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#CareerAdvice : #Presentations -5 Common #CommunicationMistakes (and how to fix them).. A Great REad for All!

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We have all unnecessarily suffered through disengaging, ineffective presentations and meetings. But most of us make the same mistakes, again and again. By applying these straightforward fixes, we can make our communication experiences more effective and productive.

Below are five fixes for more effective communication.

1. STARTING

The most precious commodity in today’s world is not gold or cryptocurrency, but attention. We are inundated with a tremendous amount of information vying for our focus. Why then would so many people squander away an opportunity to gain attention by starting presentations or meetings with: “Hi, my name is . . . and today I am going to talk about . . . ” This is a lackluster, banal, disengaging way to begin. Not only does it lack originality, it is downright silly since most speakers start this way while standing in front of a slide displaying their name along with the title of their talk.

Rather than commence with a boring and routine start, kick off your presentation like a James Bond movie–with action: You can tell a story, take a poll, ask a provocative question, show a video clip. Starting in this manner captures your audience’s focus and pulls them away from other attention-grabbing ideas, people, or devices. This action-oriented approach works for meetings, too. On your agenda, have the first item be one or two questions to be answered when you start. In this way, participants get engaged from the moment the meeting begins.

 

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2. ENDING

Research in psychology teaches us that we tend to remember best what we hear first and last rather than what comes in the middle–aka primacy and recency effects. You would expect then that speakers would dedicate more time to how they conclude their talks and meetings. Unfortunately, this just doesn’t happen. The most common concluding lines I hear go something like, “I guess we’re out of time and someone needs our conference room.” This type of ending is a missed opportunity! Take time to plan out and practice how your presentation and meeting will end. Be concise and clear because you don’t have a lot of time. Once you signal you are wrapping up (e.g., “In conclusion”), your audience disengages and begins to focus on what comes next.

A great way to end is to first express gratitude: “Thank you for your time,” or, “I appreciate your attention to this.” And next, simply speak out your communication goal, which should be a concise statement of what you want your audience to know, feel, and do as a result of your content.

3. TRANSITIONING

In college, I was trained for a full academic quarter to be a tour guide of my campus. During my very regimented training, they impressed upon me that above all else good tour guides never lose their tour groups. The very same standard exists for presenters and meeting facilitators. Never lose your audience because if you do, they will likely go to their phones or their friends or to sleep. The weakest link of any tour or presentation comes when moving from one place/portion to the next. It is in transition that your audience is most likely to get lost, distracted, or confused. Thus, you must spend time planning and practicing robust transitions that go beyond “next” and “so.”

In any typical business communication, there are several potential transition points that must be bridged successfully:

  • Moving between points in your talk or meeting
  • Entering and exiting slides
  • Going from presentation into Q&A
  • Switching from one presenter to another

A successful transition includes a concrete wrap-up or takeaway of the immediately prior topic/slide/person and then bridges to the next topic/slide/person. These transitions can be statements (e.g., “With a clear understanding of the current problem, we can now address one way to solve it”) or questions (e.g., “With a problem as substantial as this, how can we best solve it?”).

4. HEDGING

Too many leaders today negatively impact their credibility through their word choice, such as, “I think we should kind of sort of enter this new market.” Hedges are these phrases that litter much of our communication. Repeated use of hedging language reduces perceptions of your competence because it softens your assertiveness, reduces your clarity, and makes you seem wishy-washy and unsure of what you are saying.

The best way to address hedging is via substitution. Find stronger, more powerful words to replace these less assertive ones. For example, “I think” becomes “I believe” or “I know.” “Kind of” and “sort of” can be replaced with “one way.” Finding more assertive substitutions affords you a way to make your point more clearly and definitively. However, before you can substitute, you must first become aware of your hedging language. Thankfully, apps such as Orai, LikeSo, Ummo, Ambit, and VoiceVibes can provide useful, personalized feedback on your language use, along with pacing, pauses, variation, and tone.

