BetterPresenting

Thanking God

Like many sports enthusiasts, I sat with rapt attention last weekend watching 59-year-old Tom Watson defy father time and all matter of plausibility by coming within one putting stroke of winning the British Open. His grace and poise impressed all of us; however, the eventual winner Stewart Cink impressed me even more, for two reasons:

1) He knew that 99% of the gallery and worldwide television audience was rooting against him in the four-hole playoff he waged with Watson, and there was absolutely nothing that he could do about it.

2) During his victory speech, he invoked his faith in an unusual and refreshing way.

While this was not a hostile audience, Cink knew that he was in a delicate situation, going up against an overwhelming sentimental favorite (the Scotland gallery was rooting for Watson even over the British golfers in the field). He handled this situation the way that I would counsel a client who was about to give a presentation before a potentially disagreeable audience: with respect, earnestness, and grace. Cink did not take the partisanship personally, he respected and appreciated the gallery's biases, he competed earnestly and without fear, and won with grace and class.

Even more noteworthy was how he credited his faith for helping him win without being obnoxious or polarizing. This is a touchy subject, I know -- I probably shouldn't even be blogging about it. I abhor when athletes with strong religious backgrounds remark how "God was on my side today," or solemly state that "God just didn't want me to win today."

Please.

There are few things more ridiculous, and more off-putting, than the notion that God cares who wins one of our recreational pastimes. I think our supreme being has better things to do than take a rooting interest in us. But Cink phrased it differently:

"I lift this [trophy] up to God for giving me the ability to withstand the pressures and obstacles I face on the golf course."

To my ear, this is a completely different message. Cink knows that winning or losing is a function of his performance and that he is solely responsible for how well he performs. In order to perform well, everyone needs to find his or her inner strength and Cink has found his through his faith.

His was not an in-your-face expression of his religious beliefs. It was not intended to be divisive or evangelical, and I don't believe anyone took it that way. I think that religion finds its highest form when it gives people the strength to do great things, and that was what Cink represented with his eloquence.

As a presentations coach, I often spend many hours helping people find that inner strength -- sometimes in vain. As a pramatist, I don't much care where it comes from. Some people find it through a confidence they were born with, some from a passion for their work. Some get it from the love of people close to them, and others from their faith.

But the presenters/performers who generally have difficulty tapping into this reservoir are the ones who describe their primary emotion as fear of failure. They become far too conscious of external matters and rarely channel their inner being, the one that usually knows innately how to accomplish the task at hand.

If God is the ingredient that can get them to turn inward and find the strength of character to perform at their best, that is a happy ending, in my book.

Your mileage may vary; we're talking religion, after all. Do you agree that Stewart Cink allowed his faith to bring out the best in him and his was a simple acknowledgment of that? Or do you nonetheless feel that his remarks were over the top and inappropriate? If so, let me have it...

What we can learn from Michael Jackson

The passing of legend Michael Jackson has been felt in every part of society's fabric, so it should come as no surprise that the community of presentation professionals can reflect on his life and take something from his experiences.

As I separate the bizarre from the pathetic, I try to disregard the surgeries, skin-bleaching, bed-sharing, and bone-scavenging. Instead, I focus on the loneliness and extreme isolation which led to his confusing two important emotions -- a confusion that could befall anyone who performs in public.

Michael Jackson confused attention with adoration and adoration with love. He wanted people to love him and thought that he could get there through his fame. That became a dreadful, perhaps fatal, cycle. As Jackson said to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the unofficial rabbi to the stars in Los Angeles, "I want people to love me...because I never really felt loved. Maybe if I sharpen my craft, people will love me more."

This is an all-too-easy trap for anyone in the public eye, including presenters who might place inordinate value in earning applause from an audience. If that is the closest personal connection they feel to other people, they are bound to become lonely.

I have experienced a related dynamic myself. In the course of four compressed days at PowerPoint Live, we develop tight bonds with people whom we have just met and it is easy to regard these types of friendships as more than they are. Not to suggest for even a moment that there is anything artificial in the affinity that we all feel for one another, because the congeniality and the vibe that we create at the conference is one of its most important qualities. Come Thursday morning, however, the day after the conference closes, we all realize that our newfound BFFs cannot replace the closeness of life-long relationships that have been forged over decades.

Many of the veteran alumni who see each other year upon year have created lasting relationships, and that is the point -- they take time and earnest effort.

If we presenters are not careful, we could find ourselves seeking the quick fix that Jackson did -- adoration instead of love. When you have just nailed a presentation and 200 people are all standing and applauding, it's tempting to want to have the Sally Field moment. We can bring meaning to Michael Jackson's passing if we remember the importance of cultivating genuine and healthy relationships, instead of fooling ourselves into believing that a grateful audience can magically turn into a room full of best friends.

The Debate Over “On Click”

The Debate Continues
Over “On Click”

A workshop or seminar rarely passes in which I do not have occasion to engage in a favorite controversy: Whether or not to display a list of ideas or bullet points one by one or all at once.

