Perfect Presentation Coaching

Ok, time for a pet peeve of mine…

We’ve all heard it before, but how many of us actually take it seriously?  Spelling is important!

I realize that spelling is not something that comes easily to everyone.  A good friend of mine is a genius at numbers.  He can speak in math terms and equations like I speak English, but he can’t spell his way out of a wet paper bag! Me?  Spelling is easy.

My day job is as a teacher and, believe it or not, there are teachers who can’t spell! (Yes, there are even teachers who think not being able to spell is not a big deal!) As a result of this, many students do not understand how important it is to be able to spell well and consequently they don’t pay attention to the impression they create when they spell things incorrectly.

The bottom line is this: Until people really know you and your abilities what you produce, memos, emails, presentations, anything written, is how they form their picture of your effectiveness.  I preach this to my students all the time, especially at the beginning of the school year; I say to them, “I don’t know you yet, so your work IS you!”  So be careful.

When I see a presentation with misspellings, I have a really hard time staying focused on the content. Now, it may just be me but I have a hard time giving any authority to a presenter who has not taken the time to do even a cursory check of their grammar and spelling.

Here’s  brief list of some of the more common mistakes I’ve seen:

• Homophones:  Words that sound the same but mean different things.  One is using the wrong “to.”  I admit, I struggle with this one.  Here’s the difference:  ”Too” is used as a substitute for also, it can also mean that there is too much of something.  ”To” is a little slippery it has a variety of meanings, the most common usage I’ve seen is when it’s used to connect two nouns such as “I gave flowers to her.”
• Then and than:  then denotes things happening in a particular order. Than does not.  Don’t mix them up.  Look at this sentence:  He gets better, then me.  Now, same sentence different word:  He gets better than me.  The first means he got better before me, the second means he just plain gets better than I do.
• Would have and would of:  I see this one a lot.  I think its because most people use the contraction would’ve.  Just so you know, the right expansion is would have.
• Dropped letters:  Sometimes we type so fast that we miss a letter. Yours gets turned into your which in turn sometimes gets turned into you. Also watch out for the dropped “s.”
• Dyslexic fingers:  I have a big problem with this one.  I quite often will type “teh” instead of “the”, “tow” instead of two, and the biggest one of all for me, “form” instead of “from.”

So, what’s the point of all this?  At the very least, use the darn spell checker! Seriously, use it.  But. And this is a big caveat, sometimes it misses things, such as from and form, neither one is misspelled, they are just two completely different words.

As a presenter it is important to appear as competent as you possibly can. So take some time and double and triple check your work before anybody else sees it.  Catch the things that make you look like an amateur before they get the chance!

(It’s a good thing I checked this before I pushed the publish button, I found several of the very mistakes I was just complaining about! See? Listen to me, I’ll steer you straight.)

Photo: iStock

(Originally published on February 24, 2009)

I just returned from a week long trip with forty eight 7th graders. We went to Catalina Island and attended Catalina Island Marine Institute, a camp run by Guided Discoveries. (Unsolicited endorsement…. this is an absolutely amazing learning experience for kids and if at all possible you should find a way to get your child’s school to take a field trip there.)

What’s the point of my telling you this? Simple, during this trip my students did not attend one single formal, lecture type presentation. They did, however, attend somewhere between 15 to 20 highly effective informal presentations. The point is, even though the instructors were not formally trained presenters and did not have high tech presentation materials, they did not even use Powerpoint or Keynote, they were effective for one simple reason. Enthusiasm!

Enthusiasm for your material can make or break a presentation. As I wrote about earlier (The Slides are Great, but…) the presenter is an integral part of an effective presentation. Here’s an example from my trip. The students I was with live in the desert and many of them had never even seen the ocean, much less swum in it. The enthusiasm of the instructors enabled every one of the students to not only swim in cold 57 degree water, it even had them reluctant to get out! I would call that an effective presentation!

What can you do to use enthusiasm to make your presentations better? Here’s some simple tips:

• Get excited about your material: Now, I don’t mean get stupid excited, what I mean is that even the most dry topic can be made more interesting with the addition of some enthusiasm. Add a funny anecdote, use some self deprecating humor, anything that will cause your listeners to perk up their ears is a good thing.
• Be careful: Your energy and enthusiasm has to be genuine. If its not your audience will notice and that will make your job that much harder.
• Watch your language: No, you shouldn’t sprinkle in a few swear words. What you do need to be aware of is how your verbal language and your non-verbal (body) language affect your listeners. Saying you’re excited with slumped shoulders says more than you probably want your audience to hear. Try to avoid overtly negative statements, if you are trying to sell your product, highlighting its pluses is much more effective than only highlighting your competitor’s flaws.