5. MEMORIZING

We all fear standing in front of a group in the middle of a high-stakes presentation and forgetting what to say next. Many people try to address this ubiquitous fear by memorizing their content. Unfortunately, memorizing often increases the likelihood of blanking out. How do you escape this fate? Simply put: Avoid memorizing.

Here’s why: If you commit your script to memory, you create the “right” way to speak your content. This approach only increases the pressure you feel because you want to say things exactly the way you previously memorized. This pressure increases the likelihood that you will make a mistake due to the increase in cognitive load. Further, this added mental demand reduces the bandwidth you have to adjust and adapt to your audience. Thus, speaking to your audience “through” your script causes you to be less connected and engaging.

But if you aren’t supposed to memorize your presentation, how can you be sure your content won’t be forgotten or come out as a rambling, unorganized mess? The key to not blanking out and remaining connected and engaging is to create a comprehensive outline that is based on a clearly structured presentation. A structure provides a map for both you and your audience. With a map in hand, it’s hard to get lost. First, take the time to thoughtfully apply an audience-centric structure. Second, document it in an outline format. At least three types of outlines can help you:

  • Traditional outline: Leverage an indented, hierarchical listing of your points. Provide key phrases or words.
  • Question-based outline: List questions that spark specific answers in the order you intend to cover your content.
  • Illustrated/picture-based outline: Graphically map out your ideas using icons, pictures, and words.

Finally, practice your presentation from your outline and allow yourself permission to vary how you speak your content; your wording need not be exactly the same each time. Outlines afford you the opportunity to adjust and adapt your content based on how you feel and how the audience responds. This flexibility reduces the likelihood of blanking out when compared to the more rigid memorizing approach.

 

FastCompany.com | BY MATT ABRAHAMS  5 MINUTE READ

 

#Leadership : #Presentations – These 7 Common #SpeakingHabits Undercut Your Credibility …These Simple Behaviors are Easy to Fall into When you’re Nervous, But they Can make Listeners Think Twice About Taking you Seriously.

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Every speaker needs to be credible. If your audience spends the duration of your talk mulling over whether or not to take you seriously, you can kiss goodbye to any chance of your message resonating. Sometimes your credibility has as much to do with your behavior as it does with the message itself.

Here are a few common bad habits to watch out for.

1. OVERSMILING

Speakers are frequently coached to smile, but many overdo it. Rather than smiling continuously, just smile spontaneously–as a natural reaction to a certain part of your message or based on audience feedback. You can’t have a smile pasted onto your face continuously, which makes you look wooden, like a Barbie or Ken doll. Oversmiling comes across as fake, definitely costing you credibility points.

2. TOO MUCH ENERGY

Every speaker needs to show a level of ease in their delivery. Talking fast, gesturing quickly, any jerky movements–these behaviors project anxiety rather than enthusiasm. They make your energy seem too sharp, like a jackhammer. You might be worried about punching things up a bit to avoid putting your listeners to sleep, but it’s possible to go overboard. With too much energy, you’ll come across as talking at your audience instead of to your audience.

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3. WINKING

Whenever you wink, you’re sending a “Get it?” message. It invites your audience to hunt for some sort of unspoken meaning, which introduces ambiguity you probably don’t want. You might think that winking once or twice at a key moment helps makes you seem clever or intriguing, like some kind of impresario, but in most professional settings it costs you credibility points by suggesting that you’re not being clear or transparent.

4. RAPID PACING

Don’t pace continuously back and forth. If you keep moving while you speak you’ll drive your audience to distraction. They’ll start to focus less on what you’re saying than on watching you move. One principle I learned as a theater director was to avoid having actors walking and talking at the same time, unless they’re saying throwaway lines. As a speaker, you don’t necessarily need to stay perfectly still, but pacing too much suggests that everything you’re saying is essentially a throwaway line. Listeners will miss your key points and begin to doubt your credibility.

5. FIDGETING

You already know not to fidget, but it’s sometimes hard to avoid making small adjustments when you speak–especially when you’re nervous. Fiddling with your hair, your jewelry, or your clothes may help you feel more comfortable, but they make you look uncomfortable, and the audience wonders why you’re so jittery. They’ll see a disconnect between what you’re saying and what you’re showing them–they feel the anxiety you’re feeling.

