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Leadership Communication- How to Structure a Speech | Conference Speaker
Narrator (Jim Cathcart, Conference Speaker): I’d like to focus your attention on the mechanics of the presentation, both the physical and psychological mechanics. It never seizes us to amaze me what a tremendous influence these things can happen. You can make a far more effective presentation if you know how to use these mechanics to your advantage. When I say physical and psychological mechanics, I’m talking about questions such as: where should you speak from; should you stand or sit down; should you have audience participation or not; should you use visual aids?” There are lot of questions like these and believe me the answers are very important.
Let’s take audience participation for starters. Most people have an extremely limited attention span, especially when they’re listening to lecture type of presentation. Studies indicate that, immediately after hearing something, most people have retained only half of it. Within 48 hours they remember only 25%. What this means to you and your presentation is that you really must be especially careful to organize your thoughts and illustrate them in such a way that people can easily hang on to them. To illustrate your presentation means of course visual aids. Should you use them? Unless your presentation consist of something that in no way lends itself to visual aids such as, perhaps a pure motivational speech which is very short or maybe a talk that consist of a quick intro followed by question and answer session.
Then I’d strongly urge you to use visual aids, because visuals can help the audience get more involved. They also help making you the presenter more prepared and it tends to make meetings move faster. The next question then is, how do we use visual aids effectively? First off, get comfortable with the equipment you’re going to use. Figure out how the equipment works, how to switch it on and off, how to change light bulbs if it has bulbs. Incidentally if you don’t know how to change a bulb in a projector at the very least, be sure to have someone around who does know. Any printed material projection on the screen should be printed in such a way that the letters are big enough to be clear and legible to everybody and at the lines have plenty of space between them.
Have you ever been in a meeting when you’re looking at the chart or a graph on the screen and you can’t figure out what is suppose to be about, there these long exhausting lists of things in lines going every which way, and the graph just doesn’t seem to make any sense because everything so small? Well a few of visuals are like that, one of two things will happen, either the audience will give up trying to figure out what it is and they start ignoring it or they’ll try so hard to concentrate on it that it takes too much effort away from paying attention to what you’re saying. In other words they’re going to be paying attention to the visual and not to you, so keep them simple.
Use them to illustrate, just the major part of the point you’re making. If you’re breaking down a big graph or chart into pieces, illustrate each piece one at a time. Make each part as big as possible for visibility and impact because get turned off when they see too much information on a visual. They think it looks like hard work to decide for it and [laughs] they’re right. Effective presentation requires a solid understanding of the kind of the visual aids available as well as knowing how to use them best. There are two categories of visuals that can be used; direct aids and projected aids.
Direct Aids are such things as chalk boards, flip charts, posters, physical models used for illustrating things or hand outs. Projected Aids on the other hand are such things as slides, overheads, motion pictures and videos. Each of these categories requires their own set of guidelines. For Direct Aids or Props, these ideas will help you. First, for those visuals that you can prepare in advance is best to do the following: First, introduce the visual before presenting it to the group, say something like now here’s the chart that shows you these four steps, let’s turn to page four. Second, summarize the visuals information rather than reading its content word for word.
Supposed the four steps on your chart or graph or each represented by one word and it reads: 1) Introduce 2) Develop 3) Increase 4) Follow up. Don’t just say one introduce, two develop, three…[phonetics], it gets boring for people and instead say something like, so as you can see the first step in the business marketing plan is to Introduce our new product into the test market, if were satisfied with the results, we’ll move on to step two develop it and you go on from there in that matter; the third guideline for using Direct Aids is if the visual in on easel, make sure that the easel is steady, you know what your chart wobbling back and forth or worst falling down in the middle of your presentation; fourth, keep the visuals high enough in the room or on the stage so that those on the back of the room can see them over the heads of those in the front. Best way to check that out is just going to the meeting room sit at the back chairs, hold your hands up where you think the head of the person in front of you would be sitting and see if you can notice the visual above that point in your line of sight; five be sure that you thoroughly explain the information on the visual before you move on to another subject; and finally when possible use color contrast on your visual for easy visibility. By the way remember that brighter colors like red, yellow and orange tend to blur from a distance, so only use those colors when the meeting room is very small and the group very small, otherwise stick to blacks, blues and darker colors.
