How to project your voice

Welcome to this blog - my aim is to make a difference to the success of your presentations. If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! Olivia

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.

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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.”

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9 ways to use space in your presentation

There are many benefits to movement in a presentation:

• It adds energy and variety to your presentation.
• It makes you look more confident - because people who are nervous are generally frozen in one spot.
• And as an added bonus, if you move, you may start to feel more confident. That’s partly because movement will help dissipate the extra adrenalin in your system.

Movement got a bad name because of university lecturers pacing up and down. Audiences are distracted by mindless, repetitive movement. Movement should be interspersed with stillness. That way, they both have more impact.

Incorporate movement in your presentation by planning different positions on the stage (or front of the room) that you’ll present from. In the theatre, this is called “blocking“. Blocking is deciding on the position and movement of the characters as they move through the play. You can block your presentation too. Here are some ideas:

1. State your Key Message from the Power Position

Your Key Message is the core of your talk. Choose one spot where you will stand and state your Key Message. It should be dead centre, and close to the audience.

2. Map your structure on the stage

Using your physical space on the stage to map out your structure. It will help your audience anchor the different parts of your talk. Use these areas when you do a preview near the beginning of your presentation. Then return to that area of the stage for that part of the presentation.

3. Use a stage timeline

Where a story or explanation involves the passage of time, imagine a timeline across the stage and move along it to show the progression of time. Remember to make the past to the audience’s left - not your left.

4. Argue the pros and cons as if you were in a debate

In a debate, the people arguing for each side will stand at different sides of the stage. Although there’s only one of you, you can adopt this strategy. Stand on one side for the pros - and the other side for the cons.

5. Physically reflect the continuum of points of view

Points of view on a topic often exist along a continuum - from one extreme - to middle of the road - and out to the other extreme. Reflect this with where you stand on the stage as you describe each point of view.

6. Give each option it’s own spot

If you’re discussing a range of options, stand in a specific spot for each option as you describe it. When you refer back to an option later in your presentation, go back to that spot.

7. Story time

Have a general area of the stage for story-telling. When you’re telling a light-hearted story, it can be effective to move around as you’re talking. You’ll come across as chatty and conversational.

Where a story involves two or more characters in dialogue, have a specific spot where you deliver the lines of each character. Stay within the storytelling area.

8. Move close for emphasis

If you normally stay a couple of paces back from your audience, you can then exploit closeness for empashis. Moving close to people is powerful. Even intimidating. But you can stand really close to someone, and look elsewhere. You get the powerful effect without intimidation.

9. Dance with your Slides

Adding the display of slides is a complicating factor. To keep as much flexibility as possible, I recommend placing the datashow screen slightly off to the side. If the screen is in the middle, it’s easy to turn into a projectionist instead of a presenter. If it’s to the side, then you can still claim the power position. To avoid stepping into the beam of the datashow, stick some duct tape on the floor as a reminder. (Note: I generally have the screen to my right because I also use a flipchart which I like to have to my left, so that when I turn around to write on the flipchart, I don’t have to move to the other side of it. I’m right-handed - if you’re left-handed, you’d flip this arrangement around).

You’ll also need to be aware of blocking the view of some parts of the audience. With this arrangement if you move slightly back and to the side, it will allow everyone in the audience to see. When they’ve seen the slide, move back closer to the audience, as you’ll lose impact standing further back for a long period of time.

When you want to draw attention to a slide, move back to your datashow screen.

Explain your slides physically. Get in the beam. For a great example of explaining slides physically have a watch of Hans Rosling explaining statistics like you’ve never seen before. You’ll never use a wimpy laser pointer again!

Choose one or two of these ideas to implement to begin with. If possible, rehearse in the room that you’re presenting in, so that you can integrate the movements you want to make. Generally, it’s more natural and conversational to keep talking as you’re moving. But occasionally use the power of silence for more impact.

Using your space will add a new dimension to your presentations.

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How to give a great presentation the hundredth time

I recently heard New York choreographer Mark Morris being interviewed on the radio.

He talked about making a dance performance fresh and exciting - however much it’s been rehearsed and performed.

What he said is particularly relevant to presenters who present the same information over and over again.