6. STOIC DELIVERY

While being too energetic can be a credibility killer, not being energetic enough can do much the same. Reining it in and appearing too stoic can leave you to come across as mechanical–or worse, you seem like you’re hiding something. You might think you need to project an air of seriousness in order to be taken seriously. But if you go too far, you’ll end up looking like an android instead.

7. VARIABLE PITCH

While recent research has focused on so-called “upspeak”–ending sentences on a higher pitch–as a problem for women (some of whom argue, by the way, that the bias against this habit is itself sexist), I’ve found that the real credibility killer is too much pitch variability overall, a problem that’s actually gender-blind.

As a speaker, your pitch should stay level or go down very slightly as you finish your sentences. It’s true, as upspeak critics have noted, that if your pitch rises at the ends of sentences, everything winds up sounding like a question. That can sap some of the conviction from your voice. From your listeners’ standpoint, too much variation in your speaking pitch is like a roller-coaster ride–a distracting experience rather than a compelling one.

Your credibility as speaker always hinges on what you’re saying, but it also has a lot to do with how you say it. When you’re nervous, these common bad habits are easy to miss, but paying a little more attention to how you look and sound can help you come across as someone really worth listening to.

 

 

FastCompany.com | March 31, 2018 | BY ANETT GRANT 3 MINUTE READ

#Leadership : How To Deliver Your #Presentation In Half The Time You’d Allotted…Talking Faster During a Presentation is a Bad Idea. Here are a Few Better Ones.

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It’s the day of your big presentation. You’ve spent the last few weeks fine-tuning every detail. You rehearsed last night, and you were flawless. You’ve never felt more prepared.

But then you hear something that makes your stomach drop: “Sorry, but we’re going to need you to keep this to 10 minutes.” You’d planned for 20. How can you possibly pull it off in half the time?

Your first instinct is to just try and talk faster and maybe breeze past a less-important point or two–hopefully you can still cram in everything else, even if it’s a little rushed? Nope, wrong strategy.Nobody can be effective speaking in hyperspeed. Here’s what to do instead.

Related: How To Nail The First 90 Seconds Of That Big Meeting

GIVE YOUR CONCLUSION FIRST

If you have only one takeaway from this article, make sure it’s this one: Always state your conclusion first. Running out of time before getting your key message across is devastating. So don’t wait. Get to the point right away, no matter what. You may worry that your core message is kind of complicated and takes a little bit of background to spell out. Even so, get it out there first and then use your remaining time to fill in the context. If you can’t put your finger on what that essential conclusion actually is, though, you may have a bigger problem (but here’s how to solve it).

Related: The Only Three Notes You Need To Write Before Speaking Off-Script

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SPEAK EITHER IN “LAYERS” OR “MODULES”

Sometimes you may have a hunch that things could change and your talk might get cut short–which is great, because it gives you a chance to line up some contingency plans. There are two methods you can use to design your presentation with flexibility in mind so you can still manage to get through everything, even if you’re given less time:

Layering. This approach simply means designing your presentation from the inside out. The inner “layer” is your key message–the most important takeaway you want your audience to leave with. The next layer consists of your other major points that directly support that key message. Then you have the details that support those key points–which together make up a third layer. Think of it kind of like dressing for cold weather: If you get too warm, you can always take off a layer. Similarly, if you get short on time, you can take off one of the outer layers. What’s really important is that you communicate your inner layers effectively.

For example, let’s say you’re presenting about a project you’d like to get approval for. With the layering approach, you’d first deliver your key message about seeking approval for your project, followed by the supporting arguments and fundamental issues–the main benefits to approving the project, the outcomes it will deliver, and the challenges you may face. If you’re pressed for time, you’d simply leave out any additional details beyond that and stick just to those key points.

