Category: Presentation Skills

Presentation Peer Feedback

6/22/2019

It can be difficult to get students and trainees to give each other productive feedback, especially when their culture values social harmony. This leads to every trainee's presentation being "very good" and any additional feedback being rather generic.

Something I have started doing recently with my corporate trainees is asking them to give one positive comment and one negative comment to their groups members after each presentation. To make it more neutral, I ask them to use the following language.

"I like the way they ______________."
and
"I wish they had ___________."

Some examples could be "I like the way she presented energetically but I wish she had looked up from his notes more often."

By doing this, the trainees show that they were paying attention to the other trainees' talks and the presenter gets more feedback that just mine. Sometimes the other trainees notice things that I didn't or we just have different opinions about what was enjoyable or distracting. It also shows that they are learning what I have been teaching about good and bad presentation habits.

I have been happy using these prompts for peer feedback in presentation training and hope they will work for you too.

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Busy Slides

5/20/2019

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Over the past four weeks, I have done a lot of pitch coaching for startups. One thing that many of the pitches had in common was very busy slides. The presenters intended for the slides to look impressive and show that the team members had "done their homework". Instead, the slides made the message more difficult to receive due to information overload and data dumping.

To put it simply, slides aren't handouts. Slides are meant to work with the speaker and help the audience understand when showing is more efficient and effective than simply telling. Examples of this include photos for visual imagery and charts and graphs for data.

Handouts are for audience members to take home and read at their leisure so it doesn't matter as much if each page is jam packed with information. That being said, no one enjoys squinting at tiny font when trying to read the bottom corner of a busy slide that is showing 18 different things.

Last week when watching one of the pitches, there was a particularly busy slide that the presenter showed but only chose to talk about one section of it. I asked him why he put so much extra information on the slide but didn't bother to explain it. He seemed surprised that I would ask. The next slide was also packed with information in various formats and it took him quite a long time to cover everything. In this middle of his detailed explanation, I asked him where my eyes should be on his slide. Again, he looked confused. He was missing two important aspects of slide design. One: if you don't plan to say it, why show it? Two: information needs to be given in small amounts.

There are many other mistakes that presenters make with the slides. They write what they are going to say and then read from their slides. They fail to use animations for lists. They turn away from the audience and talk to the screen. But for now, let's focus on the process of sitting at your computer and designing a slide. Ask yourself what you want the audience to focus on and build a slide around that. Giving information to an audience is like feeding a baby, you need to give small bites and time for digesting is needed. Your slides will have much more impact if they focus on one thing each and what the audience is hearing matches what they are seeing.

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Why Are Presentations So Scary?

4/19/2019

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Jerry Seinfeld said, "According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that seem right? That means to the average person, if you have to go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy." I don't think I've met a person who actually feels this way but it is a funny quote. So what is it about presentations that many people find scary?

The first thing has to be the unknown. Many religious people will tell you that they know what happens after we die, but since different religions disagree about this I think it's fair to say we don't know for sure. Similarly, we can't be sure how a presentation is going to go. There are so many variables that can go wrong and it only takes one of them to really embarrass the speaker. What if the tech doesn't work even though you tested it in advance? What if there is a jerk in the audience who thinks he is a comedian? Even if we prepare thoroughly and have lots of experience, there are things that can pop up and throw us off.

This leads us to the second thing, the multitude of things we need to concentrate on at the same time to deliver a solid presentation. I tell people who attend my training sessions that presenting is like juggling. You have to focus on what you are saying, how you are saying it, what you look like while you are saying it, and how much time you have left to say it. Throw in presenting in a second language and you might as well be trying to juggle four live squirrels and adding in a chainsaw.

Third is the power dynamic. A lot of people don't like to be in the spotlight. Having everyone's eyes on you while you are trying to manage all the presentation elements is tough; doing it while you are standing up or on a stage adds an extra layer of stress. I know a lot of people that can speak confidently from their seat but when you ask them to stand up and come to the front of the room, they freeze. It's just easier to talk to people when you're on the same level, literally and figuratively.

