Slide Show Upgrades

Using PowerPoint or Keynote to improve the audience's learning and engagement experience is an art form.  View this PowerPoint to read and see a few key strategies...

(View in SlideShare to view full screen.)

YourNextSpeake Slide Show Upgrade Example

View more presentations from Rhett Laubach.

To learn more, read Nancy Duarte's Slide:ology and Garr Reynold's Presentation Zen books.

Enjoy!

The Best of Both Worlds

I just spent a great week traveling the state of Oregon with Sara Nilles, Program Director of the Oregon Association of Student Councils.  They have over 190 member schools in Oregon and do a great job teaching, guiding and motivating middle school and high school student leaders in the ways of leadership excellence.  She invited me in to present three hours of leadership lessons each day at their Winter Regional Conferences. 

It was a powerful week for many reasons.  Engaged students, committed teachers/staff/advisers, the beautiful Oregon landscape, focused application of content, etc.  The feedback from the advisers and students was overwhelmingly positive.  One of the reasons was because of my training/speaking style.  They loved that I employ a teaching technique that I encourage you to try on if you don't already.  Its called BBW - the Best of Both Worlds.

BBW is when you take your audience to both extremes of engagement - intellectual and emotional.  This means you stir up their emotions (laughter, sadness, excitement, etc.) in a big way and then lead, guide and direct their thoughts with application points. 

If you engage the emotional side only, you aren't teaching - you are a cartoon.  If you engage the intellectual side only, you aren't teaching - you are a thesis paper.

Following is an example outline of one way I employed the BBW technique last week in Oregon:

1. I led them through an activity called Name That Tune.  As a team of 8-10, they have to guess what movie or TV show each theme song is associated with.  It is competitive, fast-paced and filled with fun songs.  My body language and verbal tones reflect excitement, engagement and humor.
2. After the activity I ask them a simple question to discuss as a team, "Why were you able to remember these songs?"  The key lesson is repetition.
3. Then I pull everyone close together near me (close proximity to you and each other creates attention and focus) and elaborate on this statement, "The most effective leaders repeat the right habits on a daily basis."  I give them a few specific, concrete, simple habits that will help them be a positive influence on their peers.  My body language and verbal tones reflect sincerity and importance of message.  Not preachy though.  The connection between the audience and me isn't parent-child, but coach-player.

Good luck rocking this skill. 

Only when you go to positive extremes with your techniques and words do you fully cut through the clutter and distractions in each audience member's life.

OSU Graduate Student Questions

Recently I presented my Presenters in Gear program on campus in Stillwater, Oklahoma to the Oklahoma State University Spears School of Business graduate students.  Following are a few questions they asked after the program and my answers.

How do you combat being nervous?

 

The most important thing to know about nervousness is that it is perfectly normal and actually necessary. The secret isn't to get rid of nervousness (that results in a blanching of emotion) - the goal is to control your nerves. You do this by knowing your content top to bottom, putting your full attention on the audience before and during the presentation and getting as much experience as possible.

 

How do you handle audience members who walk out in the middle of a presentation?

 

Do not worry about them. Don't bring any attention to them. Forget them the second you see them leave.

 

How do I recover my composure to successfully conclude my presentation?

 

If you ever need to recover because you mess up, forget something, etc., just move on quickly to the next portion of your presentation. Don't linger in the moment. The conclusion of your presentation should include one of the following elements:

 

• A call to action.  What do you want them to do with the information you just gave them?
• A re-cap of your main points.
• The most important/critical point/data/fact supporting your presentation.
• A brief Q&A (ONLY if you facilitate a creation of questions from the audience during your presentation.)
• A multimedia tool (video, self-running slide show, etc.) that puts an exclamation point on your presentation.

 

How to keep a flow going, connecting two slides?

 

Slides should follow the natural flow of your presentation. Transitions connect your main points (i.e. - slides), so as long as your transitions are tight, you should be fine with moving from slide to slide. The best transitions tie together a key element of two points. I.e. - So, as you can see, our global population's energy needs will be overwhelming over the next 20-50 years. This brings us to needing to understand why we must act now on mining the rich resources that exist below the ocean floor.

 

What are some great ways to get as many people as possible to make lasting behavioral change based on your communication?

 

Lasting behavioral change is a very personal issue and the motivations behind it changes from person to person. Even the most powerful communicator can hope to only effect change in people for a short period of time. Beyond that it is up to the individual. So, a better question is - what are some great ways to get as many people as possible to begin walking down the path of lasting behavioral change? The answer to that question is the core elements of all great orators:

 

• An intense passion for your content and for your audience doing something with it.
• A trust from the audience in your expertise, authenticity and likability.
• A message that is clear, specific, action-oriented, simple in nature and resolves a problem/challenge/question that is relevant and urgent to the audience.