Now for those aids that are using extemporaneously such as a flip chart or chalk board where you write on as you go along, I found it best to use these guidelines. Start with a clean slate, begin with a blank sheet of paper on the flip chart or clean chalk board and if you’re using flip chart, it may be helpful for you to write some brief notes to yourself lightly in pencil on each sheet of paper so that you can be sure to remember what you planned to write on there. The audience probably won’t see your notes and it helps you be more confident and little bit more prepared. Use your visuals briefly. Abbreviate what you’re saying rather than writing everything out, after all these are visual aids right, not the whole presentation, they’re supposed to support what you’re saying not do the job for you.
Print clearly and use large letters of at least two inches high. If you’re drawing a diagram, make that big too. Be sure to stand sideways as you write rather than turning your back to the group and obscuring the visual. When you’re finish with the point, erase the board or flip to a new page before moving on your presentation. Leaving the old material up there can be very distracting to the group unless you want to leave it up there to reinforce an image throughout the rest of your talk, that’s a different use. Let’s take a look now at some guidelines for using Projected Aids effectively. Here are the ones I found to be most helpful and work best for me: First, make sure that the equipment is working well and you know how to run it.
Second, when you’re using for example a video player there are two rules to keep in mind. One, clear audience viewing is done within eight-times the diagonal width. Now let me explain that, if you have a 36 inch screen, a 3 foot screen, the viewing distance for proper viewing is 24 feet in other words (8 x 3), 36 inches is 3 feet times eight, twenty-four. You’ve got 24 feet of space within which to put people for clear viewing of that screen, after that it’s harder to see. The number of the people in the audience should be the number of inches from the corner to the other corner of the video screen. If you have a 36 inch screen then probably about 36 people would be able to fit into a meeting room and clearly see the image; if it’s a 24 inch screen 24 people; 19 inch screen, the group should be smaller.
Third, when you plan to use projected visuals be sure to bring them to the meeting yourself, don’t assign this someone else and above all, don’t check them with your luggage if you’re flying on a plane, carry them with you on board, be sure that the vital parts of your presentation arrive with you. Fourth, use as much color as possible. Fifth, before making any comments about a visual that’s flash on the screen, give your audience several seconds to see the visual, let it sink in so they can think about what it’s saying or illustrating then make your point verbally.
Sixth, keep the visual on the screen while the projector is turned on and if you have a projector which presents a white stark screen when there’s no visual inserted in that part of the mechanism, like a slide tray which might have a blank space, then either get some black slides to insert there so that no light shines through or if you’re using an overhead projector when you removed the visual turn off the projector because there’s nothing worse for an audience when it comes to visuals than looking at a stark white screen with no visual image on it. It creates a great deal of nervousness and makes the audience uncomfortable. Seventh, avoid keeping the room dark longer than ten minutes. I guarantee you the audience will go to sleep if you do. Finally, eighth, if you’re using slides be sure to determine your purpose. Are you giving primarily a slide presentation or you’re making a speech and using slides in your speech as supportive material? If it’s a slide presentation darken the room, show the slides. But if you’re giving a speech in the slides or merely there to support and illustrate your points, dim the lights only enough so that the slides can be seen clearly but make sure that you the speaker remain visible or get a spot light to focus on you so that you’re able to be well lit so the audience can see your facial expressions, your gestures and so forth. Giving presentations whether you’re prepared or not, can really play have a quit to your nerves. Just remember that it’s okay to be nervous. It really is. It’s your body’s natural response to a tense situation. Just recognize as a natural instinct and channel that energy into right direction. [Laughing] I can hear you now, maybe a natural instinct Jim but how do I handle it so I don’t make a fool of myself? Well the best thing to do is first, take a couple of slow deep breath, when you do that some of the tightness in your chest is automatically released. Try it now. [Inhales] In through the nose [exhales] after the mouth. Can you feel how it relaxes you a little bit? Next, identify the parts of your body that are feeling the most tension. Think about it, systematically from toe to the top of your head, increased the tension of each muscle group like flexing the muscles and then released them and feel them relaxed. For example, right now, really tighten the muscle groups in your upper legs, get them tight, okay, now take a deep breath [inhales] and relax those muscles [exhales]. How’s it feel? You see, it takes a lot of tension out of your legs. Concentrate on how you feel