CHAPTER 9

Oral Presentations and In-Person Meetings

Attending a presentation and being in the same room with the speaker brings about a very different communication experience than reading her words. A physical proximity between speaker and audience creates a different rhetorical effect. In this chapter, we consider how nonverbal attributes of the message further affect the rhetoric of the message, which can affect a decision regarding mode of delivery. It may be most convenient to send an e-mail to a coworker, but the message may be more effective for a few reasons if you meet with them in person.

Social Presence

The concept of “Social Presence Theory” posits that the more one is perceived as “real,” the closer another feels to that person. Consider a comparison between online classes and face-to-face classes; or consider the experience of an in-person meeting versus a series of related exchanges that occur via e-mail with others whom you have never met in person. If you have ever taken an online class, how “close” did you feel to the other students or the teacher? Unless you had met them before in another class or setting, you likely did not feel very “close” to them. If you have taken face-to-face courses, you experience the other students and the instructor physically. You see them; you can touch them (shake their hand); you can talk to them and hear their voice. You feel much “closer” to them, and that exchange is very different.

As a class reflection activity, my team and I once had our students respond to the question of whether the required group assignment should be changed to an individual assignment. The classroom students almost unanimously indicated a preference for it to remain as a group assignment, whereas the web-based students were mixed. Most web-based students felt it should stay a group assignment, but they admitted it was difficult because of the online setting. Obviously, there is the challenge of coordinating schedules to meet (technically, web-based students do not have to meet face-to-face or in any real time setting; they are not required to do anything outside of the electronic environment). There is also often a lack of trust in group members, because they do not know whether particular group members are actually doing the work until they post it for review. In some cases with a group member who procrastinates too long, it may be too late, and the others take up that person’s work. As such, the notion of social presence is the highest it can be when the communication occurs between people in face-to-face contact with someone in the same room.

Dress

In addition to physical proximity’s effect on closeness and trust, dress can also enhance the effect of an in-person encounter. As I mentioned in The Neuroscience of Multimodal Persuasive Messages,¹ studies find that people are attracted to others who are similar to them. Political advertisers understand this and try to integrate particular dress in certain messages. If the politician is speaking about education policy, he may dress as teachers might dress. If the appeal is directed at the general public, his dress may be less formal. If the message pertains to business policy, he will dress as a business professional.

Sometimes, though, the audience may be persuaded more by someone who portrays some expertise they lack but recognize as being of value to them. A popular example of this is the person wearing a doctor’s lab coat tells the general public that smoking is bad for their health. The message is considered more authoritative than if that person dressed casually—looking like a member of the general public—made the same statement. The person dressed as a doctor is a member of a community that has expertise in healthy lifestyles, while the other speaker is not. If the doctor was not dressed as a doctor, she would need to acknowledge explicitly her professional status in order for the message to have the same effect. The image of the doctor wearing the lab coat makes the statement for her, giving their message some degree of credibility. A manager or executive may dress more nicely than her employees dress, even as all are dressed professionally; because she exhibits a different position than they do, requiring a higher standard or expectation.

Much of the rhetoric related to dress is derived from the dynamics of neural plasticity—how neurons develop and react to certain stimuli over time. It is through conversations and experience that people learn how to react to stimuli, including one’s dress. For example, one who was born in the last few decades cannot understand why everyone in a television show from the 1960s is wearing a suit or dress outside of work. The viewer is used to wearing casual clothing outside of word and is accustomed to seeing few people in public wearing formal dress, except as an expectation of their jobs or for a formal occasion.

While you may understand that it is natural to wear a business suit in a workplace environment, you may feel awkward wearing a suit at all. I am aware of a few business students who went to business job interviews wearing a polo shirt and khaki pants. It was not that they did not have a suit; it was just that they thought it acceptable to wear “dressy-casual” to an interview. In each case, they were turned away without the interview actually occurring. Their perception of what was acceptable fell below the employer’s expectations of acceptable professional dress for the interview, resulting in a negative outcome for the applicant.

Imagine a conference room environment, with fifteen people at a meeting that is scheduled to last two hours. There may be a couple of people who become disruptive, talking to each other and giggling while the person conducting the meeting is speaking. Others in the room notice the behavior and are distracted by it. The disruptive pair responds differently to approaches to quiet them. At first, the person conducting the meeting gives them a look to quiet them down; they quiet down for a few minutes, but the disruption occurs again several minutes later. The leader asks them to quiet down, and they do so. This pattern happens once more during the meeting.

The leader’s clothing may impact perceived authority. Managers and executives tend to wear nice business suits. Dress could reinforce the manager’s position of authority as well as model professionalism. Nevertheless, the disruptive pair continues their behavior, and others at the meeting seem to understand the manager’s effort to quiet the pair. The disruptive pair does not respond favorably to the manager’s message, dress, or position. Perhaps, they value each other’s behavior or attitude and mirror each other’s behavior to reinforce their membership in the group. Nevertheless, the manager and others in the room observe a problem.