The fourth thing that makes presentations scary is when they are for high stakes. Sales presentations, job interviews, speech competitions, and presenting in front of your boss are all stressful because of what happens if you mess up. The best case scenario might be that you lose out on some future opportunity but the worst case scenario can be that you lose what you already have, like your job. I think we can all agree on how stressful can be.

Finally, it can especially scary when we don't feel like an expert on our topic. Maybe the topic was assigned to us or we have read a lot of the topic but don't have any personal experience with the topic to fall back on. We don't have a story to tell and have to rely on the information that we found. Impostor syndrome can kick in and really mess with our confidence.

So, yes, giving a presentation can be stressful, but so was driving a car for the first time. Imagine getting behind the wheel and focusing all your attention on the things that could wrong. Your tire could pop on the highway, someone could change lanes and hit you, the brakes could fail. Sure, these are all true, so we are taught to focus on what we can control. Pay attention to what's going on around you, learn basic car maintenance and take it in for regular service, try to obey the rules of the road and things will usually be ok.

A final thing that I tell trainees is that you don't have to be a great presenter, just try not to be a bad presenter. Try to avoid big mistakes and control what you can control. If you do it enough, presenting can become as routine as driving a car. As you increase the size of the audience or increase the stakes, it might feel like learning to drive a bus or even flying a plane, but with training and practice people learn to do these things all the time and it stops being so scary. Hopefully presenting can be the same for you.

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Presentation Pep Talk

2/14/2019

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Hi. I can see you’re a little uncomfortable about going up there to give your talk. You’re nearly out of breath and not making eye contact with anyone. It’s pretty clear that you are in your own head right now.

Let me ask you a question. Are you thinking about what could right or what could go wrong up there? Ah, that grin leads me to believe it’s the latter one. That’s normal but that’s also the problem. So many speakers focus on what could wrong and forget to concentrate their energy on making the things that they can actually control go well.

I’ll give you an example. Are you worried about the technology messing up at that critical point in your talk, maybe when you want to show a video? Ok, did you come in here earlier and test it out? You did? Awesome, that’s one less thing to worry about. Put it out of your mind. Are you worried about forgetting what you were planning to say on Slide 5? Do you think anyone here knows what you were planning to say? Trust me, we don’t. If you forget something you were planning to say, skip it. We’ll probably never know unless you announce it to us. “Ummm, sorry everyone, I forgot what I was going to say here.” Yeah, don’t do that. Don’t apologize and don’t make excuses.

Some of us will be able see that you’re a little nervous and if we can’t then that’s great, but don’t tell us. Let us believe you are confident, and prepared, and knowledgeable about your topic, and here to share something that will be useful for us. See, that’s what you need to be focusing on. Even if you don’t feel confident and prepared, ACT confident and prepared. You may not be THE biggest expert about your topic in the world but you should be one of the most knowledgeable people on it in this room. Act like it.

Finally, your audience is here because we thought you would be able to offer us something beneficial. We’re sitting here patiently with our cell phones in our pockets (ok, well, most of us) waiting for you to share something that you know and we didn’t. It doesn’t have to be earthshattering but it would be nice to leave this room after 10 minutes or thirty minutes or ninety minutes thinking about something we do regularly but in a slightly different way. Now, if we can be truly inspired, well, that’s even better but 99% of the people in this room would settle for “Huh, I never thought about that.” or “If I changed X to Y, I could probably use that next week.” So relax.

Trust me, every single person in this room wants you to do well up there. No one is cheering for you to mess up. Think positive. Focus on us, not your notes or your slides. Make eye contact. Smile. Speak with energy and passion but don’t yell at us. You’ll calm down after the first few minutes, everybody does. But that means those first few minutes are key. Look at us when you introduce yourself. Tell us what you plan to share with us today and everything else will fall into place. Sound good? Ok, have a great time up there and enjoy the spotlight.

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Know Thyself

8/16/2018

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Today, I was reading about Cesar Millan (The Dog Whisperer) in Malcolm Gladwell's "What the Dog Saw" and how much his body movements impacted his success with dogs. Gladwell also touched on how some former US presidents were perceived based on their body language while speaking and it got me thinking about good and bad presenters.

