Forster N. - Maximum performance (2005)(en)

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Delivering the presentation

You are now ready to deliver the talk, but may be feeling nervous and anxious. This is to be expected, because you are in a fight–flight situation. However, you may be experiencing a lot more than a little anxiety, with fast, shallow breathing, a light head and pounding heart, a cotton mouth, wobbly legs and excessive sweating. If you ever feel this panicky, be assured that there are ways to overcome this. Remember that all public speakers and actors experience anxiety and nervousness. For example, Dame Judi Dench, one of the most respected stage and film actors of recent years, was once asked by Michael Parkinson during a TV interview on the BBC how she coped with nerves before going on stage. She instantly replied, ‘It’s anxiety and fear that create adrenaline – for me that’s the petrol in the engine.’ Stand-up comedians describe the time immediately before going on stage as ‘Walking the 15 yards’, and this is regarded as the most nerve-wracking time of any show.

Focus on channelling this nervous energy into your performance. Here are a few well-tried tips for coping with this. First and foremost, you must know your material. This is why the preparation phase of a talk is so important. If you have prepared well, you will be more confident when you stand up to deliver the presentation. Second, focus on the task at hand. If you can, arrive at the auditorium early and get everything set up ready to start. Always have some water to drink before presenting. Actors drink plenty of water when they are in stage productions, because it lubricates the vocal chords. This will also help avoid the unwelcome appearance of ‘Dry biscuit mouth’ and ‘Who put the glue in my toothpaste?’ Re-enter the auditorium just before you are due to start, or with the person who will be introducing you. If you have to hang around before delivering your presentation, talk to a few people in the audience, remember their names and refer to them in your introduction or during the talk. Just before you start, take three or four deep breaths; this will open up your lungs and voice box and pump oxygen round your body. Then introduce yourself or thank the chair. Refer to your audience and the occasion, tell them about your credentials, if necessary, and then begin your talk.

One of the most intimidating aspects of public speaking is being stared at by large groups of people. This is a natural reaction, based on a deep-rooted primordial human fear: the ancient terror of being attacked by the clan or tribe. All you have to remember is that they see you as an individual and you must view them in the same way. You should make eye contact at least once with every member of your audience. As you talk, scan left to right and right to left. Don’t forget to

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include the ‘widows and orphans’ (people sitting to your extreme left or right at the front) and those sitting right at the back of the auditorium. When you finish a sentence, maintain eye contact with one person for two or three seconds.

Throughout the talk, remember to breathe deeply and that with vocal delivery it is critical to breathe into and from the stomach, not just into the chest. If you don’t do this, you cannot vocalize or project your voice properly. This will also encourage you to slow down and help with your pronunciation. If you have problems, ‘uming’ and ‘ahing’ a lot (which can become very irritating after a short time), try to utter these silently to yourself. If you want to communicate with the visual and emotional parts of the brain, you also have to pay attention to your pitch, pace, pauses, volume and tonal quality. Try to vary your tempo: speeding up to create tension or excitement, slowing down and increasing the volume when you want to make a pivotal or important point. Remember to pause at regular intervals. If you are nervous, it’s very easy to rabbit on at high speed. Pauses give you time to collect your thoughts, give your audience a short rest and can be very effective just after you have made a significant point. One of the greatest Shakespearian actors of the 20th century, Sir Ralph Richardson, once said, ’The most precious things in speeches are pauses.’

Be passionate, visionary, convincing, knowledgable and motivational in the way you talk. Practise this and stretch the boundaries of the way you say things. To some extent, public speaking is an act. Enthusiasm and passion for a subject will cover a multitude of other sins. If you are not enthused, your audience won’t be. Don’t be aloof, remote or patronizing and be very careful about telling jokes because it is surprisingly easy to offend people. Try to be sincere – even if you don’t always mean it! As the French dramatist Jean Giraudoux once observed about acting, ‘the secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.’ Last, wherever possible, keep your answers to questions from the audience short and to the point, and try to avoid the old ‘foot in the mouth’ technique. Here’s the one that won the 2002 Foot in the Mouth Award. Responding to a question from an interviewer about his (allegedly) ambiguous sexuality, the actor Richard Gere replied: ‘I know who I am. Nobody else knows who I am. Does it change the fact of who I am what anyone says about it? If I was a giraffe, and someone said I was a snake, I’d think, no, I’m actually a giraffe.’

Many of the presentation techniques described above have been used for more than two thousand years. For example, the ancient Romans developed oratorical and presentation skills to a very high level. They believed that good public speakers had to have a central thesis (what

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they were going to argue); controversia (strong evidence to support their arguments); suasoria (using myths, legends, history and illustrative stories) and vox forte (well-developed vocal and voice projection skills). Lawrence Olivier’s son has even taught these principles as ‘mythodrama’ to senior executives in the UK. In order to develop your vox forte, please try the next self-development exercise.

