Believe it or not, being a persuasive, fearless presenter is really quite simple:

• Know who you are
• Know what you believe
• Say what you really mean (Speak the truth)
• Speak from your heart
• Respect yourself and your audience
• Prepare and practice your presentation

I typically use a 12-step formula for putting together a presentation.   Today, I’ll talk about the first four steps, and I’ll cover the other eight steps in future blog postings.  Here goes:

Step 1

Determine your purpose
Write down or speak out loud the conclusion of these sentences:

• I want to ___________________.
• I want my audience to be able to _______________.

Commit to these two completed sentences as you collect data and information, and as you shape your material and select persuasive examples, stories, and statistics.   Be flexible enough to change when circumstances and audiences change.

Step 2

Brainstorm possible ideas, strategies, and selections.

Step 3
Come up with lots of ideas but don’t judge them.  Just write them down (preferably on flip charts that you stick on the wall), or use any other brainstorming formats that suit you and your thinking style.

Step 4
Clump ideas/material into manageable groups.   Triads work best to begin with when you start to put the ideas and material into groups.   Be realistic about your time constraints, audience endurance, and persuasive power.  Refine and label the main points of your presentation, and refine and label the secondary points

I’ll talk about steps #5 through #8 in my next blog.   In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a little food for thought about composing speeches, from William Gladstone, Prime Minister of the UnitedKingdon four times in the late 1800s:  ” A speech need not be eternal to be immortal“.

One of my favorite topics is The Zone.   The Zone is made up of all the non-verbal, psychological, emotional, and physical parts of your presentation.  Your gestures, eye contact, and voice are all important parts of The Zone. When you make the mental shift from talking to presenting, you are entering The Zone.

Everybody has a different way of getting into The Zone, such as:

• Moving in slow motion.
• Focusing on direct eye contact
• Extending gestures so that they’re large
• Uncrossing arms
• Allowing oneself to smile
• Unlocking eyebrows

For every person, there is a key to The Zone. It often involves looking at the hobbies or professional skills in which you are most comfortable and happy, and mimicking those feelings of confidence and control. For example:

• A fisherman who needs to get into The Zone can think of it like the act of fishing: Be patient, watch the water, change the bait when necessary, and be flexible. He remembers he can’t force a fish onto a hook – he has to coax, wait, and strategize.
• A nurse compares getting into The Zone to talking with the family of a critically ill patient. She positions herself before she walks into the room, plans her message carefully, opens and closes with a positive message, and nurtures with strength all the way through the conversation.
• A golf pro can get into The Zone through solid golf techniques: balanced stance, soft knees, focusing on the ball, extending as she hits the ball, allowing the golf club to lead her.

In summarizing The Zone, here are some of the known facts:

• You can’t be in a “pure” Zone until you care more about your audience and your message than you do about yourself.
• Before you can get into The Zone, you have to be prepared on your speech, bullet points, topic, and presentation with a rock-solid foundation.You, like an actor, must always know why you’re on stage, where you are on that stage, and the goals and purpose of your performance.
• We never apologize to an audience for a mistake. We correct it, but do not draw attention to it.
• The material you will present to your audience must be practiced and rehearsed for weeks until the material is second nature to you.

When you make the mental shift from talking to presenting, you are entering The Zone.  The Zone, one of my favorite topics, is made up of all the non-verbal, psychological, emotional, and physical parts of your presentation.  Your gestures, eye contact, and voice are all important parts of The Zone.

Gestures

Gestures are an outside expression of internal attitude.  They create the first visual imprint for the listener and will elicit the first instinctive response:  positive, negative, or indifferent.  With gestures, the four most important attributes are:  calm, open, balanced, and definitive.

Your gestures should be comfortable, natural, deliberate, open, extended, emphatic, and meaningful.

When you use gestures, keep your hands and gestures open:  no finger pointing, crossed arms, or clenched fists.  Always remember this succinct little rule:  movement matches meaning.  Think of hands as relaxed mittens, not gloves.  Do not separate out your fingers, which is a subconscious indication of tension.   Make sure your hand gestures are not “below the belt” so that the listeners’ eyes are not drawn downward, reducing visual distractions.

Eye contact and connection

Eye contact is a non-verbal signal that creates a connection, or bond, with a listener.   (Again, we are building rapport through connecting with the audience.)

