In this chapter

• Seven-point strategy for overcoming nervousness
• How audiences listen
• Power of association and conditioning
• Influence of culture and group dynamics
• Why you must be succinct
• The role of unspoken language

As you approach the point of having to stand and deliver, chances are you’ll have an attack of the nerves. For some reason, when the spotlight is on us we lose confidence in our ability to deliver an impressive performance. Let’s be very clear about this. It is a performance anxiety. So let me offer you a seven-point strategy for bringing those nerves under control.

First, identify what your fears really are. Are you afraid that:

• people might laugh;
• you might dry up;
• people will stop listening;
• your voice will break;
• people will be hostile;
• you will not meet expectations;
• you’ll make a fool of yourself;
• you will lose face or status?

Seven-point strategy for overcoming nervousness

1. Remind yourself that you know what you are talking about. Why is it you speaking? What do you know that the audience don’t know?
2. Thoroughly prepare and trust your material. If you know what you want to talk about, and you have all the facts and ideas ready, you can’t be caught out.
3. Keep repeating your core message. It will give you focus. Keep saying to yourself, ‘What I want them to hear, understand and accept is . . .’
4. Do not try to deliver the whole encyclopaedia on your subject. Keep it simple. You can deliver an entire presentation on just one point. Or you can make it two or three points. That’s enough for any audience.
5. Do some proper deep breathing. Take a deep breath, then breathe out and when you think you have emptied your lungs, blow out six imaginary candles. Then breathe in again. Do this three times just before it’s time to speak. It will clear your head.
6. Raise your metabolism. Go somewhere private, throw your arms up in the air and cry, ‘YES!!’ Do that three times. If you cannot go somewhere private, grip your seat between your legs and pull upwards as hard as you can, and release. Do that three times, just before it’s your turn to speak.
7. Finally, recall some incident involving a child or an animal, an incident that makes you smile. That will create an inner smile, which will make you look more approachable, and your audience will respond with friendly smiles.

FEAR stands for:

False

Evidence

Appearing

Real

Be worried if you’re NOT nervous. Are you properly tuned in?

• Use the adrenalin. It keeps you on your toes.
• Always make the effort to persuade your audience.
• Never take an audience for granted.
• Tune in to what the audience want and find the energy to provide it.

Your audience consists of people just like you. They have the same doubts and anxieties as you, but above all, they want you to succeed. No one attends a presentation wanting the presenter to fail. So they are on your side and will help you along, if necessary. Incidentally, even the most experienced speakers have nerves and performance anxiety before they speak. Once they get started (as you will probably find yourself) they are fine.

When I was at university, the lecturers would stride back and forth at the front of the room, often with hands behind their backs, sometimes pausing to stare out of the window while still delivering their wisdom for the benefit of anyone who cared to listen. They weren’t much bothered either way, and quite a few of the students were equally uninvolved, slipping out of the lecture room soon after registration. As examples of communication, those lectures were poor, and we were left to pick the bones out of their content, supplementing them with our own reading.

How audiences listen

I didn’t realise it at the time, but quite a few of those lecturers had developed that disconnected, uncaring style out of performance anxiety. If business presentations were delivered in the same way, they would be a total waste of time. It is important to connect with the audience, and recognise how they listen and understand. Remember that people listen:

• for a confirmation of what they already know;
• to obtain new information;
• to learn and understand;
• to be entertained.

As I explained in Chapter 4, your audience first want to know that you are on the same page as they are, that you have knowledge in common, that your starting position is their existing fund of knowledge, and that you will extend that knowledge. Unfortunately, even when the subject is of interest to them, they will remember only 25 to 50 per cent (or even less) of what they hear, within a few days of your presentation.

Every person has their own way of listening. If they are interested (and your first job is to engage their interest) they will make mental summaries of what you are saying, and relate those summaries to what they already know. Then they will try and build a memorable structure, filtering out what they don’t need or cannot understand or accept. No one can remember an entire presentation after a single hearing. See if you can remember just one page of your own script after reading it once. For them to understand, accept and remember what you say, you must help them. Follow a simple structure (that you share with them) and relate your new ideas to established thinking on your subject.