Exercise 3.7

Using a full range of emotions

You may feel slightly ridiculous doing the next exercise, but this has been used in drama and acting classes for decades. It can also be a useful device to help you make fuller use of a range of human emotions in presentations. Find a place where people won’t be able to hear you practising. Here is a well-known poem (used in the first audio recording of a human voice, made by Thomas Edison in 1877):

Mary had a little lamb,

Its fleece as white as snow.

And everywhere that Mary went,

The lamb was sure to go.

Now, please read this out loud in the following styles:

Angry/excited/bored/passionate/worried/frightened/critical/not convinced of the facts/convinced of the facts/accusing/suspicious/factual and, last, as if this was the closing statement of a presentation.

You should aim to have at least half of these emotions in any presentations you deliver in the future.

To make a visceral, personal and emotional connection with an audience also requires something that many sports coaches are familiar with, kinaesthetic awareness. Kinaesthetic speakers are aware that audiences want to experience presentations on a physical as well as an intellectual level. Because they are aware of their body language and physical presence, they can create powerful non-verbal messages that reinforce the verbal ones. Most people do not spend enough time focusing on this component of presentation skills. We also live in a highly visual information age, where people expect to be ‘close’ to the person delivering a message on screen. So, to create a kinaesthetic bond with an audience means that you have to, literally, get near to them and this means moving away from the podium and laptop. This is the area I’ve come to think of as ‘The Twilight Zone’, where the speaker is trapped in

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the dimly lit corridor between the podium and the projector screen, disconnected from their audiences for the duration of their talk.

Instead, use all the available floor space. Move towards your audience to engage with them and select sections of your audience to talk with or to ask direct questions. At all times, use open gestures. Giving members of the audience items to look at, or comment on, can also create a powerful bond. The more you know about your audience before giving your presentation, the more confident you will feel about putting yourself about during presentations. To engage with an audience means that you have to manage both your body language and the technologies you use. If you are not careful, the overhead or PowerPoint projector can become a security blanket to hide behind. You may also need to be aware of imitating one or more of the following characters:

The horizontal bungee-jumper

This is someone who cannot escape from the magnetic force-field in The Twilight Zone, and is propelled back into this area as soon as they get a short distance away from it.

The tennis player

Also known as the Wimbledon position – this is where we have someone who has alternating conversations with their audience and the projector screen behind them, like watching a rally at a tennis match. Novice presenters can spend 80–90 per cent of their time having animated conversations with their overheads or slides.

The leaning tower of Pisa

Having apparently lost the ability to balance on both legs at the same time, this presenter will lean against everything they encounter: podiums, walls, tables, desks and chairs. Not to be confused with Long John Silver.

Long John Silver

This presenter has also lost the ability to stand on both legs at the same time, but prefers to lean over the podium, with hands gripping the side for dear life and balancing on alternate legs.

Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers

A cousin of Long John Silver, this would-be dancer is compelled to constantly tap alternate feet on the ground.

Road-runner

This is someone who is incapable of standing still and usually stalks up and down in The Twilight Zone in a straight line and very quickly, while having animated conversations with the floor or their notes.

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The musketeer

Give this presenter a long pointy thing (or, even worse, a laser pointer) and watch him (rarely her) turn into one of the Three Musketeers for the duration of their talk.

The fig leaf

This is a common ailment, where both men and women feel the need to protect their most sensitive bits from attacks by the audience, by crossing their hands over each other at waist level.

The sergeant major

He is a rare sight, but can be spotted occasionally in businessmen with military backgrounds (hands on hips, chin thrust forward, rapid stentorian delivery style, etc).

Captain Vanity

This is someone who feels the need to regularly groom their hair and is perpetually adjusting their clothing or brushing off imaginary bits of fluff.

Last, but not least, switch the projector off occasionally. All audiences will breathe a deep sigh of relief if you do this during your presentations.

Dealing with uncooperative participants

Sooner or later, in public speaking situations, we will all encounter ‘The Participant From Hell’ (PFH), whose mission is to contradict everything you say or disagree with every point you make. There are some well-known one-liners that could be used in these situations:

•‘Would you like to step outside and repeat that? Good. Well stay there while I finish my talk.’

•‘Don’t say another word. I want to forget you exactly the way you are.’

•‘When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you.’

