Recuperate and keep moving towards your goals and dreams, do not let obstacles stop you  In a presentation when something unexpected occurs you can’t look at your audience and say, “Sorry, I’m having trouble as this is not what I planned. I just want to stop.” You must use your will power and go on like Nike’s motto, “Just do it.” Isn’t that what life is all about?

This came to me last night. I was on my way to a BUILD event in Boston. BUILD’s mission is to use entrepreneurship to excite and propel disengaged low-income students through high school to college success. All the 100 students in California went on to college!!  They now have 100 youth in Boston who will create a product, build a business and sell the product—for real!! I printed the evite with the address as well as Google directions. My GPS did not have the address but I told myself, “No problem you have printed directions.”  Well, one hour later (should have taken me 20 minutes) I am still driving around the street. So far I’ve asked directions from a porter at a  hotel, a taxi driver, two policemen and three pedestrians. I was about ready to quit. This was not the evening I planned. Then I asked a bus driver. He says, “Follow me.” I do. Finally he stops the bus, gets out, points to the building and smiles. Best bus ride I ever had!!

I arrive just as the last the student presentation concludes. Frustration mounted and I felt like turning around and leaving. I’d already expended enough energy trying to get there. BUT I stayed and met some wonderful people with great ideas for a product I’m creating as well as learning more about BUILD. It was one of the best networking experiences I’ve had.

Remember, whatever situation you are in, you always have time to use your will power, recuperate and make it positive. Don’t let your unmet expectations that did not happen stop you from recuperating and finding ways to make the experience positive for you and for whoever is around you.

I’d love to hear an experience, where you used your will power, recuperated and made the experience a success.

“To assert your willpower is simply to make up your mind that you want something, and then refuse to be put off.” – Phillip Cooper

Make yourself six New Year’s Resolutions to stop pulling the power out of PowerPoint. Yes, there is so much talk about how boring and overdone PowerPoint presentations have become. But many of you still have to give them! I suggest you stop these six bad habits. You’ll engage your audience and save days of your life – and no one will ever call your presentations boring or overdone again.

1. Stop making twice as many slides as you need for the just-in-case scenario. I have never seen even one client who did not have too many slides when we started working together. “But,” you say, “what if someone asks me a question and I can’t find the answer in my ten backup slides?” I suggest you tell the person you will get back to him or her in the next six hours. That should be sufficient.  Spend the time working on your key business objectives, which I guarantee have almost nothing to do with creating ten extra PowerPoint slides.
2. Stop organizing 40 minutes of data for a 20-minute talk. That means plan for 10-15 minutes of talking with time for discussion.  Do not create 20 slides and then decide which ones to keep or cut. That is a total waste of time. Instead, set up your presentation’s structure and then fill in the details. Tell your audience, “I know you have come to a 20-minute talk. I will be speaking 10-15 minutes, and then we can discuss.” They’ll love you, especially when they find out that you’re not overloading them with unnecessary and inappropriate details. Of course, I know this suggestion will not work for every situation. For example, a TED talk is supposed to be a certain length.
3. Stop writing those “perfect” long sentences on your slides. First of all, you are not supposed to put sentences on your slides. You are going to argue, “But sometimes people are not there and they need my slides.” Believe me; no one wants to look through a slide deck that has sentence after sentence. It’s boring and usually doesn’t make sense. Keep your audience from going nuts trying to read the words and listen to you at the same moment.  Make yourself a rule of how many words to put on a slide and stick to it. For sure, don’t have the same word on a slide more than one time.
4. Stop telling yourself you don’t have time to rehearse out loud. Here’s the ratio of preparation to rehearsal time for most people who are talking for twenty minutes.2011: 8 hrs to create slides + 10 minutes to think about the delivery with no rehearsal = boring and overdone

   Change the ratio:

   2012: 6 hrs to create slides + 1 hour to rehearse = a confident presentation and audience engagement

   People generally look and sound more confident when they have practiced out loud. Do it and you’ll be impressed with yourself!!

