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Leadership Communication- Public Speaking & Presentations | Conference Speaker
Woman: Our next speaker is inexperienced in talking to people like this and she scared to death. I’m sitting here while this really nice person reading of all my qualifications and all I can think about is how frightened I am. Why does my brain shut down when I’m supposed to speak up?
Man: And now it’s time for our honored guest.
Woman: No time to worry now. I’ve just got to do it.
Jim Cathcart (Conference Speaker): The human brain is an amazing thing. Billions of brain cells performing billions of functions each and every second of everyday of our lives, our brains starts working before we’re even born and it never stops that is until we stand up to speak in front of a group. Think about it, there are times when we need to stand up in front of other people and communicate and we just same to go blank. Maybe we’re up there to give a report or a speech maybe as to lead a group through a training session. Maybe it’s even an emergency but in some time or another all of us are called on to speak in front of a group and according to the Book of Liz, the number one human fear, the number one thing that absolutely petrifies people is talking in front of a group.
Oddly enough most of us can sit down and talk to those same groups with no trouble at all. Who knows maybe the brain isn’t fault at all, maybe it’s our legs that are the problem. Seriously though, if we’re going to get presentation before groups of people, regardless of whether we’re standing or sitting, regardless of whether spontaneous or planned in advance, we need some kind of structure. We need a structure on which we can build our presentations that allows us to give good performances every time. The structure needs to be flexible so we can vary our presentations if we need to do so. You may be called upon to give a sales presentation, you may be asked to conduct a board meeting, a staff meeting or committee meeting.
You may have a week to prepare or you may have a few days, only a few hours, you may even only have a few seconds before you have to speak. What you need is to be able to vary a presentation to meet any of these situations.
Well let’s look first at presentations from the point of view of somebody who does get put on the spot a lot. Someone who has to give a completely spontaneous response or report. You know what I mean. You’re sitting in a meeting and all of sudden someone calls out to you, “Hey Jim, tell us about so and so”, you then stumble through the first few words because you didn’t have any time to think about it. It’s an awkward moment in it. If you had a basic structure in your mind, of how to do even a short presentation like that, that awkward moment wouldn’t be difficult at all. You’d take just a moment, organize your thoughts, and then present them in such a way that the other people would be, really impressed probably.
They’d marvel it the way you’d plan your remarks. They’d probably think you’d prepared them for days or weeks in advance. Thinking on your feet, that’s what they call it. It’s a necessary skill into day’s business world. Your job even your career may depend on it. Those who can communicate effectively and persuasively do very well in their careers. Those who don’t or often passed over or forgotten when opportunities come up. People judged us by our ability to communicate effectively. Good communication skills are seen as a sign of competence and strength. Poor communication skills on the other hand are seen as sign of weakness.
Although, our communication skills may not be an accurate picture of our overall capabilities, there’s still often the basis of how we are judged by others. Because you’re usually judged by how you sound and how you present your ideas, your intention. Then it ought to be to sound self confident regardless of how you feel inside. As they say, it’s okay to have butterflies in your stomach as long as you can get them to fly information. Thinking on your feet is not a skill, it comes naturally to just a favored few, and you need to learn to think on your feet too. Unfortunately, such a skill won’t just come to you; you have to work at developing it. There are number of techniques that can help you, but I would suggest the Cathcart method. Huh, there’s a modus name. My method has five steps; 1) Begin with an opening or positioning statement; 2) Present your main idea; 3) Have up to three major points that you’re going to cover; 4) Use an illustration for each major point; and then 5) Summarize, call for action. Let me repeat that; begin with an opening statement, present your main idea, have three major points, illustrate each point and then summarize, call for action. First, you start with a positioning statement, an opening statement that can be used to diffuse some of the psychological bombs that might be waiting for you. You might even stayed up front the listeners concerns that you’re aware of, for example, “I know you’re concerned about the cause and the time overruns on this issue”, see if you begin by addressing their concerns in that way, then those in the group won’t feel it’s necessary to explode with them later, to bring this up, they’re more likely listen to you and they won’t tune you out because of the mental arguments they might have with you and your ideas. Let’s take an example; you might get up and you say, “First, let me make it clear that I agree with the rest of you that this is a very threatening project for us to pursue, for us to take on a project like this can put us on a touchy situation, I share your concerns now let me tell you what I think we can do about it.” See by stating groups concerns, you’ve moved them out of the way, the group is now more than willing to listen to you because they’ve been reassured that you know what they’re thinking and how they feel. They’re now ready at least to consider the ideas that you have to suggest. What if you’d begin by just telling them what you’re going to do? Well, you’ve stimulated a lot of internal responses and fueled their opposition to you.
