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While listening to All Things Considered on NPR yesterday afternoon, I heard a story about video game jargon. Although I don’t know anything about video games, by the end of the story, I knew exactly what they were talking about. It was part of a special series ATC is doing on trade lingo. The show’s producers have...
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Why a Performance Approach to Business Presentations Doesn’t Work Presentations should not be confused with speeches. Speeches are a type of performance. Presentations are a type of conversation. That’s why we’ve redefined them as “Orderly Conversations.” Unfortunately, many people, even industry experts, hang on to the idea that a presentation should be “performed,” that it...
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A recent workshop participant said, “I don’t want to simplify this slide. The abundance of the data is where the story is.” As his coach, I cannot argue with that. This is exactly why those one-size-fits-all rules about the number of bullets or words on a slide don’t work. Admittedly, sometimes less is more. (And...
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A friend and fellow ATD Chicagoland board member sent this article to me, 9 Habits of Highly Effective Speakers, and asked what I thought. If you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, here is a snapshot of the nine “habits.” They are authentic. They choose phrases carefully. They keep it short. They rewrite. And they rewrite some...
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I remember watching Greg (Turpin’s VP) moderate a panel discussion several years ago. As I observed, I realized that the discussion was one of the best I’d ever attended. It was good, not only because of the insightful panelists (and they were) but also because of how Greg kept the conversation orderly through the use of some...
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Last week, we talked about “Beth,” a nervous presenter. Beth is a smart, articulate professional, but when it came to presenting, she struggled and became self-conscious. The first hurdle we had to jump was to settle her thoughts so that she could be in control. We did that through active pausing. Beth was amazed at how...
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I was working with an extremely nervous presenter in a recent Mastering Your Presentations workshop. She described her presentation experience like this: “My head races and swirls, and then it switches back on itself. I know that words are coming out of my mouth, but I don’t have any control over them. I must sound like...
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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 This is the final article in a series focusing on the need to take a fresh look at the visuals you use in your presentations. This article focuses on visuals intended to bring emphasis or emotion to the conversation. This type of visual might be a photograph (a completed project or...
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Part 1, Part 2, Part 4 This is the third in a series of four articles about the need to take a fresh look at the visuals you use in your presentations. In this article, I’ll talk about images that you use during your presentations that exist on their own outside of it (things like sales numbers,...
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Part 1, Part 3, Part 4 This is the second in a series of four articles about the need to take a fresh look at the visuals you use in your presentations. Here’s the question I posed at the end of the last article. As you know, we define presentations as Orderly Conversations. We need to ask how...
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