So the big nerves are over – for now at least. I’ve given a talk on Smart Use of Social at the CIPD HRD event and it seemed to go well. The little auditorium was overflowing, nothing like a crowd to put the fear in you!
I don’t know about you but increasingly I find straight forward presentations rather dull, and I’m not sure how much learning actually sticks. So I’ve been trying a few ways of making a talk more engaging that you might find useful to think about the next time you are asked to give a talk.
Pictures v Words
I’ve got a confession to make, I’m falling in love with PowerPoint. There, I’ve said it. It is a great tool for adding visual depth to a talk. The session I ran this morning had a few slides, and only one had any words on it (four of them in total). If you’ve lots of written stuff you want to share, that’s fine but please put it in a document, not on a bunch of slides.
Ask v Tell
I started the conversation asking people ‘what do you want to get out of this session?’. The beauty of this approach is that I’m dealing directly with the needs of the audience. It happened that some of those needs mapped nicely onto some of the images I had in the deck so where there was a good fit, I used them. I keep reminding myself that I know what little I know already and because I’m a lousy mind reader I find this a useful way to kick off a talk.
The Eyes Have It
Eye contact matters. Even though people say I don’t show it I get quite uptight when giving talks. Something that helps me to relax is the personal direct contact I have with others. So when I’m talking I talk to one person at a time. I try and make eye contact with as many people as I can. The interaction that produces is wonderful, and I find it reassuring. And I think it helps people in an audience feel involved too.
So there are three things that worked for me this morning, and it didn’t all go to plan…
Mister Invisible
Several people came up to me after the talk to say thanks, one guy even declared the session ‘brilliant’. Then I detected a buzz of ‘where can we find out more?’, ‘who was that guy?’. I froze. I had made a school boy error. I forgot to tell anyone my name, far less share any contact details. Idiot!
An alternative ……….
Every quarter, we have to give a commercial update to our wider stakeholders. It’s dry, it’s Powerpoint, it’s a routine presentation from 3 “Heads of” on each of their segments………… unless you write a story that tells the same information in a different and wittier way!!
Which is what I did on the last one – wrote an 8 minute short story (including the now famous “Hydra of Finance”) which went down a storm, although my Director looked somewhat worried throughout. Both of those points were a positive as was the autocue app on my iPad which meant i could walk around, make eye contact, wave my arms about and generally act my shoe-size rather than my age. I used 5 slides, 1 of which had words on it – the others were pictures
The negative …. how do I follow that as there is now an expectation? I’m working on a poem for next time!
Powerpoint is great as a support, not a crutch!
Super tale Chris. Briefer is better. Leaves more time to question and converse, good luck with the poem and thanks for sharing!