One reason that this issue rubs me wrong is because so many content creators do not give any thought to it at all: They apply animation to their text and they accept PowerPoint’s default setting, which is to have bullets appear one by one (On Click).

Their entire reason for choosing a presentation strategy is because of the program’s default setting.

I would feel much better, and one’s argument would carry more weight with me, if there was some forethought given to this decision. Choosing a path because software suggests it is rarely a recipe for success. Let me hear “I thought about the differences and have decided that this is the better way to go.”

Because she has done exactly that, I will take respectful issue with my friend, colleague, and she whom I describe as the rock star of presentations Nancy Duarte. In her outstanding book on presentation design slide:ology, Nancy writes this on page 145:

I prefer to have text build sequentially as I’m not sure why anyone would want the audience to jump ahead. Remember, if the audience can see your bullets, they know the points you’re going to make. They’ll get bored or agitated waiting for you to catch up with them.

Let’s start with common ground: If you have designed a slide with 15 bullet points on it, then yes, you had better bring those points in gradually. I think Nancy and I would also agree that if you have created a slide with 15 bullets, the least of your troubles is how you choose to display them.

But with a properly-proportioned list of ideas—with a slide that has four or five tersely-worded bullets on it—I believe more good than harm comes from displaying them all at once. You allow the audience to see the forest from the trees and you make it easier on yourself by eliminating altogether the risk that you might forget how many bullets are left and run past the last one.

If I am a capable presenter, I should not be concerned in the least of my audience running ahead. How far can they go?? It’s my job to keep them on point. It’s my responsibility to keep them engaged, and if I can’t do my job, I shouldn’t blame my PowerPoint plumbing for that.

Most of the time, I want them to know where I am going with a story or an argument. I want them to have that context.

My position on this has become only more adament over the past 12 months when I heard from users who are put off—actually insulted—by the practice of revealing bullets one at a time. I don’t blame them—why shouldn’t they have the context for the discussion that I have? What am I trying to hide? Why am I trying to be coy? Do I think my audience can’t keep up? Do I think that they are not smart enough?

These are legitimate questions that are raised by an over-reliance of the On Click in PowerPoint animation.

Now I draw stark contrast to the treatment of dense, chunky data, like an involved chart or a big table. That is an entirely different situation, in which Nancy and just about everyone else who has spoken at PowerPoint Live would agree: Elements like these absolutely need to be sequenced and spoon-fed to an audience.

But when it comes to bullets, my position on this is unconflicted: Life is just too short to worry about them. They're not worth the trouble. Everyone’s life is made easier when you display simple lists of ideas all at once.

I'd love to hear what you have to say about it...

A Blast from the Past...and the Tyranny of PowerPoint

One of the finest live presentations I have ever witnessed featured a man and a microphone. It was in 1989, the debut event of the CorelWORLD User Conference, the precursor to the PowerPoint Live User Conference. John Meyer, the president of Ventura Software, was the keynote speaker. He did not speak from a script, yet it was obvious that he knew what he wanted to say. He began at a podium, but frequently moved to the edge of the stage where nothing separated him from his audience. He was always looking into someone’s eyes, and regularly journeyed from one side of the room to another.

He spoke of the company’s beginnings, but resisted all temptations to proper the dreadful “corporate background” speech. He shared with us through anecdotes how customers had influenced the product, but did not give in to the air-puffed “we are responsive to your needs” cliches. And he shared with us his goals for the software, but never once used words like “proactive,” “vision,” “innovative,” or any other buzzword that sounds good but means nothing at all.

The crowd of 300 was utterly riveted. They watched his every move, and hung on his every word. All the focus was on John, as the lights were up and there were no multimedia distractions behind him.

One year later, Xerox had taken over the software. Instead of entrepreneur John Meyer giving the opening keynote address, it was corporate journeyman-turned-president Larry Gerhardt. He began with a corporate backgrounder, offered his own resume, talked about how Xerox would be responsive to our needs, and spoke of being proactive and innovative. For the attendees at this conference, this wasn’t a speech; it was a punishment.

It was bad enough that this address was everything that conference goers didn’t care about, and delivered with the energy and charisma of a potato. What made it worse were the slides—those dreadful slides. Instead of working the room, Gerhardt was working the projector, fiddling with transparencies and trying not to put his face in the light.

This leads to a question that has been nagging me for the last two years: Where have all the good presenters gone? Because I refuse to believe that there aren’t any left, there must be something else going on, and I’ll tell you what it is:

Presentation software

The tyranny of presentation software is what it does to skilled speakers. It takes good speakers, able to carry an audience with their voice and their language, and it dummies them down.

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I wrote these words in October 1998. It is both entertaining and troubling to see how far and how little we have progressed in the span of a decade. You can read the entire article at

http://www.betterppt.com/editorial/archive/98oct.htm

What do you think — have we learned anything? Are we better off today? Or just more endowed with technology and toys...?