I’ll return to what you could and should do about holding their attention and improving their recall, but first let me show you what happens in every audience. In fact, in every person present. Their concentration span is short, and they drift in and out of what is being said, as this diagram illustrates:

Track 150

We think at an average speed of 500 words per minute or more. You are on Track 150, presenting at an average of (say) 150 words per minute, taking the audience from where they are to where you want them to be (dotted arrow).

Track 350

Your listeners’ brains have a surplus of at least double that (350 w.p.m.). That surplus capacity is not going to lie dormant. Thoughts will intrude, even if your listeners are trying to give you their full attention. Each time that happens, they will be on Track 350.

If you say anything they do not understand or do not agree with, they will deal with it on Track 350. That is also where they get their ‘Aha!’ moments, when they get the point you have been making. Each time, they drift onto Track 350.

Of course, they return to join you on Track 150, because you are making the most noise in the room, but each time they have missed a bit of what you were saying.

Typical presentation timeline

INTRODUCTION (Half attention) → HOOK (Track 150) → MAP/AGENDA (Track 350, visualising sequence) →

THEME 1 (Track 150) → (intermittently Track 350) → TRANSITION/LOOP BACK (Track 150) → RHETORICAL QUESTION (Track 150) →

THEME 2 (Track 150) → (intermittently Track 350) → TRANSITION/LOOP BACK (Track 150) → RHETORICAL QUESTION (Track 150) →

THEME 3 (Track 150) → (intermittently Track 350) → TRANSITION/LOOP BACK (Track 150)

SUMMARY (Track 350, putting elements in pigeon-holes) → CALL TO ACTION (Track 150)

This is, of course, only an example of how attention may drift in and out, and the pattern will vary according to the individual concerned and the occasion. The one certainty, however, is that it will occur, and you will need to plan to recapture attention at frequent intervals.

It happens in daily conversations

Think about the way you listen to someone in conversation. While they are telling you about some incident or experience, don’t you often:

• think of something they reminded you of;
• prepare what you want to say at the first available opportunity;
• work out the right point at which to come in?

It’s the same thing. You may think you are multi-tasking, but that’s a myth. What you are actually doing is drifting in and out of Track 150.

We all do it. It’s going to happen when you present, so expect it and plan to cope with it. The best way is to loop back. Using your transitions, and referring to the ‘Map’ you gave at the start of your presentation, remind people of what you have just covered, and tell them what’s coming next. That helps them to catch up and make sense of the gaps in what they have heard.

Your transitions should be something like: ‘That’s the problem as I see it. Let’s now consider how it came about. We need to know the causes of the problems we identify before we can find the right solution. So what should we do next?’

Such a transition simply marks where you have arrived and where you are going next. It adds no new information but it does allow listeners to catch up and also to file away what they have heard from you about the previous section (in this case, it would be defining the problem).

Power of association

What else could you do to help your audience understand and retain what you tell them? Illustrations help. They help with attention, with understanding and with recall.

The Open University recommends visual techniques for revision: ‘Developing visual material can help your recall and also be a quick way to show lots of information. Visualisation helps you remember – two examples are trying to picture where you’ve left your car in a car park, and thinking about what’s inside your cupboards when writing a shopping list.’

Tony Buzan, in teaching Mind Mapping, strongly recommends using colours and pictures. He says: ‘Colour is one of the most powerful tools for enhancing memory and creativity’ [and] ‘adding images . . . increases the possible triggers for further associations and recall.’

Conditioning plays a big part in the way people listen, just as associations help recall. What is in the mind and memory will act as filters to influence the way we receive new ideas, information or experiences. Dim the lights and put on a video or film clip and people will go into movie-watching mode and expect entertainment. They may even want popcorn! Some will fall asleep.

