If you’ve ever taken presentation skills training or gotten coached, you know most presentation coaching focuses on the presenter.
My work focuses on the audience.
Transforming a screen full of "black squares" into real connection
How to achieve a standing ovation
Standing ovations are the hallmark of highly skilled presenters. They occur in proportion to how precisely you reach your audience, whether you hit a true bull’s eye with your delivery and your message. They start long before your final sentence. There’s only one driving element that produces them. Simply put, the depth of your skill in both message and delivery determines the depth of your audience’s response.
The 10 Rules of Executive-Level Presentations
That email came from Vikram, a senior leader who had sent his top team to our Art of Executive-Level Presentations workshop.
Before that, everyone was frustrated. The ELT was frustrated with long, unfocused presentations that buried the point. Vikram’s direct reports were frustrated because they couldn’t get anything approved.
They had an abundance of good ideas, intelligence, and spent hours preparing their presentations to the ELT. None of these were working because they weren’t playing by the rules.
Everything changed once they learned The 10 Rules of Executive-Level Presentations I’m making available in this PDF. (Free Download)
How to move people when logic isn’t enough
David leads a large group in an organization that has over 80,000 people. They’ve been getting hammered in the news for months now, trying to recover from mistakes made by the then-CEO five years ago. Unfortunately, they’ve just had to announce layoffs. There’s a tremendous amount of unsettling re-organization and re-shuffling going on. Where people will land is up in the air. The future of the organization is uncertain and morale is at an all-time low.
David’s group is the only inspired group in the whole organization. They’re engaged, focused, forward-looking. And helping the new CEO turn the whole organization around. That wasn’t always true.
They’re inspired not because conditions are better for them, but because David changed the story he was telling them.
When David first came for Beyond Persuasion, his attempts to “inspire” his team were falling flat. He was saying all the right things: the new vision, the plan, the priorities, the outcomes, the call to action. All good, but none of it was working.
How to become a fearless presenter
Most people begin presentations unsure how the audience will react. It’s the not-knowing that undermines self-confidence. They look for the first response to regain their footing. And when the reaction isn’t what they expected, confidence drops again.
Prediction vanquishes fear, even when the starting point looks dismal. You’re not needing. You’re not guessing. You’re not hoping or wishing. You’re able to predict. With certainty. Prediction becomes possible when …
The 10 rules of “Audience Logic”
Most people don’t know how to create instant acceptance. It’s rare to see someone who does. When the stakes are high, most think they’re being “logical” when they’re actually relying on a kind of logic that generates too many words. They talk a lot, present too much detail and explanation, believing it’s essential to creating understanding and agreement. Audiences don’t work like that.
Especially at the executive and senior levels. They have their own logic.
To be successful you have to master a different logic. Audience Logic. Audience Logic decides the outcome.
Here are the rules of Audience Logic (especially senior level audiences):
How to win the audience before you say a word
Laura: “You weren’t watching me!”
Me: “No, I could hear you. I knew what you were doing. I was watching the audience to see what change you produced in them.”
Laura had asked me to be there when she presented at an industry conference with hundreds of potential customers. The revenue potential was enormous if she was successful with her presentation. I spent several days coaching her to get her messaging, and the way she delivered it, just right.
The big day came. I was watching the audience like a hawk. I wanted to see the audience reactions from the moment she said “Hello”, all the way through exactly how they looked as she walked off the stage. Were they looking at her with admiration as they applauded? Or shuffling around and checking their phones?
I started watching the audience before Laura even walked on. They were on their phones or talking to the person next to them. Laura entered the room. I could feel something change in the room as they watched her walk. It was the way she was walking. They could see she carried herself differently.
Creating meaning when it's just you and a camera
How to transform your audience without ever seeing them
Tuesday was the first day of the Causative Communication course. Prasant had just learned about affinity and the difference it makes to communication. He learned that he actually needed to feel it if he wanted to be successful, and that finding something to like about the other person was the key to feeling it.
That sounded “great in theory”, but Prasant said it was “impossible” for him to find anything to like about Martin. However, Prasant knew only too well that what he was doing wasn’t working. He’d reached the point of being willing to try anything.
