STORYTELLING IN PRESENTATIONS. Ms Huffingtton delivers a short but effective one.

Following the topic I began with in my previous post on Presentations, I would like to invite you to watch this second Ted Talk by Arianna Huffington. Her talk is called HOW TO SUCCEED? GET MORE SLEEP

You may have heard about her a couple of months ago when her widely-read online paper THE HUFFINGTON POST was bought by AOL Inc, and she became President and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group.

Well, my post is not to talk about AOL and/or Ms Huffington herself, but to show you the effectiveness of a sound content-message, in which words have been carefully chosen.

How to succeed? Get more sleep. Certainly the title itself is catchy. When reading it, one wonders how it is possible to be successful in life by having enough sleep. We are usually told that successful people have devoted themselves to working hard and giving up leisure or family time. If you want to be on the top, you must work up the ladder and it won't be easy. A visible instance of this is top-politicians; when they get into power their faces eventually start looking haggard with rings under their eyes, a certain sign of lack of sleep.

Ms Huffington delivers a brief talk (a bit over 4 minutes) that goes right into our inner feelings. She deliberately addresses the female audience with an interesting feminist message that goes away from the hackneyed discourse ¨we, women, are the same as men, therefore we have the same rights¨. Actually, she says the opposite: because we are different, we are better.

What's more, she does not use visuals, no ppt to enhance the content of her talk. The content of her talk uses the power of words and intonation to make it effective. She does this with the best technique: storytelling.

Her story has a personal drama, some research so you will become better, other characters humourously presented, not to forget the villains, there's also a time line with a past, a present and a future, and there's some learning to do in the hope that we will improve as human beings.

Her storytelling is imbued with simplicity and, yet, it is not simplistic.

Let's look at the use of adjectives, starting by the first sentence:

My big idea is a very, very small idea that can unlock billions of big ideas that are at the moment dormant inside us. And my little idea that will do that is sleep.

big / small / dormant / little / sleep

(simple opposing adjectives & the issue of sleep)

A pause, to let the audience take in what she has just said with the hope that it will raise their expectations to what she is about to say yet.

This is a room of type-A women... good address to the audience by praising them. Next she tells them a personal story to show her empathy with these great sleep-deprived women. Her personal story depicts pain, I broke my cheek bone bone, I got five stitches on my right eye,ouch! we only seem to learn the tough way. Then she backs up the story with some follow-up research. So, this happened to me, but it made me go beyond, illustrating myself with sound research so I now feel authorized to tell you why a good sleep is sound advice. A good bunch of positive adjectives the audience will surely like to feel as the definition of their lives, sort of the background music used in films to show the good moments:

And I'm here to tell you that the way to a more productive, more inspired, more joyful life is getting enough sleep.

Pause.

She certainly delivers her message: a new feminist revolution so that we women will lead the way.

We are literally going to sleep our way to the top, literally.

We are set in a time line, with a past story, that of the Titanic, which is used as a metaphor to illustrate the recent present and its catastrophic consequences. Some of the characters have been named, Lehman Brothers. Men who brag their lack-of-sleep virility. Men who have led us to colliding into a crisis of unprecendented magnitude. Those men are the villains in our story. And we must learn out of this so that it will never happen again.

So I urge you to shut your eyes and discover the great ideas that lie inside us,

to shut your engine and discover the power of sleep.

TED Talk: DON'T INSIST ON ENGLISH & a good example on how to begin & end an interesting talk.

I've been teaching a course on Presentations for the past two weeks and TED Ideas worth spreading together with Presentation Zen are two useful and enriching sources on the web to learn and illustrate any key issue regarding this skill.

There is a previous entry on my blog called Delivering a presentation where I explain the main parts of a standard presentation, so I invite you to click your way there if you would like to read more about it.

The aim of this entry is actually to draw your attention to the beginning and end of a presentation. How we should start and end our presentation cannot be neglected during the preparation stage. However interesting our talk may be, we cannot expect our audience to walk out of the room remembering all we have said. Therefore, our message needs to be clear and simple (and by ¨simple¨ I don't mean ¨simplistic¨); we must make sure that they walk out of the room with the right message and not, say, with the lovely slides we have chosen to enlighten our talk, or an anecdote we have given them and whose purpose is simply to entertain.

There are different techniques we can use to make our start. A personal anecdote, an outstanding fact, a quotation, a catchy question, a joke; these are some of the ways experienced presenters use to start off, with the hope that the audience will immediately feel they are about to listen to something well worth their time.

Likewise, we need to think of a good ending so that our audience will walk out of the room with a fulfilled feeling; the sound bite.

Patricia Ryan, an experienced English teacher in Arabic countries, delivers a remarkable talk with interesting food for thought. Her talk is called DON'T INSIST ON ENGLISH and you can watch it with subtitles in different languages apart from English. This is another good feature of Ted Talks, the talks that have been uploaded to their site can be watched with subtitles in different languages eventually.

I would like to draw your attention to the humourous way in which Ms Ryan begins her talk. She actually turns what could seem a disadvantage at first hand into an advantage. She makes fun of her age and her looks to distract the audience from a potential preconception regarding her own appearance, and she certainly succeeds. Just watch her do it!

I will not discuss the content of her talk in this entry but there is certainly a lot to say about it. Nor will I discuss her choice of slides or body language. There is no other reason that my desire to stick myself to the aim of this post.