Modularizing. This means designing your presentation in “modules” that you can eliminate if necessary. While you still give your key message first, you don’t share all of your key points right away (even if they’re all relatively equally important). Instead, you leave out some of the points altogether, depending on how much time you have. The thinking here is that it’s better to do a great job spelling out just one supporting argument, than doing a mediocre job rushing through three of them. Think of it like going to dinner: You may want to skip either appetizers or dessert if you’re worried you’ll be late for the movie you bought tickets for.

So to continue the example from earlier, you’d deliver your key message, followed by your first key point (the reasons why the project should be approved) along with any relevant details. Then, if you have time, you can go over your next key point (intended outcomes of the project), along with those details. If you’re pressed for time, you’d drop the “challenges” point entirely.

ADJUST YOUR SLIDES ACCORDINGLY (OR MAKE MULTIPLE VERSIONS)

Finally, if you sense your presentation time might get cut down, you should design your slide deck to adapt–reflecting either a layered or modular approach, depending on which one you’d prefer taking. Or you could just save a couple different versions of your deck so you can pick the right one depending on the circumstances. At any event, when your time gets cut short and you’re forced to give an abbreviated presentation, having your slides out of order is going frustrate you as well as your audience. It’s much better to create either a few different slide decks or one that will work in any situation.

While time is one factor you may not be able to control, how you use it is.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anett Grant is the CEO of Executive Speaking, Inc. and the author of the new e-book,CEO Speaking: The 6-Minute Guide. Since 1979, Executive Speaking has pioneered breakthrough approaches to helping leaders from all over the world–including leaders from 61 of the Fortune 100 companies–develop leadership presence, communicate complexity, and speak with precision and power.

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FastCompany.com | January 5, 2018

#Leadership : 3 Steps to a Well-Structured Presentation…Many People Struggle with Writing Business Presentations. What’s Needed is a Structured Way to Think about the Presentation.

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PowerPoint presentations are an ingrained part of the business experience: A 2015 survey by OutsidetheSlide.com found that more than 25 percent of workers surveyed said they see at least one presentation every workday.

Close-up of businesswoman holding touchpad with document

Related: Avoid the PowerPoint Trap by Having Less Wordy Slides

And that may be a problem, considering the less-than-optimal way in which today’s organizations communicate through these presentations. In short, from our observations, many of these presentations fail to deliver.

One of the major reasons for this is poor structure. As Mind Tools reminds us, without a logical, clear and well-structured presentation, your audience is unlikely to follow and remember your message.

We ourselves have written thousands of presentations and business documents in our careers. And, in our experience, the most important step is what we call “hanging the document.” In simple terms, you need an outline. However, this can’t be just a list of random points. The document has to have a structure. It has to hang together in a way that makes your point as clearly as possible.

Doug learned to structure presentations when he worked with McKinsey & Company. McKinsey used a method called the Pyramid Principal. Barbara Minto, McKinsey’s first female consultant, developed this methodology for structuring business documents, which we believe is the best in the business.

Below is a simple illustration of this powerful method. Imagine you are making a business presentation during which you hope to persuade the decision-maker to take specific action. In such situations, use what we call the “situation-complication-resolution” approach. Each of its three steps is discussed below.

1. Situation

This is a statement of the current state of affairs. It should be fact based (e.g., “Since its founding 15 years ago, the company has grown from a startup with no revenue and one employee to a robust enterprise with $15 million

 

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in revenue and 60 employees”). Because it is fact based, this “Situation” step should be something with which no one can reasonably disagree. We often use this section to highlight positives. If possible, give the person to whom you are presenting credit for his or her accomplishments.

2. Complication

This is a statement of the problem — the issue you are addressing (e.g., “Over the past three years, revenue growth has stalled”). It lays out why the company should take action. Without the “Complication,” the company wouldn’t need to do anything; There would be no reason for change.

People who are resisting the change you are suggesting may well try to take issue with the complication. After all, if it isn’t valid, there is no need to change. Therefore, if possible, you as presenter should base this section on objective facts that are irrefutable (“Sales three years ago were $15.1 million, while sales last year were $14.9 million”). People may not like hearing this, but they can’t argue that it isn’t true.

3. Resolution

This is your recommendation; it resolves the complication. It should be a single point. For example, “We should launch a sales growth program.” Each document should have only one main point. If you can’t boil your recommendation down to a single point, you should have more than one document.

