by Beth Levine | Apr 9, 2012 | Just Mouthing Off
Is it okay for a corporate executive to be folksy? Well, heck yeah, it is!
There is no right or wrong for a speaker’s individual style except authentic versus inauthentic. If an executive has a folksy style and has risen to the top of an organization, then there is something – or a lot of things – about his or her style that works. And it probably works because it’s authentic, it’s true to who that person is. And it’s probably very appealing, authenticity is very appealing.
Being real is so important. Trying to adopt a persona that isn’t real, isn’t authentic, just won’t work. Audiences see right through it, and it can affect levels of respect, trust and credibility. It’s just not worth the risk, so be who you are. If you’re folksy, go with it … but, of course, tighten it up! Know your audience, job, and win. Get your stories (and we know that if you’re folksy, you’ve got some stories!) organized so that they support your point, have a strong open and close, and you’re off!
by Beth Levine | Mar 19, 2012 | Just Mouthing Off, preparing for a presentation, procrastination, public speaking
Preparation. Procrastination. Both begin with P. Both are factors before a
speech or presentation. And both are easy to conquer.
In fact, preparation can
conquer procrastination … but only if it’s super simple. And that’s actually easier than you’d think. So let’s be realistic about preparation, let’s talk about being efficient and effective, let’s talk about what to do when you only have a few minutes to
prepare.
Hold onto these 3 shortcuts:
1.
Know your JOB. Are you supposed to inform, entertain, persuade, educate, introduce? What is the communications verb that best describes what you are supposed to do in your talk? Once you know your job, you can focus, and it will help you eliminate extraneous material and relieve you of having to create and deliver a magnum opus.
For instance, if you have been asked to make the welcoming remarks at a nonprofit fundraiser, then you simply need to welcome; you do not need to prepare and present the history of the organization.
2 2. Have a
FOCAL POINT. What is the one thing you want your audience to know, think, do or feel when they leave the room? There is always that something. And that is your focal point. Be transparent and direct, use your focal point as part of your talk … et voilà, you have your opening and closing! Giving your audience clear guidance helps ensure that they actually do leave the room knowing, thinking, doing or feeling what you want them to.
Let’s continue with the example of you making welcoming remarks at the fundraiser. Let’s say your focal point is that you need your audience to give more volunteer hours in the coming year. So, one option for your opening (and adaptable for closing too) is, “Welcome to tonight’s event. You’ll hear from a variety of people tonight, and you’ll have plenty of time to socialize, but it is my desire that you leave here tonight even more committed to our organization and even more inspired to make your donation this year in volunteer hours.” Focal point set.
3 3.
Limit the INFO. Unless you are delivering a technical paper or research findings at a scientific or medical conference, you can probably do without a lot of detailed information. Think about your topic, and what is most significant about your topic to your specific audience, and then plan to tell your audience the significance while limiting the supporting info to anecdotes and/or memorable facts, details or data. You can never deliver all the info on a topic anyway, so take the pressure off yourself and be prepared only to talk about the significance with a few quickie, retainable tidbits of info as backup.
In a nutshell, if you 1) are mindful about your “job” and stay in your lane, 2) know your “focal point,” what you want to ask of your audience, and 3) know what’s significant about your topic and only use “info” as backup, you are ready to go … !
by Beth Levine | Mar 5, 2012 | Just Mouthing Off
So, I just read an article about how harder-to-read fonts promote better recall. Uh oh, I wondered, slides too? Yup, slides too.
Interestingly enough, most of the prevailing wisdom about creating effective PowerPoint presentations suggests that clean and lean fonts, anything sans serif – i.e. no curlycues on the letters – are best. But apparently, less legible fonts make readers concentrate harder and therefore retain better. It seems counterintuitive until you really think about it and realize that readers have to slow down and focus harder with a font that isn’t as easy to skim.
What fascinated me most, though, about the research presented in this article was that they discovered students learn better from a teacher’s or professor’s handwritten scribbles on a “chalkboard” (probably a whiteboard!) than they do from PowerPoint. Yes, this would make sense given the font proposition. And it also supports my long-held theory that drawing or writing on a whiteboard during your presentation allows your audience to be present for, and part of, the creation of your visuals … and therefore promotes stronger reinforcement and stickiness.
No matter what, though, less is always more in the retention department, so feel free to go ahead and use a busier font, or your own handwriting, but keep the number of words and lines as lean and mean as possible!
by Beth Levine | Feb 21, 2012 | Just Mouthing Off
If you ever needed a really good reason to improve your performance at the front of a room or at the podium, consider this …
In an article on “Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership” published in the Harvard Business Review in September 2008, Daniel Goleman (of EQ fame) and Richard Boyatzis wrote this:
“It turns out that there’s a subset of mirror neurons whose only job is to detect other people’s smiles and laughter, prompting smiles and laughter in return. A boss who is self-controlled and humorless will rarely engage those neurons in his team members, but a boss who laughs and sets an easy-going tone puts those neurons to work, triggering spontaneous laughter and knitting his team together in the process. A bonded group is one that performs well, as our colleague Fabio Sala has shown in his research. He found that top-performing leaders elicited laughter from their subordinates three times as often, on average, as did midperforming leaders. Being in a good mood, other research finds, helps people take in information effectively and respond nimbly and creatively. In other words, laughter is serious business.
Wow … if we all took this to heart, meetings could be a heck of a lot more fun, huh?!
by Beth Levine | Feb 7, 2012 | Just Mouthing Off
Okay, speakers and presenters, you have a dilemma!
On the one hand, it is widely expected and perfectly acceptable to open a talk by thanking your hosts and guests for being there and for their participation in whatever meeting or event everyone is gathered to attend. Sometimes this is even laced with welcomes and other platitudes.
On the other hand, it is also widely known that audiences judge a speaker or presenter’s worthiness within the first 10 seconds. Some say 8 seconds, some actually say 3 seconds. Hmmmm. Suffice it to say, audiences judge fairly quickly – in a matter of seconds – whether the person at the front of the room is worth paying attention to and whether they plan to listen attentively or not.
Collision, conundrum, dilemma. What to do? How do you reconcile these two forces? I’m a big advocate for shaking things up and trying something new and different. I’m also a big advocate for yielding to the audience (if there’s even a slight conflict between the speaker’s interests and the audience’s interests, the audience wins hands down!). It’ll be a little bit like moving over and sleeping on the other side of the bed (you know you have a side!), but try and grab your audience’s attention first and thank them later. See if you can save your niceties and pleasantries for the end of your opening section, or for the very end of your remarks, whichever feels more doable. Open instead with a story, a question, a proposition, or a call to action.
Yes, making this change is likely to feel unnatural at first, but it will make you and your talk much more memorable. If for no other reason, you will stand out as the speaker who had a strong, impressive opening!
