DEATH BY PRESENTATION, AND 14 MODES OF RESURRECTION

DEATH BY PRESENTATION, AND 14 MODES OF RESURRECTION

James R. Rosenfield

February 2003

What if a dark angel appears at your deathbed and tallies up how much time you've lost doing useless things? Listening to speeches and presentations, for example.

To perish by presentation! Perhaps it's a consummation devoutly to be desired. Who among us, at some point, has not half-wished for easeful death, to use Keats' image, when subjected to charts, graphs, droning monotones, and hideous jargon? PowerPoint has made things worse. Back in the days of 35mm slides, cost was a mitigating factor. Now, a presenter can go on forever without spending a cent or getting slides out of order.

Whether in conference rooms or hotel ballrooms, ninety five percent of presentations are boring, self-serving, and informationally malnutritious. This is true everywhere in the world, and, near as I can tell, always has been.

Since I make some of my living speaking in public, I thought I'd share a bit of what I've learned through the years.

1) DON'T TELL JOKES

The worst advice speakers get is to begin with a joke. Don't. Ever. Period.

Why? Very few people, even glib ones, are good joke tellers. Your idea of a good joke is not necessarily mine. Most funny jokes are politically incorrect, leaving you only with bland ones. Downside risk totally outweighs upside gain: If you tell a joke and it doesn't work, you've ruined your presentation. If it does work, all you get is a laugh.

You can use humor, and you probably should when you're speaking for a half hour or more. But do it through slides, cartoons, and perhaps an occasional aside.

2) NEVER BETRAY ANGER OR IMPATIENCE

I've done this, and it's a killer. By dint of standing up in front of an audience, a speaker becomes psychologically enlarged. That's why a good one can be so powerful. Audiences by their nature are passive, and become a bit infantilized. They want to be entertained, enlightened, and nurtured. The speaker, very temporarily, turns into an authority figure, with attendant parental overtones.

As a result, speaker irritation - at an equipment failure, for example -- becomes grossly magnified in the psyches of the audience, who become most uncomfortable. If you're ever in a group where this happens, note the utter silence that follows the speaker's anger. You can hear a pin drop.

If you get mad, it's almost impossible to get the audience back on your side. Unbreakable rule: Never display any kind of impatience or irritation, even if you're inwardly furious at the incompetence of the audio/visual team, conference sponsors, etc., etc.

3) AVOID JARGON, ACRONYMS, AND BUZZWORDS

Speak plain English, unless you are a priest preaching to the priesthood (e.g., data processing experts speaking to data processing experts). Don't say "CRM," say "Customer Relationship Management." (After a few mentions, you can revert to "CRM," but then towards the end of your presentation re-state it fully once or twice.)

Jargon, acronyms, and buzzwords make people feel bored and stupid.

4) AVOID SEXIST PRONOUNS

Avoid saying "If someone wants to advertise effectively, he must study media." The use of "he" to designate the entire human race is hopelessly archaic. Solution: Pluralize. "If people want to advertise effectively, they must study media."

5) DON'T USE A PODIUM (UNLESS YOU HAVE TO)

If you hide behind the podium, you lose most of your body language, and the greater part of your dynamism. Liberate yourself from the podium. It humanizes you and makes you more interesting, since you're able to walk around a bit and make eye contact with people.

Don't do this, though, if you're an uncomfortable public speaker. If you dislike speaking, you're in good company: In the U.S. public speaking is evidently the greatest fear of most people, exceeding death itself! If you're in that group, you might need the podium as a source of protection. Use it, then, and concentrate on getting your message across.

6) DON'T READ, AND, IF POSSIBLE, DON'T EVEN USE NOTES

Keep your eyes on the audience, and speak naturally and conversationally. Place the computer between yourself and your audience, and let your slides be your guide.
Don't use the notes feature, though. That's just another way of reading text. (If you're not comfortable with public speaking, take advantage of the notes feature, but very lightly: No full sentences, just phrases and words to keep things flowing.)

7) ENTERTAIN QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS DURING YOUR PRESENTATION

Waiting till the end ruins spontaneity. It also makes a speech more boring for want of a few different voices. If the question is irrelevant or requires too long an answer, say "Excellent question, is it OK if we return to it at the end so that we can discuss it more fully?" (Exception: If the presentation is delivered to a very large group, wait till the end for all questions, otherwise things get unwieldy.) .