One of the biggest problems that public speakers have is that nobody has told them what they are doing wrong. By "wrong" I mean distracting, something that prevents the audience from focusing on what the speaker is saying. Some examples of this include swaying from side to side, looking at the ceiling or floor, turning and talking to the screen for most of the presentation, nervously scratching or rubbing one's hair or face, or unconsciously playing with an object like clicking a pen, jingling the keys in one's pockets, etc. The first step to helping them improve is making them aware of what they are doing. This can be done by a very blunt audience member (hopefully someone they know), a presentation skills instructor during a course, or by watching a video of themselves present. All three situations can lead to feelings of embarrassment at the time, but they can also lead to huge improvements in public speaking.

Really good presenters know themselves. They know their bad habits, catch themselves doing those things quickly, and stop. They are aware of their posture and straighten up when they feel themselves slouching. They are constantly thinking about where they are standing in relation to the audience, the projector screen, the lectern, the microphone, etc. Good presenters know they can't continue speaking into a fixed-position microphone if they need to turn around and check something on the screen behind them, or they figure out that they can speak into the side of the microphone while glancing over their shoulder. They know what do with their hands (or more importantly, what NOT to do with their hands). They know the value of eye contact with the audience and make an effort to acknowledge different areas of the room even if it isn't comfortable for them.

How you deliver your message is often more memorable than what you are actually saying. Think back to the last conference you attended and the talks you sat through. There is a good chance that your impression of the various speakers is based more on how you perceived their delivery than on what they actually said. The people we consider to be "good speakers" are usually the ones that are more aware of how they appear to us and make sure that poor body language doesn't interfere with the message they want to communicate.

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Hurricane in the Brain

7/20/2018

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This week I'm working with students at an entrepreneurship camp. The week of brainstorming, idea development, and teamwork will culminate in a 7-minute pitch on Friday afternoon. Several participants have noted that when they speak in front of a large group of people they notice that they have trouble remembering what they said and did once it's over. I call that the hurricane in the brain.

What causes this inability to recall details or their presentation experience? I have a theory about this. Presenting is like juggling and the hurricane occurs when the speaker tries to juggle too many things at once. Think about all the things a public speaker needs to pay attention to: time management, body language, speaking speed and volume, working with technology, and then add presenting in a second or third language (the running chainsaw)! Add in trying to recite a memorized script in these stressful conditions and the brain can't handle all those things at once.

What can presenters do about this? One suggestion is to try to work more on understanding what your audience needs to know and then using your slides to help you deliver the content in manageable chunks. Each slide is its own chapter of your story. Also, remember that you (should) know more about your topic than your audience and your mission is to inform and/or persuade them. Focus on helping them understand your content. Concentrate on communicating clearly and efficiently with them (focusing outward) and stop thinking about all the mistakes you might make (focusing inward). Think positively before you start speaking. The audience wants you to succeed. Nobody goes to a presentation hoping the presenter will get confused and lose their confidence.

Better preparation will help reduce the disorientation that many public speakers experience. Approach your presentation will a "service mentality". You have a gift to give. If that gift is useful to the audience then you should feel good about giving it. Your presentation is an opportunity as much as you might consider it a threat. It's all about the way you choose to approach it.

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A Lesson for Teaching Impromptu Speaking Skills

7/5/2018

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One of the topics I didn't go into in my book on how to teacher presentation skills is how to teach impromptu speaking skills. Most of the formal presentations you and your students will give will be planned out and rehearsed (well, hopefully). However, there are times when you are called upon to stand in front of a group of people and share your experience or just "say a few words".

One example of this was when I was representing KOTESOL at a conference in Russia and was asked to come to the front and say a few words about the conference that KOTESOL would be hosting the next year. No warning, no time to prepare, just get up there, smile, and wing it. This situation can even throw experienced presenters for a loop. No PowerPoint slides to fall back on, to time limits to base our amount of content on, just freestyling it in front a room of your peers.

The biggest problem that occurs in this situation is that we revert back to all out bad public speaking habits. We forget to make strong eye contact with different parts of the room. We lose track of what our hands are doing. We forget that most audiences want to hear less, not more, so we ramble on and on with no organization to our thoughts.