If the clip is well made, they are likely to engage their emotions, because that’s what happens when they watch a movie. You will then have to be sensitive about the way you speak when the clip is over. It’s a bit like the way you might handle someone who has just come out of hypnosis.

If the clip is poorly made, however, you’ll find your audience judging it against the professionalism of TV and the cinema. They will not be listening to the message, because their minds will be occupied with a critical analysis of the clip’s shortcomings.

Overcoming the rejection reflex

We live in an Experience Economy. We judge everything according to the experience it delivers. If we are networking, we decide whether we like the people we meet. When we attend business presentations we judge them according to how good they made us feel. There isn’t time to make detailed, reasoned assessments, because we all have too many demands on our attention.

Every day, everyone in the developed nations has huge volumes of data, information and sensory appeals to deal with. An average edition of a Sunday broadsheet newspaper has much more information than all the books available in the 15th century. In 1472, the world’s best university library, at Queen’s College, Cambridge, boasted just 199 books. You probably have many more yourself.

Today, we are assailed by emails, newspapers, magazines, press advertisements, radio, TV, posters, notices on the railways, advertisements on Tube stations, along the walls of escalators, text messages on our phones, phone calls, Tannoy announcements, traffic notices and more besides. The average supermarket displays something like 40,000 items, and we have to look at them as we pass, to decide if they are what we want.

All this amounts to information shrieking for our attention. The Nobel Prize winning economist, Herbert Simon, explained the effect of this, saying, ‘What information consumes is . . . the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.’ We have to develop a coping strategy for all these demands on our attention, and that strategy is a simple one: we switch off. We have been trained to do so.

That is the obstacle you have to overcome when you present. The rejection reflex.

Your audience brings this reduced capacity for attention to your presentation. Think of attention as bandwidth: the ratio between what they can remember and what they will forget. Their bandwidth is depleted.

The way to handle it is to:

• offer very few items of information at a time;
• be different, be unexpected;
• tap into the listeners’ basic needs;
• make them feel good about themselves;
• use visuals and colour.

How audiences process information

The danger in spoken communication is this: what the speaker says may not be what the listener hears. They may both process information differently. Both will be clear in their own minds about what was said and what was meant, but often the messages will not match.

Expect there to be broadly three types of listeners in the audience:

1. Those who are hostile.
2. Those who are passive.
3. Those who want value.

Hostile

The normal distribution curve suggests that there will always be a small percentage of people who will be hostile, and a similar percentage who will love you, come what may. You just need to be aware of potential hostility and prepare for it. When preparing a presentation for a large group I always imagine that only three people will turn up, and sit defiantly in the front row with arms folded. If I can win them over, I’ll win them all over.

Passive

In any large audience there will be a number of people who are content to receive what you say in much the same way as they might watch a television programme. They do not have an agenda and either may have been instructed to attend or will be part of the implementation of any decisions that may be taken after your presentation. It would be a good idea to connect with them and capture their interest.

Value

The decision makers will want value. They will be listening for something new, something they can use. They may not adopt your proposition totally, but use it as a jumping off point. It’s not necessary to give them the full solution, but rather to inspire insights, and allow them to suggest applications of your proposition that might lie outside your own thinking.

In the early 20th century, Jim Young was the Creative Director of the advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson. In his book, How to Become an Advertising Man, he defined five advertising functions:

1. To familiarise.
2. To remind.
3. To spread news.
4. To overcome inertia.
5. To add a value not in the product.

There was a TV commercial for the Peugeot 206, in which a young Indian man beat his plain, ordinary car (with the aid of an elephant) into a shape resembling the Peugeot, to give himself street cred. The advertisement won an award. It was not directly about the car, but rather about the perception of the brand, of the style, and of owning a car of that shape and style.

That street cred was a value that was not intrinsic to the product itself.

How large groups and nations process information

There are some overriding influences on the way we process information. Being common to all groups, they are what I’d call ‘collective’ behaviour, and they may characterise a whole nation’s way of thinking, and carry over into your audience.