There could have been actual interruptions or even worse people say into there selves, “This is stupid, this won’t work, oh these ideas going to get us in trouble.” Internal responses such as these, cause people to stop listening to you. To minimize the likelihood of that situation, begin with the positioning statement and then follow that with your main idea. Even you’re called on frequently to make on the spot comment, you can actually do some advance preparation. You can do a professional speakers do. You see, they determine what topics they’re called on to speak about most often. They write them down; they create a file for each topic. Every time they see you’re here an idea or newspaper article or something that’s related to one of those topics, they put on a note and put that in their file for that topic. You can do the same thing, for your work or for other areas in which you’re asked to comment or areas where you know you’ll be expressing your opinions. You can even collect little cartoons or one liner or things like that related to what you do and keep a file of those. This kind of a file will give you a lot of quick, clear and entertaining comments to use. By the way, you don’t have to any immediate use for the things you put on your topics file. If you see something you like and you find yourself saying “Hey, that relates to me”, put in your files, then every week or so just dump through your files quickly review the material, pick out the things you can use throw away the things you can’t and save those with potential for later on.
When using my method, I identify there, three major points that I want to make after introducing my main idea. The key here is keeping the number of points to a maximum of three. I tried to use key words for these three points and an illustration for each one of them. Example: If I’m giving a speech, I’m have a think like a winner, the three main points I want to cover are; how you think about yourself, how you think about other people, and how you think about the business you’re in? They are my three ideas, yourself, other people, the business you’re in. I illustrate each point and then I conclude. I can use that structure for a five minute presentation or one hour speech or an all day seminar. But then again, I do that for a living. You can do the same thing on your subjects. Supposed I’m on a meeting and the purpose is to decide what city our company’s next convention would be held in. The choices being considered are Denver and New Orleans. I’m asked for my opinion, let’s assume that I’m in favor of New Orleans that would be my main idea that we should go to New Orleans. For the three points I want to cover as I speak, I write down keywords to remind me of them. In this case, my keywords would be weather, hotel, money. Thinking of the keyword weather, I say something like, “Well since the convention will be in March, I’m sure New Orleans will be more pleasant because March tends to be a month where there’s still a lot of cold weather. Now Denver offers skiing but with our time frame for the meeting I don’t think too many of the people will have a chance to take it advantage of the skiing.”
Then would my next keyword hotel, I make my second point which is New Orleans has more centrally located hotels and more accessible famous restaurants and so on. My third key is money, my queue for the third point that I want to make leads me this way, “Okay folks, I admit New Orleans would be more expensive but I think it’ll be well worth it because of the entertainment value we’ll get from being in the French quarter.” That’s how the keywords for three main points work. What about the illustration for each one? Well, for my first point on weather, I can support my initial statement by saying “After all Mardigrass’ held there in February and you see crowds of people in summer clothes walking around Barton St. partying, shopping and so forth. For an illustration on my second point about hotels I might go on and say “After all, they’ve held newcomers National Conventions and Super Bowls in New Orleans. It’s a city that’s used to huge conventions.
