Comedy, and falling down Person Holes! - Paul M Johnstone

Professor Stanley Unwin the comedian, who is best known for making up a language that you can understand but sounds rubbish.  This in his case is the centre of his humour, rubbish that sounds funny. 

In real life though, malaprops are usually delivered by people who don't even realise they are doing it.  And have no idea of the difference between their condiments of the season and other fox paws.   

An old friend of mine who works in a Government department, OK one of the Home Office departments, told me about a meeting the attended.  The manager a bit of a straight laced humourless chap was loosing the audience.

The humourless manager stood at the lectern in an effort to bring the meeting back on track and said, "I fear our discussions are tangenital to the issues at hand."

At that my friend looked around at the other attendees who were all fighting back laughter. She had to excuse herself from the meeting to keep from laughing out loud, a career halter in the Civil Service. 

A flexible presenter who was truly in touch would have 

1) Realised their mistake quickly,

2) Laughed at themselves, and

3) Used that unplanned comic relief to get everyone's attention so that she could regain control of the meeting. 

Someone really experienced would make the mistake on purpose.

Over the years of writing speeches I’ve learned, that many times the mistakes are much funnier than the planned presentation.  These days I plan mistakes when appropriate.  This has a great affect on your audience frequently opening up the presentation. 

The next time you experience a tangential experience use it to your advantage.  Relax your audience, smooth your way through the situation and you will have delivered a more memorable presentation.  Well Done.

If you’d like to improve your public speaking and presentation skills – get in touch! Feel free to comment if this tip has helped you, share your own ideas or ask a public speaking question Paul will try to help!

www.paulmjohnstone.co.uk

and

www.paradigmshakers.co.uk

 Paul M Johnstone

Catch up with you again soon!

Paul Johnstone is the founder of

The Paradigm Shakers

Providers of Thought Provoking Training

Delivered by Subject Matter Experts

http://www.paradigmshakers.co.uk/

©Paul Johnstone

The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint I think? - Paul M Johnstone

I suffer from something called Lack of Audience Engagement Disorder (LAED) but don’t worry, you cannot get it from reading my blog. The symptoms include loss of attention, low boredom threshold and the ability to multi-task (write a to do list or sort pout the shopping for the way home) during dull  presentations. 

There are many medical theories about its cause: too much salt, caffeine, or alcohol in one’s diet, too much stress, and allergies. But by far the biggest contributor is Boring, inappropriate presentation delivered by presenters too keen on them being the centre of attention, not the audience.  And now there is a cure, so I’m told.

To prevent an epidemic of LAED  in audiences, I am promoting something called the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. 

It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. While I’m in the audience I want to be informed not bored and entertained as well as informed. Following these simple rules will help us get to this wonderful state of achievement.

Ten slides. Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting—and I believe I’m quite normal.  By using more than ten slides to explain your idea, proposition, business, you  are squarely in LAED territory The ten topics that a venture capitalist cares about are:

1. Opening
2. Present your Problem as a Solution
3. Define your Model
4. Underlying magic/technology
5. Marketing and sales
6. Competition
7. Team
8. Projections and milestones (if you must)
9. Status and timeline
10. Summary and call to action

Hey, you don’t have to use 10 slides if you can get away with less great, do it.

Twenty minutes. You should give your ten slides in twenty minutes. You may have an hour time slot, but technology often takes thirty to forty minutes to overcome. Even if setup goes perfectly, people will arrive late and have to leave early. In a perfect world, you give your pitch in twenty minutes, and you have forty minutes left for discussion. When designing your presentation design in questions.  This does two things A) it involves your audience and B) you can tease out any limiting beliefs your audience may have.

Thirty-point font: The majority of the presentations that I see have text in a unbelievably small font. They cram as much text as possible into the slide, then the presenter reads it, just like a bed time story. Believe me. I can read faster then you can read it to me……... The result is that you and the audience are out of synch.