The bottom line is this: Your job as a presenter is to “sell” your topic. Being genuinely enthusiastic and realistically excited about your material are key to your presentation being “Perfect.”

(Originally published on February 13, 2009)
Here’s the scene; you have spent days and weeks putting together the greatest presentation in the history of presentations. Its midnight before the big day, you fall exhausted into a fitful sleep, eager and excited to change the world tomorrow. Tomorrow comes, you get up in front of your audience and…… nothing. It seems that in the excitement of your awesome slides you forgot one of the most important parts of presenting, the speaker. Yes, that’s right, the speaker. You. What follows is not pretty. Disaster. You lose your job, you even lose your cat. Life is sad.

Ok, ok, I exaggerate. But just a little. All too often speakers concentrate so much of their energy on making their slides so magnificent that they completely forget to prepare the other half of their presentation, themselves. So here are five things to keep in mind that will help you remember that you are exactly half of your presentation.

1. Avoid the mental place keepers. These are the ums, the ahs, the alrights, that people subconsciously employ when their brain needs to catch up with their mouth. These happen to everybody on occasion but if they become a regular part of your speaking they WILL distract from the power of your message. As an example, look what just happened recently to Caroline Kennedy. I have no idea if she had any good ideas or not but her speaking habits completely destroyed any chance she had of putting out a coherent message.

2. Speak TO your audience, not AT your audience. How many times have you seen a speaker who would have given the same presentation to an empty room? When people come to listen to you speak they are sacrificing some of their valuable time. Respect them enough to speak to and with them, not at them. The easiest way to do this is talk like you are speaking with a friend about the movie you just saw last night. Be excited, if necessary. Be casual, don’t allow jargon to get in the way of your message. It is possible to speak casually and still be professional.

3. Speak to your audience not your slides. The biggest mistake I see from novice speakers is this one. They are so unsure of themselves and their grasp of the material that they actually turn their back on their audience and talk to the screen where their slides are projected. Remember, the screen does not have ears, it can’t hear you! Your audience on the other hand does have ears and they need to hear you. If you need to overcome nervousness or fear of public speaking their are organizations, such as Toastmasters, that can help. Another way to avoid this follows in tip #4.

4. Practice, practice, practice. Sounds cliched, but it is so very true. The more you practice the more familiar you become with your material. The more familiar you are with what you have to say the better equipped you will be to deal with the inevitable heckler, questioner, or other distraction that will happen to every speaker at some time. Practice allows you to roll with the punches, it allows you to deal with the distractions and stay focused on your message. It’s not an accident that actors and other public speakers rehearse many times before they go in front of an audience or the cameras. If you have a million dollar deal riding on your presentation, don’t you think its worth a little of your time to get it right?

5. Know your material. Your audience expects you to be the expert. You absolutely MUST be the expert. This is different from just practicing. This happens before you start to practice, it probably even starts before you create your first slide. This requires you to become familiar with your material inside and out. Go to the library and do research, talk to other people who know more about the subject than you, do whatever you must to become an expert on your topic.

Back to our intrepid presenter. He follows the tips, he practices, he researches, he talks like he is the expert, and it works! He gets the deal, marries a movie star and lives happily ever after!

Photo: iStock

(Originally published February 3, 2009)

I recently attended a presentation from an attorney on an educational law. It was horrible. You would think that a person who earns a living persuading people that their side is right would recognize the importance of a quality presentation; you’d be wrong. Almost every slide was chock full of bullets, and each bullet was read to us. Pure agony.

When putting together a presentation make sure you focus like a laser on the most important points, leave all the extraneous details out unless, they too are essential for understanding of the topic. If you have to use bullets keep them to a maximum of 3 or 4 per slide. This guideline means you might have a lot of slides, that’s OK, if…. If you have included only the essential, if you have cut the fat, if you, well, you get the idea.

This also means you have to spend some time drilling through your information to find the nuggets. Quality presentations don’t just happen, they require work. Get in touch if you want help getting your presentation closer to perfection.

{This post was originally published on January 23, 2009)

Ok, let’s start with the basics.

In order for a presentation to go smoothly you must do your homework! Here are 3 key things, in no particular order, to keep in mind when preparing…

• Know your subject inside and out. Your audience will be looking to you as the expert, be prepared to act as one. It will be painfully obvious if you don’t prepare. Just about all of us have experienced the unique pain of sitting through presentations where the presenter was, in a most obvious way, faking it. Don’t be that guy!
• Keynote or Powerpoint should be the last things you work on. Start in a word processor and get your thoughts organized before you put the slide show together. There are several methods for doing this. There will be many posts on this topic as we go along.
• Make sure your graphics enhance your presentation. I have seen too many where the colors got in the way of the content. (Side note to my 7th grade students… purple and lime green are NEVER a good combo!)

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