People perceive someone who speaks up as a competent leader – regardless of whether they actually are competent. That’s the finding of a fascinating research study that has just been reported online at Time.

The research study

68 students were divided into teams of four. Each group was tasked with organizing an imaginary nonprofit environmental organization. The level of influence and competence of each group member was then rated by:

1. the other members of their group
2. independent observers who watched videotapes of the group sessions
3. the researchers.

All three groups came to the same conclusion:

Consistently, the group members who spoke up the most were rated the highest for such qualities as “general intelligence” and “dependable and self-disciplined.” The ones who didn’t speak as much tended to score higher for less desirable traits, including “conventional and uncreative.”

The researchers then ran a similar experiment to test whether people who spoke up more, were in fact more competent. This time the subject was maths and the researchers knew the students’ ability in maths before the start of the experiment. Once again students who spoke up were seen as leaders. But here’s the surprise – they were also rated as good at maths – regardless of their actual competence:

What’s more, any speaking up at all seemed to do. Participants earned recognition for being the first to call out an answer, but also for being the second or third — even if all they did was agree with what someone else had said. Merely providing some scrap of information relevant to solving the problem counted too, as long as they did so often enough and confidently enough.

The take-home message of this research

The message from this research is that if you want to be perceived as a leader in your organization you need to speak up.

So what holds you back from contributing to meetings? If you’re anything like me, you might have the following thoughts:

1. I’ll speak up, but only when I have something useful to offer
2. I want to make sure that what I say makes sense, so I’ll just think about it a bit more before I speak up
3. It’ll look like I’m dominating the meeting if I speak up too much
4. There’s never a silence for me to speak in, and it’s rude to interrupt.

If you have these thoughts, you may find that you often miss opportunities to speak. By the time you’ve worked out what you want to say, the agenda has moved on.

These thoughts are all based on being concerned about what other people think of you. You’re concerned about being perceived as stupid, dominant or rude.

Sounds reasonable, but the research shows the opposite. People who speak up are seen as competent, intelligent leaders.

Tips for increasing your “speak-up” rate

1. Let go of perfection

Often we don’t speak up because we want to be perfect. But perfect is not realistic in the fast-moving flow of a discussion. A perfect thought that never gets expressed is useless. An imperfectly-formed but spoken thought will elevate you in the eyes of your colleagues.

2. Have a goal for the number of times you speak up at a meeting

It’s useful to have a goal to motivate yourself. If you currently don’t speak up often, commit to speaking up at least once at every meeting you attend.

3. Experiment with speaking first

Once you’ve mastered speaking at least once at every meeting, make it a point to speak first or as early as possible in the discussion.

4. Voice your support for what other people say

The research shows this is useful and it’s a relatively easy and low-risk way to express yourself.

5. Get used to interrupting people if you have to

In some aggressive corporate cultures this is the only way to get heard. I find it very difficult – but when I have to, I will. Here’s how I do it. I say “Can I just interrupt you there?” Then as soon as they’ve stopped speaking, I make my point.

5. Use a formula to help you structure your thoughts

A formula will help you think on your feet and you’ll come across as credible, organized and persuasive. An easy formula to use is PREP. PREP stands for Point, Reason, Example, Point. Here’s an example of how to use it:

Point – Speaking up can enhance your career

Reason – People who speak up are perceived as being competent and intelligent leaders

Example – Richard Backstrap has just been promoted for the second time this year. He speaks up a lot – but he’s no more competent than the rest of us (note: fictional example)

Point – Speaking up can enhance your career.

So speak up and enhance your career. Do you have any other tips to help people who find this hard?

The guru of multimedia learning Richard Mayer has just published a new paper that all presenters should take note of. The paper is called “Increased interestingness of extraneous details in a multimedia science presentation leads to decreased learning”.

The research

Students received one of two PowerPoint presentations about how a cold virus infects the human body.

