Some leaders are afraid to let other people know that they took public speaking coaching. I want to explain why it’s a mistake, and why the best leaders are proud of being coached.
The Consulting Partner who hired me back in 1996, for a company that was then called Andersen Consulting, was an extremely charismatic person and an excellent orator. One advice he gave openly to his peers, and to us young consultants, was to get professional public speaking coaching to become better orators.
What happens when two parties position themselves in a similar manner on the same topic? Simple: the one which is the most credible wins. By “most credible,” I mean “the one that incarnates the rhetoric with the most authenticity.”
There is a mistake that has been made by many traditional parties. Some traditional parties saw new parties start to gain popularity by advocating extremist views. So they started to adopt a slightly watered down version of these views to attract voters.
You’ve probably already seen those presenters who climb on stage and rush into their presentation, apparently oblivious to the fact that they have an audience in front of them. Once they’re done, they rush out of the stage, as if you didn’t exist.
To avoid looking like one of these presenters, try to establish a connection with the audience as soon as possible. Look and smile at them as you enter the stage.
You’ve probably all seen these slides: they use a picture which is “cliché,” like two shaking hands. Using a few of these clichés is fine, because they are often the clearest way to illustrate the idea of the slide; it’s nice to be creative, but clarity of the message comes first.
But some presentations seem to overflow with these clichés, using them on every slide. So I asked myself the question: why are some presentations nearly cliché-free, while other presentations are full of them?
The days of the expert or reliable narrator are over. We have entered the “Disinformation Age” where fake news, conspiracy stories, and meme warfare rule.
One of the most prominent casualties, at least from a presentation perspective, is the TED-like style, top down, subject matter expert: the teacher or preacher schooling their passively sitting and listening students.
We see trust move from the command and control leadership style and morph into something vastly flatter, decentralized/distributed, and perhaps even autonomously self-organizing.
A funny thing happened when I was describing my “dream job” to a friend. I imagined a company whose mission would be to help people become great presenters, and had a culture that was both supporting and nurturing while remaining professional and attentive to clients’ needs. My friend said: “I know that company!”
A few weeks later after a relaxing summer vacation between positions, I found myself in the company of all my new colleagues, some whom I met for the very first time, at our annual Fall team meeting.
It’s your turn to present. You’ve launched your presentation and enter the stage. But how do you know if your presentation remote is working? If you start clicking back and forth between your first and second slide to see if it is working, everyone will notice what you’re doing, and you will not make a great first impression.
Luckily, someone shared a simple tip on twitter. Just duplicate your first slide.
Moving with purpose on stage is good. Moving around aimlessly is not. It’s what we call derivative actions, things that we do unconsciously that betray our stress, lack of confidence or lack of preparation. Luckily, it’s very easy to stop parasitic movements, but the solution sounds counterintuitive: use eye contact to “anchor” yourself on the ground.
Yes, that’s right. Making eye contact with your audience will stabilise your attention and will prevent your feet from moving you around the stage.
