Presentation Pitfall
Less PowerPoint can mean more pizzazz
Premium content from Atlanta Business Chronicle - by Tonya Layman, Contributing Writer
Date: Friday, June 3, 2011, 6:00am EDT
There probably isn’t an executive alive who can’t recall a painful experience sitting through a presentation where the presenter drones on and on about a subject they should care about, but simply can’t make themselves pay attention. The delivery is dry and the information is fact regurgitation. Presentations like that are not uncommon and most will agree they are a waste of time.
Communications experts agree presentations usually need to be slimmed down time-wise and boosted up energy-wise. Otherwise, the audience will spend their time catching up on e-mails on their iPhone and knocking each other over to get to the door at the conclusion.
Joey Asher, president of Atlanta-based communications skills coaching company Speechworks and author of the book “15 Minutes Including Q&A: A Plan to Save the World From Lousy Presentations,” said there are many things people can do to jazz up their presentations.
“People don’t like to listen for long,” Asher said. “Presentations don’t usually include much audience interaction. If they leave time for questions, they leave them until the very end. They also try to say too many things. They don’t include enough stories which people really like. Then to top it off, they are usually delivered with all the energy of a house plant. The overwhelming majority of business presentations stink. The presenter doesn’t consider the audience and consider what the audience really wants.”
Patti Wood, an international speaker, author and trainer based in Atlanta, agrees. Known for her expertise in body language, she is also an expert on presentation skills and sales presentations, making more than 100 per year.
“You have to have a clear purpose that outlines what the audience is going to take away from your presentation,” Wood said. “When you start you want to say, ‘Today I am going to talk about’ and then explain what the subject matter will be so the audience can expect to learn something. Then they will say to themselves ‘I am going to have to be active to receive this information’. Use the word ‘you’ often. Get rid of ‘I’ and ‘me’. Use phrases like ‘Here is something else for you.’ ”
Wood said the top tip for good presenting is connecting with the audience.
“That is what distinguishes an OK presentation with a phenomenal one. Afterward people will talk about it as an experience rather than a speech,” she said.
Experts agree slide-creating software like Microsoft Corp. ’s PowerPoint can be good tools to aid presentations but speakers shouldn’t treat slides as their focal point. Nobody wants “death by PowerPoint.” For an hourlong presentation, Asher suggests 10 to 20 slides maximum.
“The slides should complement the message that you’re delivering orally, but they should not contain the entire message,” said Cory Anderson, an associate with medical device venture capital firm Accuitive Medical Ventures , which has an office in Duluth.
Anderson hears, on average, 50 presentations a year from entrepreneurs seeking venture capital and often gives presentations to boards of directors and management. “Reading slides implies that the presenter is not familiar with the content of their presentation. It is a waste of time for the audience,” he said.
“Presenters have a natural tendency to use too many words on their slides, which distracts the audience as they try to read and listen at the same time. Pick the words on the slides carefully to help tie your message together,” Anderson said, adding the PowerPoint slides need to be visually interesting. “Bullets and the default PowerPoint templates may be the easiest way to build a presentation, but it is probably not the most effective way to communicate your message and keep your audience engaged.”
A presenter should never start or end with a slide and shouldn’t have the slide up as the audience enters the room, Wood said. Asher said in order to keep that connection alive, take questions throughout the presentation. Don’t save them until the end.
“The best thing to do to engage the audience is leave time for Q&A,” Asher said. “One reason people don’t build in much time for questions is they really don’t want the questions. They are afraid they will be asked something uncomfortable or that they won’t know the answer. You have to be prepared for the questions.”
There are a lot of things a presenter can do to make sure people ask questions.
“Tell them early on you want them to ask questions,” Asher said. “Stop periodically throughout to take questions. When someone does ask a question, don’t put them off. Take the question and answer it and show that you love the question. Don’t send out the signals you don’t want questions.”
Keeping the questions to the end of the session is a quick-fire way to ensure no one will ask a question because the audience won’t want to prolong the agony, he said.
“I also recommend show-and-tell,” Anderson said. “If you’re pitching a product, there is nothing more compelling than a hands-on presentation of the product —- when it works as expected. Coordinate the show-and-tell so that it does not distract the audience’s attention from the rest of your presentation.”
Delivery is also a key component to getting the audience’s attention.
“If you want me to buy into your ideas, you need to sound like you are passionate about those ideas,” Asher said. “You need to have high energy, make contact and look for that sense of connection. Use the same intensity as you would when talking with a good friend.”