as you released the tension in those muscles. Here are some other things you can do before presentation. It’s best not to sit with your legs crossed because that restricts the blood flow and can cause you to maybe stumble or be a little awkward when you first stand up to speak. That’s the worst time in the world to have an awkward moment. Do some stomach breathing as you’re getting ready to talk. Breathe in and out comfortably slowly through your gut not through the chest. This helps to take a little bit of the tension out of your diaphragm so you don’t stand up there and say “Come on ladies and gentlemen“. When things don’t go the way we’ve planned, we often experienced sudden feelings of Stark Terror. Fortunately we don’t have to have those moments of panic if we know how to respond to the emergencies that come up. Here are some suggestions that will help you respond to those little moments and… Give you a little reassuring composure. One, control your eye contact; focus on one spot or person for at least five seconds or so before moving on to someone else. Do this as a post to say skimming the group with your eyes and never making eye contact really with anyone. If you make solid eye contact with someone, they get more of sense of connection with you and they also feel more trust for you and they feel like you’re being more sincere. Also be sure to alternate, look at the people on one side of the group and then shift and look at the people on the other side of the group, back and forth, don’t worry about the timing of it. Just do what comes naturally. Feel like you’re having a conversation with them. Next, use pauses, take time to breath, relax, don’t try to communicate everything as quickly as you can because you’ll run out of breath and become nervous. Instead, just pause, present an idea, allow them to think about it a moment and go on to your next point. Doing so will give you a chance to get more control of yourself.
Three, another suggestion is to talk to back of the room as far as the volume of your voice is concerned, so that everyone in the room can hear you, speak to those in the back row. Four, anchor your feet eight to ten inches apart and relax rather than moving around a lot because it’s better to stay in one spot generally than pacing because pacing can become distracting. The audience starts to count your pacing movements rather than listening to your message. A matter of fact I can remember college professor years ago who not only paced back and forth but he cleared his throat constantly and one time I went to his class and he cleared his throat, this literally truth, a hundred forty eight times in a one hour class. It’s very interesting, thinking back I’m not even sure what subject he taught and I certainly couldn’t tell you what he spoke about that day but I was so distracted by his mannerisms that I remember them now twenty, thirty years later, wow. Number five, use gestures but don’t overdo it. Gestures can be too easily the biggest part of the presentation itself, let your gestures flow naturally like they wouldn’t– just schedule a dialog. Sixth, If you’re really scared or nervous, find a friend in the audience and talk primarily to that person. Look occasionally at the other members of the group but talk primarily to that one friendly face and it may reduce your tensions somewhat. Seventh, if you become flustered, call for questions, ask the audience to help you direct your presentation. If you got no questions, simply say “Thank you” and sit down.
Don’t worry about it being a disaster, you either did well or you didn’t do well but it’s over and you can go on to other things. If you ask for questions and none are asked the audience are telling you, they are finished with what they were to do and they feel it’s time to get on with something else. This last suggestion brings up an important area.Effectively handling questions or challenges, even the best presenters get flustered when tough questions come up. Questions are blessing for you, they actually good news because they show you that the people are involved and interested in what’s going on. The best attitude to have toward questions is to know that you’re not expected to have a prepared text to respond to each one of them, instead it’s a dialog. If you’re more comfortable sitting down to answer questions, pull up a chair and sit down. Do that on a flat form and answer the questions in a calm manner. Do this by first hearing each question completely. Give each person asking you a question your full attention, look at him or her directly while listening carefully and then restate the question they ask to make sure that you got it accurately. For example, “Lynn what I heard you saying is this…”, and then you restate the question, then you asked, “Is that what you were asking?” and she’ll say yes or no to clarify it whatever. You then take a moment to organize your thoughts and you present your answer. If you don’t have an answer, say so, “Lynn I really need to think about that one some over before I respond to it if you don’t mind let’s talk briefly at the end of this meeting. Or you might say, give me a chance to think about that some more while I take a couple of other question, but don’t let me forget it. In that way Lynn is working with you to help you find the answer to that question. If you don’t know it at all just simply say “I really don’t know and perhaps we can talk after this meeting about where you could find the answer.”
