When can you break the “rule” of a three-part structure?
August 7, 2009
In my Presentation Planning Guide I suggest that you use a thee-part structure for your presentation. They work for novels and movies, and for presentations too.
But, using a three-part structure is not a rule set in concrete. Sometimes your presentation will be more effective with more points. There’s a risk though, that each time you add a point, you dilute the power of the points that came before. Hence the saying “more is less”.
So you need to be clear that more than three points really are necessary. Here’s the distinction to make: is each point part of a logical sequence? Or can each point can stand alone? [Read more]
How to use your fear of public speaking to be a better speaker
August 2, 2009
It’s normal to get nervous about public speaking.
When you stand up in front of people and open your mouth, you’re making yourself vulnerable. Public speaking involves risk. So aiming for zero fear is unrealistic.
I still get nervous when I have to present in unfamiliar situations. I’m very used to presenting to small groups of people on a course. That’s my comfort zone. But take me outside of that familiar situation, and I’ll get nervous.
If I were to get upset about being nervous, I would make it worse. I don’t fight my nerves, I use them.
How to create a “new” presentation from pre-existing slides
June 13, 2009
In a perfect world, every new presentation would be prepared from scratch, tailored exactly to the specific audience. But in reality, you sometimes have to cobble together a “new presentation” from pre-existing material.
How can you create an effective presentation in the shortest possible time using pre-existing slides from different sources?
There are two phases to this. First, organizing the content of the presentation and second, creating slides to go with it. [Read more]
7 time-saving tips for planning your presentation
March 13, 2009
In my last post, I wrote about why it’s worthwhile to spend time preparing a presentation. But it’s also possible to waste time preparing a presentation, by not going about it in the right way. So here are my 7 time-saving tips to help you prepare a presentation efficiently.
1. Always be preparing
Professional public speakers have always advised aspiring speakers to be collectors of stories. But now also collect images, videos etc which could be useful. That way, when you next have to plan a presentation, you’ll have some resources at your fingertips, rather than having to search from scratch. [Read more]
4 reasons to spend time on planning your presentation
March 12, 2009
Devoting time to preparing a presentation is worth it. Here are four reasons:
1. The audience’s time
Balance the time that you will spend planning the presentation against the time of the people in your audience. Say you’re presenting to 10 people for 40 minutes. That’s 400 minutes of people’s time – 6.6 hours. Isn’t it worth spending a few hours to ensure that 6.6. hours of people’s time is not going to be wasted?
2. The impact you can make
9 ways to edit your presentation
January 28, 2009
I ask people who download my presentation planning guide what they find hardest about presenting. Here are some of the answers:
- Being concise
- Finishing on time
- Fitting everything into the allotted time
- Finding a balance between presenting too much and too little
- Not giving too much info.
It’s a common problem. Most of us have far too much too say.
The three key ingredients for planning a presentation
December 24, 2008
The Speak Fearlessly blog has just published a guest post I’ve written on the three key ingredients for planning a presentation. You can check it out at Presentation Planning Guide: The Three Key Ingredients.
4 Reasons brainstorming may sabotage your presentation
August 7, 2008
Many people plan a presentation by brainstorming. I don’t recommend it. Brainstorming is an attempt to capture everything you know on a particular topic. That’s likely to overwhelm your audience.
Here’s an example of a brainstorm for a presentation on financial planning to small business-owners.
Brainstorming to prepare a presentation leads to many problems: [Read more]
Are our brains wired to enjoy stories?
August 2, 2008
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.
12 ways to increase the success of your presentation – before you even start
August 1, 2008
If you expect that something will be good, then you will probably experience it as good.
Many years ago I was invited to dinner at the house of a family friend – my father was the guest of honour. To honour him, our host had saved a very special bottle of red wine – worth $200. My father – an enthusiastic wine drinker – exulted over it. I’m not normally a wine drinker – but I decided I had to taste some of this wine. It was fantastic – velvety deep, a whole experience in one mouthful.
But having read of the results of research on wine tasting reported on the Neuromarketing blog I wonder if I was at the mercy of my high expectations. Roger Dooley’s post is worth reading and he’s also get some simple and effective graphics to demonstrate the findings of the research. Here’s the key finding:
When people don’t know the price of the wine, they prefer cheaper wines to the more expensive. When they know the price, they enjoy the more expensive wine.
