"By hook or by crook…connect, connect and connect with your audience." Tom Peters

The most successful presentations are made by those who connect with their audience. But what does that audience connection mean exactly?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines "connection" as: "An association or relationship." In computer terms, a "connection" occurs when we join with others through a communication link.  Connecting with your audience is all of that. Communicating, associating, relating.

Connecting with your audience involves them in the core of what you are saying in your presentation, in the ideas and information you are giving them. At a deeper level, you’re not just giving a speech; you’re creating a two-way interchange based on common interests.

When we connect things, we bind them together. When we connect with our audience, we bind them to us. If we really connect with them, they’ll want to see and hear from us again. By doing this, we create the starting point of a relationship. When we feel a rapport with someone - -a person or a group — a sense of trust and affinity begins to develop. Whatever your objective — the information or points you want to get across — you need to be in sync with the people you are trying to reach – your audience.

Let’s look at some of the ways in which we can treat an audience so that they will trust us, feel a rapport with us and perhaps even want to hear more about our ideas or our products.

More on Public Speaking: Connect with your Audience, Part 1

We're issuing a press release for our upcoming By Invitation Only Complete Communicator workshop.  I am including a copy here for any of our readers who may be local and interested in experiencing our work firsthand:

Terry Gault, VP of Services for The Henderson Group, defined this workshop as “combining several programs into one intense skills-development program, where employees learn to communicate effectively one-on-one, leading small groups, standing before intimidating executive audiences, and facilitating meetings.” 

 

Terry Gault will be leading the “By Invitation Only” Complete Communicator Workshop in San Francisco, August 14-15, 2008. 

 

Terry has been a coach, trainer, and consultant in communications skills since 1997.  In addition to executive coaching and leading workshops in presentation and communication skills, Terry oversees all curriculum and services and is responsible for the selection, training and development of all trainers and facilitators for The Henderson Group. 

 

Through the Henderson Group's unique and proven feedback model, participants receive immediate feedback from instructors, peers and videotape, enabling them to rapidly learn, reflect and improve their communication skills.  The workshop is limited to 10 participants to insure plenty of personal attention to each participant.

 

A. Anastasi, of Oracle, said of the workshop, "I have used the skills learned in class. In fact, my team is hosting our quarterly departmental meeting on Friday and I again plan on using your techniques. I have taken several courses through Oracle University and I can honestly say that yours was the most exciting and challenging of them all. Thank you."

 

Specific Skills Mastered:

• Structuring presentations for maximum impact
• "Thinking on your feet" to better handle questions and objections
• Engaging listeners and increasing attention span
• Building rapport and credibility with audiences
• Exploring thinking and reasoning in ways that build relationships
• Turning hostile discussions into joint problem-solving sessions

Terry Gault further explained, “Presentations - whether one-on-one meetings or speaking before a huge audience - can drive fear to exquisitely high levels.  Some fear is useful; it forces you to take time out of your crammed schedule to prepare the presentation. But when fear crosses the line from excitement to dread, it can impair concentration and kill energy.  It can negatively affect that carefully crafted speech and make you swear off presentations forever … which would be a shame. Few skills will propel your career faster than the ability to speak in public.  We help people overcome the fear of public speaking.”

 

Chuck Kuglen, The Henderson Group’s VP of Sales and Business Development, added, “Our work has to be experienced to truly understand its value.  We use these workshops as a way to introduce our work experientially to new prospective clients. With that in mind, we set aside a couple of free seats for the right candidates.”

 

ABOUT THE HENDERSON GROUP – The Henderson Group trains and coaches business professionals in the art of communication and presentation through our experiential methodology. Since 1990, The Henderson Group has helped Fortune 500 companies worldwide improve employee productivity and business results through the development of communication skills.

I’m often asked the question by clients whether a presentation or a speech should be completely written word-for-word, or whether it is acceptable to be ad-lib – as if these were the only two options.

My response is that both are not good ideas: presentations should definitely not be either ad-lib or set in stone.

Presentations should be interactive. They should have questions, allow questions, and be audience focused. To do this, a presentation has to remain flexible. Bad presentations often consist of a presenter reading their verbose, text-heavy slides in a monotone.

This can be alleviated by a few things.

