Author: Laura Bergells
Americans find the word “whatever” annoying.
They find it way more annoying than the phrase “you know” and “it is what it is.”
This factoid comes courtesy of USA Today, as quoted in a recent Marist Poll.
Really?
As for me, I have trouble with another pervasive verbal tic.
I call it “The Trailing So.”
You might hear “The Trailing So…” in interviews and Q&A sessions. Someone asks a question. The subject answers, but instead of ending the sentence in a period, he or she ends with “so…”
You can actually hear the ellipses after the trailing so! For example:
Question: “How did it feel to come back to Michigan after living in Hawaii?”
Answer: “Hawaii is great – beautiful weather. I like the change of seasons in Michigan, though. So…”
The “trailing so” signals a weak answer, or that the interviewee is too bored to complete the thought to a satisfying conclusion. It’s often a sign that the mouth has started chattering before the brain has had time to think through the answer!
How to cure the trailing so. The first step to finding a cure for the trailing so is to become aware of it. If you find yourself ending a sentence in a trailing so, there are two common situations for why you might have let this verbal tic slip.
1. Habitual Offender. If you find that you’re a repeat “trailing so” offender, it’s likely that you have become accustomed to hearing it, and unconsciously let this sloppy habit slip into your vernacular. You’ll do well to take a moment or two to think through your answer to completion before activating your voice. Taking these silent moments can make you look more thoughtful and reflective. It sure beats babbling around in circles while you try to figure out how you’re going to end your statement!
2. Bored or Tired. Let’s say you’re giving an answer, and find to your horror, that you’ve ended with a trailing so. This is so unlike you, and you’re mortified! You may have done so because you lost interest in your own idea halfway through your statement. Or you may simply be exhausted. At this point, snap awake and firmly state this phrase “Let me summarize!” After you say, “Let me summarize” – quickly and strongly finish your statement as quickly as possible.
For example, “Hawaii is great – beautiful weather. I like the change of seasons in Michigan, though. So…Let me summarize! I’m enjoying the difference!”
The best cure, of course, is to be aware of the trailing so — and to avoid it by thinking through your statement before speaking.
What’s your cure for pervasive verbal tics you find annoying?
Your audience has the technology. They’re carrying smart phones. They have net books or note books.
So why not let them use their snazzy tech tools to co-create presentations? Here are two tech-driven ways to let your audience co-create presentation content.
PollEverywhere. Audience interactivity is a big part of the draw of PollEverywhere. You ask your audience a question; they can answer using Twitter, text messages, or the web. The PollEverywhere online service instantly tabulates audience survey results in chart form in your PowerPoint presentation.
I used PollEverywhere in class earlier this week — it took me only a few minutes to craft a few cheeky surveys using the service. Downloading the poll as a PowerPoint slide (ppt or pptx) was a smooth, one-click operation. When students took the poll, results weren’t exactly immediate — I estimated a 15-20 second lag time before the graph started moving and changing before our eyes. Not bad at all.
PollEverywhere also allows you to ask open-ended questions as well as create bar or column charts. You may download survey results in CSV format, tweak colors and font sizes, and embed polls in web pages. This tool is very simple to use, yet fun and potentially quite powerful. Free for a small audience of 30 or less, PollEverywhere also provides more robust options with its paid services for use with larger audiences.
Twitter Hashtags. In the 1990’s, I would often moderate candidate forums during election years. To keep these town hall meetings civil, we would pass out index cards and ask the audience to write out their candidate questions. Audience members passed their written questions to volunteers who made sure that the most popular and well-framed questions were brought forward to my lectern.
Today’s audience may warm to a similar approach that is more transparent than using index cards. Why not ask a modern audience to Tweet their questions with a special Twitter hashtag for panel discussions? This lets a tech-savvy audience easily see the most popular and well-framed questions, while preventing boors from hijacking the Q&A portion of the program with tiresome or poorly-framed questions. Services like Tweetchat and Twitterfall let the panel and audience easily visualize the scope of questions surrounding the topic at a larger meeting, forum, or conference.
