by Beth Levine | Jun 2, 2015 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking, smartmouth talks!
Your topic is set. Your time is limited. You know it’s all about them – your audience – because you’ve wisely adopted the principle of audience-centricity for yourself as a communicator.
So, when preparing yourself for a presentation, ultimately the question for you is this: Which end result do you prefer? Standing in front of a group and being comprehensive, saying everything you know and covering everything in your slide deck? Or being selective and targeted and saying something— even just one thing—that actually resonates with your listeners and sticks in their minds?
Which presenter are you?
It’s your call.
Either way, let me know what you decide.
[*Excerpted in part from Jock Talk: 5 Communication Principles for Leaders as Exemplified by Legends of the Sports World, www.jocktalkbook.com]
by Beth Levine | May 12, 2015 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking
There is quite a bit of consensus that business meetings and presentations are too often marked by mediocrity and tedium, and there are simply too few people calling phooey. It’s as if herd mentality got together with bystander effect and conspired to make time spent in conference rooms and boardrooms insufferable.
I’m trying to call phooey and help leaders and aspiring leaders raise the bar on business communications for themselves and their organizations.
Communication is the currency of success, it’s how we sell, persuade, motivate and inform. It’s how we get things done. The usual organizational values of excellence and efficiency can and should be applied to communication as well, but are they?
When it comes to how organizations communicate, I am struck by how corporate leaders strive for excellence and efficiencies in so many operational areas, yet are willing to settle for merely adequate—or worse, time-wasting—when it comes to business communications. Meetings, presentations, and speeches are so often where and how business gets done, but in these settings mediocrity abounds. Many companies in the manufacturing sector even subscribe to the tenets of the Lean Movement yet tolerate flab and time-wasting in communications.
Business audiences have come to expect and accept a relatively low standard. Well, what is standard in the business world may be adequate, but it’s not optimal and, let’s face it, it shouldn’t be acceptable. Think about how often you roll your eyes during meetings that are too long and, worse, pointless. Think about the boring presentations you’ve sat through—the ones in which you waited for the single valuable nugget, that one answer, that lone call to action that came at minute 52 out of an hour-long talk. Think about the speech by the CEO who was incredibly dry or who mouthed the same old-same old. A bar set at adequate or standard is far too low for organizations that expect excellent outcomes.
Don’t be a bystander. Do what you can to embrace good communications within your organization – and at the very least, for yourself!
[*Excerpted in part from Jock Talk: 5 Communication Principles for Leaders as Exemplified by Legends of the Sports World, www.jocktalkbook.com]
by Beth Levine | Apr 27, 2015 | preparing for a presentation
I have no advice to offer this week. I only have a question. What should we do about the issue of technology and presentations?
Let me tell you why I’m asking: Last week, I attended an event that featured 4 speakers, each of whom spoke for 8 minutes (ahem, there’s a brevity trend in our midst, I love it! #brevity #jocktalkbook). Each of the fours speakers was amazing. Their content was fresh, meaningful and tight, and everyone’s delivery was impeccable – they were poised, energetic, animated and kept their eyes on the audience at all times. Not a single flaw among the four.
But guess what? The technology failed and caused bumpy starts – followed by some fits and starts – for two of the four speakers.
I probably should mention before I go any further that the meeting was hosted and attended by technology professionals. Probably 100 of them, maybe more. Ergo, “user error” – or being unfamiliar with the equipment or software, as might happen with someone like me – can be scratched off the list of culprits.
So, here we are.
Technology fails. It does. And there are consequences. It wastes time. It dilutes the impact of a speaker’s opening. It forces an otherwise superstar speaker into an unexpected awkward moment. And perhaps worst of all, it causes the audience to roll their eyeballs (at least figuratively if not literally) and divert their attention to a side conversation or to their devices while they wait.
Ay caramba!, as Bart Simpson would say.
What should we do about this? It’s not even just a possibility that technology might fail, it’s more of a likelihood. We know this, don’t we? Yet we still bring our best stuff to a presentation on a flash drive or a laptop. The only thing I can think of is that we must be using some finely honed skills of denial, then holding our breath during set-up, and ultimately hoping for the best. I’m an optimist too, and that last sentence describes me too, but only sometimes. I have my own little over-compensation back-up plan. But not everyone does …
So what should we do about this? Visuals are awesome, but technology can be problematic – for speakers and their audiences. Thoughts? Ideas? Alternatives?
Weigh in, technology lovers!
by Beth Levine | Apr 13, 2015 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking
Preparation. Hmmm.
Don’t know where to begin? That can be solved by doing what I call “going up to 30,000 feet and looking down.” Take the biggest-picture view you can find on your topic and be thought-provoking about what’s at the core of your issue, or, as President George H. W. Bush is known to have called it, find that “vision thing.”
The view from 30,000 feet is the exact opposite of peering through the weeds, and while most people in an organization are by definition, and indeed by assignment, stuck in the day-to-day weeds, certainly a leader is in a position—and arguably has the responsibility—to rise to a higher vantage point.