Finally, and with regard to the way she ends her talk I will end my post by eliciting her sound bite: MIND YOUR OWN LANGUAGE, USE IT TO SPREAD GREAT IDEAS!

DELIVERING A PRESENTATION

THE WHY, WHO, WHERE, WHAT & HOW OF DELIVERING A PRESENTATION

The first step for a solid presentation is to prepare it thoroughly and rehearse it beforehand. You need to define the purpose of your presentation and how to plan for your strategy. The strategy should cater for ways to generate interest, to explain, to persuade and to entertain. Your message should be clear, informative and brief. To sum up, you need to think about the WHY, WHO, WHERE, WHAT and HOW of your presentation.

WHY / WHO / WHERE

We need to know the purpose of our presentation and consider the type of audience we will be addressing. The audience will define the best register (formal, neutral or informal), and their size will tell us what equipment should be used. A flip-chart or a whiteboard will be fine for small audiences, but would do very poorly if the audience is large. In this case, transparencies or a projector will be a much better choice.

Most presentations nowadays are supported by ICT technology and the star, undoubtedly, is the PowerPoint application. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to overuse and/or misuse it. Presentations should make use of ppt as visual support to emphasize main points, or to illustrate some of the content, but must not distract the audience from what the presenter is saying.

Besides, it is advisable to visit the venue (or make enquiries about it if no chance to visit it beforehand) so that we find out about the type of room, seating arragement and the equipment available. You should arrive at the place in time to check that everything works fine regarding the equipment so as to avoid unwanted situations.

WHAT / HOW

Next step is to structure the content of your presentation, so that you don’t digress when delivering it. First of all, you should welcome your audience and introduce yourself as well as say who you work for and your title in the company. Don’t forget to give a brief background of your company focusing on its assets. If you are freelance give a short account of your professional experience, unless this has been done before you start as a way to introduce you and your talk. Then, say why you are there and how long the presentation will take. You can mention how you will deal with questions & answers either at this point or once you have outlined the content of your talk. It is important to outline the main points; the use of sequencers (Firstly, secondly…., next….Finally) will make your audience draw a mental picture of how the content will be developed, and they will also grasp the presentation as a whole.

After this introduction you will start with the main body of your presentation, and the how will definitely play a key role in this part. In other words, how you manage the visual and auditory aspects will keep your audience engaged in what you are saying. Remember the sweet and simple rule: tell the people what you want to say, say it and, then, remind them of what you have just said. A summary at the end and a conclusion will round it up.

The auditory and visual aspects refer to the use of your voice and your non-verbal communication. The way you talk, the pace of your voice, should be natural; if you speak too fast people may not understand you, whereas if you speak too slowly, people may get bored. Vary the tone of your voice to retain the audience’s attention. As English is not your mother tongue, make sure where the stress of long or technical words is. It is advisable that you practise saying these words when rehearsing. Pausing is an effective technique when used correctly. If you pause in the wrong place it sounds like hesitation, whereas a pause in the right place creates expectation in the audience.

All this, of course, needs to be done in a natural way and matching your body language. Don’t stand still or fiddle while speaking as it’s a clear sign of shyness or nervousness. Keep your shoulders straight and avoid crossing your legs or arms. Use your hands to help you emphasize your points and avoid holding something in them as it would draw your audience’s attention to the object. Never turn your back to your audience when speaking and be careful not to stand in front of the visual aids. Keep eye-contact with the audience in all moments. Move around so as to highlight what you are saying not to distract them.

Always address your audience and involve them in what you are saying; be empathetic and make them feel comfortable by being yourself comfortable. Your non-verbal communication gives away whether you feel confident or not.

That’s why it is important to rehearse your presentation in front of a colleague so that you can be given feedback on the do's and don’t's as well as make you feel more confident when the actual day comes.

When dealing with questions set the time allowance and try to satisfy their enquiries, but never misinform. If you can’t provide an adequate answer tell them that you will look into it and get back to them. Don’t let one or two people monopolize this time, and encourage others to participate.

Summarizing what has been said:

· outline the structure of your presentation taking down notes on the key points to follow and to remember;
· take care of both the content and the delivery;
· prepare your visual aids thoroughly and don’t leave things to the last minute;
· act naturally and make the audience feel at ease and interested in what you’re saying.

And last but not least, smile :O), it simply makes everything much easier.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

POWEL, M. (2002) Presenting in English: how to give successful presentations. Thomson Heinle.
MASCULL, B. (2002) Business Vocabulary in Use - Intermediate. Cambridge University Press.
Unit 05. Presentations. English PR. Inglés Práctico para profesionales. Telefónica - El País.

Feel like doing some English work this weekend?!

http://www.presentationzen.com/

Two entries to focus on:

1. (March 11) Text & narration on screen (with a twist)>> Interesting tips as well on how to upgrade a presentation; bit hard to read as the text scrolls up&down.


2. (March 8) If you only had a minute to pitch your story>> Do you remember that job advert that said "The best job in the world"? If you can't, click here: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/14/best-job-in-the-worl.html for a reminder. Well, in this entry you will be able to watch some of the author's favourites. I think they grab you and the contestants have managed to "pitch their story", indeed.

Wondering what "pitch" means in this context???? The Compact Oxford English Dictionary says: "a form of words used to persuade or influence"