How else have you used technology to encourage audience interaction in your presentations? What works well? What doesn’t?
“No computers or handhelds during my presentation,” barks a presenter. “I don’t know whether you’re playing games or paying attention. For the next hour, all eyes up here, on me!”
photo credit: Ana Marta 7
I ignore this insane outburst, of course. I’m an adult. So is the rest of the audience. I take notes on my notebook PC. If the guy has something pithy to say, I might even rock it out on Twitter, give him credit, and spread his idea further.
After his presentation, the fellow rebuked me for failing to follow his pre-presentation command. I was being rude by typing as he talked, he insisted.
On the contrary, I protested. I was there to learn from him, not to pacify his ego by staring adoringly at him while he ignored the needs of his audience.
In fact, I told him I glanced up from my computer numerous times. I looked at his PowerPoint slides, but the text was too small for me to read, so I looked at him. His body language — back to the audience as he read the text from the slides — didn’t hold my visual interest, so my eyes went back to my computer screen. Because he was long-winded, he didn’t give me any short concepts to Tweet, so his ideas didn’t spread beyond the room.
I have an obligation to be a good audience member. It means that my mobile phone is silenced, so that I don’t annoy others. It means that I give back energy to the presenter — I laugh if something’s funny, applaud if I am moved, nod quietly with agreement, raise my hand to ask questions, make eye contact at times, or participate in activities or discussions when I am asked courteously. Otherwise, I remain silent and take notes.
As a presenter, I note that my audience is often texting or typing while I talk. They might indeed be playing games or doing something non-work related. They also might be taking notes, learning, and sharing ideas.
It’s not about me and my needs, it’s about the audience. A modern audience uses modern tools. As a presenter, I need to learn to adapt my style to fit their needs. Why should the audience have to pacify my selfish needs for their attention? Why should I force my audience to stop using tools that let them learn and share information?
As a presenter, I need to EARN attention. If I’m interesting, the audience is more likely to be interested. They might express their interest in a different way: years back, they might have nodded and jotted down a note. Today, they might nod and type.
Get used to it. Don’t churlishly tell your audience to PAY attention. Instead, be so phenomenally entertaining or interesting that they can’t help but GIVE you their attention!
How do you EARN attention when presenting to a modern, tech-savvy audience?
Just Who Do You Think You Are?
How many times have you heard this three-word bit of useless advice? Yes, you read that right: I wrote “useless”. Why useless? Two main reasons:
- There’s nothing “just” about being yourself. You’re complicated. You’re deep. If you were a rock or a piece of wood, perhaps you could “just” present yourself without thought to your audience.
- You can only be yourself. Even if you act as if you’re someone else, you’re being yourself. Apparently, you’re an actor. Or a con artist. Hey, acting like someone else might be exactly who you are!
If someone tells you to “just” be yourself, you might think for a second, “OK, then — who am I?”
You might find that you’re rather complicated. You’re a thoughtful, intelligent, caring person. You might also be a parent, a dog-lover, a teacher, a business person, a singer, a CEO of a thriving company, a practical jokester, a oenophile, a stamp collector, a martial arts expert, a gardener, a cook — yes, indeed, you may be all this and more. Or you may be something else entirely…
“It is well known that people don’t always ‘speak their minds’, and it is suspected that people don’t always ‘know their minds’.”
-Quote from the Harvard Implicit Association Test Home Page
So, here you are. You’re this fascinating and multi-faceted character, and some vapid goofball thinks you can “just” be yourself, as if you were a bit of plankton or an amoeba.
You can do better. Instead of just being yourself, why not present your very best self to the audience at hand?
For example, let’s say you are a fabulous parent to two toddlers. That’s a big part of “who you are”. When you’re with your children, you take on a tone of voice and project an image that is appropriate for your tots.
