Month: February 2020

COMMUNICATION TIPS… FOR PARENTS!

We help business professionals communicate better in their working environments. Presentation skills, negotiation, feedback, emailing, video-calls. All that. We work hard to improve the skills that are key to business success. But communication is so much larger. Today is about that. But it is also about you – and your communication skills.

Are you troubled at sending your message across your kids? Have you tried every single method and still nothing seems to work? Have a look at some tips that will definitely inspire you to revive the wonderful rapport you used to have when your children were little! And maybe, if you give it a thought, they will make you communicate better in general – at home and beyond.

Listen instead of speaking

Make an attempt of forgetting just how important what you have to say is (easier said than done!) and find a quiet spot and a little time when you can focus totally on your child. Try to clean your mind of the constant chatter which reminds you of a never-ending list of things to do… and just listen to what your child has to say to you. You might be surprised just how powerful empathy and true listening are!

Effects are not born at once. Careful listening will feed you information to be consumed at a later stage – when you realize that you know your conversation partner (child, adult, whoever that really is) much better than before. 

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

You show respect to others when you speak to them like you would speak to people you don’t know in a formal situation. That’s a rule. Interrupting? Out. Stone-walling? Out. Criticism? Out. Being defensive? Out.

It won’t help if you control WHAT you say but you don’t control HOW you say it. Children are perfect little detectors of non-verbal signs – and much more radical at that than your business colleagues. Kids will know instantly if you are showing them contempt or disagreeing with them. So pay attention to your tone of voice or body postures to create a welcoming environment.

Medice, cura te ipsum

Children learn by copying the people they spend most of their time with – their own parents. They DO NOT learn from HEARING the good, old naggin’ we are so full of. So if you want great communication with your kids – give them an example by being a great communicator with everyone around. Check if you can improve on the way, too, by following these three universal communication tips. Remember, though: perfection is a temporary illusion! So if you make a mistake, just try again tomorrow and don’t judge yourself too harshly. 

In almost all of our presentation trainings we hear a burning question: “How should I behave while presenting?”. The general answer is quite simple – behave like yourself. Of course, there is “room for improvement” when it comes to your presentation skills. However, changing a fact-oriented, a bit shy IT expert into Steve Ballmer won’t look natural. And if it doesn’t, the chances of audience liking your presentation (and believing you) will drop dramatically. On the other hand, you may often hear some stereotypical criticism: “She’s awfully professional and you can easily see that she’s overtrained it. It looks like another TED talk”. We don’t want that, do we?

For today, we have prepared an analysis of a presentation that is very, very different: Elon Musk’s launch of Tesla Cybertruck. Elon uses a totally different style than most of TED presenters do. He is not another Steve Jobs of presentations either. Quite the opposite, in fact: he’s delivery is imperfect, his voice unappealing, and his body language – unclear at times. Still, however, he manages to create a memorable presentation – not only because he’s announcing another extraordinary machine of his, but also because he uses hooks – a key element every presentation should rely on. Watch the recording available here, and read on for some practical advice on how to be yourself in a presentation and still make a lasting good impression.

I’ll believe it when I see it: Demonstration as Hook

One of the best elements to convince the audience to buy is… to show how the product works. When you demonstrate the capabilities of your product well, audience engagement rockets – specifically because everyone prefers to see how an unknown thing works rather than to hear about it. Tesla Cybertruck is not an easy object to present indoors. However, Elon managed to test some of its most exciting capabilities in a manner that focuses all the attention. Like here, for example:

A great hook, and a great example for those of you who can somehow show what you do. Not only will this bring a new element in your presentation, but it will also help you explain the purpose of it. So, if you’re about to conduct a product presentation – show the very thing. If it’s a webinar platform, try to connect with somebody live. If it’s a conference or an expo, take your product with you. If you are discussing an IT solution (say, Robotic Process Automation), record a video and give your audience a chance to see the novelty work. I hear you say “but what’s if that’s not going to work perfectly?” Read on. Elon has a great answer.

Oops!: Failure as Hook

One of the reasons for Musk’s presentation going viral was the huge fail during the show. The strategy was to test everything they could, right? So, they have tested a window, claiming the glass (or rather a transparent metal in this case) was extremely tough. Turned out it’s not.

On a scale like this, a failure of this sort may be called as a “disaster”. But what does Elon do? “Well, maybe that was a little bit too hard”, he says. “It didn’t go through, that’s a plus side”. “A room for improvement”, he concludes. The public is confused but finally laughs. Expectations are violated, a surprise rules in the kingdom of attention.

