If each PowerPoint was an inch, there would be enough PowerPoints to extend to the moon and back...over 10 times!
That’s a lot of slides.
Despite the considerable volume of generated slide decks, the old adage “practice makes perfect” hasn’t borne out. We all regularly encounter slide decks that merely repeat spoken content—often as a string of bullet points. Like this:
Read MoreWhen the time comes to present, you get up and start your presentation. But once you start, you can’t stop...not even to breathe. You’re off to the races. You easily finish in the time allotted, and when you ask for questions, there are none.
Was it good? Probably not.
I recently watched a speaker who used 11 ‘umms’ and ‘ahhs’ in the first 26 seconds of their presentation. That’s nearly a filler word every 2 seconds! I became fixated on them. I started counting.
Read MoreLike learning to play guitar, golf, or knit, improving your presentation skills takes practice.
We get asked all the time, how much should I practice? Good question.
In order to become a more effective communicator, we recommend the following:
Read MoreUltimately, if your audience doesn’t remember what you said, it’s the same as if they never attended your presentation in the first place.
Given the fragility of human memory, you need to design your presentations to pass the “Water Cooler Test.”
Our attention span is less than a goldfish (8 seconds, by the way)…
With our ability to pay attention going in the wrong direction, you must partition your content into bite-sized portions if you want people to retain the information you’re presenting.
Read MoreWe sit, we click on one video call after another, after another, after another.
What used to be in-person meetings in a conference room are now video calls.
While a lot has changed in the last 6 months, one thing has not -- the need to listen.
Read MoreCommunication was one area of business operations that was forced to rapidly evolve in response to the economic chaos and uncertainty of the pandemic. Specifically, the best leaders began to communicate:
More frequently,
With greater transparency,
Proactively as opposed to reactively,
From a position of deeper understanding and empathy,
And in a style that blended both data and humanity.