Wood recalls helping a finance professional from Disney with his dry, unvaried delivery.
“I challenged him to think about the company and what it offers, to think about the information he wanted his audience to take away and to think of something that would get their attention.”
The next day when presentation time came, here came this guy wearing Mickey Mouse ears. The audience loved it.
“It was a small thing but it was a big thing. He smiled, began talking and next thing we knew he was running around the room and gesturing,” Wood said. “The magic in connecting with the audience makes you feel safer.”
Similarly, life stories can engage an audience.
Asher said one of the best presentations he has ever heard was given by Colin Powell.
“He told story after story after story about dealing with the Soviets and various world powers. The audience wanted insights on what it was like to live and work at the level he lived and worked at,” Asher said. “People don’t use analogies or life experiences enough and those really do engage an audience.”
Tips for engaging presentations
• Do your homework before presenting. One size does not fit all when it comes to presentations. Understand the audience’s perspective and tailor the presentation to their needs.
• Think about the culture and dress/present appropriately.
• Make sure the objectives of the presentation are clear. Align everyone from the first slide and stay on message through the presentation.
• Structure the presentation in a way that the message is delivered thoroughly and crisply. Think outside the box. Don’t feel constrained by bullets and templates. Be creative. Use stories to engage the audience.
• Sell it with high energy and make good eye contact and speak with passion.
• Support presentation with impactful visual aids that are simple and crisp. The message should be obvious without requiring a long oral description.
• Wrap up the presentation with something that the audience can remember you by.
• Plan for someone other than the presenter to take detailed notes and follow up on outstanding items quickly and completely.
Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at http://pattiwood.net/. Also check out the body language quiz on her YouTube Channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.
Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at http://PattiWood.net. Also check out the body language quiz on her YouTube Channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.
Casey Anthony's Body Language during the Closing Arguments
For most of the prosecutor's closing arguments you would swear the film that shows Casey is on Freeze frame. Her head is held in vice grip add mixture of glaring eyes and petulant pouting lip and downward turned sad brows.
As the prosecutor says, “When you have a child that child becomes your life Casey could have shaken her head yes, as most parents who have lost a child would. As it has been in the rest of the trial, Casey’s body language does not match the baseline of what we consider a normal parents, a normal mothers body language the norm of a grieving mother.
703: The class between the expectation and the life that Casey wanted to have. Four seconds later Casey shake her head not small slow shake delayed, so it appears she had to think in her neocortex about what the instinctual limbic brain would feel and show in response to his statement.
When Caylee was born Casey was saddened with Expectorations not only from her parents but from society, Casey is shaking her head no quick shallow shakes with a furrowed angry brow and petulant mouth.
When Casey is faced with a problem her solution is to change the lie. She shakes her head twice, not fully committed to following through with her disagreement, and scowling in anger.
When Casey wants to do what Casey wants to do she lies. Again to delayed glare
No movement at all when he talks about the imaginary Nanny “Zanney” so still like a squirrel caught in headlights in the freeze response to stress.
You see the Guard move to protect his belly a comfort he gives as the prosecutor discusses her fathers suicide note, but she seated in the front of the guard is ice frozen in fizzy cocktail .
The absence of affect (facial expressions of emotions) No shake of the head no, no emotion at all. When the prosecutor discusses how Casey was at her boyfriends while Caylee is in all likelihood in the trunk of her car dead and decomposing.
Small shift, to her right side a look down to her right her thinking rational side to contain herself. And adjustment, apparently she thought it was too much work for her (to bury her) so she decided to throw her in the swamp. She rocks herself back and to the side a few more times. At this. I think she is actually upset here, feeling caught.
Prosecutors paralanguage the nonverbal nuances of the voices are emotional, Caylee was in the trunk off suburban drive decomposing. Voice gets caught, at times so low on the gruesome details as to be almost inaudible.
Imaginary Zannies Imaginary Accident, Casey starts to look away and look down, as her lies are retold by the prosecutor like a grandfather telling a bedtime fairy tale. She has trouble staying still she turns pages and then her head held with the chin up and lips petulant finally comes down. Most interesting her head twists down and sideways showing it is painful for her to hear her lies here, she fains reading something but her discomfort with everyone hearing these lies is evident.
33.33When the prosecutor talks about timer 55 her face book stalls till Caylee’s birthday. Head goes down not with true shame but with a mixture of feigned disinterest and denial. But then in one minute and 3 seconds later her head is up and frozen again.