Mistakes are strong hooks. Are you familiar with a global movement that organizes “fuckup nights”? Presenters talk only about mistakes and failures there. It is so popular for two reasons – firstly, everybody loves listening to unconventional stories and secondly, it’s easier to learn on somebody else’s failures. The topic in itself is itself enough of a hook. So was the idea to try out Tesla’s armour glass.

Let’s talk business real life.  You probably wouldn’t like to sabotage your presentations and show something completely untested to your business partners. However, think about including a minor fail, a tiny defeat. Maybe a story how of you stumbled on a new idea when in trouble, and of what you thought was a failure but turned out to be a brilliant success. You can mention a mistake that you have learnt from. It is not risky if you turn it around as Elon does, and claim there is still “room for improvement”. An admission of failure – or a staging of it – is surely a great reason for the audience to focus and think.

Ha, Ha, Ha: Jokes as Hook

If you watch the whole presentation, you will see that almost in each bit there is a small joke. For Elon, passing information is a priority – he explains very clearly how the truck is build, what is so unusual about it, and… as a cherry on top, he adds a little joke.

Jokes in presentation have always served as a great hook; everybody likes to laugh and most of us adore stories. If a joke serves the purpose of highlighting or presenting the information that you convey, why not to use this technique?

Looking at Elon’s presentation, all his jokes stressed the superiority of Tesla over other cars. Each joke of course accentuated a different feature, but all had in common the goal of convincing the audience that Cybertruck is innovative, well-done and worth buying.

Even in the bit with the shattered window that we’ve discussed above, Elon did not hold back and tried to turn what seemed to be a tragic fail, into a joke – “it didn’t go through” – by stressing the positives.

Next time, in your presentation strategy, you might want to implement a structure where some information will end in a small joke, a meme if your business environment allows you to, and mocking competition in a small dose. This will always spice up your presentation and make the audience “hooked”.

Conclusion: Hook and Be Yourself

Elon Musk has his own way of presenting. It may strike you in the clip that his fluency isn’t that perfect. His voice is unappealing. Body language? Not that good, not at all TEDesque. He may even put hands into pockets (something our mums won’t like).

Does that mean his presentation is not a success? Can you call his performance insufficient? On the contrary, the talk is truly informative and entertaining! Hence, Elon’s performance teaches us that there are different styles of presenters, and we shouldn’t strive for becoming the type that is not natural for us. One would be perfect in entertaining the audience with jokes, one will be extremely professional and deliver lots of information, or the other would base his presentation mostly on stories. Whatever the style, however, every presenter should strive to organize content for the audience. One way to do so is to use hooks: strategic elements in the talk that the audience will focus on, and will continue to remember afterwards. Prepare that, and small imperfections will not matter.

This article is a part of a larger series in which we analyze interesting presentations and show how you can nicely improve your performance in your next public talk. See any material worthy analysis? Do you have any questions perhaps? Write at julia@languageextreme.pl

This opening slogan holds more value than you probably think. In business presentations, you should practise it by limiting your content to the essentials. But how to decide on what those are and how to achieve this challenging goal? Start with these four steps:

• State what you want to achieve with your presentation. Ask yourself this: what do I want the audience to do? Decide clearly here, because this decision will have impact.
• Choose content: select only those arguments or examples that will best support and show your objective. Go with one, two or maximum of three main points.
• Find out as much about the members of the audience as you can. Try to analyse audience by their:
• seniority
• experience
• possible attitude
• engagement and interest
• and the total number of people you are talking to.

Basing on these, choose what your content should be: detailed, general, basic, direct, official or playful.

• Paraphrase. Usually, our first attempts at putting thoughts into presentation result in longish sentences and mere waffle. To do better, go over your outline, and say it differently. And again, try once more. While paraphrasing, try to be as concise as possible to make the most out of your presentation time.
• Forget the templates. Sometimes you may want to go along with your comfortable, long business template and base on the convention your colleagues have been using for ages. Don’t do it if you know the audience won’t understand or like it. Plus, there’s some common slide mistakes:
• too much text on the slides,
• too little font (make it at least 30 points)
• way too many slides.

Remember – presentations are for presenting, whitepapers are for reading. If you need to send out the content to the attendees, convert it into a pdf file or duplicate your presentation, and add more info there. Just don’t go with this version when presenting.

That’s it. Less is more – waste no words.