In my work running presentation skills courses, I’m often presenting the same material. But you don’t have to be a professional presenter  or trainer to be in the position of repeating material in your presentations:

• Maybe you have a segment that is common to all your presentations eg: the bit where you talk about what your organisation does, or the basic features of your product.
• If you’re launching a new service or product you may need to repeat the presentation many times.

My aim when I’m presenting familiar material is to make it look and feel to the audience as if I’m doing it  especially, uniquely for them.

So what are the tips from dance choreographer, Mark Morris, that can help you do this:

Make it challenging

If a dance is too easy, he makes it more challenging. If the dancers can do it in their sleep, there’s no excitement in it. The hint of struggle in the dancers’ performance gives them an edge.

How can you add challenge to your presentation:

1. Whatever level of notes you’re using now - reduce down
2. Add a new example, anecdote or statistic
3. Take one segment of your presentation and challenge yourself to make it the best it can be
4. Introduce your slides rather than letting them cue you
5. Add remarks which relate directly to people in your audience
6. Ask a trusted colleague or coach to give you feedback.

I’m always getting feedback and fine-tuning. I’m lucky that normally I’m presenting with Tony as my co-presenter, and despite having run courses for years together, we still debrief and give each other feedback. And then I make changes - I improve my slides, and add new stories which help make the point.

We also make each presentation personal to the people in front of us. We know a little about them from the pre-course questionnaire they complete. We know what concerns them about presenting and what types of presentations they do. So we can comment on how a particular concept might apply to the their situation.

Lisa Braithwaite of blog SpeakSchmeak says:

Even if I’ve been doing the same presentation for a long time, I never become complacent - I’m always fully present for each audience and constantly work to improve.

So don’t be a sleep-walker presenter.  Add challenge to your presentation to give you that edge.

Listen to your audience

Mark Morris never rehearses his dance company with recorded music - he uses a live pianist. The pianist adds unpredictability - the pianist might make a little mistake, or speed up or slow down in an unexpected way. Those slight variations keep the dancers intently listening to the music - rather than taking it for granted.

As presenters we always have a live pianist - the audience. Listen to your audience the way the dancers listen to a pianist. It’s possible that in the past you’ve just seen the audience as an amorphous blob. You haven’t had a clue what’s going on for your audience - only what’s going on for you. So what does listening “look” like? Look for these things:

• What expressions do people have on their faces?
• How do they show that they understand what you’re saying?
• What do they look like when they’re confused?
• What other things are they doing?

Each presentation you give, even if you’ve given it many times before, is your opportunity to forge a connection with the people in front of you. Make them feel like you’re doing it just for them.

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How to create authenticity - the inside-out approach

Be authentic, be yourself - that’s the advice of most public speaking and presentation experts. But what if your authentic self is not a particularly engaging presenter? And can you coach someone else to be a more engaging presenter and authentic at the same time?

The wrong way - focus on the outside

The wrong way to do this is to focus on what you can see - the outside. For instance tellling the person you’re coaching to smile more. The horrible result of this approach can be seen in this video of John McCain.

McCain’s smiles are plastered on - and disconnected with what he is saying. As many commentators said: “weird”. McCain’s smiles in this video are fake. Fake smiles and genuine smiles are controlled by different parts of the brain and they look different. The difference is subtle but we’re generally good at spotting it - try this test if you want to see how good you are (I scored 18 out of 20!)

The right way - focus on the inside

The right way to coach is to focus on what is going on inside. Get the presenter to connect with something inside that will produce what you want to see on the outside. We call this inside-out coaching. It isn’t always straightforward and you may need to try a couple of different ways before you find the right approach for the person you’re working with.

Let’s say that you’re coaching someone who is very low-key. And they’re like that in normal conversation as well - so you could say that they are being their authentic self. But that particular self is going to put an audience to sleep in minutes. Telling them to be more animated isn’t going to work - most likely they won’t be able to do it anyway - and if they do manage it - it’ll look forced and unnatural. Here are some inside-out approaches:

1. Get them to connect with something about the topic that interests them or that they think is important.

We sometimes work with people who think that their topic is boring and other people are bound to be bored by it. Ask them why this topic matters? What does interest them? Go deep into that aspect of the topic. At some point, they’ll forget themselves and start talking enthusiastically. Let them carry on for a minute or two - and then tell them that the way they were talking was great - and get them to transfer that way of being back to their presentation.