 

Where do speakers get professional training? Who is the best individual or company to get training?

 

We train many speakers every year - professionals, students, pastors, etc. Let me know if you want to chat about working together (rhett@yournextspeaker.com). Beyond that there are many options. Dale Carnegie Training and Toastmasters are the first two that come to mind.

 

If I have a tendency to speak too fast during a presentation, how do I train myself to keep a slower pace and speak more clearly?

 

Speed, like tone and volume, should be laced with variety throughout a presentation. Therefore, it is perfectly fine to have bursts of "too fast" during your presentation as long as it is balanced with a slower pace. You need to be conscience about including these slower pace times the first couple of times you begin working on it. Eventually, this will become the way you speak naturally.

 

How do I learn to speak loud and with energy? Are there any books, classes, something you can recommend?

 

This is a process of modeling, practicing, adjusting, modeling, practicing, adjusting, etc. You have the ability to be loud, you just haven't become comfortable doing it. The energy portion is where you need to watch someone present who you consider an energetic presenter and model what they do.

Mike Rowe Knows

"I guess it comes down to this. The world is desperate for authenticity. In business and in real life. In work and play. We crave it I think, because it’s in such short supply. Consequently, when we see it, we’ll wait for it. We’ll watch it on TV. We’ll stand in line for a chance to be near it. Fans, fishermen, CEO’s – we know authenticity when we see it, even if we’re not looking for it."

Mike Rowe, host of the TV hit Dirty Jobs

The Ultimate Leadership Activity Resource

The largest, searchable database out there!

http://www.thesource4ym.com/games

Or if you prefer your fresh, new activities in book form, The Activator is for you!

Building Presentations with F.O.R.C.E.

Next time you are developing a presentation, build it with F.O.R.C.E...

Focused - Keep your presentation's deliverable simple and focused.  Do not try to cover too much ground on one topic or a few things about many topics.  A famous trial lawyer once said, "If I give the jury ten great reasons to vote for my client, I might as well have given them none.  One or two compelling reasons is the best approach."

Organized - I recently spoke at a high-powered leadership event in San Diego and the biggest gripe by the conference organizers of one of the other presenters was that they were all over the place.  There was no clear structure or order to their message or flow.  Having a clear and concise organized plan for your presentation helps the audience remember what just happened, understand what is happening and look forward to what is getting ready to happen.

Rememorable - If you don't want your words acted upon, then a presentation is not the best delivery method for your message.  Send an email, letter or fax instead.  If you do require or desire action to be taken after your presentation, then you must make it rememorable.  Use props, stories, acronyms, interaction, emotional anchors, discussion, note taking, etc.  Unless your message is overtly or inherently compelling, these tools and skills are a must in today's busy, noisy world.

Connected - So many components of effective "speaker to audience" moments are driven by this concept of connecting.  The audience must trust, respect, admire, believe, listen to, want to learn more, ask questions of and like the speaker for the exchange of ideas to happen.  All of these things come down to the speaker making a connection with the audience - emotionally, intellectually, socially and even physically.  They all make a difference.

Engaging - You can spend hours preparing what you are going to say based on learning objectives, program metrics, audience expectations, your expertise, meeting goals, etc., but if you aren't able to deliver this excellent material in an engaging way, you are missing the point.  And so will they.  Your body and verbal language needs to be passionate and energetic.  It is amazing how many presenters forget this and therefore all their hours of thinking about what to say are wasted because they didn't spend any time thinking about how to say.

(Download an awesome poster version)

Resources

Following is a list of ways to connect, learn and grow from us:

http://delicious.com/pliblog - Huge database of leadership content I have gathered for you (and us) from the 150+ blogs I read daily. It contains over 1,000 articles, blog posts, videos, etc. They are all indexed by our curriculum's 10 leadership essentials (http://www.PersonalLeadershipInsight.org).

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pli-blog/id349608878?mt=8 - iPhone app that aggregates the RSS feed from this blog, my other blog, our PLI_Leadership twitter account (We also have other Twitter accounts you can follow - TeamTRI, RhettLaubach and yns1).

http://plileadership.blogspot.com/ - The PLI leadership blog.

http://www.authenticityrules.com/ - The speaking skills blog.

http://www.leadersingear.com/ - My new leadership and presentation skills book.

http://www.slideshare.net/rhettdean - A collection of my PowerPoints.

http://tinyurl.com/theleapshow - The slide show I use at the end of many of my keynotes to inspire.

http://www.personalleadershipinsight.org/- Our rich, beautiful, meaningful and interactive leadership curriculum.

We are also on Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo and Twitter. Just search for our names (Rhett Laubach and Ryan Underwood).

I hope you enjoy these resources and find them enriching and valuable.