Both PowerPoint presentations included interesting but irrelevant details about viruses. In the first presentation the details were of high-interest eg: the role of viruses in sex and death. In the second presentation the details were of low-interest eg: health tips about viruses.

Note that these details are topically relevant (eg: related to the topic of viruses) but not conceptually relevant (eg: related to the explanation of how viruses infect the human body).

The research studied how well students did on both retention (how much they remember) and understanding (how well they can apply what they have learnt).

The results

The students who received the second presentation (low-interest details) did much better on tests that measured understanding. However retention was not significantly different between the two groups. So as the interestingness of details increased, understanding decreased. Mayer concludes:

Results are consistent with a cognitive theory of multimedia learning, in which highly interesting details sap processing capacity away from deeper cognitive processing of the core material during learning.

Two competing theories

This research further supports the cognitive theory of multimedia learning.

But most presentation books and blogs are enthrall to arousal theory: the idea that people learn better when they are emotionally aroused by information (for references see Multimedia Learning). Therefore they emphasise telling stories as a way of emotionally engaging the audience. But Mayer says in Multimedia Learning:

In spite of its commonsense approach, arousal theory is based on an outmoded view of learning as information acquisition – the idea that learning involves taking information from the teacher and putting it into the learner. In contrast, the cognitive theory of multimedia learning is based on the view of learning as knowledge construction – the idea that learners actively build mental representations based on what is presented and what they already know. It follows that seductive details may interfere with the process of knowledge construction.

What does this mean for you and your presentation?

Don’t include a story that is interesting and emotionally engaging but not 100% conceptually relevant. Though in the short-term you’ll keep the attention of your audience, it will sacrifice focus and understanding of your core message.

I love having scientific back-up for the way we do things as presenters. So I subscribe to a number of cognitive science blogs to keep up-to-date. Here are two research studies on memory. The first one backs up what we already know – we’ve got a great memory for visual detail. And the second has a new twist on the impact of novelty on memory.

1. Don’t use cliched photos

Your audience can instantly recognise photos and images that they’ve seen before. And most people, when they see something they’ve seen before will say to themselves “Seen that before, boring”. That’s not the kind of impact you want.

The research

The people taking part in the research study were shown 2,500 pictures of common objects, like toasters, remote controls and backpacks. They were shown each photo for just a few seconds and asked to try and remember them. They were then shown pairs of images – only one of which they had seen before. These pairs often differed only in little details – like the kind of bread that was sticking out of the toaster. People were astonishingly good at remembering which photo they had seen before – a success rate of almost 90%.

What should you do?

When you’re looking for images, follow these tips:

1. Stay away from Microsoft clipart – you’re not using that stuff anyway are you?
   
2. Avoid cliched stock photo images. The Slideology blog has a crusade against cliched images. Check out their examples to ensure you’re not transgressing.
3. When using photo websites check out how many times an image has been downloaded – if it’s over a few hundred give it a miss.
4. Steer clear of stock photos with popular models. The people in the business-type photos crop up again and again. Like the gentleman to the right here.
5. To be sure your audience has never seen a photo before, go out and take the photos yourself.  One of our clients gave presentations to school students to introduce them to the university he represented. He wanted to motivate students to get their accommodation sorted early. Here’s what he did. He pitched a tent just outside the main building of the university and took a photo of himself with his legs sticking out of the tent. He introduced the photo in his presentation by saying: “This is what might happen if you don’t sort out your accommodation”. That slide gets a great laugh from the students.

2. Mix the new in with the old

You probably already know that we remember stuff better if its is novel. What this study shows is that if you mix new and old information, then your audience will not only remember the new information, but also have a better recall of the old information.

The research

In the research study one group of people were shown a set of images they were already familiar with (old images) and a second group were shown a combination of old and new images. The second group were better at remembering all of the images – the old ones too.

What should we do?