It's good to give students the opportunity to experience what it's like to be called on to speak in front of a group without being able to sufficiently prepare. I do this with my students in three stages.

Stage 1
In groups of three or four students, I give them a personal topic such as their hobby or favorite restaurant (listed on a PowerPoint slide) and give them three minutes to prepare and then one minute each to speak. I use the timer on my phone to keep track of the time and the beeping means the time is up. The students can stay for this stage seated but they need to adjust their chair so that they can easily see all of their group members. All of the group members talk about their experience with the same topic.

Stage 2
This time I give them a new topic and only give them one minute to prepare. The talking time is 45 seconds. I usually have them stand up for this stage. Be sure to start with a different group member this time.

Stage 3
This time they will not be given any prep time and the speaking time is 30 seconds. The twist is that when it's time for the second presenter, I change the topic. For this round, every student has a new topic. *evil laughter*

It's important to explain to your students the difference between high-stakes and low-stake presentations. They won't lose their jobs if they mess up in your class. Your classroom needs to be a safe space where students view a bad presentation as a learning experience and not something that will damage their reputation or harm their grade (when it's for practice). If you can get your students to relax and look at the class as an opportunity and not a threat, this activity will be both practical and empowering for your students. Best of all, it can be done in less than thirty minutes. Good luck!

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Presentation Skills that Teachers Should Display

10/1/2017

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Fall is a busy academic conference season and while I don't plan to attend any conferences this month, I do have some fond memories of presenting and networking at conferences in Vladivostok, Taipei, Shizuoka, and Seoul in Octobers past. I have attended some great sessions at these events but it's always the bad talks that tend to stand out in my mind and I think it's because I can't understand how an educator can have such poor presentation skills. We do this every day!

Let's take a look at 10 basic presentation skills and how they fit into classroom teaching, yet sometimes become forgotten during a conference presentation.

1. Eye contact/eye rotation

Teachers need to look at their students. We need to build a connection with them and establish trust. This is difficult to do if we aren't looking them in the eye. We also need to maintain control of the class, watching to see who might be dozing off, checking their phones a little too long, or getting ready to cause a disturbance. The longer we teach, the more natural it becomes to rotate our line of sight through the different areas of the class. Front-middle, back-right, back-middle, back-left, front-left, etc. Everyone in the audience needs to feel like you are speaking directly to them and making eye contact is a critical aspect of that.

2. Not turning to talk to the screen

I understand that speaking in a new environment can be daunting and, as a teacher, you might be used to being able to look at your computer's monitor when using a PowerPoint deck with your lesson but there are several reasons why a speaker shouldn't have to turn around so often and stare at the projector screen. First, you shouldn't have so many words on the slide that you need to read from them. Second, you should know more about the topic than the audience. Just talk to them about the content of your lesson/talk. Finally, you are supposed to be speaking TO your audience and you can't do that with your back turned to them.

3. Speaking volume/microphone awareness

While many classroom teachers may not have classes big enough to merit using a microphone, they should be used to speaking at a volume so the students in the back row can hear them comfortably. The same thing applies when speaking at a conference. For larger venues where a microphone is needed, be sure not to let the microphone drop if you are holding it or turn away from a fixed-position microphone to look behind you at the screen.

4. Speaking speed

Teachers who teach native speakers can more or less be excused for this one but teachers who teach English (or any language) to second language speakers should be used to speaking slowly and monitoring their vocabulary levels. We need to be aware of these key delivery elements when speaking at conferences as there will often be a variety of English listening abilities among our audience members.

5. Appropriate use of visuals

Whether we are using pictures in a textbook, from supplemental texts, off the internet, or in a PPT, the purpose of our visuals is to show so we don't have to try to tell something and have our students imagine it. Similarly, in a conference presentation, we want to reserve space on our slides for photos, data, and key words to help the audience understand what we are trying to explain. The speaker can then focus on providing explanations and details to compliment the visuals.

6. Familiarization with tech

The first time many teachers got a TV in their rooms with a computer connected to it, hilarity must have ensued. I'm sure half the time it was a student who showed the teacher how to push the TV/AV button on the remote control to change the input from the TV received to the computer. Hopefully, that was a valuable lesson to check the tech before class starts. In any case, it is not uncommon to see conference speakers bomb because they didn't check in advance to see if the internet was connected, whether their video would play without installing additional programs, if there were speakers in the room, or a number of other potential technical issues that could happen during their talk.