Barely moves “When he discusses car being found and mother catching her and her lie “She is at Zannies” She barely moves just minute shifts from left to the right.
Until 42:56 Problem comes up Dec 11 2008 could I have the state present 2008 please Casey bends over and cough/sneeze her head going down and staying out of site instead of bouncing up naturally as it would in a real cough sneeze. This lets her head go out of the frame of the camera and when we see her again she is bent over, while holding her lowered four head in stiff upraised fingers. Suppressing tears as the prosecutor says, “Calies remains are found.” Casey is recalling with grief not the day her daughter lost, not the day she died and the grief she felt as a mother, but the day her daughter’s body was found and she was caught in her lies. Casey put her fist up to her face to suppress her tears; the fist gesture reads that she is mad that her daughter’s body was found. This fist to face to suppress tears is a movement I see when a parent hears what someone else did to their child when someone not when a child is found. There is typical kenning and outpouring of emotion when the news a child body being found is discussed. She stays with that fist. A number or items are found the damming evidence she ….then she rubs her nose and grasps her head again hiding her eyes from view, guilt? Trying to push in her thoughts or maintain focus she rocks herself side to side in the chair more obviously now.
Casey Anthony: Closing Arguments - Part 3 - 7/3/11 State
Very eerie body language.
8: As he is calling into the evidence of 224, as he says, “This is the bag that Caylee was found in,” Casey grabs her head symbolically pulling the bad thoughts out of her head fall through her fingers like dust and then she grasp her fingers together as if she is trying to decide to strike out her hand in anger and instead holds her downward held head in her soft fist. Significant she keeps frozen in that position through the most gruesome evidence, over 6 and half minutes.
Then as he recounts what her story about her father waking her yelling where is Caylee and laying Calyee's body in front of her yelling this is your fault. She's wiping a tear with her pinky finger only once after and when the prosecutor changes repeat her fathers yelling, Where is Caylee? Where is Caylee? She presses her tears in. Open unrestrained sobbing would I think make us feel that her story was true the little pinky tear stop feels fake and forced.
At 8:29, In fact moments later as the prosecutor begins discussing reasonable doubt Casey's chest begins to heave up and down and she begins to really cry needing a handkerchief and holding her nose with the bad smell of the words, “An abiding conviction of guilt.” She then begins wiping away real tears. At first she does this tentatively, and then big long wipes down over her face. Her chest heaving up and down more.
20:18? As he talks about the order of decomposition Casey covers her nose with the Kleenex using both hands and then does that odd dramatic wiping of one eye at a time as if wiping away the evidence from her view. He ( the scientist ) examined the evidence she takes her hands covers her nose and mouth and her lower lids with both hands and wipes as if she is covered with the sickening sight and the smell and wants to wipe it off.
At 20:21 her body comes up again into a more erect posture and she goes into that petulant face again. Slightly angry eyes as he discusses the evidence of the odor.
Look at 28:40 to 28:51 notices her stillness then look at her head swivel to him and the glare on her face as he finished repeating the evidence the most damming evidences of the hair with the bands of decomposition. She does this eerily after he pauses and there are two beats of pause then she turns and glares.
She gets up does a comfort adjustment pulling her shirt down.
Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at http://PattiWood.net. Also check out the body language quiz on her YouTube Channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.
Men's Facial Hair ...... What's Behind It?
I recently did an article for the August issue of Cosmo on Men's Facial Hair. Below are some of my insights:
Mustache
Since a mustache can obscure a guy’s smile, frown, smirk, etc., it’s a perfect way for him to appear more mysterious. A mustache also makes them feel they have more character manliness and power.
Chin Strap
Guys who shave their facial hair into a “chin strap” think it’s a manly look because it imitates tough, real-life things like the chin strap of a soldier’s helmet.
A big, bushy beard
Says that a guy wants to feel rebellious and doesn’t care what other people think (think Zach Galifiniakis).
The full beard
I don’t shave, can be rebellious but if it is unkempt and trimmed it may signal a desire to break all the rules or hide from himself.
Soul Patch
A guy who sports this patch of hair under his mouth wants to show that he is unique and creative (started with the beatniks of the 1950s).
Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at http://pattiwood.net/. Also check out the body language quiz on her YouTube Channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.
More than Cozy....What does Their Body Language Reveal?
Paula and Simon appear more than cozy in these pics. He looks like he’s dying to start a relationship with her.
My read of these photos will be in next weeks National Enquirer.
Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at http://pattiwood.net/.
Also check out the body language quiz on her YouTube Channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.
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