5. Stop thinking you are a graphic designer. Do not spend hours creating weird shapes just to make a simple point. Save yourself hours, even days, of time. Graphic design is an art, like sewing your own clothes. Trained graphic designers do know what they are doing. Most of us never went to school for this and should not attempt anything too fancy. What a graphic designer can do in 15 minutes will take you 2 hours and it won’t even look that good, no matter how many times you put shadows around the shapes.
6. Stop giving a presentation that is only about showing slides. Consider having some slides if you must, but then blanking out the screen and telling a story, showing a product or if you are brave, having a group dance your presentation.  Check this out. http://bit.ly/uSpOAx

More importantly spend time asking your audience for their feedback and comments.

I am sure you would like more hours in your days. So go cold turkey and make a resolution to stop these bad behaviors in 2012. I dare you to try these ideas and let me know what happens. Happy New Year!

Prepare for Your Presentation Like a Tango Dancer

Presenting is like dancing tango: prepare so you’ll be asked to perform again!

Whether leading or following, the dancer should not depend on the partner for balance. The same is true for presenters. We should not depend on our audience to motivate us, spark our enthusiasm and keep us energized.

How does an Argentine tango dancer prepare? Well, surprisingly, after going through the basic steps, many famous dancers have told me that the most important exercise is to practice without a partner!  In other words, the dancer needs to be able to do the moves by him or herself without relying on another person. Read the rest of this entry »

Four Antidotes for Presenters Who Share Too Much

Have you ever wondered why speakers:

Create presentations with more dense, text-heavy, unreadable slides than they can use?

Include charts and graphs that are impossible to read, let alone understand?

Data-speak and rarely get to the main point?

There are numerous studies indicating that hundreds of millions of dollars in productivity are lost each year due to information overload. Meanwhile, server farms, which house internet, business and telecommunications systems, consume 3% of our national power supply; worldwide, servers consume more power annually than Sweden – so that we can send ever larger documents that many of us will never read. Read the rest of this entry »

My colleague and I recently prepared a forty minute presentation to become selected as one of the vendors of choice for a large Fortune 100 company.  How much did the two of us prepare? Read the rest of this entry »

I interviewed Daena on how she looks at nervousness. Daena Giardella is an actor, director, coach and consultant. She has been called one of the “trailblazers” of training and one-woman improvisational theater performances.   http://www.daenagiardella.com/pages/teachingcalf.html

What do you tell clients who say, “I am so nervous. I can’t do this talk”?

Your nervousness can be your best friend. Nervousness is energy that may contain a message from your innermost self. Your job is to understand what it’s trying to tell you. And then you can harness and transform it into passion and smart choices. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s an idea for sitting. Leland has these wonderful images that really show you the different ways people sit.  Remember, people watch you all the time. You want to look attentive and in charge. I also find the Alexander Technique has taught me how to relax more of my body more of the time. This helps me “think” clearer.

Recently I did a workshop on how to demonstrate executive presence. I asked the group, “How do you stand up straight?” They said, “Put your shoulders back. Lift up your chest, Push your head back.” I did as they said, and people started laughing. I certainly didn’t look very executive! So what is the right way to stand up straight?  There are various ways to answer this question.  However, having now studied the Alexander Technique for six months,  I believe it offers several guidelines and is an approach that gives you the best results and teaches you not to overuse your body. Two websites will give you a great introduction to the Alexander Technique.

Leland Vall, in New York, at freeyourneck.com/blog has some great images, including the ones reproduced here. He also has a a book.

If you are really concerned about your back and posture, I suggest you take some Alexander lessons.

Wendy Capland is the founder and CEO of Vision Quest Consulting which provides the ultimate in programs for executive leadership development for top executives and their management teams. She is also the founder of The Magic Parties, a community of women who gather to birth themselves in new ways. http://magicparties.blogspot.com/

How do you calm yourself before a presentation?
I am not nervous anymore. After all, I’ve been doing this for 25 years. I do certain practices before I talk. I take deep breaths and ground myself. If I can, I close my eyes and do a spiritual practice of settling into my body, running energy from my feet to the heavens and then from the heavens through my feet.  I then focus on being with my audience and deep into myself at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »

“I want to engage the audience.”

Jim came to a workshop and said he wanted to be able to connect to the audience and have them make comments and ask questions. Then he gave his work presentation.

He talked very fast, never pausing between sentences. He was hard to understand as he did not say the end of many words. If someone in the class wanted to ask a question, the person would have had to interrupt Jim.

What’s wrong with this scenario? Read the rest of this entry »