This is relevant when you’re presenting information your audience has heard before. There are two situations where this might happen:

1. Presentations you have to give eg: a presentation on health and safety. To prevent this from being ho-hum mix in new examples.
2. You’re revising information before going onto the new stuff eg: on a training programme. Start introducing some of the new information as you review the old.

In the days of overhead projectors, we’d slide a piece of paper down the transparency to reveal information step-by-step. That’s the Overhead Projector Paradigm.

When you’re stuck in this paradigm, you’re not using the full power of PowerPoint. What are the signs that you’re stuck in the Overhead Projector Paradigm?

• You bring on elements one-by-one
• You add elements to the slide from the top to the bottom of the slide
• You never have an element leave the slide
• You never have an element move on the slide
• You never have an element get bigger
• You never have an element get smaller.

This is a lost opportunity. You can add so much meaning to your slides by using animation creatively.

Here’s an example from Dave Paradi’s blog. Dave does regular slide makeovers on his blog which I normally find creative and inspiring. But this week when I watched his slide makeover – I was amazed – in this particular makeover, Dave was stuck within the Overhead Projector Paradigm! And as a result he’s missed the ability to use the visual power of a slide. You can click here to watch his slide makeover. You might want to go and watch it and look for what he’s missing before you come back to see my take on it. I’ll start by showing you the stills – and then a video so that you can see the animation in action.

Here’s Dave’s first slide:

The calculation describes how an asset like a building is valued. If you’re unfamiliar with the terminology let me first define the terms: NOI stands for Net Operating Income eg; the annual rents minus outgoings. The cap rate is the rate of return on your capital investment that you expect.

Dave has missed the opportunity to represent the figures visually. Here’s how I might show the calculation:

Dave then shows how you can increase the value of a property by raising the rent:

The yellow arrows are supposed to represent the number growing – but why not actually show the numbers growing directly:

In this slide, I would animate the “top-up boxes” with an entrance animation – you can see this in the video below.

The second way to increase the capital value of a property is by reducing the expected cap rate (you do this by reducing the riskiness of the income eg: by converting the tenants from short-term leases to long-term leases):

And here’s how I would show the impact of lowering the Cap Rate:

Here’s a video to show the animation and the words that I would use to present it:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://speakingaboutpresenting.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/Paradimakeover.swf " width="400" height="300" allowfullscreen="true" /]

[display_podcast]

By liberating yourself from the Overhead Projector Paradigm, you’ll be able to make full use of the visual power of PowerPoint.

]]> http://www.speakingaboutpresenting.com/design/powerpoint-animation/feed/ 0 http://www.speakingaboutpresenting.com/design/scientific-evidence-powerpoint/ http://www.speakingaboutpresenting.com/design/scientific-evidence-powerpoint/#comments Fri, 17 Oct 2008 06:54:32 +0000 Olivia Mitchell http://speakingaboutpresenting.com/?p=847

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.

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.

Presentation experts extol the power of telling stories in presentations. A recent Scientific American “The Secrets of Storytelling” explores why stories are so powerful. It looks at three theories from the fascinating field of evolutionary psychology.

Stories are simulations for real life

Keith Oatley, is a professor of applied cognitive psychology and a novelist. So he’s got a special interest in the psychology of fiction. He describes stories as “simulations that run on minds”. He says that just as pilots-in-training spend time on flight simulators, stories may act as flight simulators for real life.

Well-known evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker says storytelling may have evolved because it was a useful “thought experiment”. By running a scenario and visualising what happens we learnt what might happen in real life. This equipped us to deal better with real life. So people who were more receptive to stories had an evolutionary advantage over those who weren’t so receptive. (For more on this see Pinker’s article “Toward a Consilient Study of Literature”).

We create stories to better understand other people

In stone-age times, our ability to get on with other people was crucial to our survival. As a result we have what psychologists call “Theory of Mind” – we’re constantly guessing what other people are thinking and feeling. Our tendency to attribute thoughts and feelings to other people, leads us to create stories. In a 1944 study  reported in the Scientific American article, psychologists showed people an animation of a pair of trianges and a circle. The people naturally described what was happening in the form of a story eg: “The circle is chasing the trianges”. We’re naturals at creating stories out of what we see and experience.