You see when you choose illustration; you need to be sure to remember that they’re most effective when they cause those who were listening to create a mental picture of what you’re talking about. When I say Mardigrass, everyone pictures a carnival atmosphere of happy people in their mind, Super Bowl and National Conventions, brings to mind vivid medal images. When you can, use illustrations that will bring your points to life and use the keywords technique to organize your thoughts. What I’ve just said about Denver and New Orleans may or may not be true of the actual cities but the points made are valid. Naturally, this is a whole lot easier when you’re giving a prepared speech or presentation rather than when you’re speaking spontaneously but I think you’ll find those three keywords where still a big help to you in those spur the moments situation if for no other reason than they keep from forgetting your main points.
I’m sure you had this experience. You’ve just finished talking about points 1 and 2, and you know you had a third point to make with suddenly it’s gone, you can’t remember. This keywords technique will prevent that from happening to you. Once I’ve completed my illustrations, I summarize and then I call for action. Be sure that when you call for action you make it as easy as possible for your audience to do what you them to do. The easier the action, the more likely to do it. In our example I might conclude by saying “Why don’t we call right now to New Orleans and double check to make sure the hotel we want is still available for that week?”
Noticed I didn’t say, “Let’s book it now” instead I called for an action that would be easier to do but one that would still move things closer towards my goal. Let’s review this presentation structure briefly. First, use an opening statement to put people at easier and to get their attention. Then give your main idea followed by three main points. Illustrate each point and then finally ask them to do something about it by summarizing and calling for action. Make that action as easier as possible for the audience or the listeners. Now you’ve structured your talk or presentation and whether [Music plays] not he action is taken, what you had in mind you’re assured that at least you came across well and you’re improved your chances.
Right now, I’d like to show you how to deal with the problem that can break the flow of your presentation and sometimes cause your structure to break down. It’s a very common problem in any type of presentation except perhaps formal speeches. The problem is this; what if you’re making a presentation and all of a sudden people start talking and asking questions. If you find it difficult to talk in front of groups, then questions can sometimes really throw you often and make it more difficult for you. Here are some techniques I’ve found helpful. First, when you get a question, repeat it back to the group, this not only assures the person who post the question that you heard and understood it, but it gives you a little time to think about your response.
Repeating the question also helps others in the audience who may not have heard the question when it was first asked. Next, give an honest answer, if you don’t know the answer, say so. Identify what research is necessary and tell the person you’ll report back to him or her as soon you know the answer if you can find it. If you do know the answer, be specific and brief. Use the structure we talked about earlier to organize your thoughts. Give them the main idea, use up to three main points, illustrate each point then summarize. Use some humors; smile if it’s appropriate, as I’m sure you know smiles can work miracles. Now that we’ve covered on the spot presentations, let’s turn our attention to prepared presentations.
Those that we’ve prepared in advance. To ensure any presentation is effective you must be very well prepared and to do this, carefully analyze the situation and design your presentation in the same way I’ve suggested that you plan a meeting. That is, know your purpose, select the format that’s best, and determine how complex and how long it’s going to be, carefully analyze your audience… What I mean by analyzing your audience is for you to figure out what the audience is interested in, what questions they might be wondering about, what kind of challenges they might raise to the issues you’re suggesting? There are few helpful structures that you can use to build and organize general presentation. The first one is quite simple, you’ve all heard it one time or another right? Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. It’s been around for years and usually we’re first to weddings but that delightful tried and true saying can and does actually relate to speaking. Here’s how: Something old, in other words, here’s what the situation was before the day, supposed you’re talking to a group from a computer company and you begin by saying
“Eight or nine years ago that personal computer market was wide open and almost any decent product on the market had a good chance of succeeding, but then a host of competitors appeared, the market became over saturated and a lot of companies in the business went under.” That’s the something old part of your presentation, referring back to how things were. Then it’s something new, which means here’s what’s new, here’s what existing now, here’s what I found or here’s what’s coming up. For example you say, “Now the market is picking up again specially in the software area.” Then you moved along to something borrowed and that would be, here’s an example from somewhere else to illustrate, you say something like
“Personal computer sales are rising in rate of 4% every three months and software sales are rate of 12%”, then the trend shows no signs of slowing. Be sure to court your sources, this will give added credibility. See that is your something borrowed, you went to another source for information to support your point. Then finally something blue, which means here’s something that touches the heart or appeals to the emotions or puts a little color into my illustration, you might say “ladies and gentlemen yours was one of the few companies that thrive when the market was down, when the going was rough.”