You might even turned it over to the group by saying “That’s a great question, does anyone else here have an answer that would be appropriate for that question?” In that way the group can help you generate the response you need. Remember, it’s okay to say that you don’t know, the group doesn’t expect you to be perfect and you’re not taking a test, you’re simply trying to communicate. During a question and answer session, what do you do if you get an insult from the audience? I supposed you could do like Don Rickles, swapping self for insult, but that’s the guarantee the way to get yourself in trouble. What I suggest you do is remain calm look at the person and say “Let me make sure I understand what you said.” and restate it to the person. That is a very strong response and a lot of people will back down when you do that. The person may come up with “Maybe I was a little hasty, I didn’t really mean it quite that way.” but let’s say you feed it back to the person and here she says “yeah, that’s what I said. I said you don’t care about this organization”, so you would pause and say “Well you certainly have a right to feel that way” and then you can explain your point of view but don’t get into argument. Let him feel okay about having their point of view then give them information that might help him change their mind. If they don’t change their mind, well I’m sorry we can’t resolve that right now and move on to something else. Never fight back when you’re on the flat form. You can always complement the person who raises the criticism by saying something like “That’s a valid point of view, I appreciate your bringing it up, we do need your concern about it” then give your answer.
In that way, what you’ve done is you’ve complemented the person for giving an alternate point of view instead of getting an argument with them. You can also just pause, remain silent let it roll off and then get back to your presentation. Or you can say “You certainly same to feel strongly about this, let’s see about the rest of the group. How many of you agree with his point of view?” ask for a show of hands, maybe there’s more support and maybe there’s not. If there is support, don’t take it personally; just address the issue that’s been raised. Even if they’re talking about your own sincerity and whether you mean what you’re saying or not, you can still address the issue calmly and then get onto other things, if they don’t believe you, it’s their choice. There are number of effective methods for handling difficult questions, objections and challenges. Here are some ways to neutralize them. First, empathize with them. Never show resentment towards them or raise your voice because doing so will produce negative results, instead stay calm. Try to understand the group and ask them for more information. Restate the objection to them and perhaps make a comparison between the different ideas with the group’s assistance. Go to the chalkboard or flip chart, draw a large tea on the right side label, the column Advantages, on the left side of the column, label it Disadvantages, and then talk about the Pros and Cons of each side of the issue. Then with their assistance after you’ve listed all those things, you can see whether an idea has merit or should be discounted. Other things you can say might include some like this, “I’m sure you have a very good reason for feeling that way, would you mind telling me what it is?” or “Thank you, who else shares this position, John you seem to have some concerns, do you see it the same way Bill sees it?” Let’s say someone raises a challenge and you don’t want to spend time with it, you just want to get back to you presentation. Look at the person and say “Thank you. I wasn’t aware of that” or “Thank you. I’ll check on that” and then let it go or “That surprises me, I didn’t have any idea that was so.” or “No wonder, you’re alarmed, if I’d known about that I’d be alarmed too.”
