The COVID 19 pandemic has forced all of us to adjust and has pushed roughly 35% of the workforce to an exclusively online existence. While this is fortunate and frankly would have been impossible 15 years ago it doesn’t come without its challenges. As we struggle to maintain our routines, stay connected with our co-workers we have to continue the regular meetings attendance, trainings and webinars and we often have to give them ourselves.
Many of us are starting to approach presentations in the right way, taking the time to fix our objectives, analyze the audience, study the context, put together some coherent arguments, good visuals and even find the time to rehearse. Just as we are now spending longer to prepare our presentations properly, in a world of ever-increasing social media and ever-dwindling attention spans, our presentations are getting shorter in order to be more effective. What this means is that the inevitable question and answer interaction that follows is now more important than ever, yet we still don’t spend enough time preparing the Q&A session.
A battle still rages for hearts and minds in the city built on speeches. Let the US election of 2020 be a lesson to all leaders of tomorrow. I am a frequent visitor to Washington DC. Having a key client on Pennsylvania Avenue, I have had the pleasure of getting to know the city and its people, working the day and socializing the night, breathing the atmosphere and drinking its politics. Washington DC is a city built on inspiration; it is built on speeches. There is a litany of references: Martin Luther King’s 1963 ‘I have a dream’ speech, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration (‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself’) and Ronald Reagan’s Challenger disaster speech… the list goes on. There are hundreds.
If you ever talked with me about my favorite TEDx talks, then I am sure I mentioned the late Hans Rösling, one of my all-time favorite TED speakers. On paper, he didn’t really start with an advantage; he spoke English with a strong foreign accent, and his key topic was statistics and demographics, something most of us associate with good sleep, not with great presentations. Yet, Hans’ enthusiasm and passion on stage, combined with his unique way to use numbers to tell meaningful stories, meant that his presentations were always a high point of any TED conference.
Some people think that to make a great TEDx presentation, they should learn their text by heart. Our collective experience as coaches shows that it’s a good solution only IF: You like to know your speech word for word and it fits your personal style and you know how to do it properly. If you don’t meet one of these conditions, then it’s best to avoid learning your text by heart. Why? Because it will appear awkward, unnatural or insincere. Reciting a text from memory requires a lot of effort, often at the expense of naturalness and emotion. To keep people close to your heart, don’t learn by heart.
Many speakers tend to rush the start of their presentation. During conferences and events, they start to speak even before they put a foot on the stage, talking as they walk towards the center, or as soon as the master of ceremonies stops to speak. It makes them look as if they think they are suffering from the “imposter” syndrome, insecure and unsure that they should be speaking on stage.
Do animations in a presentation make you feel seasick? Animations in PowerPoint are great, until they aren’t. A small dose of animation is fine, but presentations with too many animations can be cumbersome to watch in presenter mode. Luckily, PowerPoint offers a simple functionality to disable all animations in one go. In the ribbon, go to the “Slide Show” tab, then click on “Set up Slide Show”. Then simply tick the box “show without animation”. Now all animations will be gone. It does not, however, disable slide transitions, so if you use a fade or magic move between slides, they will still show.
Recent events have shown that discrimination kills, and it has to stop. Many minorities, not just in America, but everywhere in the world, have to suffer injustice for no other reason than a difference of color, gender or belief. Our position at Ideas on Stage is simple: discrimination, in any form, is not acceptable and must be actively fought.