1. Never treat a presentation as a speech or a lecture: the audience matters. Always allow time for comments and questions, and be flexible enough to finish up on time, every time.
2. Be aware of your energy level and your body language. It is important to keep an open posture and a high energy level to maintain audience alertness.
3. Use a format that is simple and easy to follow. Do not use a lot of text (if any…pictures can often be more effective) in your slides or flip-charts. Instead, focus on the big picture. If the presentation is overly technical, use hand-outs for the small details. Keeping these in mind will go far to improve your presentation.

As to speeches, you probably shouldn’t write it word-for-word. Now, a lot of people will respond to this advice by saying that politician’s speeches are often word-for-word, so theirs should also be word-for-word. While this is true, politicians are trained to use tele-prompters…an art in itself.

More on Public Speaking: Word-for-word or Ad-lib?

A lot of people flounder at starting conversations with strangers.  They don’t know where to start or what to say – god knows they don’t want to offend someone. 

Here are a few simple rules to keep in mind.

1: Instead of throwing out your hand and diving straight into your life story, a better way to start a conversation with someone is to ask simple but pertinent questions ; getting the person you are talking with to talk about their work, family or their hobbies is a safe and reliable way to make a personal connection.

Further, simple questions are especially good since compound questions confuse the other party and they’ll generally only answer one piece of your multi-part question.

With these questions, a thing to keep in mind is that you want to keep your questions broad without narrowing their options. For example, narrowing their options in a business setting might sound like, “What are you struggling with? Is it time to market? Is it low productivity? Is it loss of market share?” It tends to skew the results and you are less likely to get an accurate or comprehensive response. Once asked, shut-up and make sure you really listen to what the other person is saying.

2: When asking these questions, it is important to remember that physical cues are just as important as your questions. If you are stone-faced, this is not going to be remembered well by who you are interacting with. Be animated! Smile and nod your head slightly to show you have heard them when they are finished. Maintain eye contact with them when they are speaking to you.

3: Along these lines comes a powerful technique called smiling while probing. I find that much of the time, people will only provide surface details unless I probe with follow up questions. This works in social situations when you do it with warmth and genuine curiosity. Smile, tease, coax them, charm and cajole. You can get away with murder … as long as you smile and project good humor and empathy.  

More on How to Start a Conversation: Communication Skills

The ability to both give and receive candid performance feedback is critical in highly dynamic, fast-moving organizations. "Too-nice bosses often make workplace worse" is the title of Jared Sandberg’s recent Wall Street Journal article. "By avoiding confrontation, not giving unpleasant feedback, a hands-off manager can allow problems to ferment."

Lowrie Beacham, manager of a fitness company, disliked confronting people or making decisions that favored one staffer over another, especially when two employees were vying to be in charge of the new fitness center.

"Instead of having one bad day and getting over it, it went on for literally years." What resulted was a dysfunctional workplace, so he gave up his management role. Instead of avoiding confrontations and decisions or giving up your position altogether, here are some simple guidelines for giving and receiving feedback effectively.

1. Focus on actions, not attitude. When you say to an employee, "Your attitude is not very professional," it’s like saying, "I don’t like your height." Don’t be personal. An attitude is more like a personality trait. You’re on much safer ground if you focus on actions instead. People are much less likely to resist the critique or defend themselves.
2. Be specific. Prepare your feedback with the journalist’s formula: Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. Who was involved, what happened, where did it happen, when did it happen, how did it affect others? You might not know the Why until the feedback; in fact, you might not ever know, so you need to be as specific as possible with the facts you have.
3. Be accurate and have documentation. When you’re giving feedback, be sure your facts are right. Write them down. All those dates and numbers, what people said, it all needs to be accurately noted. "The palest ink is better than the best memory," according to the ancient Chinese, so document your feedback and have on hand any documentation relevant to the critique.
4. Be inquiring. Before giving feedback, you need to learn everything you can about the situation. During the feedback, keep asking questions. Questions asked, both ways, during the critique help to develop plans for future action.
5. Deliver in a timely manner. Be sure you give feedback before both your memories have faded. Doug Larson, an English racer, said, "A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience." You lose impact if you delay.