The main thing is to try and maintain a sense of why you’re in front of a group and what you have to say while the same time showing concern for your audience. Concern for your audience is vital if you’re going to get your point across. If you don’t care about them, you can bet they’re not going to care about you or what you have to say. Remember that in any meeting that you plan, your presentation requires the same degree of attention. [Music plays] You must know your purpose, you must select the format that’s best for the situation and you must determine how complex and how it should be timed and so forth and you must carefully analyze your audience preparing for their interests, their questions and their challenges. The key for successful presentations is Preparation. [Music plays out loud] Picture this, you’ve been working on presentation for weeks, finally you’re up their giving up to a large audience in annual convention, everything’s going well, you have the undivided attention of more than a hundred people. You turn to at the projector as the lights begin to dim and suddenly kaboom. The slide projector tips over some guy were walking by tripped and your slides go flying in a hundred different directions all over the floor. Things like these can undo happen.
What would you do? Do you have a clear immediate idea of what you do of something like that happen? You’re going to give presentation and there go all your slides all over the floor? Unavoidable problems or what I call meeting room disasters. [Laughs] Can occur at any time. In fact if you’re regularly attending conducting meetings, you’re bound to run into a disaster situation sooner or later. So the first thing to remember is the old Boy Scout model, be prepared. You should be as prepared for this situation as you are for the presentation itself. Now let me explain what I mean. One of the best things I can suggest is for you to visualize the meeting before it happens. Get a clear picture in your mind of where the meetings going to be held, what kind of a room or meeting hall will be used, whether it’s large or small, think about where the exits are, think about the equipment you’ll be using, where it’s going to be plugged in, how are you going to operate it, who’s going to operate it. Think about kind of audience who’d be there, what kind of mood they’ll be in when they arrive. In short visualize every detail you possibly can. Try to run through the whole experience in your mind in advance of the meeting. By doing so, you’ll be able to identify just where the most likely problems are to pop-up. This is the first step in being prepared to deal with them. No matter what the problem maybe, visualize what you would say and do if it happened. Play what if. What would I do if my slide tray fell over in the middle of my talk? What would I do if we had a fire?
What would I do if somebody jumped up and had a health problem; you know they were choking or something in the middle of a speech? What would I do and then practice saying what you’d say and doing what you’d do in that situation in your mind, have your response ready? It may sound like a lot of unnecessary work but if you run through what you would say the words would come or easily if and when you need them. For example, let’s take difficulties you might run into it with the audience. Here’s not a non-common audience problem, people have arrived and they all take their seats but all the seats they’d take are in the back of the room, the front seven rows are empty. What would you do? I found that the best thing to do in this situation is either walk back to back of the room and hold your meeting there where the people are or encourage them to come down front and don’t start them meeting until they do. If you used that suggestion don’t make it a faceoff be friendly about it. You might say “We’ve planned the meeting for a lot of interaction and participation, we’re going to be participating pretty actively and it’s easier if everybody gets up front. Consequently, we won’t start the meeting until you’ve had a chance to move up here. The last seven rows beginning here with George, George would you please raise your hand. Okay, thank you George. Well everybody in George’s row and behind it please stand up right now?
Okay please stand up, thank you. With all of you now please move forward with me to these rows right up in front. George please starts us.” Just stand there with a smile on your face as if you expect them to do it and don’t do anything else until they do. When you’re that’s specific, things will be more likely to happen. If you just say “Okay, folks we need to fill these first three rows” and stand there [laughs] they may be empty rows until you’re a very, very old person. Here’s another problem, what if the audience won’t quiet down? This is very common problem. Instead of getting into a yelling match, just say something like “Excuse me ladies and gentlemen”, pause, count to five or six, maintain eye contact as if you expect them to be quiet and then raise your hands again and say “Excuse me ladies and gentlemen” when they finally give you portion of their attention say “I recognize there are lot of other things that we need talk about and work on right now but for this moment, let’s get on with the meeting itself, if I can have your attention for just a few moments, I’ll be as brief as I can.” If this is a small group in the audience and won’t quit talking, everybody else is fine but not the small group; you might say “Excuse me! Excuse me!” give them eye contacts, say “Yes, yes. I was addressing you. I know what you’re talking about is probably is very interesting to you and is probably important but it’s distracting to the rest of us, would you mind either postponing your discussion till the end of the meeting or moving into the hallway for now so you can talk about it without distracting others? Thank you.” then continue your meeting. You’ve been courteous to that group although confrontive. Let those people know, you mean what you’re saying but be courteous enough to let them live if they have to. What if the problem isn’t the audience but at your equipment? What if the lights go out? [Laughs] That happens to me once. What do you do? You turned them back on, right? Yes but what if the outage was caused by blown fuse? Then somebody needs to know where the fuse is. You should realize that in advance. Who do you turn to with the problems? Have you thought about how you could get the people out of the room safely, if the lights were out? Do you even know where the exits are? How could you get the lights repaired quickly? How could you maintain the integrity of your meeting and operate say outdoors or in a hallway or some other location if you had to move? Prior to the meeting, check out each piece of equipment you’re going to use. Find out who the contact person is for that facility or who the technician is or who ever knows how to run the lights, the air conditioning and so forth? Find out who you can turn to if something major goes wrong during the meeting? Designate a person to be your troubleshooter. If you have a problem, they immediately contact the technician and they fix it.