Once you have identified you primary recommendation, you should support it with a series of what we call MECE (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive) sub points. Mutually exclusive means that the points do not overlap; there is no duplication among them. “Collectively exhaustive” means that there is nothing left out. Taken together, the sub points cover all possible ways to achieve the point above it in the structure.

Related: 10 Questions to Ask When Creating a Killer PowerPoint Presentation

For example, consider that the main point is, “We should launch a program to grow sales significantly.” The supporting points then might be:

  1. We should cultivate new customers, and
  2. We should sell more to existing customers.

These are clearly mutually exclusive points; there is no overlap between new customers and existing customers. They are also collectively exhaustive; every sale will be to a new customer or an existing customer. There are no other possibilities.

You will then support each of the sub points with another set of MECE points. For example, you might support cultivating new customers with: 1) Cultivate new customers in existing sales territories; and 2) Cultivate new customers in new sales territories. Again, the sub points at this level are MECE.

If you diagram the structure of your document keeping all points at the same level in the document on the same line of your paper, you will begin to see a triangle or a pyramid emerge. The pyramid continues to grow until your recommendations are at a sufficiently granular level to make it crystal clear how you propose to accomplish your main objective.

Related: 10 Tips for Creating a Winning Business Plan in PowerPoint

Many people struggle with writing business presentations. What’s needed is a structured way to think about the presentation. Once you have the structure, hanging meat on the bones is straightforward. The pyramid principle provides that structure that’s needed.

Entrepreneur.com | October 18, 2016 | Doug & Polly White

Your #Career : How to Craft the Perfect #ElevatorPitch ….An Elevator Pitch can Be Scary. But Once you Start Investing your Time & Effort, You’ll get More & More Confident. That Process of Building Confidence Starts by Squaring Away What you Want to Say, Getting Used to Saying It, & Speaking it to People Outside of your Current Circle.

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An “elevator pitch” is so called because you’re supposed to be able to summarize your pitch so quickly that you can effectively get it across in an elevator ride.  The idea here is if you’re ever lucky enough to trap Richard Branson in an elevator for three minutes, you can pitch him on your killer idea and get him to lavish you with riches to make it a reality.

Free- Focus on Work

This concept works whether you’ve actually got Branson cornered, you’re a guest on “Shark Tank” or you just want to explain to someone what you’re dedicating your life to.

The crux of it this: People are busy, so you it’s best to present ideas in the most succinct manner possible. What’s more, if your idea is as good as you think it is, you ought to be able to present it in a minute or so. Simple ideas that connect sell. So here’s how to boil your pitch down to its barest essentials.

What your elevator pitch needs

There are three things your pitch needs to communicate:

Your qualifications

One question you need to ask yourself is why you are the person to make this dream a reality. What makes you qualified — uniquely qualified — to be in charge of your project.

The up-front value

Your project has to have a tangible value you can express in a single sentence. This is the value you’ll be delivering to your potential investor or partner. Take it as a given they know you’re passionate about your own project. What’s in it for them?

What you want

Frankly, a partner or investor who doesn’t want to know what’s in it for them isn’t a very good partner. Similarly, you’re not going to make a good partner or investment if you’re not clear about what you want out of the project.

There are as many answers to these questions as there are people running around with dream projects. The problem most people have is that they can’t even begin to answer these questions. When you start honing your elevator pitch, these are the three questions you need to answer at a bare minimum. This is what you need to communicate.

 

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Start working on your presentation

All that covered, answering these questions isn’t your presentation. This is simply the research you have to do before you can even begin working on your presentation. A presentation is far more than the words that come out of your mouth.

It’s everything you have to say, but also the way that you say it. This includes your tone of voice and your mannerisms.

If you’ve ever given a presentation, you know that they can be a little nerve-racking. This is 1,000 times more true when you’re talking about trying to sell someone on your dream. You’re going to feel pressure like you’ve never felt before.

