Nuke the Bullets!
Great advice in this video on SUPPORTING your talk with a presentation (Powerpoint, Keynote, etc), not leaning on it.
Brains Need Stories
Evidently story-loving is a function of our brain’s development. We’re biologically wired for them.
In a Washington Post story I learned: “Roughly around age 4, psychologists say, a child develops a ‘theory of mind.’ The child suddenly grasps that other people have feelings, thoughts, just like the child’s own. From this great mental leap comes a secondary, almost accidental talent: We can get inside the heads of people whom we never actually meet except in stories. This is why fiction works. Huck Finn and Harry Potter seem real enough.”
Is this why Steve Jobs is the world’s greatest keynoter? Because he’s a great storyteller? In the new book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs we learn his three-act methodology:
- Act1 is to create a story with seven tips (chapters or scenes) in crafting a great story behind the presentation
- Act 2, delivery of an experience with six scenes for adding appealing visuals to a presentation.
- Act 3, refine and rehearse and rehearse some more with five scenes discussing body language, verbal delivery, and using appropriate dress
I wrote a post on PowerPoint and effective presentations a couple of months ago that got excellent traction with readers. Join the discussion.
Prompts for Professionals
Next time you’re trying to deliver a memorable presentation try:
- Aesop’s Fables
- When you want to make a point that appearances may be deceiving try The Cat, the Rooster and the Young Mouse
- When you want to illustrate the power of positive versus negative influence, try The Wind and the Sun
- You’ve probably heard the phrase “Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered”– here’s a fresh approach: The Dog and His Reflection
- In this economy, many CEOs and companies could be compared to Icarus
- And when talking about messes that need a dramatic approach, refer to Heracles and the Augean Stables or The Gordian Knot
“I loved the way he used PowerPoint”
The anti-PPT bandwagon doesn’t have room for another rider. My only addition to the chorus is that a bad PPT-based presentation is like a bad dog — blame the owner!
PPT isn’t inherently bad, but, like a Rotweiller, can be placed in the wrong hands and do real damage.
I generally agree with the authors of Real Leaders Don’t do PowerPoint: How to sell yourself and your ideas, “You are the message. Who you are–your character, experience, values–shapes the message your listeners hear.”
Dan Ariely, PowerPoint master
Last year I heard Dan Ariely, bestselling author and professor at my B-school (Fuqua — Duke) speak on behavioral economics and his first book Predictably Irrational.
In staccato diction, he regaled us with tales of our irrational behavior — like why we won’t pay $3000 for a leather couch in the family room while we will pay the same amount for a leather interior in our family car — and he did it with the delivery skills of any comedian’s aspiration.
If he’d been a rock star we’d have whipped out our cigarette lighters and stomped our feet until he gave an encore.
And yes, he used PPT, including a slide with an x-ray of Homer Simpson’s brain. See? I remembered that one.
In defense of PowerPoint
Recall a time when someone gave a terrific, memorable, actionable presentation WITH PPT, as Professor Ariely did.
I’ll wait.
OK, I can’t wait all day.
If you did have the good fortune of attending such an event, you’ll recall that PPT didn’t make it great — it was great because the speaker had something to say and said it with conviction; they knew their stuff cold, engaged the audience, told stories and stayed ON POINT. Did the PPT help? Maybe, after all, who knows how it would have gone without the screen?
Reasons for PPT:
- Leave-behind for those who couldn’t make it to the live event
- Guided handout for taking notes
- Satisfies the need for visual stimulation
- Illustrate points graphically
Bottom line: No one says “I loved the way he used PowerPoint;” but if you’re a good presenter they’ll say “I’d go see him speak again.”
Malcolm Gladwell speaks
A friend of mine had the good fortune of attending The Foundation for the Carolinas’ annual meeting. You can hardly drag me to one of those, but I wish I’d gone to this one. Why? Bestselling author and New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell did the keynote.
According to my friend, Gladwell took a wireless mike and roved the audience, telling stories about a town in (I believe) Pennsylvania and how and why it prospered and failed. My friend, a public relations pro who is not easily impressed, was awed.
Just the opposite of Ariely, Gladwell is soft spoken. Where Ariely is irreverent, Gladwell is earnest. Both can bring the house down.
I’m not a qualified speaking coach — my specialty is the content — but to me this is the bottom line: You don’t have to be “dynamic” to get your message across. The book mentioned earlier, Real Leaders Don’t do PowerPoint: How to sell yourself and your ideas, got good reviews and the website and book Presentation Zen is chock full of great stuff. And I’m always here to help.
