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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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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Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 We need a new way to talk about the visual component of business presentations. I didn’t use the term “visual aids” to describe this part of the process for a reason. That term, one that has been around long enough to have been applied to everything from a flip chart to...
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Part 1, Part 2 This is the final article about the perils of business presenters following the same path as the elocutionary movement. The great thing about The Ideal Orator is that its approach, from our twenty-first-century perspective, is completely over the top. Anyone reading this book today would recognize its unnatural exaggeration of delivery behaviors, its focus...
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Part 1, Part 3 As I mentioned in the first article on this topic, I stumbled upon an old elocution textbook among a pile of books that were about to be hauled away from my mother’s house. It was published in 1895, at the tail end of the elocutionary movement’s popularity. While the movement began as a...
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Part 2, Part 3 Several years ago, my mother was cleaning out her attic. She was very good at throwing things out, but always hesitated when it came to books. When I visited her during this cleaning phase, she directed me to the latest stack and told me to take what I wanted. Last chance, she...
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