Now you have the opportunity to perform in an expanding market and to turn in sales and profits like you’ve never seen before. In other words you appeal to their emotion, you appealed to pride. That’s the technique of something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.
Another helpful structure to use in organizing a presentation is the AIDA, A-I-D-A formula. That’s an acronym, it’s stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. First get their attention, next, capture their interest, then stimulate desire and finally call for action. Then there’s the old simple formula of tell, tell, tell. Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them what you came to tell them and then tell them what you just told them. In other words, introduction, body and conclusion. You might say, “Tonight, I’m going to talk to you about the need for thoroughly understanding the international market and how it affects our business here in the United States.”
You see that is telling them what you’re going to tell them. Then you deliver the body of your presentation, and the end, you summarize and tell them what you just told them and you conclude by saying “That’s what it’s so vital to understand the impact of the international market on us, your future, your company’s future and our country’s future may depend on it.” This technique for structuring your presentation is the most general but also the most basic. [Music plays] Always keep in mind and use it in conjunction with the other techniques I’ve talked about. It’ll give you solid presentation each and every time you speak.
When preparing a presentation in advance you have the opportunity to customize it. To customize a presentation for a specific audience, use the five levels of customization: 1) Acknowledgement; 2) Reference; 3) Illustration; 4) Involvement; 5) Integration. Let’s say, you’re giving a speech to a civic club in La Jolla, California. The first or simplest level of a customized presentation to an audience is acknowledgement, when you simply say “Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen of the Quantum’s Club”. You’ve acknowledged that you’re speaking in the afternoon and you’re speaking to Quantum’s Club and that’s it. It’s not really customization, it’s just simple courtesy.
Another acknowledgement would be “Thank you for that introduction, Frank”, you’ve acknowledged Frank, big deal [laughs] right? It didn’t take a whole lot study to don an acknowledgement. It’s nice to be in La Jolla, California. Acknowledgement is the simplest most fundamental form of customizing a talk and as nothing more than just common courtesy. The second level of customization Reference, takes a little more understanding of your group. Reference means that when illustration a point you refer to the group’s members their situation, their city, their committee, things they’ve done in the past, the names of their newsletters or something like that.
For example you might say “Your weather in La Jolla is about as close to be in perfect as you can get, I supposed it’s because you’re situated on a cove here but it’s really great and nice to be here.” Reference takes acknowledgement one step further but in order to do it effectively and appropriately, you’ve got to know more about the group and their situation. The third level of customization is Illustration, illustrating your points by using something from their world or their experience. To use our example again you might say “I supposed that great weather is why you get so many tourists passing through here. I was on Prospect Street this morning and the traffic was so thick you can hardly move.
That’s the thing I’d like to talk about today. The congestion that is caused by an inflow of tourist traffic.” To illustrate, you have to know even more about the group and their situation then you did for just referring to them. The fourth level of customizing, Involvement, requires that you know still more about them. What you want to do at this point is not only talk about them and the things that relates to the, you also want to ask questions that stimulate their responses and get them thinking along you train the thought. At this point too, you can begin to segway into the main theme of your presentation.
Let’s say the subject for your talk to this group is motivation, keeping our example in mind of La Jolla, you might say something like “I guess I can get pretty frustrating for those you who live here when you’re downtown area so frequently crowded with outsiders. Frustrations, one of those things we all run into from time to time and often takes a lot of motivation to be able to look beyond the frustration to deal with the actual situation.” See that way you’ve presented the idea of motivation and allowed yourself to blend in that direction. The fifth and highest level of customization is Integration, making yourself and your message a part of the group you’re speaking to.