Collective behaviour is when groups of people respond in the same way as one another, even spontaneously demonstrating some shared impulse. Think about football crowds that suddenly start singing the same song in the same key!

A presentation audience can similarly turn for or against you, either ‘getting it’ or deciding they do not understand or agree. It is therefore a good idea to pick the ‘friendly faces’ in your audience and quickly get them nodding in agreement. It will help the others to follow.

It’s worth considering a nation’s way of reasoning, as it may influence the group behaviour of your audience. The reasoning styles fall into two broad camps:

1. Particularist. These people look at each situation on its own merits. They include Egyptians, French, Greeks, Chinese, Portuguese, Mexicans, Singaporeans.
2. Universalist. These people look for universal rules or laws to govern their decisions and behaviour. They include Australians, Brazilians, Canadians, Finns, Germans, Britons, Swedes, Americans.

Dealing with facts

Many presentations fail because they are overloaded with facts and figures. Many people close their minds to figures, and few people can remember many new facts. There is a popular brain game called Sudoku. It consists of placing numbers 1 to 9 in a grid, so that all nine numbers appear in every vertical and horizontal line, and also in every one of the nine boxes. That description is actually more complicated than the game itself, which does not require any skill with numbers. It could be played with nine symbols of any kind. Yet I have met people who refuse to consider playing the game simply because they are phobic about numbers.

Just imagine how they would respond to numbers in a presentation.

Why you must be succinct

Television is the most common medium of communication these days. It has changed the way in which information and entertainment are delivered, and trained the public at large to expect information in a certain way. What people want is:

• instant gratification;
• satisfaction without effort;
• pre-digested news;
• to know what they need to know to keep up.

Even computers mimic television, with video clips about everything. YouTube delivers presentations, demonstrations, entertainment, and more. Some of it is rubbish, a lot is not. It sets the standard against which your presentation will be judged. Moreover, the internet and YouTube have made your audience better informed than ever before, and their expectations will be based on their online searches and experiences.

Think of a news story on TV. Often the story starts with the news anchor in the studio, cuts to an ‘expert’ who then refers you to a reporter at the scene, who may interview someone affected by the story. Each person in the chain makes a brief contribution, but the scene changes each time, adding to the visual input. Then it is on to the next story. World news in 20 minutes, and never a moment’s silence, never any ‘dead air’.

Meanwhile, there could be domestic sounds in the viewer’s background, perhaps from the kitchen or from family members. It takes only 15 per cent of the brain’s capacity to understand and process language, leaving 85 per cent to deal with interruptions. That trains people to listen with half an ear. That inbuilt inattention is the obstacle you face when you present, as well as the expectation of information TV-style.

Body language

In a business context, information is generally not received passively. There is a need to evaluate it, asking, ‘What does this mean?’ and ‘Can I use it?’ Even more importantly, ‘Do I trust the person giving me this information?’ This is when body language becomes important.

Your listeners read body language at least as well as they understand the words you speak. Words are cerebral, body language is visceral. It is not enough to say the right things. You have to demonstrate your commitment to your message through your body language.

Unspoken language

The key question to ask yourself (while you watch a video of your rehearsal) is this: ‘Are you delivering the words or the message?’

This matters even more when you are presenting one-to-one. You can’t fake sincerity, and when you are presenting to just one person, your style, your voice and your body language will be quite different from when you present to a large audience.

Try this. Choose a topic that you know well, and speak about it on camera for three minutes. Then write a one-page script on the same topic and learn it by heart. As soon as you know it, recite it on camera, without reading from the script. Now compare the two versions. Can you see and hear the difference? You may be more fluent in the second version, because you have prepared the words, but do you sound more convincing?

If you remember only one thing from this book, let it be this: you must present in a way that connects with the way people listen. It is the most effective way to get and retain attention and to make sense of WII FM.

We’ll develop this further in the next chapter, in which we consider delivering your presentation.

Summary

• Tips for overcoming nervousness
• How people listen
• Typical timeline for presentations
• Why you need to deliver a good experience
• How to deliver the facts