Storytelling helps us know what’s going on

Anthropologists note that storytelling is universal across cultures and throughout history. They hypothesise that storytelling about other people helped our ancestors survive and thrive. Our survival was dependent on living with other people – storytelling about others would have helped us learn who we could trust and who we couldn’t. Frank T McAndrew in “Can Gossip  be Good?” says:

People who were fascinated with the lives of others were simply more successful than those who were not, and it is the genes of those individuals that have come down to us through the ages.

The phenomena of gossip magazines and celebrity culture are possibly the modern equivalent of ancient storytelling.

So the presentation experts have got good reason for recommending the use of stories in your presentation. Your audience is wired to listen to them.

In your business presentations, you may be tempted to stick to hard, proven facts and statistics to persuade your audience. But a powerful anecdote can trump objective facts.

The power of the anecdote

1. Vaccinations and autism

A recent Scientific American article by Michael Shermer “How Anecdotal Evidence can Undermine Scientific Results” discusses the medical controversy over vaccinations and autism. Many parents are convinced that their children developed autistic symptons as a result of a childhood vaccination. There is currently no scientific proof that this is so and many scientific arguments that show that it is highly unlikely. Despite that many parents continue to strongly believe in a causative link.

Michael Shermer explains:

The reason for this cognitive disconnect is that we have evolved brains that pay attention to anecdotes because false positives (believing there is a connection between A and B when there is not) are usually harmless, whereas false negatives (believing there is no connection between A and B when there is) may take you out of the gene pool. Our brains are belief engines that employ association learning to seek and find patterns.

So our brains naturally make connections from anecdotal evidence -even though there is no scientific proof.

2. Chronic causes and high-profile emergencies

Further evidence of the strength of anecdotal evidence is the struggle that charities have in funding vital ongoing work such as fighting malaria and AIDS,  compared to the deluge of funds that pour in for high profile crises, such as the Asian Tsunami or Hurricane Katrina.

Here are the statistics for the estimated number of people who die each month from chronic causes:

AIDS   250,000

Famine 150,000

Malaria 80,000

Infectious diarrhea 180,000

TOTAL  660,000 deaths each month

By contrast the number of people who died in the Asian Tsunami was 280,000 and Hurricane Katrina, 1,093. When there’s a crisis, the emotional video footage and tragic stories motivate us to donate money. The sobering statistics can’t compete.

Combining statistics and anecdotes

You would think that combining statistics and an emotional anecdote would be even more powerful.

However, a fascinating experiment reported in Chip and Dan Heath’s book Made to Stick shows that mixing analytical information with an emotional anecdote may nullify the power of the anecdote. In the research at Carnegie Mellon University, George Loewenstein and his co-researchers compared the effect of three different charitable appeals for poor people in Africa:

1. Statistical information on the plight of people     Gave $1.14
2. Story and photo of a 7 year old girl called Rokia  Gave $2.38
3. Both the statistics and the story                           Gave $1.43

So the group who read about Rokia gave twice as much as the first group who only saw the statistics. And the third group gave only slightly more than the first.

The researchers followed up with a second experiment using the Rokia story. Before giving people the story to read, they either primed them to think analytically (had them work out a maths problem) or primed them to think emotionally (asked them to describe how they felt when they heard the word “baby”).

1. Primed to calculate   Gave $1.26
2. Primed to feel           Gave $2.34

An additional follow-up experiment I would be interested in would be looking at the impact of offering statistics after the emotional story. Would that lessen the amount of giving? On their blog, Chip and Dan Heath look at an example of exactly that – a video called The Girl Effect which moves from a story of a single poor girl to the statistics that she represents (I blogged about it a few days ago). Chip and Dan Heath praise what they call the micro-to-macro approach.

