The research showed that the difference in ability was due to more practice hours. The researchers concluded:

Irrespective of skill level, stimulating deliberate practice will likely improve performance.

Why we don’t rehearse

You know in your gut that that ’sall true. But you still don’t rehearse because:

1.  “It’s time consuming”. Get over it. Multiply the number of people who will be listening to you by the length of your presentation. A one-hour presentation to 30 people. That’s 30 hours of people time. Isn’t it worth doing a couple of rehearsals so that that 30 hours is worthwhile.

2.   “It makes me feel uncomfortable”. Rehearsing brings up fear - the fear you feel when you’re in front of the audience. So it’s tempting to sidestep the rehearsal. But instead of focusing on the fear, focus on the reduction in fear you’ll have as a result of your rehearsal. The knowledge that you’ve practised your presentation a couple of times and it hangs together well, will help.

3.   “I’ll get stale”. Rowan Manahan has a rant about the stale excuse on his blog:

Try using that ’stale’ line with a stage actor who endures weeks and weeks of rehearsal and then months or even years of 8-shows-a-week performances. Stale? In front of a full house who have paid 70-100 bucks a seat? I don’t think so! The enormous effort put in at rehearsal and the ongoing cycle of refresher rehearsals keeps the show alive and invigorated and fresh - not stale. What these performers display at every show, at every cast meeting and at every refresher is called professional pride and I sincerely wish that more presenters displayed it too.

4. “I can get away with winging it”. You’re deluding yourself. Here’s Nick Morgan to skewer your delusion:

The alternative, winging it, is never as good as you think it is.  And your audience won’t tell you the truth. Unfortunately, what happens is that the speaker who wings it gets pumped full of adrenaline, comes charging off the stage and asks the first person he sees, ‘how was it,’ with a big smile on his face.  Only a churl would reply with, ‘well, it was disorganized, there were lots of minor screw-ups, and you kept making the same points over and over again’.  Most people say, ‘it was great!’ and the speaker think to himself, ‘That’s all right then; next time I’ll do it the same way.  Obviously I’m too cool to rehearse’.

5. “I’m better when I’m unprepared”. Jason Fried from 37Signals recently posted on the company blog:

This year I’ve spoken at about a dozen or so conferences and another dozen or so meetings or classes or gatherings. What I’ve started to notice is that I’m better unprepared.

Then he compared two talks he’d recently given:

I’d never given the Software Curator talk before, so I practiced and practiced and practiced the night before. I was manic about it. I ran through it a few dozen times. When it came time to give the “Software Curator” talk, I was nervous. Not because I was speaking in front of a couple thousand people, but because I kept thinking about what I was supposed to say based on hours of practice. I kept reliving the practice, not living the moment. I keep reaching for the script in my mind instead of my current thoughts. I wasn’t happy with the talk at all.

Last week I spoke at the IDEA conference in Chicago. I had no idea what I was going to talk about. The topic was just “Getting Real” so it was pretty open ended. I went up on stage, grabbed the mic, and just started talking. No idea what the next sentence would be. I wandered through a bunch of ideas that came to mind in the moment. I think it was one of my better talks.

First, I wonder whether the audience would agree with Jason. Your own feelings about how a talk goes are not necessarily a good reflection of how the audience felt. But more important, the way that Jason rehearsed may not have served him well. The way he rehearsed resulted in him writing a script in his head. Just like a script on paper, having a script in your head has you “read” to your audience. That doesn’t help you connect and engage with your audience. Even more problematic, because the script was in his head rather than on paper, he also had to reach for the words. That had him concentrating on his content rather than the audience.

One of the goals of rehearsal is to have the content of your presentation so familiar to you that you don’t have to think about it. That means that during the presentation, your sole focus is on connecting with your audience. Chris Bonney has a useful analogy in his post The truth about winging it:

Think of it like basketball. You practice dribbling, free throws, and your jump shot until you can do them in your sleep. That way on game day when you’re in the flow of the game and are forced to read the other guy on the run, you’re able to adjust and still hit your jumper with no problem.

How can you rehearse to achieve this goal? A presentation is about communicating ideas not words. There are hundreds of different ways of saying the same thing. So the exact form of your sentences is not critical. Every time you rehearse make a point of saying it differently. That will reduce the risk of writing a script in your head.

If you want to be a great presenter, there’s no excuse for not rehearsing.

Other great posts on rehearsal:

TJ Walker argues that the only way to rehearse is by video. He argues that not watching yourself deliver your presentation is like sending out a critical written report or proposal without editing and proofreading.