8) BE ALERT TO BODY LANGUAGE AND THINGS BIOLOGICAL

You'll know in an instant if people are engaged, or if things are dragging. Use this as a feedback loop. If people are engaged, keep doing what you're doing. Otherwise, do something to speed things up. Often just saying "I'm going to pick up the pace a bit here" does the trick.

Speeches and seminars are usually held in hotel ballrooms. These venues operate under an ironclad worldwide rule: They're always too hot or too cold. The temperature is never right. When people suffer from either frostbite or heat exposure, you'll know by their body language. Ask them if they're comfortable, and if they're not, politely request a staff person to make a temperature adjustment. The mere act of attending to the audience's comfort will make them feel benignly towards you.

Remember also that men and women have different thermostats, with women usually getting colder faster. (When men start to don their jackets you know you're really in trouble.)

Cold people get cranky, warm people fall asleep, neither one of which will help your success. On a similar biological note, if you speak right before lunch, people may be irritable because of food deprivation (not to mention the three impossibly boring speakers preceding you). If you speak right after lunch, folks tend to be sleepy.

Best times to speak: Keynote speech, first thing in the morning. Second speech in the AM isn't bad either, unless the first person is a great speaker and you're not. If you're going to speak after lunch, try for right after mid-afternoon break, when the audience will have a resurgence of energy. Last speech in the day is bad, people want to collect phone and email messages, party, or go home.

9) DON'T WORRY ABOUT AUDIENCE HOSTILITY

It doesn't happen.

10) BE CAREFUL OF THE LIGHTING

If your speech takes place in a very large hall, or if it's being videotaped, you are likely to be subjected to blinding light, which will make it impossible to see the audience. This costs you your ability to connect with people, eliminating your feedback loop. Work with the lighting and A/V people, and there will be an acceptable compromise.

11) AVOID COFFEE, ALCOHOL, AND DAIRY PRODUCTS BEFORE A LONG SPEECH

That means skip the Irish Coffee, Charley! I learned this years ago in Montreux, Switzerland, when I was teaching a two-day seminar. I lost my voice the first day and barely was able to finish the second. When I got home, I saw a doctor, who told me that coffee, alcohol, and milk products create an alkalinity condition in one's throat that leads to losing the voice. (Alcohol, of course, can create other problems. Regardless, I fondly remember speaking in Europe back in the 1980s, when wine was always served at lunch. I would drink along with the attendees, guaranteeing that we were on the same wavelength. I shudder to think what I must have said in the afternoon.)

If you feel yourself getting hoarse, don't clear your throat, and don't whisper, two things you'll be very much inclined to do. Both of these activities will worsen your condition.

12) DON'T BE SELF-SERVING

Avoid "we" and "I." The best way to sell, if that's what you're doing, is to be modest. Don't say, "Here's what we did for Client XYZ." Do say, "Client XYZ had the following problem, and here's how it was solved." It will be obvious that you are the problem solver.

13) BUILD YOUR SLIDES, AND MINIMIZE WORDS

PowerPoint is great for this. Present your information one point at a time. This keeps you in control, and prevents the audience from becoming overloaded. Don't use long sentences, or even full sentences. Phrases, fragments, words are enough.

For example:

--Avoid " Present your information one point at a time."

--Instead: "Info: 1 point at time."

Never, never, never use a slide filled with text. The medium is the message, and the message here is one big yawn.

Make sure the slide can be read from the back of the room. All slides, in fact, should be readable from the rear of an enormous hall holding thousands of people. And when you use charts and graphs…well, read on…

14) GET EDWARD R. TUFTE'S BOOKS

Tufte is a professor at Yale who teaches courses in statistical evidence and information design. He is the last word on how to design graphs and charts for maximum meaning and intelligibility. I once attended one of his seminars, and was struck not just by his brilliance, but by his common sense. For example, he said one should always arrive early for one's presentation. If you're early good things happen, if you're not, bad things happen. How very, very true, as any speaker can attest.

His Big 3 books are Envisioning Information; The Visual Display of Quantitative Information; and Visual Explanations.

If you are in the business of communicating graphically with other human beings, get these, immediately.