Unfortunately, these only work in the movies. In real life, comments like this will only serve to antagonize the PFH. However, there are some strategies that do work well most of the time. If you find people are chatting constantly, simply stop talking and look directly at them. Nine times out of ten, they’ll stop immediately. If this doesn’t work, ask them if they have a question. Smile at them and then continue. If you come across people who disagree with everything you say, don’t

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get defensive or argue with them. Let them air their concern or gripe. Then, immediately, ask the rest of the audience what they think. Nine times out of ten, they’ll pounce on this PFH and peer-group pressure will force him to back down. Because they are often ignorant about the subject you are talking about, you can also ask them if they have read the relevant book or report that addresses their query. If they haven’t, your problem is solved. If they persist, simply apply the emotional diffusion technique we looked at earlier in this chapter, ‘I can see that you feel very strongly about this point. Why don’t we discuss this at the end?’ Occasionally, you’ll come across people who like to dominate discussions. As this PFH speaks, move slowly towards them. The instant they stop talking, break eye contact and move away from them saying, ‘Thank you. Let’s get some input from the rest of the group.’ The non-verbal signals here send a powerful message. Last, you might have given a presentation and launched a ‘bouncer question’, so-called because you launch it over your audiences’ heads and it bounces straight back to you – unanswered. Unless you are very confident that you are going to get some useful answers back, don’t do it! Either ask a rhetorical question (which you then answer), or direct your question to a small section of the audience or to individuals you know.

Conclusion

At the beginning of this section we established that effective presentation skills can be broken down into six components. These were: knowing your audience, structuring your talk, enhancing the content of the presentation, choosing which audio-visual aids to use (and how to use these), delivering the presentation, and dealing with uncooperative participants. This covers the essentials of public speaking, but is only the starting point. With this particular leadership/management skill, practice really does make perfect. So practise it whenever you can, in front of the mirror, family pets, your kids, anyone who’ll listen, and video yourself the next few times you do a talk. Join a local public speaking club for a while, such as The Round Table. If you use a video to record your next presentation, look at the playback dispassionately. Make a note of what is good and areas where you can make improvements in the future. Turn the sound off and focus on your body language. Do you move around too much or too little? Do you use your hands and body well? Do you make full use of the room and engage with your audience? If you can, use your junior staff to get feedback. For example, Mike Allred, of the US company Visual Information Technologies, used to hold dry runs of his presentations to the board of directors with the 90 employees who reported to him. As a result of this, he enjoyed a ‘triple whammy’. He was well prepared, his staff

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4.

5.

‘B’ List

1.

2.

3.

4.

Cross-cultural communication

Before reading through this section, please complete the next exercise. (There may be more than one answer to each question.)

Exercise 3.9

Cross-cultural communication

1.Pork is not consumed by the dominant religious group in which country?

a.Saudi Arabia

b.Egypt

c.Malaysia

d.Indonesia

2.Before entering a South Korean’s home, you should remove your shoes and wait to be invited in.

a.True

b.False

3.In which country should both hands be used when passing an object to a native?

a.Germany

b.Canada

c.South Korea

d.Former USSR

4.In Latin American and Asian countries, if you try to maintain eye contact with your native host while discussing business, you are likely to be interpreted as

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a.honest and truthful

b.aggressive

c.attentive

5.In which countries is it advisable to carry a large quantity of business cards (in English and the language of that country) and give one to everyone you meet?

a.Korea

b.Japan

c.China

d.Taiwan

6.In which country would you not accept being told directly that your proposal was unacceptable?

a.Japan

b.China

c.Taiwan

d.Malaysia

7.It is not polite to admire an object while in the presence of your host in Saudi Arabia because he may feel obliged to give it to you.

a.True

b.False

8.South Americans, Africans and Arabs stand closer than is customary in the United States and backing away may suggest dislike or aloofness.

a.True

b.False

9.During the month of Ramadan, Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. While in their presence you should not

a.eat

b.smoke

c.drink alcohol

10.Friday is the day of rest in which country?

a.Pakistan

b.Jordan

c.Somalia

d.Kuwait

11.In Islamic countries, women must dress to avoid exposure of arms and legs and body shape.

a.True

b.False

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12.When in Saudi Arabia, you should not:

a.discuss women

b.discuss politics

c.discuss religion

d.refer to the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf

13.Potato chips manufactured by the Wise Corporation, with its owl trademark, are not likely to be sold in:

a.India because the owl is a sign of bad luck*

b.England because of the colour of its packaging

c.Canada because of the shape of the chip

14.In which region of the world is the hiring of a family member considered an accepted norm?

a.East Asia

b.Latin America

c.Arabian countries

15.In which country is it likely to be viewed as unsanitary to have toilet and bath facilities in the same room?

a.Ireland

b.Japan

c.Venezuela

d.Oman

16.In which country would a person greet an elder by bowing lower and longer than the older person?

a.China

b.Taiwan

c.Brazil

d.Japan

17.In which country does a man greet a woman by placing the palms of both hands together and bowing slightly?

a.China

d.Taiwan

c.South Korea

d.Malaysia

e.India

18.In which country would a greeting include a slight bow followed by a handshake?

a.China

b.Taiwan

c.Brazil

d.Indonesia