For an example of a 30,000-foot view, let’s look at another of my clients, an entrepreneurial company that manufactures super-high-end sports equipment. The executives came to me for spokesperson training in advance of what they expected to be a busy season of trade shows and competitions where their products and sponsored athletes would attract a lot of attention. The engineering and technology that goes into the production of their equipment is as fascinating as it is dense with detail and data. Yet for the media—and for the benefit of building and promoting the brand—they needed to develop some higher-level messaging. The nitty-gritty details could be saved for the trade journals that craved them.
In a small-group session with the core executive team, I asked a series of questions to elicit the 30,000-foot view. Fundamentally, I was pushing and poking at them to home in and identify what their company is really all about. It’s not about the product line or producing the best equipment; it’s not about being made in America; it’s not even about satisfied customers. Those are all great attributes, but they’re closer to the ground. What the 30,000-foot exercise yielded in the end was that their company is all about three things, characterized in a different way: innovation, performance, and fun.
Having a 30,000-foot view of your organization’s work in your back pocket means you’re always prepared to speak at the higher visionary level befitting a leader. It gives you a go-to point when you need to make remarks that describe your work and its value.
[Excerpted from Jock Talk: 5 Communication Principles for Leaders as Exemplified by Legends of the Sports World, www.jocktalkbook.com]
by Beth Levine | Apr 1, 2015 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking
Being prepared is just about the most audience-centric thing you can do. It confers a sense of importance and value on your listeners. It shows respect for their time and is arguably the least you can do in exchange for their attentiveness to you as a speaker. Plus, it ensures that what you deliver is actually received. Preparation shows—as does a lack of preparation.
All too often, though, people resist preparing for a talk or a media interview. Clients have told me it feels egotistical or self- important to them, and they feel—or want to appear—more humble than that. In their minds, preparing a “speech”—whether that means welcoming remarks at an event, a thank-you for an award, or even an introduction for a speaker—feels bloated and unnecessary. Still, the principle from the first chapter of this book applies: “It’s all about them—it’s not about you!” You have a responsibility to deliver something of value to your audience, and the best way to do that is to be prepared.
When a speaker or presenter is prepared, the audience notices. The speaker is on point, and the message is clear and relevant to the audience. The prepared speaker doesn’t open with, “Well, I didn’t have time to prepare anything, so I hope you’ll bear with me.” Instead, the prepared speaker opens with an anecdote or an attention-grabbing factoid specific to that particular audience. Or the prepared speaker knows his or her desired outcome and puts it out there right up front.
There are many who speak or present in front of groups often enough that they feel it’s okay—and in fact, for some it feels more comfortable—to just “wing it.” Wingers are gamblers. Sometimes they win, but other times they lose. Since the outcome can go either way, you have to ask yourself if you can afford a loss. Or can you afford even to risk it? If speech prep were short enough and simple enough, would you devote just a few seconds to being prepared? I think anyone would.
[Excerpted from Jock Talk: 5 Communication Principles for Leaders as Exemplified by Legends of the Sports World, www.jocktalkbook.com]
by Beth Levine | Mar 4, 2015 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking, quote
There is considerable debate about attention spans and about the effects of the digital world and handheld devices. Interestingly enough, just a few decades ago, the debate focused on the effect that television was having on attention spans. Digital devices like smartphones and tablets are just the latest and greatest scapegoats. Whether they have or haven’t contributed to diminishing attention spans, it is certainly mind-boggling to realize that, with Twitter, full-bodied messages can be delivered in 140 characters or less.
The change in attention spans is often discussed in negative terms, as a deterioration in our ability to focus. But I think we have to ask ourselves, is this really a bad thing? I prefer to look at the phenomenon as a market disruption or correction that is forcing communications to adopt the often-touted corporate principles of leanness and efficiency. As companies try to increase engagement and productivity, improving communication—by cutting out waste—could be quite effective. Being brief and to the point may require a little extra effort, but it can accomplish a lot and save precious time.
Many studies have now measured adult attention spans— where they are and how they’ve changed over the years. There are reports suggesting that in just the last decade, the average adult attention span has shrunk from highs of twelve to eighteen minutes and to lows of three to five minutes, depending on the study’s focus and the environments of the participants. Some studies look at how long people can concentrate on a task; others look at their attentiveness while listening. Yet how long people can pay attention to a speaker depends on tremendous variables that can make it hard to measure: the comfort and conduciveness of the environment, the speaker’s voice quality and modulation, the actual content, whether there are effective visuals or good stories, what the objective is for the audience, and whether they understand that objective. The ability to focus is, afte r all, crucial to the achievement of an objective, so audience motivation levels can vary as well.
In addition, there are two types of attention: “transient attention,” which refers to a short-term stimulus that attracts or distracts attention; and “focused attention,” which refers to the attention given to a task or a speaker. Transient attention comes out pretty consistently at eight seconds, and we’ll address this a little later in the chapter. Focused attention is where much of the debate lies and is the type for which experts claim that attention spans are as short as five minutes and as long as twenty.
[Excerpted from Jock Talk: 5 Communication Principles for Leaders as Exemplified by Legends of the Sports World, http://amzn.to/1vkcxjz]