2. Ask them who they’d most like to share this information with - and then get them to imagine them as their audience.

Sometimes, a presenter may not be able to create any enthusiasm for presenting to a particular audience. Maybe there’s a different audience they’d love to share their knowledge with - children, graduate students…

3. Get them to talk about something else that they are passionate about.

OK. Sometimes they really can’t find anything they find interesting or important about the topic - and nobody they want to share it with. If the presentation can’t be cancelled - what next? Find out what they do care about, what they are enthusiastic about - and once they’ve captured that state of  being - transfer that to their presentation (yes, I know this isn’t totally authentic - but this is a last resort!)

4. Use video feedback.

People who are low-key are often concerned about looking silly if they show any passion or enthusiasm. By showing them what they look like when they are talking enthusiastically they’ll see that they can afford to let their enthusiasm show - without looking silly.

So how would I coach McCain? He seems totally disconnected from his words - there’s no difference in his tone or manner - whether he’s talking about Hillary Clinton as an inspirational role model for his daughters or Barack Obama as a formidable opponent. I would have him connect with what he’s saying - so that his tone and manner match the meaning of the words - naturally.

What are your approaches to helping people to be more engaging and authentic at the same time? You can add to this post in the Comments.

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You can learn to be a better presenter

Barack Obama is well-known for his speaking skills. But it was not always that way. Here are some comments on Barack Obama from his early days in politics:

From Time magazine:

[Obama's] delivery was stiff and professorial–”more Harvard than Chicago,” said an adviser who had watched Obama put a church audience to sleep.

From Chicago Magazine:

Ted McClelland, who covered Obama’s failed 2000 congressional bid for the Chicago Reader, recalls that back then Obama “was not real comfortable or confident as a stump speaker.” McClelland found him wonkish and aloof. “He was stiff and monotonous, and he spoke like a poli-sci professor-a pedantic lecturer who used lots of deadly boring, neutron bomb language.”

Obama has clearly put in some hard work to achieve his rhetorical brilliance. I strongly believe that any person can become a better speaker. You don’t have to be born with the talent. I’m evidence of that. I was a shy introverted teenager much more interested in horses than anything to do with people. It was through joining Toastmasters in my mid-twenties that I started to develop some skills.  In many areas of endeavour there is a debate on what is most important - innate talent or hard work. Through coaching hundreds of people to become better speakers, I believe that if you have the basic skill of carrying on a conversation with just one other person, you can also become a great speaker. But it does require application and hard work. Obama has come a long way in his speaking ability. And so can you.

Note: I’d love to see some videos of Obama’s early political speeches to see if he really was as bad as these comments make out - I searched for a couple of hours but with no luck.  If you know where to find one, please post the link in the comments!

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Business presentations - don’t take performance too far

Is a business presentation like a performance? I believe we often take the comparison too far. Garr Reynolds has often noted that the similarities between the presenting and performing and in a post on Benjamin Zander, comments:

We often talk about presentations being conversations, which is what I believe they are. But they almost always have an element of performance to them as well.

I agree that for professional and highly-experienced speakers - performance is an element. But I don’t think it’s a useful concept for most business presentations.

Two reasons why thinking of a presentation as a performance is not useful

1. It puts pressure on the presenter

Many people are nervous about presenting. Thinking of the presentation as a performance puts more pressure on you and makes you more nervous. Thinking of the presentation as a conversation lessens that pressure. See yourself connecting to the individual people in the room, not delivering a performance to an audience. You’ll feel less nervous and as a result you’ll be more effective and enjoy the presentation more.

2. It makes the presenter less conversational

Many people change the way they normally talk when they get up to present - they go into “presentation mode” - and they lose the connection with their audience.  They’re thinking of the presentation as a performance and they can’t retain the conversational element. For most people being conversational and delivering a performance at the same time is quite tricky. It requires a lot of practice and coaching to be able to combine the two elements successfully. Focus first on being conversational and connecting with people in the audience. As you get more experienced and comfortable in front of an audience - you can start playing with adding performance to the mix. It will then be an addition to your conversational style - rather than supplanting it.