Look people in the eye.  Forget the old speech class adage to look at people’s hair or above their heads, or to visualize them naked (if you visualize your audience naked, it makes it even harder to look them in the eyes!).  Do not look at the foreheads of your audience members.   (Have you ever seen an actor portray a blind person?   They do so by looking at their acting partner’s forehead.)

Make a connection with the individuals in the audience with your eyes.  When you do that, you will feel an electric zap…a click.  ­Arrive at a natural breaking point in your thoughts, feel the click, and move to another audience member. 

Voice

A voice can subconsciously repel or attract an audience.  The most important suggestion for the use of voice as a persuasive tool is to be your conversational self when you present. Be prepared, organized, and a rehearsed– but be yourself.   Present with energy, emphasis, and variety, and you will control an audience’s attention.

Projection 

 Your breath is the source of a well-projected voice.   What is “projection?”  First of all, it is not synonymous with ­volume (“loud or soft.”)  It is the force with which we speak, which affects the FORCE of our message.  To help you project your voice, picture a large red circle on the back wall.  Your goal is to send your voice on a wave of air to hit that circle, and then bounce your voice off the walls!   Energy will then fill the room . . . and people will listen and be engaged.  

Enunciation

If you want to have a crisp, professional, and articulate speaking voice, here’s a trick:  make sure that you pronounce your consonants clearly.  This is referred to as clear enunciation.  To improve enunciation, read aloud from the newspaper five minutes a night for two weeks, emphasizing precise pronunciation of consonants.  Force lazy lips and a lazy tongue to work at sounding all the letters in a word, not just the vowels. Emphasize the last consonant of each sentence.   Consonants carry the force and structure of a message; vowels carry the emotion.

Speed 

Am I racing and spilling one word into another?  Do I need to slow down, because, as a Southerner once said about a northern friend, “He talks faster than I can listen”? Conversely, am I talking too slowly, lumbering along and sapping my energy – and my audience’s energy — with too many lengthy pauses?

Pitch and tone

Is my voice too high, like a cartoon character’s voice, or is it too dull, low and monotonous? Is it too high or a cavernous drone?   When I speak, do I send my air though my nose rather than my mouth? Do I sound breathy, like Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday Mr. President, or do I sound strong, forceful, and confident?

In sum, your gestures, eye contact, and voice will indicate your energy level, preparedness, stress level, and confidence – or lack of it. 

Because I started talking about the Zone in my last blog, I have a secret to share with you.  It’s my favorite topic, and my secret weapon.

When you walk into the spotlight as a presenter, what do you do?  You move into what I call your “Zone.”  

When you make the mental and physical shift from talking to presenting, you are entering your Zone.  Your eye contact, stance, posture, gesture, and vocal projection are some of the most important facets of your Zone. 

Your presentation really begins the moment you get out of your car in the parking lot:  you are “on” … and you are in your Zone. Think of your Zone as your suit of armor.  No matter how you feel, no matter how fast your heart is racing, or how much sweat has dripped into your socks, your Zone will protect you.  

Stance

Your steadying force in your Zone is your stance.  Position your feet so they are aligned with your shoulders.  Move your feet only when there is a reason to do so.  Don’t pace or jangle your coins, bracelets, or earrings.  Don’t rock, shift, or wander aimlessly around.  Know exactly where you are, and why you are there.

Posture

In order to be perceived as a balanced and credible speaker, you must present an image of certainty and strength.  Make a conscious decision to have your weight evenly distributed over both feet (50% over one foot, and 50% over the other foot).  Visualize your spine as a stack of coins, stacked straight and strong through the center of your body.  Relax your shoulders down, away from your ears, move them back, and then stack those coins.

Doing all this will allow you to be perceived as comfortable and solid.  When YOU look comfortable, you will make your audience feel comfortable.  Your audience will then be ready to focus on your message.

Barriers

Speakers distance themselves from their audience because their delivery is boring and their presentation is unrehearsed.  Another culprit is the lectern that is placed between the speaker and the audience.  Many speakers use a lectern as a security blanket to crouch behind, or lean on, or ­nervously shift our weight behind.    

Don’t let a lectern lure you into thinking that you have a security blanket. The lectern diminishes the conversational feel you want in a presentation.  

Like talk show hosts Jay Leno and David Letterman, get out from behind the barrier and stand tall.  Do what Leno and Letterman do:  move close to your audience.  Avoid the lectern except for such situations as formal acceptance speeches and commencement addresses.