Laura Bergells has Top 6 Touchy-Feely Presentation Rehearsal Tips. She stresses the value of rehearsing in front of people to replicate the emotional energy of the audience. If you don’t have people she recommends “hang pictures of friends, family, or colleagues.”

Joey Asher responds to people who say they don’t have time to rehearse for a new business pitch “If you don’t have time to rehearse, I guess I understand. But know this. One of your competitors probably wants to win enough to practice really hard. And with that in mind, they’re probably going to win.”

Lisa Braithwaite of SpeakSchmeak has a great post on the difference between preparing and overpreparing. here;s one of her indicators of overpreparing: “You’ve rehearsed a gesture, facial expression and movement for each moment of the presentation so there is no risk of spontaneity breaking out.”

New scientific evidence for banning bullets from your PowerPoint slides

Many of us know intuitively that having lots of bullet-points on our slides isn’t effective. But it’s useful to have some scientific evidence to back up that intuition. New research on multitasking may provide that.

In the research carried out at the University of Michigan and reported on the NPR website, subjects were asked to perform different tasks while lying in an MRI scanner. The research shows that multitasking is a human delusion. In fact we switch rapidly from one task to another. One of the reasons for this is that similar tasks compete for use of the brain. Neuroscientist Earl Miller at the University of Michigan said:

Think about writing an e-mail and talking on the phone at the same time. Those things are nearly impossible to do at the same time. You cannot focus on one while doing the other. That’s because of what’s called interference between the two tasks. They both involve communicating via speech or the written word, and so there’s a lot of conflict between the two of them.

Applying this to PowerPoint presentations, reading bullet-points and listening to the presenter are conflicting tasks. If a person in your audience is reading a bullet-point they are not listening to you.

So what does this mean for the use of text on PowerPoint slides? Should we use any text at all? I think short pieces of text can have a place on PowerPoint slides.  It’s hard work listening to a monologue - we’re much better at listening when it’s a dialogue and we’re expecting to take our turn at speaking. So as speakers we need to help our audiences to stay tuned in. You can so this by by isolating your main point for each part of your presentation and putting it on a slide. The text will act as an anchor in three ways:

1. It will help emphasise that this an important point.
2. It will provide a visual memory of the point particularly if teamed with an arresting image.
3. It will provide longevity to your words.
4. And lastly, should someone tune out temporarily, when they tune back in they’ll know what you’re talking about.

But keep it short. My rule of thumb is one short sentence which expresses the point of the slide.

And stop talking when you first show the slide. It doesn’t take long for people to read one short sentence - maybe 2-3 seconds. Keep silent for that time and they won’t have a conflict between reading and listening to you.

Mice show that you can overcome fear of public speaking

If you get nervous about speaking in public, the recently published results from a scientific experiment on mice, should give you some hope. The experiment showed that mice that had been trained to feel calm, coped better with stressful situations.

The mice were trained to associate a specific sound with safety. They were then subjected to a stressful event - a mouse swimming pool that they could not escape from. The mice would eventually give up swimming as if they had given up hope. But when the “safe” sound was made, the mice started swimming again.

The lead researcher, Eric Kandel said:

The behavioral changes observed in the mice squelched anxiety as effectively as antidepressant drugs such as Prozac. This shows that behavioral intervention works.

On the Redorbit site, Kandel is reported as saying:

The experiment suggests that there are good ways to teach people this skill, and points to new routes for developing better antidepressants. The happy place works. This is like going to the country.

So how can you use the results of this experiment to help you overcome nervousness about speaking in public? I’m not an NLP fan, but I have heard of people having success with the NLP tecnnique of anchoring and this research would seem to back up the effectiveness of anchoring . Here’s the wikipedia definition of anchoring:

Anchoring is the process by which a particular state or response is associated (anchored) with a unique anchor. An anchor is most often a gesture, voice tone or touch but could be any unique visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory or gustatory stimulus. It is claimed that by recalling past resourceful states one can anchor those states to make them available in new situations. A psychotherapist might anchor positive states like calmness and relaxation, or confidence in the treatment of phobias and anxiety, such as in public speaking.

To apply this to reduce your nerves when you’re speaking in public, a specific touch is the most practical, for example touching the pads of your thumb and your forefinger together. Train yourself to associate this touch with a positive, empowered state. Recall a time when you were in this state at the same time as you touch your thumb and forefinger together. You will likely have to do this many times before the touch will by itself summons the positive, empowered state. Once you’ve achieved this, you’ve given yourself a “button” you can use to reduce your nerves at any time before or during a presentation.

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