You can go ride on with your presentation. This one you’re not going to believe, one time I had a chalkboard which wouldn’t accept chalk marks, honest truth, what happened was I went into a meeting room, I checked out everything to make sure it was fine the sound system work, the chairs were fine, chalk board was there and so is the chalk. I turned around during the meeting to make mark on the board with the chalk and it wouldn’t make a mark. What had happened, it was one of the cleaning people had cleaned the chalk board with a waxy substance that prevented the chalk for marking on the board. I was really very embarrassed but I could’ve avoided that whole situation if I just tried it out in advance. You never know where these little problems are going to come from. That’s the key to all lists. Most of the problems, the meeting room disasters are really are own fault, simply because we didn’t check everything out in advance. To avoid problems there are several ounces of prevention that I can prescribe. First, arrive early and better yet if the meeting room is available and set up a day in advance, check everything out the day ahead as well. Second, thoroughly check out all the equipment you’ll be using. Third, if you’re going to use magic markers in a flip chart, turn to the last page of the flip chart and test each marker to be sure it writes. Fourth, test the lighting. Fifth, test the sound system.
When you test the sound system don’t just walk up to the microphone and recite the usual 1, 2, 3 testing 1, 2, 3, instead test it from where your audience will be seated, have someone else stay and on the flat form and speak into the microphone and you walk around the room to each side of the room, each corner of the room and listen to see if you can hear the voice over the labs speakers. This will ensure that all those people can hear what you’re saying and sometimes you’ll discover that some of those little speakers in the ceiling have been turned off so you can get it adjusted. If you don’t know that in advance you’ll end losing part of your audience. Sixth, test your slides, run through them to be sure that not only the projector is correctly placed and working properly but then all the slides are in the right order and right side up. Here’s something I’d find helpful when preparing slides for a presentation. I first put them in carousel and then sequence that I want to show them and I checked them by using the projector itself. I then removed them one at a time and numbered each slide in order in the upper right hand corner as it is sitting into the carousel facing me. Then when I put them back in the carousel I used the numbers as my guide to line them up properly.
These help me not only put them in the correct sequence but I know which side of the slide should be at the top and which one should be facing me. Words do the wise, even with this method; always check your slides before you show them to the group. Seventh, have a supply of extra tools for your presentation. If you’re going to be using markers, bring an extra of each color you planned to use. If you’ll be using an overhead projector or slide projector make sure that there’s an extra bulb and just as an important know how to quickly change the bulb. Eighth, whenever possible secure the cords that lie across the floor with tape to keep them safe. Too often, when equipment’s being used someone’s heel catches the cord unplugs the machine or worst yet trips the person. You might be thinking that some of the things I’m suggesting are very small matters, but there little details in the overall scheme of things. You’re right but [Music plays] attention to detail can turn a good presentation into an excellent presentation. Attention to detail will prevent a meeting room disaster from ruining your presentation and destroying all your hard work planning and preparation. Have a good meeting.
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For more information contact Jim Cathcart or Cathcart Institute, Inc. at http://Cathcart.com