We must face two realities about presentations:  We need to create chemistry, and we need to be a broadcaster. 

Webster’s Dictionary defines chemistry as, “the way two individuals relate to each other.”  Many times, the choice a consumer makes (whether it is someone choosing a person, a product, idea, or a service) is based on chemistry, and not on expertise.  “Chemistry” between you and your audience, gut instinct, and an indefinable feel for you as a presenter (and you as a person) is very influential when you are asking your audience to make a decision or a choice.  Chemistry is definitely a factor that will inspire your audience.  

The other challenge facing you when you’re a presenter is that you need to act like a television broadcaster.  

Television, particularly TV news shows, has subconsciously changed what people expect from a presentation.  Viewers expect a polished, virtually seamless (but not slick) delivery. The same applies to an audience listening to a speaker.  The audience might sit through a disorganized, rambling, incoherent presentation, but they will not respond positively to it.  When presenting, you have to think of yourself as broadcaster who is being rated by your viewers. Those viewers have an internal remote control with which they will change your channel very quickly if you do not engage them intellectually and emotionally. 

What can you do to make yourself a comfortable, natural, ­conversational, and professional presenter?  What can you do to give yourself the persuasive edge that produces the “YES!” response or even a standing ovation?   The answer is simple:  connect with your audience, and be natural.   

Your persuasion abilities are based on how connected you are with your message and your audience, and how close you are to your natural, or conversational, speaking style.  The non-verbal, psychological, emotional, and physical part of your presentation is what I call your “Zone”. When you make the mental and physical shift from talking to presenting, you are entering your Zone.   

After discussing the art of definitive, deliberate, and descriptive gestures in a recent seminar, I was approached by one of the attendees who was a military retiree–from the Marine Corps Band.  He was struck by the similarities between the principles of gesturing I had discussed and modeled and his instruction as a band director or symphony conductor.

“It’s amazing!” he said.  “We, too, learned that the signals (gestures) we give the band are within parameters, within a ‘box.’  Essentially, it is exactly within the pitcher’s strike zone, just as you described.  Like your gesture description, the flow of the conductor’s signals have both depth (out from the body) and latitude (the horizontal extension of the arms).”

“The conductor’s movements must have meaning and must be fluid, just like the way you have taught us to use our arms and body to produce a visual image of the spoken word.”

As he explained these concepts to me, he used his arms to visually explain the way a conductor keeps the desired rhythm but also brings in various instruments and soloists, sometimes with elaborate gestures, sometimes with just the lift of an eyebrow.

I was struck by his astute insight but also by how his analogy captured the essence of purposeful, non-random gestures.  Movement matches meaning.  Meaning must have purpose or it is wasted and worthless.

Presentation gestures are different from “talking gestures,” which are more random and repetitious.  Presentation gestures are:

1.  Between the beltline and shoulders

2.  A full extension of the arms and hands out from the chest, with firm wrists and “soft” hands–I call them “mitten” hands, not “glove” hands, which have tense, extended fingers

3.  And most importantly, useful in creating our personal “Power point space” in the “box” by aligning the concept with the movement: “on the other hand,” “as we move forward,” “let us all work as a team,” etc.

When we speak, we really are conducting an orchestra; we are the band leader.  The audience looks to us for meaning and that meaning must have a narrative flow as well as a physical flow.  “Presentation gestures” are one of the many ways to achieve both.

In the last 3-5 years, I have witnessed an enormous backlash against the use of PowerPoint in presentations.  The PowerPoint Pendulum has swung from “Isn’t this neat?!” to “Oh, no, not another boring Power Point!”

I use the phrase “Death by PowerPoint” to describe that comatose suspension between life and death while you wait for a Power Point presentation to conclude (“Stop! Stop! Please stop!).

Some companies have even gone so far as to ban all PowerPoint presentations, telling their managers to “Just tell me your recommendations and get on with it.”

The reasons for this Power Point backlash are many, but one in particular stands out: people hate being read to and nearly every presenter does just that. They throw the entire “script” up on the screen and monotonously read every single line, every single word to their audience, who are sitting in the dark….secretly checking email messages on their Blackberries.

Speakers inflict this sadistic suffering upon their audience for 4 main reasons:
1. They are petrified of public speaking and use Power Point as a security blanket
2. They don’t know any better
3. That’s the way it’s done at their company; no one knows any better
4. It’s easy and it’s safe.