Two ways in which a presentation is like a performance

But there are ways in which a presentation is like a performance:

1. Presentations do require preparation and rehearsal

Thinking of your presentation as a conversation is not an excuse to wing it. A presentation does require preparation and rehearsal. If you think you can get away with winging it read this illuminating post on rehearsal from Nick Morgan.

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’.

2. Show your best front to the world

When something goes wrong in your presentation, don’t spend time catastrophising. Move on. My business partner and life partner, Tony, does some amateur acting. When he fluffs a line he knows he can’t afford the luxury of beating himself up - or he’ll fluff the next line as well. Sames goes with presenting.

So there are some ways in which a presentation is like a performance, but for most people, focus on being conversational first. You’ll feel less nervous and connect more with your audience.

See also my post on Conversational Presenting and Unlearning Presenting.

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Are you missing out on half the power of your PowerPoint slides?

If you use your PowerPoint slides as your notes, you’re missing out on half the power of your slides.

To make the most of them, dance with your slides.

Dancing with the slides means that you and your slides are partners in creating the presentation experience for your audience. Sometimes you will be doing the talking, and sometimes your slides will be doing the ‘talking’. Sometimes you’ll lead, sometimes your slides will lead. And you don’t want to tread on each other’s toes.

Here are some tips for dancing with your PowerPoint slides:

1. Introduce the slide before you show it

Let your audience know what’s going to be coming up next. For example, here’s a sequence in our  “Banish Bullets” presentation:

1. Tony says: “Most people do this when they start planning a presentation.”
2. He then waits for a beat before clicking the remote to reveal this slide:



3. He then stays quiet while the audience looks at the slide.
4. When the audience looks back to him, he says: “They open PowerPoint and start typing bullets.”

2. Use the writing on the slide to reinforce the point you’ve just made

When I was at school the teacher would talk, and then write up the point on the blackboard. The written words reinforced the point she had just made orally. You can do the same with PowerPoint. For example, I use this graphic to explain the power of using images.

Once I’ve finished my explanation I click to reveal the words - and I stay quiet - the slide does all the talking:

3. Create slides that make the audience do the work

Show the slide and then ask the audience what it might mean. Here’s an example of how this can work. Tony says “People listening to a PowerPoint presentation often look like this”. He then clicks to show this slide:

This gets a laugh - then he asks the audience “What are they feeling?” People in the audience volunteer the answer - the man on the left is suffering from information overload from all the bullets on the screen - the woman on the right is bored and going to sleep because the presenter is reading from the PowerPoint slides.

Dancing with the slides creates audience anticipation, surprise and involvement. If you’re not dancing with the slides you’re missing out on half the power of your PowerPoint.

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The three benefits of gesturing - it’s not what you think

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.

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Unlearning presenting

In my last post I wrote about conversational presenting. Conversational presenting builds on the skills most of us already have and use in normal day-to-day conversations. But for many of us, conversational presenting is hard. That used to be the case for me. I was in Toastmasters for many years and developed a formal style of public speaking. I planned my vocal variety, my body language and my rhetorical flourishes. And it wasn’t really me. Nor was I connecting with my audience - they were a backdrop for my performance.

With the help of a great coach, I learnt about being myself in front of the audience and seeing and engaging with individuals in the audience. That’s conversational presenting.

However, it took time and effort to change my style. Every time I got up to speak it was a trigger to go into my “public speaking mode”. It was a hard habit to break.

Every so often, we have experienced presenters on our courses who also go into “public speaking mode” as soon as they get up. They morph into somebody else and start speechifying. Often they have a background in Toastmasters or debating.

If you can recognise yourself in these descriptions, you can break this habit.

1. Rehearse your presentation sitting down. It’s much harder to speechify when you’re sitting down. Sitting won’t trigger your public speaking mode. Sitting in your seat will have you talking to the individual people in your audience, as if you were having a conversation.
2. Once you’ve got the feel of the way that you were presenting when you were sitting down, stand up, but stay presenting in the same style. To make it easier to stay in the conversational style, make this transition half-way through the presentation. If you feel yourself starting to speechify again, sit down again and get back into conversational style and then try again.
3. When you’re presenting for real, speak as if you were in your seat.

When you first start doing this you may feel that you are being too low-key and relaxed in your style. It’s normal to feel like this because you’re making a big break from your old style. Ask for feedback from several trusted friends about whether your new style is appropriate.

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