Now take that same tone of voice and image that you present to your children and use it to give a business presentation to the board of directors. Or lecture to a class of college students. Or to talk to the guy who’s fixing your car.
Probably not so effective to be your “exceptional-toddler-parent” self for those particular audiences!
If you think you know yourself, think again. So let’s go back to the very essence of “who you are” — who are you, exactly? (For an eye-opener, I recommend taking some of the online tests at the Harvard Implicit Association Test. You may find out that you know yourself very well — or maybe not!)
Let’s say, for example, that you are “a thoughtful, intelligent, caring person.”
No matter which role you take on — parent, martial artist, teacher, business person, dog lover — these characteristics describe the essence of “who you are”. You carry these characteristics with you, regardless of the audience in front of you.
And because you are intelligent and caring, you might decide that your audience will be more enthusiastic if you decide to act like someone else entirely! Someone smarter, funnier, braver, stronger, sillier, dopier, goofier, angrier, more confident…whatever.
“Pretending to be braver than you are” is also a bit of presentation advice you’ll often hear — almost as much as that crazy bit about “being yourself.”
If you have to pick between these two bits of contrary advice — which would you choose?
And “just” how well do you know yourself– really?
I ♥ David Byrne.
I even ♥ David Byrne’s “I ♥ PowerPoint.”
Really, I do.
But the days of the Talking Heads are over.
I’m not talking about the band. I’m talking TV. And presenters. And presentations.
We have social media to thank.
Interactive presentations are in.
Authoritative anchors reading dispassionately from teleprompters are out.
Teachers and professors lecturing from on high? Also on the way out.
Note your TV news shows asking, “What do you think? Talk back. Send us your video. Talk to us at Twitter. Comment on our blog….”
Walter Cronkite, bless his trusted soul, didn’t ply his trade in an era of interactivity. He was a talking head, appropriate for the decades he served. A deep authoritative voice coupled with a kind-looking face served him well in his time.
Today, Jon Stewart is the most trusted man in TV news. Well, not really. People just voted him as the most trusted newscaster.
In an online poll.
By Time Magazine.
See what I mean? Online polls. Talking back. Old-school journalism meets citizen journalism. Opinions. Interactivity. It’s all the rage.
Burning down the house. Last week, Stewart jokingly called his second-place poll rival (TV news anchor Brian Williams) a “teleprompter monkey.”
Does that make the new style of news anchor, a “hyper-interactive monkey?”
And how are you using social media to make your presentations more interactive, compelling, and contemporary?
Using the medium to help create the message, I posed my situation and asked a question:
Within hours, I received a dozen or so intriguing replies. It struck me that many of the replies looked — and read — like fortune cookies. So I felt whimsically inspired to use a prophetic design treatment for some of the Twittered replies. Ergo,
and
In some cases, I worked the Tweet into the overall landscape of the Twittered prophecy.
Give credit where it’s due. When I showed each of the crowdsource quotations, I gave verbal credit to the contributor, stating their name, city, and occupation. The Tweet itself shows each of their Twitter ” handles=”” or=”” thanks=””>LisaBraithwaite @JGaler @AnitaCochran) . The audience discussed the twittered advice. Each slide served as a backdrop for an interactive discussion.
Why Crowdsource Content? Frankly, at the time I turned to Twitter for content ideas because it sounded like fun — and because it would be very easy to do. I’m also acutely interested in what professionals who participate in social media circles might have to say on the subject — and how they’d say it. Additionally, I thought that the students in my audience would also be interested in this very relevant perspective and voice, as well.
I also found four other reasons to crowdsource presentation content:
1. Introduce a fresh voice. As a speaker, you express your own point of view and personality. And you’ll use your own pace, pitch, tone, and vernacular. A fresh, new voice can add both visual and auditory interest — while supporting your key points.