In order to integrate your topic fully with the group, you have to know virtually everything about them, you got to know who they are, what they do, why did they do it, what bothers them, what excites them and so forth. If you’re talking to a group that hates tourists, you may make references to problems you’ve had in this regard. But if you’re talking to a group that loves tourists, say the convention bureau, you better make mention of the beneficial effects tourist have on the economy. If you’re talking to a group of sports enthusiast, you might work in a line or two about the most recent ball game.
If it’s a group of conservationist, you might talk about the relationship of your ideas to their most popular cause. The point is integration endears you to group more quickly. They say “Hey, she really knows about us, she’s one of us.” When they feel that way, there much more likely to accept your ideas. There are several other things you can do to help this, one of them is Terminology. Before you ever give a presentation, you usually have met or talked with some other sponsors of the meeting or some else who’s typical of the group. Listen to the words they used their terminology and adapt it for your speech.
Terminology means the special jargon that they use in their field that isn’t commonly used outside of it. For example, advertising people used the word spot for a commercial rather than say to one another “What’d you think of that commercial?” they’re more likely to say “What did you think of that spot?”. Even if you learn and use one or two terms of this sort, it’ll go a long way to integrating your presentation to show in the group that you know what they’re all about. Anecdotes are another thing to look for, you know those little stories you can learn from the meeting sponsors or other members from the group.
Also study the typical situations these people find themselves in. Ask them, what do you do on a typical day? What’s the usual monthly meeting like for your group? Find out their slogans, their symbols, their logos, for example, Elsie the cow has been used as a symbol for Borden’s Milk Company for years and if you’re going to make presentation for a group from Borden and you don’t know about Elsie, you’re an outsider, they realize you don’t understand them. If you’re talking to a group from say McDonald’s hamburger franchise, and you’re not aware that the golden archers is their symbol, then you’re the distinct disadvantage. Another thing to uncover and advance is the group’s attitudes and their prejudices towards certain things. Each group has its own set of prejudices, things they like, things they don’t like, things they believe in, things they don’t believe in. The more you know about these, the better prepared you are and the less likely you are to make serious profile. Another item, not to mess in your research in preparation, is find out who they compete with. Although a group may not be in business, every group has a competitor somewhere and you should be aware of it. You can structure your presentation for any purpose, it doesn’t matter what type of group you’re addressing, what the content that your presentations about or if you want to propose a course of action or not.
What’s important for an effective presentation is proper structure and researching your audience and then customizing the topic to fit them. This is true whether you’re speaking in California or Connecticut; whether you’re talking to computers sales man or construction workers; whether you’ve had months to prepare or just a few seconds to gather your [Music plays] thoughts. Learn these techniques we’ve discussed and it really won’t make much difference which of these situations you find yourself in. Study them until they’re second nature to you and then every presentation you make is bound to be a success.
With the possible exception of formal speeches and conventions. Your presentation is usually only part of the meeting. Generally speaking, the first part of it, what follows is usually a discussion or question period, most often with the objective of coming to some kind of decision on a matter at hand. In order to have a really successful meeting you have to take this into account as well. I’d like to give you some practical tips on how to increase the chances of making the entire meeting productive. Now keep in mind that these tactics apply whether you’re the leader in the meeting or merely a participant, whether you gave the presentation or listen to it and for that matter whether there was any presentation at all.
You’re a participant in a meeting; here are some things you can do to make it more worthwhile. Before the meeting, look over the agenda and form your own opinions on the topics, ask yourself, “how do I feel about this; what do I think on this subject?” Make your decisions and write yourself some notes in the margin on the agenda. Plan to be a contributing participant rather than an inactive one. Get supporting information if you need more input. Call some people who’d be coming into the meeting. Talk with them about the issues, find out if they agree or disagree with you and why. You see in this way, you’ll be well prepared and won’t go into the meeting only to be surprised later of what happened.