7. Hooking

Good teachers explain to their students WHY they are covering certain material or undertaking a given activity. Telling students how learning or experiencing something could benefit them later in their academic career or after they graduate can increase student motivation and reduce the likelihood of bad/distracted behavior. Conference speakers should also start with a hook, explaining how the content is relevant to the audience and could benefit them when they go back to work.

8. Energy/enthusiasm

I often tell participants in my teacher training workshops that I'm glad they are now able to remember what it's like to be stuck on the other side of the classroom for hours at a time. The best situations are when there are multiple trainers and I ask them to compare and contrast the sessions. Invariably, the "best" trainers had a high energy level and were "passionate" about their topics. If that is what you prefer as an audience member, wouldn't you strive to appear that way when you are in front of the room?

9. Time management

I still talk with some of my friends about the time the plenary speaker "stole our lunch". He was the speaker just before the lunch break and kept talking until 12:15 which meant people didn't hit the restaurants down the street until 12:20 at the earliest. The long lines meant many people were late getting back to the 1pm sessions, all because this "experienced" conference speaker couldn't (or wouldn't) keep track of his time. In his defense, he did appear to be an ivory tower academic more than a humble classroom instructor but surely he had spent years in the classroom prior to that. As teachers, we are always checking the clock to see how long we can let an activity go on and making sure we save a few minutes at the end of class for reminders and questions. For some reason, at a conference that skill can fly right out the window.

10. Q&A

Speaking of questions, are we not used to asking for questions at the end of an activity or class? Surely we have developed delaying tactics and the awareness to discern a general question that everyone would be interested in from a specific question that sounds like something we should discuss with that one student after class. Granted, at some conferences, Q&A sessions can be a minefield and a few attendees will want to make your session all about them but a confident, seasoned teacher should be able to manage the room and put arrogant or socially-inept audience members in their place.

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Putting the Wow Before the How

4/21/2017

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As much as I enjoy working as a communications consultant, I miss working with students. Most of my clients these days are researchers and civil servants. I feel fortunate to work with chemistry students in one of the labs at KAIST twice a month and I enjoyed meeting the students who attended the materials science symposium that I emceed in Osaka earlier this week. In both cases I noticed the same thing; students are not proficient at "selling" their research outcomes.

Now let me be clear, I am not blaming their professors for this. There are only so many hours in a day and professors have full plates. Between conducting and writing up their own research, planning and giving lectures, and mentoring their students' research projects they are insanely busy. Add in departmental meetings, reams of bureaucratic paperwork that need to be filled out, and applying for grants I'm surprised they have time to tuck their kids into bed at night.

So if professors are too busy, whose job is it to teach students (and junior researchers for that matter) how to explain their poster presentations efficiently and maximize the time they are given to speak during general sessions at conferences? Too often they are unable to organize their content in a way that clearly explains the problem they were attempting to solve, the solution they tried, the outcome that justified creating the poster or applying for the speaking slot, and only then explaining how they accomplished it.

Two recent examples come to mind and I will use these stories often when coaching young scientists. The first case is from the chemistry lab students. One of the graduate students was practicing his 10-minute presentation on a fairly significant breakthrough. He found a way to conduct a test that previous took ten seconds and now could be accomplished in one tenth of second. Wow, right? The problem was that he waited until the end of the talk to tell the audience what we had achieved. We all waited patiently while he explained the background of the test and the procedures he went through. Slides and slides of charts and tables were shown without telling the audience why we should care. It was a textbook example of "burying the lead". He shared all of the methodology before he got to the results (like he would in a journal article).

Similarly, one of the poster presenters in Osaka was unable to give an elevator pitch for her experiment's results. I asked her to give me the 15-second version of her research and she looked at me like I was speaking Greek (her English was pretty good, so that was not the problem). I then asked her to briefly tell me the problem, what she did, and what the outcome was so I could decide if I wanted to hear how she did it or not. There was a professor emeritus standing behind me as I said this. I pointed to him and explained that he was a busy guy who didn't have time to hear the details of everyone's poster. He needed to know what the achievement was to help him decide if he wanted to hear more. He nodded and said that was correct. "Time is money," he agreed. I think she got what I was trying to emphasize because she came over to my table at the closing banquet to say thank you for the advice. No one had explained that to he before.