That’s not going to make your project any more attractive. On the other hand, if you’re able to get your presentation down pat, you’ll be able to go into your elevator pitch with confidence. And confidence is probably the biggest asset you can have on your side.

Three things you should be doing while you work on your presentation include:

1. Memorize your pitch

Memorizing a pitch is a bit like learning how to tell a joke. You don’t want to memorize a script. You want to memorize the bullet points, the broad strokes, and fill in the rest on the fly. That’s going to make your pitch sound a lot more natural, organic and fluid when the time comes to actually deliver.

2. Say your pitch out loud

Even when you have your talking points memorized, you still might be nervous. Saying your pitch out loud, a number of ways and preferably to an audience is the best way you can start making that nervousness go away.

Record yourself and listen to your pitch. Take notes, then act on them. Toastmasters is a great way to get objective feedback on your presentation itself, but not necessarily on your pitch. Friends can give feedback that keeps your personality in mind.

3. Practice makes perfect

Eventually you’re going to have to deliver your pitch to someone. Otherwise, it’s just a good idea, not a pitch. In Social Capital, Jordan talks about how networking events are often seen as a sort of business equivalent of “singles events” filled with desperate, low-hanging fruit. In a sense, this makes them the perfect dress rehearsal for your elevator pitch. Even if no one bites, so what? You’re just practicing for the moment when someone with a higher value does.

Don’t worry about making mistakes

Here’s a little secret we’ve been teaching guys on our field nights for the better part of a decade: For the most part, people only remember crushing victories and incredible disasters.

Your elevator pitch will either fall somewhere in between, in which case no one is going to remember the line that you flubbed in the middle, or else it’s going to be a rousing success and you’ve closed the deal.

Even though it’s easier said than done, you shouldn’t be nervous when you’re giving your elevator pitch. You might make a mistake here and there, but so what? If that’s what people remember, your pitch wasn’t honed enough anyway.

Everyone is out there doing the best they can. When you pitch to networkers in your scene, you might not be closing the deal, but you are networking and meeting new people. At the very least you’re practicing your pitch. This time is only wasted if you allow it to be. If you can learn from the experience, it’s valuable.

Try and have fun. It’s all practice until the day you actually strike gold.

Be honest with yourself about what changes to make

Honest, truly reflective self-analysis is what separates the men from the boys. If you can’t give yourself honest feedback, your pitch is never going to improve. Beating yourself up isn’t going to make things any better than pretending that everything you just did was perfect. You need to shoot for the middle ground where you’re able to see what you did right while at the same time recognizing where there’s room for improvement.

A simple method for constructive self-criticism is:

The positive

Start by finding at least one thing you did you did well. That can be difficult for a lot of guys, because we’re not used to tooting our own horn. That’s OK. Finding one, two or even three things is the best way to start self-criticism.

Remember that self-criticism isn’t about beating yourself up. It’s as much about looking at what you did exceptionally well and capitalizing on that as it is about improving areas that need it.

The negative

There’s always room for improvement. So when you’re done seeing what you did correctly, you’ll want to look around to see where you could improve.

The point here isn’t to beat yourself up anymore than the part where you look around for the positives is about empty self-congratulations. Instead, you’re looking for areas where you can improve what you’ve already done.

Focus

One of the reasons that we concentrate on one or two or at most three areas is because you want to work on specific aspects of your pitch. Don’t try and tackle everything at once. Look for your greatest strengths and the biggest opportunities for improvement. That’s the best way to ensure your pitch is always getting better and better.

Try and view this as an experiment. You want to plan, test and then report to yourself on the results. It can be hard to have this kind of emotional detachment from a project that you’re passionate about.

However, the more that you can view things objectively, the more you’ll be able to improve your pitch. The more you improve your pitch, the closer you’re going to be to the day when your elevator pitch finally connects. That’s the point of all of this.

An elevator pitch can be scary. But once you start investing your time and effort, you’ll get more and more confident. That process of building confidence starts by squaring away what you want to say, getting used to saying it, and speaking it to people outside of your current circle.

 

 Businessinsider.com | March 27, 2016 | Johnny Dzubak, Art of Charm