It’s easy to bash PPT, and you’re welcome to bash away in the comments section. I’d really like to hear from you about a presentation that thrived WITH the visual support.
Beware the Fart Joke
We are a collection of "selves"
Catching up on reading this week at the beach, including past issues of my favorite magazine, The Atlantic.
The November 2008 edition carried a fascinating article that touched on neuroeconomics, or the neurophysiology of economic decisions. I love this stuff.
According to Yale professor of psychology, Paul Bloom, “…remembering something is easiest while you are in the same state in which you originally experienced it. Students do better when they are tested in the room in which they learned the material; someone who learned something while he was angry is better at remembering that information when he is angry again; the experience of one’s drunken self is more accessible to the drunk self than to the sober self. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
Bloom’s research underscores why effective business communications need to take people to an emotional place in order to cement the message. Warren Buffett did this well in his 2009 annual letter to shareholders when he drew a parallel between derivatives and venereal disease: “Participants seeking to dodge troubles face the same problem as someone seeking to avoid venereal disease: It’s not just whom you sleep with, but also whom they are sleeping with.”
If that gives you a creepy feeling, the Oracle from Omaha met his objective; he hates derivatives.
More Buffett bon mots:
- Tony and I feel like two hungry mosquitoes in a nudist camp. Juicy targets are everywhere.
- By year end 2007, the half dozen or so companies that had been the major players in this business had all fallen into big trouble. The cause of their problems was captured long ago by Mae West: “I was Snow White,but I drifted.”
- If merely looking up past financial data would tell you what the future holds,the Forbes 400 would consist of librarians.
- The tennis crowd would call my mistakes “unforced errors.”
- Upon leaving, our feelings about the business mirrored a line in a country song: “I liked you better before I got to know you so well.”
- Investors should be skeptical of history-based models. Constructed by a nerdy-sounding priesthood using esoteric terms such as beta, gamma, sigma and the like, these models tend to look impressive. Too often, though, investors forget to examine the assumptions behind the symbols. Our advice: Beware of geeks bearing formulas.
Advice for speakers
Back to Paul Bloom in The Atlantic story, “Good smells, such as fresh bread, make people kinder and more likely to help a stranger; bad smells, like farts (the experimenters used fart spray from a novelty store), make people more judgmental. If you ask people to unscramble sentences, they tend to be more polite, minutes later, if the sentences contain positive words like honor rather than negative words like bluntly. .. All of these studies support the view that each of us contains many selves-some violent, some submissive, some thoughtful-and that different selves can be brought to the fore by different situations.“
Next time you’re delivering a presentation, keep this in mind. The oft-repeated advice to open with a joke should be tempered by what you just learned about neurophysiology — don’t make it a fart joke.
Smelling your Content
According to Dr. John Medina, “Smell is unusually effective at evoking memory. If you’re tested on the details of a movie while the smell of popcorn is wafted into the air, you’ll remember 10-50% more.”
Book by BY LYALL WATSON
Makes you rethink the food and beverages you offer at presentations, doesn’t it?
And how about doing reconnaissance on the meeting room itself? Giving a presentation in a stinky room might associate you with “stinky” content.
That said, kicking the sales team in the pants while they whiff the cafeteria’s burnt offerings might subliminally reinforce your point to get going or get burned.
But before you break out the room freshener, do some research. Men and women prefer different smells and certain smells perk us up while others have a sedating effect.
The Ten-Minute Window
DR. JOHN J. MEDINA is a developmental molecular biologist focused on the genes involved in human brain development and the genetics of psychiatric disorders.
Stay with me.
He also runs a site and authored a book entitled “Brain Rules” in which he expounds upon “12 rules for surviving and thriving at work, home and school.”
Medina’s Rule #4 says “We don’t pay attention to boring things.”
Today’s blog focus, presentations.
Thousands of cartoons
Since presentations (and their presenters) are too often boring, we don’t pay attention to them — sometimes to our detriment. Medina shows that every ten minutes or so our attention flags and we need a little shot of something to continue paying attention. He says this little shot should be ” emotionally relevant.”
Consider the occasional New Yorker cartoon. For $20 each, you can insert a witty and apropos cartoon into your deck and keep your group’s attention. Plus that, you’ll look urbane and well-read.