So if you’re combining anecdotes with statistics, ensure the anecdote comes first, then follow up with the statistics to give credibility.

Why is it, that when you’re speaking in front of a group you suddenly become aware of these great clumsy appendages at the end of your arms – your hands?

Why do you suddenly wonder what to do about them?

Gesturing is natural

In normal one-to-one conversation you never think “What shall I do with my hands?”. In normal conversation, your hands are probably gesturing without you giving them any conscious thought. On our courses, the participants rehearse their presentation in pairs before presenting to the group. So they get to present to just to one other person. As I stand back and observe the room I see all these people talking with animation and energy, with natural gestures to go along with what they’re saying. That’s because gesturing is normal and natural.

There is a theory that gestures were the precursor to language – the gestural theory of language evolution. In the June 2008 issue of Scientific American there was an article on the the neuroscience of dance. It reported that Broca’s area (the part of the brain which is associated with speech production) is also activated during certain movement tasks. So it seems that speaking and gestures go hand-in-hand.

But for some people when they speak in front of group their natural gesturing disappears. I see this on our courses when people who had been talking with lots of gestures in the one-on-one rehearsal suddenly seem to lose that ability when they speak in front of a larger group. That’s because a common reaction to being on show in front of a group is to freeze and become stiff – it’s a symptom of nervousness.

It’s not what what you think

And it does matter. But not for the reason you may think.

It is not because your gestures help the audience understand what you’re saying. You may have heard that 55% of the meaning of your presentation comes from your facial expression and gestures, 38% from your tone of voice and 7% from your words. This is bunkum and arises from a huge misinterpretation of a research study by Albert Mehrabian. Click here for an enlightening discussion of the Mehrabian myth.

The three reasons why gesturing is helpful

First, gesturing helps you be fluent and articulate. There is a large body of scientific evidence to support this. In an interesting study, three groups of subjects were asked to speak under different conditions. One group had both arms immobilised, the second group had one arm immobilised and the third group was free to gesture. The experimenters found that disfluency increased as gesture was restricted. In addition, research shows that restricting hand gestures makes it more difficult to find the right words.

Robert Krauss from Columbia University has published many papers on this topic. He concludes one of his papers with this story:

Many years ago, my maternal grandfather told me a story about two men in his hometown, Vitebsk, Belorussia, walking down a road on a bitterly cold winter day. One man chattered away animatedly, while other nodded from time to time, but said nothing. Finally, the man who was talking turned to his friend and said: “So, nu, Shmuel, why aren’t you saying anything?” “Because,” replied Shmuel, “I forgot my gloves.” At the time, I didn’t see the point of the story. Half a century later it has become a primary focus of my research.

So by gesturing you not only unfreeze your body you unfreeze your mind.

Secondly, gesturing conveys enthusiasm and energy to your audience. Surveys of what people like and dislike about presentations consistently report that people what presenters to show passion and enthusiasm.

Thirdly, when the audience sees you gesturing they will think that you look confident. That’s because nervous speakers are often frozen and stiff. Not only that but you may also fool your mind into thinking you are confident. You’ll realise that you’re speaking in a confident, conversational manner and start to feel that way too.

So what to do with your hands?

Unclasp them (or take them out of your pockets) and let them be free. To begin with they may just hang by your sides – that’s OK. Although it feels awkward it looks fine. As you get into the flow of your talk – your hands will join in. Because gesturing is a natural part of speaking.

The more concrete and specific you make your words, the more persuasive you will be to your audience. The same applies to the pictures you show. Recent research backs this up. Students were given short fictional news stories to read:

One story claimed that watching TV was linked to maths ability, based on the fact that both TV viewing and maths activate the temporal love [of the brain]. Crucially students rated these stories to be more scientifically sound when they were accompanied by a brain image, compared with when the equivalent data were presented in a bar chart, or when there was no graphical illustration at all.

So that’s more evidence that pictures add credibility, and that the more concrete the picture is the more it will persuade.