2. Introduce fresh ideas. Through crowdsourcing, you may be exposed to new ideas that can enhance the content and tone of your presentation. The Twitter community gave me plenty of content to support my overall thesis — but they also encouraged me to explore a new dynamic that may previously have gone uncovered.
3. Strengthen the audience connection to the content. Presenters often use a pithy quotation from a famous person to help convey a point. But why limit your quotations to famous people? Getting a quote from a respected professional with a unique point of view can be engaging for the audience. Using a quote from a “real” person can make the content more personal.
4. Why not? How hard is it to ask a question to a group of people? The worst that can happen is that no one responds, and you’re out a few seconds of your time! Weigh that against the best that can happen – you gain new insights into your topic that you haven’t realized before. You get smarter. You get to build and strengthen ideas. Your audience benefits from stronger, more personal content. And along the way, you meet interesting people who like to talk about ideas.
What other reasons might you decide to crowdsource a presentation? And what might hold you back from getting ideas from people in the crowd? 🙂
(For another example of crowdsourcing, feel free to respond to this question about college graduation keynote speeches!)
Confidence. Somehow, this word became virtuous in the 1980’s. It remained a positive trait — until fairly recently.
Confidence men, we called them in the 1930’s and 40’s. Over time, we shortened this to “Con Men” or “Cons”. Overly charming, smooth. Hucksters. Yech.
Cons transmit that they are absolutely positive in their correctness. Who trusts the overly confident?
Bernie Madoff and his ilk have made us collectively uneasy about confidence again.
photo credit: Matti Mattila
How to appear less confident
If you’re an overly confident speaker, you might have a big problem connecting with a modern, tech-savvy audience. (Especially here in the American Midwest!) In an era of quickly produced, less-than-polished user generated content — your confidence might seem inappropriately over-the-top.
Here are 3 quick and completely insincere ways to tone down any over-confidence you may have as a speaker or presenter.
- Toss in filler words. A few, “ums and ahhs” and nervous shuffling can go a long way to instill the idea that you’re thinking about what you’re saying. You’re not glibly reciting a speech. You’re not absolutely convinced that you are unequivocally correct. You’re open to starting conversations and creating a dialog. Your social awkwardness in public speaking indicates that you’re thinking. That you’re concerned. That you care enough to be nervous. Audiences warm to this kind of humility.
- Ugly up your PowerPoint slides. Nothing says, “I’m overly image conscious” like professionally designed PowerPoint presentations. When it looks like a presenter spent 80 hours in meetings with a team of designers, writers, and speech coaches to deliver a one-hour presentation — that’s the take-away. That’s what the audience will talk about behind the speaker’s back. The message won’t stick when all people talk about is how pretty the slides were and how Hollywood the storytelling was.
- Dress out-of-sync. I watched a multi-millionaire give a presentation to 200+ business people. The audience? In modern business attire. The presenter? In a sad, schlumpfly suit from the 1980’s. The audience LOVED him. Think they merely tolerated his eccentric garb because he was rich? Guess again. I also watched a junior software engineer wearing an unpressed polo shirt and lumpy khakis present to a board wearing business suits. They ADORED his presentation, too.
If you’re an awkward or eccentric speaker, rejoice. This is your time! Embrace your humility! Hug your weirdness!
And if you’re a con artist, your audience will likely see through your naked attempts to “Aw, shucks it up” for them. After all, this is the age of authenticity and transparency — two achingly glorious buzzwords that shine a bright, unflattering spotlight on slick over-confidence and transparently phony faux-humility mannerisms.
Social awkwardness is in!
Nerds, enjoy it while it lasts…
What will the next wave of popularity be?
architecture.
revolutionary.
relationships.
re-contextualize.
Those were four words on four slides in a 15 minute PowerPoint presentation I witnessed last month. The remaining 700 slides in the presentation each had one word on them, as well.
OK, I’m exaggerating. There couldn’t have been 700 slides in that presentation.
But it seemed like it.