It takes hard work, time, discipline, courage, and an understanding of just what engages an audience to produce an interesting, unique, and creative PowerPoint presentation.

Lee Gomes, business writer at the Wall Street Journal, says that “While PowerPoint has served as the metronome for countless crisp presentations, it has also allowed an endless expanse of dimwit ideas to be dressed up with graphical respectability.” Yale graphics guru, Edward Tufte, scathingly asserts that PowerPoint “elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.”

Robert Gaskins, one of the two creators of the PowerPoint concept (the other, Dennis Austin) believes Tufte’s criticisms are spot on. They have “no patience with cubicle warriors who, in the guise of doing actual work, spend endless hours fiddling with fonts!  ” They like telling the joke that the best way to paralyze an opposition army is to ship it PowerPoint and thereby contaminate its decision making.

A New Yorker magazine included a cartoon showing a job interview in hell: “I need someone well versed in the art of torture,” the interviewer says. “Do you know PowerPoint?”

So my point has been made: PowerPoint presentations are mind numbing, soul deadening, spirit sapping exercises in staying awake. Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post writes that this energy draining essence of PowerPoint was captured perfectly in a spoof of the Gettysburg Address by computer whiz Peter Norvig of Google.

It featured Abe Lincoln fumbling with his computer: “Just a second while I get this connection to work. Do I press this button here? Function-F7?” He collapses his speech into six slides, complete with bar chart depicting four score and seven years. (See sidebar for a sample PowerPoint slide from the Gettysburg address) But it doesn’t have to be this way!

I believe the day will come when an audience collectively thinks: “Oh, Boy, a PowerPoint presentation!” Incredulous? Let me explain. Here are Three PowerPoint Rules to help make your PowerPoint presentations
invigorating and refreshing.

Rule #1—Remember first and foremost that readers are not the same as listeners. The brain uses differing parts to process the written word vs. the spoken word. Speeches and Power Points are meant for listeners, NOT readers. So prepare a feast for your listeners’ eyes and ears. Think of the audience as consumers. Use color—with consideration of your audience—unique design, pictures instead of data and bullet points, and “sell” your ideas to your consumers.

Stand with the screen to your left, so the audience can scan your material from left to right, the way this culture is taught to read. Keep your feet pointed toward your audience, so your face, with its voice and expressions, can reveal your passion and commitment to these ideas. Be an expressive proponent of your material, not a deadly reader of lengthy sentences meant for English Comp 101.

Rule #2—Do not make yourself part of your audience. You are the actor, the director of the play, the set designer, and the choreographer. Symphony conductors do not sit behind the symphony. Neither should you turn off the lights—nappy time—sit at the back of the room with your computer, and send out a disembodied voice that drones ”Next……” over and over and over…… Take your position up front as the “owner” of this message, engage your audience with your entire being, and make the PowerPoint part of your “presentation presence.”

Rule #3—Audiences don’t need or want everything you’ve got. (No one is as interested
in your wedding pictures as you are.) So the presenter should develop 3 different documents:

Personal notes, to be seen only by the speaker and used as a reminder of the topics and key points.
Illustrative slides, which illustrate the major points and help motivate the listener and sell the message.
Handouts or leave-behinds, where the speaker puts the references, data, the appendices to the talk. Some may actually study these; some may glance at them; many will toss them. But they are there, revealing the background work that went into your engaging presentation.

So is it PowerPoint that’s bad?

No. Bad speakers are bad. Bad Power Points just make them worse. Obviously, then, there are two fixes:

1) Become a better speaker

2) Quit taking the easy way out with Power Points.

Next time, surprise your audience with an energetic, engaging presentation, which incorporates visually appealing PowerPoint slides. Think of your PowerPoint “show” as theatre. Most PowerPoint “shows” would close on opening night. Craft your set, stage the lighting, use dramatic focus, create a narrative flow (an impressive seamlessness), and end BIG.

In summary, you are everything from costume designer and tech crew to janitor. This is a reality all presenters must acknowledge, accept, and prepare for. After all, PowerPoint is the messenger, not the message. So don’t kill the messenger.

Mary E. Rauch is a communication strategist, presentation consultant, and public speaker. She lives in San Antonio and can be reached through her web site.
www.maryrauch.com