Communication coaching from my father
A number of years ago, my father called and told me he was going to be in San Francisco giving a talk. He said, “Let’s have dinner afterward!” I was thrilled, and said I’d love to also see his talk. I’d never seen my father give a presentation. He was a trial attorney who won a lot of cases, including one in front of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. I knew he did a lot of public speaking, but I’d only ever seen him be a father.
Following signs in the hotel lobby leading to his talk, I walked into the glittering ballroom in the Mark Hopkins, a grand 5-star hotel high atop ritzy Nob Hill, and found my father speaking … to hundreds of attorneys who packed the room to listen to him.
What?????? This was my father??????
The most important skill of a real leader
What’s different about a real leader?
A real leader inspires and impels spirit, purpose and action. More importantly, they transform.
The only tool they have is communication.
They may have vision, wisdom, strategy, experience, knowledge and a love of humankind. But it is their communication that defines them.
A great communicator surpasses all others.
The man who got two standing ovations before he was done speaking
Philip said, “I’m already getting standing ovations when I speak at conferences. Not sure what you could teach me that would make me better.”
He wasn’t challenging. Just matter of fact.
I asked, “Are you getting them at the end of your presentation?”
He said, “Of course!”
I asked, “Do you also get any standing ovations during your presentations?”
Philip looked puzzled, “No.”
Pause. “Is that possible?”
What to do when the audience turns their cameras off
It was a virtual meeting. Most people think the word “virtual” means “Far away; using technology” and definitely “not as good as in person.” (I hear this all the time.)
However, if you look up the word “virtual” in a good dictionary, you’ll see that it means “Creating the power of real without actually being real”. I want to let that sink in.
In other words, virtual reality is different than actual reality, BUT when it is done well it has the power of actual reality. In other words, it creates a new reality.
The most effective presentation strategy ever
When people in the audience come to you afterward and tell you, “You really helped me!”, they’re saying that you are valuable to them.
Being valuable will do more for your career than anything else. It’s measured by how much you help. Think about the most valuable people in your career. They’re not the ones who dazzle you. They’re the ones who help you.
What it takes to own the room
Someone asked me what makes my coaching different. I’m going to talk about one thing I do, and one thing that all of our incredible ETS Coaches do, that makes it extraordinary. My purpose in telling you is perhaps knowing what I focus on will help you focus on this too as you go to your next meetings and give your next presentations.
Many communication coaches and programs coach the visible: the hand gestures, the voice inflection, emphasis on certain words, body language, the slides, the smile. The visible, physical mechanics.
I coach the invisible. The invisible is manifested, and others can see it, but what I coach is not visible.
I coach: Being there, presence, affinity, attention, awareness, interest, intention, creating understanding, command, dignity.
How to have the audience see the best in you
I’ve worked with professionals and executives of large corporations for over 30 years. They are used to feeling tense. It’s become normal. Feeling completely comfortable is not normal. Being relaxed is not.
That’s how being slightly tense, or even very tense, becomes habitual. And they’re surrounded by others who are also slightly or very tense. So they’re swimming in a sea of uninspected “normal”.
How to talk to a large audience
Terror, fear, even a little anxiety, makes people talk too fast. When you talk too fast, your words lose their meaning. Correct pacing is the hallmark of a professional speaker. There was one thing that Mariela was doing that was causing ALL the problems I just mentioned. She was talking to EVERYONE.
It seems logical. You have 300 people in your audience - you should talk to 300. Right?
This is the worst thing you can do.
Misled by hand gestures
Latisha showed up for Transforming Your Presentation Skills in quite a state. She was very self-conscious. No matter what I said, she kept asking me to coach her on her hand gestures and her words.
“Do you think this hand gesture is better than this one? Do I have more presence if I put my hand on my hip like this?”
On and on. It took Latisha all morning to realize I wasn’t going to coach her on any of that.
It’s a common mistake - I’m always coaching people on this point.
How to change everything with a single presentation
Most people have a lot of attention on themselves, what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling, what they want, what they’re going to say, etc. etc. etc. etc. It’s a deeply trained-in self-consciousness that makes the most important question in their mind when they’re giving a presentation the absolutely wrong question and that is, “How am I coming across?”
It’s a common mistake - I’m always coaching people on this point.