In the presentation I saw, random buzzwords that the speaker used in his narrative kept fading in-an-out of the PowerPoint slides projected behind him. Oh-so-slowly.
After a few minutes, I blinked, shook my head, and looked away. I was getting too mesmerized by the slow word parade.
I was looking for meaning in those words. I was looking for context. There wasn’t any.
After looking off to the right for a few moments, I focused on merely listening to the speaker while I stared at a blank wall. The presenter was telling a story about a problem his customers had, and how his product helped solve it.
It wasn’t a half-bad story, so I turned to look at the speaker.
Then, I saw it.
I grimaced. I had to look away again.
Since this presentation, I’ve seen a few other slow-word-parade style presentations. I suspect presenters create this style as something of a mood board to set the tone for the presentation. It can be easier and cheaper to toss word salad at people than to craft a story and work on polishing the delivery.
Personally, I find this word-mood board style of presentation design distracting and disturbing. It was hard for me to focus on connecting with the speaker or his story. I found myself thinking that he would have been much more effective with absolutely nothing in the background.
I’ve seen this technique a number of times this year. Let’s hope this a trend that will, uh — fade quickly!
What are better ways to set the mood for your presentation?
“Stop! Police!”
That’s what I’d yell if I was a police officer chasing a suspect. And apparently, I’d be wrong.
A buddy was watching a crime drama a while ago. I came in late. As I settled on the couch, a police officer was chasing a suspect.
“Stop! NYPD!” shouted the policeman. The bad guy kept running.
“What’s NYPD?” I asked my chum.
“This story is set in New York. NYPD is New York Police Department. Everyone knows that.”
“Really?” I asked. “If I was visiting New York, and some nut with a gun was chasing me screaming out alphabet soup. I’d run faster.”
Of course, screaming out the acronym NYPD is ludicrous. If I was in Chicago, would police officers scream, “Stop! CPD!”? And if the Ontario Provincial Police yelled, “Stop! OPP!” — suspects would probably break out in laughter.
It doesn’t take any longer to say “New York” than it does “NY”. Same number of syllables. So it’s not a matter of speaking an acronym for speed. And it’s not a department that’s chasing a bad guy — it’s a solitary officer. Even weirder — why say the name of the city at all? Isn’t that redundant? After all, the suspect probably knows what city he’s in!
I asked my crime-show loving friend all of these questions. He seemed annoyed.
“Because it’s TV. I’m sure they say, “Stop, Police” in real life. Now can we please watch the show?”
I stopped talking, but I kept thinking about it. In real life, people can get a little acronym happy. The police officer became so accustomed to interdepartmental and collegial jargon — he forgot that anyone outside his circle wouldn’t know what the heck he’s yelling about.
It’s not just television show detectives that have acronym issues. As a consultant who gets brought into larger organizations, one of my first tasks is usually to crack the acronym and jargon code that insiders use among each other. This can actually be kind of fun — like a puzzle. Or learning a new tribal language. It also helps keep my wits sharp for when adolescents and young people start talking in Instant Messaging Lingo (IM, for short!) –“OMG! POS – TTYL.”
So when it comes to crafting presentations or communication pieces for an external audience, consider hiring a writer or editor — if for no other reason than to have an outside set of ears and eyes experience the communication piece. You won’t believe the alphabet soup I’ve often encountered in external marketing presentations. It often slips by, unnoticed to ears that have grown tone-deaf to the buzz of interdepartmental acronyms.
It’s really that ubiquitous. Don’t believe me?
For a fun little exercise, open up any one of your recent corporate or organizational PowerPoint presentations. Do an acronym count — it’s quite likely that you’ll find at least one.
And before you think, “Yeah, but everyone knows THAT acronym…” please think about how little work it might take to change it. You can make yourself more clear by actually speaking the words — instead of chanting the letters that represent the words.
This one simple act may keep your suspects — er, prospects — from running away!