(Or secrets of a 25 year veteran speaker!)
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No matter what business you are in, there will be a time when you have to present some ideas to a group, or maybe you are presenting at a wedding or personal event, these ‘rules’ apply to any presentation you have to do any where to any number of people!
If you are a CEO or meeting planner or senior manager it’s important that you pay attention to some of these rules, as your team may be more inspired with this process approach to a presentation.
So here we go with the ‘rules’!
- You must have fun!
Ron drilled into me that if I have fun, they will have fun. No matter how serious your content or how professional you need to be, you can always have fun.
- It’s a conversation NOT a speech or a keynote. The purpose is to connect! You to them and them to each other.
Think about the best speakers you have ever seen. They are the ones who seem to be talking directly to you, that’s a conversation, not a speech. Too many times, we focus on our ’speech’ and practice it and rehearse and re-craft it so the words are just right.
- People will remember how you made them feel.
People do not remember facts and figures nor does that make them change their behavior or thinking. We need to touch their hearts with stories and experiences or memories that will make them feel some positive emotion.
- You are an experience creator!
We need to be creating experiences for people, not delivering a ‘speech’.
If you can create an environment in which people can feel safe; they join in and interact (even if they are reluctant); in which they can learn and remember information that is packaged in a way that is memorable; in which they have fun and laugh, where they have an AH HA moment which inspires them to change - then you will be a successful speaker!
- It’s never about you!
Forget about your fears and judgments, of how you look and how stupid you sound or if you just made a mistake or if you forgot something, just be real! The more authentic you are in this conversation, the more they will relate to you. Our work is to serve others and be useful to them; to give them what they need, not to worry about ourselves!
- Have your focus on the audience or group, always
Prepare yourself before you get on stage or in front so that when you stand up in front of a group, you can focus totally on the audience. Keep them engaged!
- Be original.
Life is full of funny incidences and events; look at your life for the humor or lessons. Everything that happens to me is potential material to change a mindset.
- > Tell stories to deliver your messages
Lou Gerstner said ‘facts and figures will not change peoples behaviors”, I added touching their hearts will. You can change someones behavior in a heartbeat if you give them an “ah ha’ moment or touch their hearts. Tell stories to illustrate all your main points.
By the way, what stories do you tell your self about your presenting? Are you telling yourself you are terrible at this stuff? That you are probably going to make a fool of yourself? That your mind will go blank? There are all going into your subconscious mind and you will program that behavior in! Is that what you want?
Do you judge yourself along the way as you are speaking? Which of course immediately disconnects you from the group and you disengage from them, which makes them disengage from you! They have no choice.
- > Internalise your message and come from your heart.
Ron used to tell me to ‘internalise’ my messages, to find a way to have the concept resonate within me, to make sense to me and then I could deliver it to others without notes and from my heart.
If you go on stage with a spirit of serving, a desire to help these people in some way, to give them what they needed, they will notice! Remember, it’s not about you, not even a tiny, weeny little bit!!
- Preparation does not equal rehearsal!
Rehearsing in front of a mirror or others, crafting the perfectly worded keynote or attending a course on speaking does not constitute preparation!
In my opinion to prepare for a presentation you need to:
• consider the objectives/outcomes for the meeting
• put yourself inside the minds of the people you will be addressing and imagine how life is for them so you can frame the information in a way that is relevant for them
• find out all about their current situation, stresses and challenges
• learn the right language and phrases used in this company, eg IBM lives on acronyms and if you don’t know a few of them, you are not part of the group! Some people talk about customers; some, clients.
• in other words, know your audience and how they think and feel right now
• ask yourself what information would help them and how can I deliver it so it’s relevant to them and their situation and needs.
• find stories and exercises that will illustrate the points in the best way for this group
• sit in on any previous presentations of meetings before you on the day so you can relate to what has been said and modify what you say based on what they have already heard
• make sure you know your content before you are on stage and then let go of it from the minute you walk on stage
• pray to give them what they need before you go on stage
- > Room preparation
Where you can, have people sitting theatre style, it makes them connect much more. If you sit people at round tables, you split them into clumps or separate groups of 8 or 10 and the group dynamics is very different.
- > Always start with an activity, icebreaker or questions.
I think the most boring way to start a presentation is to say ‘ thank you’ or ‘I am glad to be here’ or it’s great to be here’ etc. Anything in that genre is so ordinary!! Instead change the energy of the group from the minute you start by engaging them.
Ask them a question, or better still, 3 questions with the third one something that makes them laugh, for example, I sometimes start with this series of questions:
How many people wake up every morning full of energy and vitality? (raise your hand as you ask the question indicating to them that they need to raise their hand, if you don’t do it, they won’t either!)
How many people go home every night full of energy and vitality?
Pause, laugh at how few people put their hands up and then ask
How many people just want to remember what it was like to have energy and vitality? HAHAHAHAH (remember to raise your hand each time you ask the question and you want an answer)
- > Make your content memorable.
Use symbols, acronyms, things like ‘the 3 rules of …”, the 4 lies /myths of …”, attach concepts to images or stories etc. There are many ways of making your points memorable, even if it’s only to make them turn to each other and repeat what you said!
Use interactive exercises, stories, create characters on stage, attach ideas to gestures etc and you will find that years later people will remember great chunks of what you said!
- > Think about the structure of your presentation
Think about the point you want to make; illustrate that point with a story and then tell them how the story and point relates to them..Dale Carnegie taught me that!
- Process vs content
Michael Grinder taught me about the power of influence. Once you are very familiar with your content, you can pay attention to the process by which you deliver the content.
Some of it is very obvious and some very sophisticated! Visit www.michaelgrinder.com for more information.
And how you use your hands is critical! Michael has a very funny link on youtube about this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59g5aIujRSc
Last points!
Remember it is never about you! Come from your heart; be sincere and really hope that you give people what they need.
But most of all, have fun, which gives them permission to have fun.
1400 words
(see whole article in “the 12 rules of speaking”
