In our business presentation workshops, we sometimes do an exercise in which we stretch the length of a pause—way beyond what would ever be comfortable or necessary—in order to show our learners how pausing helps eliminate a variety of presentation habits they want to avoid. We also teach people that in a presentation or meeting...
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You’re a detail-oriented person working in a highly technical position. You probably wonder how much detail you should go into when presenting to managers and leaders. You may even have been asked not to go into information overload again. You’re not alone. This is a topic that comes up a lot in our presentation skills...
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Among many of our learners, there is a persistent belief that the number of slides in one’s presentation is somehow related to the amount of time the presentation will take. While there is some connection when it comes to big differences (a 600 slide deck will probably take longer to present than a 6 slide...
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I was leading a presentation skills workshop a few weeks ago when something happened that has never happened before. It was during the needs assessment discussion. This is when we go around the room, and everyone talks about their needs and what they’d like to take away from the class. This was a small group,...
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The Orderly Conversation is getting around. This time it’s in India where an online publication, Indezine, has interviewed co-authors Dale Ludwig and Greg Owen-Boger about the book and the writing process they followed. We’d like to thank Geetesh Bajaj, editor at Indezine, for his insightful questions. Geetesh: Compared to other presenters’ books, The Orderly Conversation is a book...
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Any number of books and articles about business presentations focus on skills and outcomes that really belong to the world of theater. Such resources may tell you that you need to be entertaining, invent a presentation persona, or use acting techniques to jazz up your presentation. For example, they may tell you to rehearse when...
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Last week I was working with a nervous workshop participant. Let’s call him Nate. Nate said that his biggest concern when presenting was nervousness. “What sort of nervousness is it?” I asked since nervousness is caused by different things for different people. “Is it about the audience, the topic you’re talking about, or something else?”...
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Recently, I had an opportunity to observe Greg coaching a very Type-A businessperson. In her one-on-one session, the question arose of how to deal with mistakes. During her in-class presentation delivery, she had experienced a brain blip and had given an amount in thousands when she meant hundred-thousands. She had stopped, smiled, and said something like, “Well,...
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Often, our learners walk into Turpin workshops expecting to focus on the little habits that are hard to break: saying “um,” “uh,” “like,” or “you know” too much; using uptalk (that habit that makes every statement sound like a question); fidgeting/not standing still; keeping hands in pockets; making a particular face or gesture. Our response...
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Sometimes in workshops, we discover that our learners are working with slides or whole decks they didn’t create, and some of these slides are not only unnatural to deliver but also confusing in their layout, organization, or even in the information they include. If you’re confused by a slide, your audience is not going to...
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