Monday 23 January 2017

Speeding up your presentation is not the answer when time is short – now there’s scientific proof!

“I’ve got a lot to get through, so I’m going to go quite fast”.

How many times have you heard this from someone giving a business presentation? And how effective did those presenters turn out be?

Speeding up, as I have often said to those I coach in Presentation Skills, is not an effective answer to communicating a lot of information in a short space of time. Indeed, it will probably do more harm than good. And now there is some science to support what I have been saying; published in the journal Cognition, it was reported in both the Times (see below) and here in the Daily Mail.


The findings of the research, by Dr Uriel Cohen Piva, assistant professor at Brown University in the USA, are quite complicated and the Daily Mail has almost inevitably led on a reader-friendly gender divide. The nub of it, however, is that as speech sped up, the information rate declined. 

So what can business presenters do when they have a lot to convey in a short amount of time? The best approach is to be ruthless about your editing – you need to accept the fact that you suffer from the ‘Curse of Knowledge’ and need to ‘Kill some Darlings’, just as TV and film makers do. I have discussed these issues at various times in the past and you can click on some links for the articles, the most recent featuring Jeremy Clarkson.

Thereafter, there are a number of tactics you can deploy, primarily:

First, be sure to time yourself carefully as you rehearse. The brain plays tricks on you at times like this and your presentation will always seem either longer or shorter than it actually is.

Second, aim to come in a little under time. People will thank you for that and you will have a built-in comfort margin. It may even help in terms of stimulating follow up questions.

Third, build in some content at around the 75% mark that is nice to have, but not essential. That way, this can be cut if necessary, so that you can avoid having to rush or even manage without your closing comments.

Finally, remember that if you are forced to curtail your closing comments you are messing up the most crucial part of your presentation. ‘Firsts & Lasts’ are the most important elements of any presentation for two main reasons: 1) Those are what your audience remember and 2) Your close contains your ‘Call to Action’ – a crystal clear (rather than rushed or stunted) definition of what you want your audience to do and to remember.

Monday 16 January 2017

How effective could my business presentations be if I were able to read minds like Derren Brown?

Of all the questions I am asked when applying the Rules of Magic to business presentation skills, “Can you use mindreading techniques to win people over?” is the one that crops up most consistently.

The short answer is ‘yes’, but it’s a very qualified yes because the secret behind most ‘mindreading’ is blatant, and often quite simple, trickery. No one really likes to hear that, so they persist with: “But what about the stuff Derren Brown does?” Again, mostly trickery, with elements of psychology mixed in, but this does lead to where we can have a more constructive conversation on the subject of Cold Reading.

Essentially, Cold Reading is about truly observing – rather than just seeing – everything around you and putting that information to good use. Sherlock Holmes is the best known exponent of this technique and would famously chastise Watson with: “You see, but you do not observe,” before drawing all kinds of conclusions about a person based on the way they dress, the scuff on their shoes, the hint of a scent and a study of their gait.

I recently found myself in the perfect position to point to the benefits of some ultra-simple Cold Reading when I helped a Korean start-up business with their investor pitch. They had a whole new hi-tech take on personal identification for online security and they were pointing to the potential for their product in different parts of the world. They displayed a global map that was divided into percentages, with higher scores featuring in the West than the East. When they finished I confessed I had failed to understand this part – what did the percentages represent?

Then, and only then, did they explain that until quite recently people in Eastern cultures tended to use a stamp impression to identify themselves rather than a signature. Then someone else chipped in: “It’s a bit like the signet rings that British people used for stamping sealing wax on important documents.”  “Like this,” I replied, showing my own signet ring bearing my family’s ancient crest and motto.” Just as I had very little knowledge of Eastern practices, my client had never seen the Western equivalent and in my explanation I had to avoid getting too bogged down in the complexities of Royal Charters and the Norman invasion.

What came out of this, however, were at least two very useful little nuggets for future versions of the pitch. First, actively use – and maybe even make a feature of – the cultural differences between stamps and signatures. It may seem peripheral to your ‘big sell’ but it’s all good story material with the potential to interest and intrigue your audience. 

Second, do a little ‘Cold Reading’ before you get started, especially in a room full of Brits in the City of London. Scan the room to see who has a signet ring, probably on the pinky finger of their left hand. Then you can get individuals actively involved in your storytelling. It builds a bridge between the two different cultures, together with empathy between yourself and your audience.

Show business people other than magicians will be familiar with this process, without necessarily regarding it as ‘Cold Reading’. “Who’s in tonight?” they will ask the theatre manager, keen to know of any particular coach groups with special interests, regionalities or special interests they can bounce off. As for magicians and their trickery, that inevitably has to remain shrouded in secrecy but, while much of it is surprisingly simple, technology has undoubtedly helped. Indeed, in the early days of the internet many mindreaders made a specialty of picking a supposedly random audience member and telling them intricate details of their schooldays – all plucked supposedly direct form their minds. Those mindreaders continue to this day to curse the demise of Friends Reunited!