It's not fair to generalize and say that Korean students, or Japanese students, or science and engineering students don't know how to sell their research because I'm not sure any students are being mentored on how best to share their research outcomes at conferences and symposiums. Perhaps it's like putting together one's first Western-style CV; you see someone else's CV that you like and change their info to yours. Students should watch other presentations and take note of organization styles that help them get the most out of what is being said and shown. In a perfect world students would be taught ways to share their work with international audiences more clearly and efficiently but for now I'll summarize it into one key tip: "Put the WOW before the HOW."

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Upgrading from a "Not Bad" to a "Good" Presenter

10/30/2016

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Let's be honest, if you attend professional conferences regularly you've seen your fair share of bad presentations. By now, if the presenter makes a little bit of eye contact and doesn't speak in monotone while reading a slew of text-filled slides you leave thinking, "Hey, that wasn't bad." Seriously, "not bad" is the new "good" but this may not be enough for some public speakers. They want to improve their skills and become legitimately "good". Here are some suggestions for taking your presentation skills to the next level.

Many seasoned presenters will suggest observing other presenters. I give this advice as well but to really shine try referencing a point made by a speaker from earlier in the day (especially a plenary talk that many of your audience members attended) in your talk. This shows flexibility on your part and makes your talk feel current. It also doesn't hurt to name drop or give a little shout out if that person happens to be attending your talk.

Next, share your personal stories. Scientists often keep their presentations dry and fact based. Why not talk to the audience members about how you failed, what you learned from failing, and then how that led to you trying something that turned out to be the breakthrough you are presenting on today? Your scientific/academic talk doesn't have to come across like a TED Talk but it will stand out in the crowd when everyone else is turning their backs to the audience and reading the stats off their PowerPoints.

Speaking of slides, it can be hard to predict the size of the room you will be presenting in and the size of the screen your slides will be projected onto so avoid small fonts whenever you can. The best way to accomplish this is to reduce the number of words on each slide. Remember, slides are free. You can break up sections of your talk over a number of slides. On a side note, if your slide desk has a large number of slides, don't include the total number of slides in the slide footer (ie: 1/89). Doing that can really damage the audience's motivation to listen to your talk as it will feel longer than it really is.

Another way to lose the audience is to overuse the word "I". The best presenters enjoy presenting and ego plays a big part in that but step back and listen to yourself telling your story. If you feel you are starting too many sentences with "I", trying editing a few sentences using the examples below.
I discovered that the algae required more sunlight in the winter. ---> It was interesting to discover that the algae required more sunlight in the winter. OR We were excited to discover that the algae required more sunlight in the winter. OR It turns out that that the algae required more sunlight in the winter.

Finally, make every effort to finish your presentation on time. Newer presenters will be tempted to skip their last few slides to accomplish this but doing that can frustrate your audience. I mean, you went to all the trouble to make those slides and now you consider them unimportant? Summarize the key point or "takeaway" from each slide in about ten seconds when you notice you are running low on time. When you finish your presentation you make your final impression and it can leave a strong impression on the audience. By finishing on time (or, God forbid, a little early) you demonstrate your preparedness, your consideration of the audience's time, and are able to slow down and really focus on tying everything together and selling your talk's takeaways. This also allows ample time for the audience to ask a question or two.

The next time you find yourself attending a conference, watch for presenters utilizing these tips and I'll bet you will find yourself nodding and thinking, "Hey, that was pretty good."

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Presentation Peer Feedback

Busy Slides

Why Are Presentations So Scary?

Presentation Pep Talk

Know Thyself

Hurricane in the Brain

A Lesson for Teaching Impromptu Speaking Skills

Presentation Skills that Teachers Should Display

Putting the Wow Before the How

Upgrading from a "Not Bad" to a "Good" Presenter

Tim's Thoughts

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