For example, if you’re going to a convention get the convention agenda in advance, look over all the sessions that are going to be offered and determine which one you need to attend the most, circle those on your agenda. Develop a daily schedule, allow yourself some freedom of movement, some flexible time but plan how you will participate in that convention because you’re investing a lot of time and probably a lot of money and you deserve the maximum pay off. Once you get there, make notes during the opening presentation if there is one and decide which points of the ones that are most important for you, if there’s something you don’t understand, make a note of it, then medley prepare the questions you want to ask or the points you want to make in discussion later on.
The main thing to do is look for ways to positively contribute. The keyword here is contribute, you’re actually giving something that has value for you. When you expand on something that’s being discussed, you help the group build an improve on the discussion or sometimes there are negative contributions. Negative contributions are valuable if they point out problems or short comings but as a participant, don’t point things out in a negative way, it’s like the old saying “Hey, it’s okay to disagree but don’t be disagreeable about it.” Don’t be a constant complainer and also don’t be the opposite of that a constant rubber stamp for all ideas.
If you’ve got a concern, voice it. Don’t approve or something simply because everyone else seems to be approving it. Bare this in mind, millions possibly trillions of meetings and with an agreement never been reached or with an agreement being reached and then no action ever taken, the group agree to do something but no one ever did anything about it. That’s because the leader probably didn’t define the responsibilities in like, who’s going to do what and when, and the leader probably didn’t follow through. After the meeting participation as well as during the meeting participation can make big difference for example let’s say Lynn likes a particular idea that was passed by your group, get her to call Ed directly because Ed is a part of the implementation process and he needs to know from her that’s she’s in favor of it. Or after the meeting, appoint a task force to get a particular part of the program implemented. Or after the meeting you can get with Bob who’s now in charge of implementing the plan and maybe he wasn’t one of those who strongly in favor or the plan he was just assigned the responsibility because of his title or his department. Is he is not excited as you are about getting it done, he needs someone like you to motivate him to get it done or he may not know as much about it or be as familiar with the task and therefore he’ll tend to procrastinate.
Don’t let someone else drop the ball, stay with them, give them the support does need to see the project through to completion. Remember the purpose for the meeting was to get something done; just discussing it isn’t quite enough. People would tend to support things they help to create, so the more you involved someone in planning something, the more likely they’re going to be to stand there with you to help get it done. If you look at most of the “To Do list” of people around this country, you’ll find that meetings occupy a large portion of those lists. It’ll say me was so and so, talk with so and so, call so and so, attend such and such, get together with so and so, meetings, meetings and more meetings.
Ask a lot of people, what’s your biggest time waster? Invariably, they’re going to say “Meetings”, all the time it’s meeting, meetings I’ve never had a chance to get my work done. Although they seem to get in your way at times, there are also times when meetings are our work. Other times the meetings simply interruptions of our work, there’s an important difference. Be sure you’re able to distinguish one from the other, if your presence in the meeting isn’t absolutely necessary, maybe you shouldn’t attend, if your presence is necessary then prepare for your participation. Find out what’s on the agenda, what the issues are, get your act together, go to the meeting ready to be involved, when you get there, speak up, nod, shake your head in agreement or disagreement.
In other words, let them know where you stand on the topics that come up. If you don’t make a comment or indicate an opinion, people may assume that you’re silence indicates consent. Bring up different points of view, question things that aren’t clear, help to keep the discussion on track and challenge underlying consumption or implications. As for after the meeting participation, review your notes, summarize your ideas in a written form like your own little personal set of minutes and if there are other people you need communicate with, send them a copy of your notes. Tell him who’s going to do what, when, why, where and so forth.
There’s a big advantage to writing down the ideas you get out of the meeting. If you summarize the conclusions and the agreements that were reached, then you aren’t depending on someone else who was less involved to give you the outcome. Doing your own follow up, you’ll provide a valuable contribution to your firm by ensuring the first steps of implementing the plans and [music plays] the decisions. Just an important, the meetings you attend won’t end as so many millions of others do with agreements made but no actions taken instead they’ll end with action. Do it now.
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For more information contact Jim Cathcart or Cathcart Institute, Inc. at http://Cathcart.com