Using 30 point or larger ensures everyone in your audience can read your slide.  Cause it’s odds on the one you need to impress is at the back and they’ve forgotten their glasses.  If you think 30 point or larger is strange try this simple equation for defining the font you should use.   Find out the age of the oldest person in your audience and divide it by two. That’s your optimal font size.

With presentations if may help if you think that PowerPoint is there to be a visual aid.  That is there to support your presentation not be the presentation. So please observe the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. If nothing else, the next time someone in your audience complains of LAED, you’ll know what caused the problem. 

Catch up with you again soon!

Paul Johnstone is the founder of

The Paradigm Shakers

Providers of Thought Provoking Training

Delivered by Subject Matter Experts

http://www.paradigmshakers.co.uk/

©Paul Johnstone

Top Presentation Techniques - Paul M Johnstone

Presentations are something that we’re all familiar with. Unfortunately there are estimated to be over 50% of the 1.3 Million presentations delivered every day, are rubbish (conservative estimate).    

To help you get the best from your presentations here are just a few tips that will help you achieve the goal of any presentation. The effective transfer of information from you the presenter to the audience in a way they understand and use your information. 

Don’t abuse your visuals – Always, always use quality images.  Avoid clip art go for quality.  If you want to use a cartoon get a cartoonist to draw one for you!   Whatever your visuals may be, keep them simple and try to use three or four words only. The audience isn’t there to read your slides, they are there to listen to your presentation.

Eye to eye with the audience – A fantastic technique for engaging the audience 

is……….Look them in the eye.  Don’t spray your eyes round the room look at one person, deliver a sentence then move on to the next person.  If no one is looking at you, stop talking.  When they look up, look the next person in the eye, deliver a sentence and move on.

Show your personality – It doesn’t matter if you are presenting to a corporate crowd or to senior citizens, you need to show some of your character when presenting. When you just stand and deliver you become wooden and any enthusiasm you have for the topic is lost.  Be yourself, be natural and you will deliver better presentations.

Make them laugh – Although you want to educate your audience, humour will help your presentation be better remembered.   No this doe not mean you have to become a stand up.  Tel your story and lighten it up with humour or an anecdote.  This keeps the audience alert and they’ll learn more from you than someone who just educates.

Talk to your audience, not at them – Don’t you just hate it when people talk at, so don’t do it. You need to interact with your audience and create a conversation. An easy way to do this is to ask them questions as well as letting them ask you questions.  I know someone who asks one person in his audience “What do you expect to achieve from this presentation”?

Honesty is your best Policy – A lot of people present to the audience what they want to hear, instead of what they need to hear. Make sure you tell the truth even if they don’t want to hear it.  There are lots of words you can use to prepare your audience for bad news. It will help you if you collect a library of these words and phrases for when you need them. Oh and if you don't know the answer to a question, tell them you don't but you will get back to them with an answer.

Please Don’t over prepare – If you rehearse your presentation too much it will sound like it (in a bad way). Granted, you need to be prepared enough to know what you are going to talk about but make sure your presentation flows naturally instead of sounding memorized. Usually if you ask experienced speakers what you shouldn’t do, they’ll tell you not to rehearse your presentation too much because then it won’t sound natural.

Get out of the Grow Bag– You probably know it’s good to move when you are presenting.  The phrase motion comes from emotion is key here. Don’t stand in one spot, like you are trying to take root, (in your grow bag) a little movement and encouraging gestures help when making a point. People are more engaged with an animated speaker.

Watch what you say – You usually don’t notice when you say “err”, “ah”, or any other filler word frequently, but the audience does. It can get irritating; so much that some members of the audience will probably count how many times you say these filler words.

Differentiate yourself – If you don’t do something different compared to all the other presenters the audience may have heard.  You are branding yourself when you speak, so make sure you do something memorable.  I find your own enthusiasm for your subject is a great place to start.

Catch up with you again soon!

Paul Johnstone is the founder of

The Paradigm Shakers

Providers of Thought Provoking Training

Delivered by Subject Matter Experts

http://www.paradigmshakers.co.uk/

 ©Paul Johnstone