Training "Filler" Ideas

Today I walked a handful of Minnesota FCCLA advisors through tips and strategies on how to host an awesome regional leadership conference. One question that come up from the group was...

"What do you do if you are ahead of schedule or a speaker is running late and you need to fill some space in your agenda?"

Basically, they were looking for some new crowd involvement ideas their officers could lead. Something different than singing "camp songs" or doing the Cupid Shuffle. The reason for having something is to keep the crowd busy and possibly enhance the conference experience. An idle high school crowd is a rowdy high school crowd. Here are a few ideas I use in these moments:

1. Name That Tune. (5 minutes)
Get everyone standing in teams of 4-6 people. Tell them they are competing against the other teams in the room to see which team can get the most right. Then play either ten TV/movie theme songs or just ten CPP (Clean, Powerful, Positive) popular songs. Only play 10-15 seconds of each. After you are done find out how many the teams got right.

2. Switch Seats. (5 minutes)
Have everyone select a partner from their school that they will go on a mission with. Tell them when the music starts, they go with their partner to find a new seat in the room. The catch is when they sit down the people sitting to their left and right get to be from a different school. Once they are seated they learn three pieces of information from their new "friends" to their left and right. You can pick whatever you want these three things to be: name, school, favorite hobby, favorite band, favorite fast food restaurant, etc.

3. Meet New People. (5-10 minutes)
Ask everyone to stand. When the music starts your job is to meet as many new people (I.e. - not from your school) in the room a possible. Bonus points for meeting an advisor. Keep track of your points (1 per new person. 2 per advisor.) Give a prize to a few people that have the most points.

4. Dance Off. (5-10 minutes)
Have each school pick (or they can self-volunteer) 3-5 dancers that will come on stage and represent their school in a Dance Off. Pick a few advisors to be the judges. Then play 60-second snippets of Cupid Shuffle, Cha Cha Slide, YMCA, the Chicken Dance, the Macarena, Apache (Jump On It), etc. You can allow more dancers per school if you would like. The judges vote on both the dancing as well as the amount of support (claps, yelling, cheers, etc.) each school gives their dancers.

5. True of False. (5-10 minutes)
Get everyone standing in teams of 4-6 people. Tell them they are competing against all the other teams in the room. Then read off 10-15 true or false trivia questions. Make them interesting and "not-widely-known." Here are a few we use:

1. Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our ears and nose never stop growing. T

2. In every episode of Seinfeld, Spiderman is always seen? F. It's Superman.

3. The words orange, month, silver and purple have something in common. T. They don't rhyme with anything.

4. Babies are born with kneecaps. F. They don’t appear until 2-6 years of age.

5. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan. T

6. Elephants are the only animal that can’t jump. T

7. A polar bear’s hair is white. F. It's clear. It's skin is white.

8. On average, right-handed people live 9 years longer than left-handed people. T

9. The Earth is the only planet that rotates clockwise? F. It's Venus.

10. Walt Disney was afraid of mice. T


- Posted from my iPhone on tour in Minnesota.

Unload and Throw

Speaking to a group is not a diplomatic process. It is largely a one-way pipeline of information and emotion. The most popular and impact-filled presenters follow the advice of my good friend (and phenomenal pastor/communicator) Justin Beadles' dad to his son regarding speaking...

"Justin, when you present in front of a group, unload both guns on 'em and then throw the gun!"

Be bold. Be grace-filled, but be bold. Leave it all on the table.

"Make an impact, not just an impression." Rick Rigsby



- Posted using my iPhone on tour in Minnesota.

How to Maximize a Conference Experience

John Maxwell, the famous leadership author and teacher, tells us there are three things we must do to grow as leaders:

1. Surround yourself with the right people.
2. Consume the right media.
3. Attend the right conferences.

When you attend conferences, to make the most of them, follow these five guidelines.

1. Be child-like. This doesn't mean throw a tantrum if the room is too cold. It means ask questions. Lots of them. Don't let your pride or reputation or position keep you from raising that hand and getting clarity, more information or better information.

2. Take organized notes. If you aren't writing, you aren't learning. But don't just write to recall. Write with organization. Make notes of what needs to be delegated, acted upon immediately, filed for later, etc. This will help your post-conference actions take flight quicker and more efficiently.

3. Offer solutions, advice and suggestions in a CVS format. Concrete. Visual. Simple. It is important to not only add value where you can, but to be clear with your thoughts.

4. Maximize gap time. The official sessions and breakouts will be valuable learning environments, but the real magical sharing times happen early in the morning, at meals and during breaks. Make the most of them.

5. Seek out answers. If possible, go to conference with specific questions and challenges you are looking to resolve. Then hunt to find experts, speakers, exhibitors and attendees who might just have the answers you are looking for.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone