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.
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”.
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.
A virtual meeting without a facilitator is like an orchestra without a conductor: the result is usually an unpleasant cacophony. Before, during and after the meeting, the facilitator’s role is key to ensure harmony, allow each participant to contribute, and achieve the meeting’s objectives.
The role will depend on the type of meeting. For a webinar, the facilitator will need to focus on sound quality, ensuring those not speaking have muted their microphones (or doing it for them), and handling the text chat.
It’s no secret that most slide presentations are boring, ineffective wastes of time. PowerPoint isn’t the problem - it’s how people (mis)use it.
In fact most business meetings would do well to avoid slides - and presentations - altogether. Meetings should be for discussion, connection, decisions… not for information-sharing. Using a wonderfully-crafted PowerPoint deck to share information is like using an iPad Pro as a frisbee: sure, it’s well-designed and better than most other tablets, but it’s still the wrong tool for the job.
As many of us are learning, it’s easy to arrange a virtual meeting, but not so easy to run one successfully. There is quite a steep learning curve.
One vital area to work on is speaking in virtual meetings. People often complain of video issues, microphone issues, poor vocal expression, monotonous speakers, and poor interactivity. Step 5 of our Virtual Meeting Revolution process is called Connection for a good reason: when speaking in an online meeting, you need to connect with the other participants, and you can’t connect if they are so bored they are not paying attention, or if they gave up trying to understand what you are saying.