More on It Pays to Be Candid: 10 Tips on Business Communication

"Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment." Robert Benchley

Procrastination. We are all guilty of that particular vice. Don’t do it. Take the first step in preparing your presentation. Force yourself onto the chair and get ready. Preparation may not be the most exciting aspect of your project, but it can be the single most important ingredient in your presentation. You may be able to charm anyone on the spot or possess the charisma of the most dynamic person in the world, but without preparation for a speech or meeting, you can still stumble and fall. How to prepare then?

First, imagine your audience. Who they are. What their expectations are. How you will connect with them. What you want to tell them. What you hope to accomplish. The specifics: Where you will be when you give your presentation – the facilities, the lighting. You need to know specifically what type of presentation you’re going to give. Are you motivating an audience? Giving valuable and/or timely information? Trying to sell something? How are you going to do it? What are you going to say?

Ideas, ideas, ideas. You have so many. Random or specific, write all these ideas down. Even if they don’t seem to relate to each other. Take three minutes and scribble ideas for your presentation on a sheet of paper. Don’t over-think this process. Ideas that may sound ridiculous at first can spur other more sensible and/or practical ideas; they can create unusual associations that lead to unique insights. Don’t stop writing. Don’t edit or go back and cross out any words. Let your thoughts flow like a river. As in visual art, make thumbnail sketches but with words rather than pictures.

All right. Now what?  More on Preparing and Practicing Your Presentation

When an eager young person, perhaps a recent college graduate, applies for a job, will they mention their MySpace page? Or their Facebook entry? Probably not, but those sites can be checked, regardless of whether or not they’ve added them to their resume, application or(for some reason) are discussing them during their job interview.

Employers engaged in the hiring process today often consider their candidate’s online pictures and pages, which are quickly and easily accessible on the internet. More than ever, a reputation gained (or lost) by these sites may be an important aspect of whether or not that eager young person is one who wins the job.

NY Times columnist, Thom Friedman, reminds us that, "When everyone has a blog, a MySpace page or Facebook entry, everyone is a publisher. When everyone has a cell phone with a camera in it, everyone is a paparazzo. When everyone can upload video on YouTube, everyone is a filmmaker. When everyone is a publisher, paparazzo or filmmaker, everyone else is a public figure. We’re all public figures now. The blogosphere has made the global discussion so much richer – and each of us so much more transparent."

Since the word transparency is defined as seeing through an object, in discussing individual reputations, it also defines seeing the faults and missteps caught and recorded — now instantly available to the world.

More on Transparency and Reputation: Communication

This blog post from MindTools.com on active listening is extremely pertinent, thoughtful and well written. So much so that I don't have anything to add. I recommend that you read it for yourself:

http://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/ActiveListening.htm

This last Saturday, June 21, I finished reading "What is the What" by Dave Eggars. It is billed as a novel but is essentially a biography of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the "Lost Boys" of Sudan who fled a civil war in Sudan.

Thousands of boys died during their 1,000- mile walk to Ethiopia, most from starvation and dehydration, some from man-eating lions, and others from attack by the murahaleen; Sudanese government-armed Arab militias. The boys live for a time in relative peace in a refugee camp - Pinyudo.

Then, Valentino and all refugees at Pinyudo are forced to leave Ethiopia when that country's dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam, is overthrown. They were run out of the country at gunpoint and forced to swim the Gilo River where two thousand lives were claimed by shooting, drowning or crocodiles.

They ended up in a huge refugee camp - Kakuma in Kenya. Eventually, Valentino made it to the United States where he met Dave Eggars, a Bay Area writer who agreed to write his story. Valentino has created a foundation and uses his web site to tell the story of his efforts to rebuild his village (Marial Bai) in Sudan.

The setting: In the vast camp of Kakuma which houses 72,000 refugees from all over Africa, Valentino has achieved a position of leadership. He's been a model student in the camp's schools gaining an education he never would have had in his village in Sudan. He's participated in the camp's drama program and even performed plays in the other-worldly, bustling metropolis of Nairobi. He's gained the lofty status of coordinator for the Youth and Culture Program, a paying job with an office, unheard of for a Sudanese boy without any family.

More on Public Speaking enhances leadership of famous African refugee, Valentino Achak Deng

We're excited to announce (and join the ranks of) Guy Kawasaki's latest venture Alltop! 

Inspired by popurls, Alltop helps you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web.  You can think of an Alltop site as a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet.

Be sure to check out the top public speaking sites page: http://speaking.alltop.com/