With about 45 minutes left in the meeting, the pair becomes loud again. Another person attending the meeting, male or female, gets up, walks over to the pair and says assertively, “I’m trying to listen and contribute. Please be quiet.” The pair reacts to the message immediately and is quiet the rest of the meeting. The message attained its desired response. How?

While the pair may be responding positively to the other person’s verbal statement, neural dynamics related to their position as a peer as well as dress may be at work in this example. The statement itself focuses on the speaker’s perspective relative to an effort to be a good employee and help the company—a reasonable goal of the meeting. It, further, may represent the values of others in the meeting. That the person who confronted the pair is a peer places him or her in a different position than that of the manager. However, the way the person is dressed could affect the pair’s response, too. The one who confronted the group may wear an outfit typical of the others. The person may even dress more nicely than the normal wear most of the others usually wear. Either of these elicits mirror neurons, reinforcing that the person is a peer. However, if the person dressed more nicely than how one may typically dress, it may affect the mirror dynamics as well as other neural dynamics.

What if the person was wearing very nice business attire, almost on par with the manager’s or executive’s suit? The person may appear more professional. The disruptive pair may respond to the business attire, because that person looks more professional. The person is dressed differently than the rest of the group, but in a positive way relative to the setting.

While the manager was trying to discourage the disruptive behavior in a subtle way, the one who confronted the pair walked to their place and told them, rather than asked them, to be quiet. The pair may have been afraid to challenge that person because of the fear of perceived aggression. As such, dynamics related to the amygdala and hippocampus are involved. It created an element of fear in the audience.

Again, the amygdala is concerned with survival. Further, the hippo-campus helps recall memories so that we understand how we reacted to a given situation in the past; however, if that situation was a negative experience, perhaps related to an act of aggressive against us, we recall that negativity. We make a decision on how to respond based on recollections of those memories.

Consider how the way one is dressed can influence how the audience responds to a message. Much like the messages discussed in Chapter 5, the nonverbal attributes enhance the verbal message to generate a different reaction from the audience than just the verbal message may have. If the student had sent the message to the students in an e-mail after class, it could not have had the same visual effects.

Proximity

Prior experience is part of the neural dynamics, but these all were influenced because the action occurred with the participants in the same physical location. The example shows how the mode of delivery can affect the impact of the message. The encounter described above occurred with considerable physical proximity. E-mail and video conferencing tools enable one to communicate without fear of a physical encounter; a reader cannot be physically harmed if verbally attacked through e-mail. Further, while the speaker’s dress may be visible in a video-conference, the lack of physical presence with the audience lessens its potential effect. However, the message has a different impact when the speaker is face-to-face with the audience.

I alluded to the concept of social presence before and how technology can create the perception of close physical proximity between communicants. The more visual and real-time interaction the technology can facilitate, the higher the level of social presence. Face-to-face is considered the highest level of social presence; so, if the speaker and audience are in the same physical location at the time the message is presented, it is the highest level of social presence. Generally, studies find that there is a greater response to persuasive messages within higher social presence contexts; so, it is relevant to include it among the dynamics affecting persuasion. In a situation in which one wants to persuade a single person or small group, it is likely most effective to do it in-person. That is, an in-person meeting may facilitate leaner communication than an e-mail would, since the nonverbal elements—tone, dress, facial expression, and others, such as scent and touch—enhance the verbal elements. This combination of verbal and nonverbal elements facilitate efficiencies relative to conciseness, clarity and impact.

Obviously, an oral presentation that accompanies a written proposal allows for more exchange between the speaker(s) and the audience. However, physical attributes of the speaker can influence audience reception. As I wrote in The Neuroscience of Persuasive Messages (2017), “A presentation from an attractive person may be received better than one delivered by an unattractive person. A presentation delivered from an attractive person wearing a nice-smelling fragrance—perfume or cologne—may be better received than one from someone who is not wearing cologne or perfume.”²

It is reported that, “Nike discovered that they could increase the intent to purchase by 80 percent through the introduction of scent into their stores. Another survey at a petrol station with a mini-mart reported that the aroma of coffee helped boost sales of the beverage by a whopping 300 percent” (paragraph 7).³ According to another study by the Smell & Taste Research Foundation, “[m]any of the subjects in the study reported that they were willing to pay $10 more for Nike sneakers placed in scented rooms, than those placed in an unscented one”⁴ Floral scents appeal to the hippocampus—pleasant memories and images in our mind. While the scent activates the hippocampus, mirror neurons or reward neurons are activated by the presenter’s image or position.

Generally, the handshake has emerged as a part of the professional greeting between professionals who do not interact frequently. In addition to the stated “Hello,” the communicants exchange a pleasant handshake and eye contact. Neither of those—handshake or eye contact—occurs with an e-mail, letter, or report. Several websites offer tips to enhance the impact these have in an exchange; nevertheless, neural phenomena help to explain that effect.

Another example of the effect physical proximity and what you do with it can have is the experience of a colleague who proposed to a major technology company to provide a grant for computer classrooms that included additional instructional technologies. The company manufactures and sells computers—mostly hardware. My colleague brought one of the company’s laptop computers that she borrowed from another colleague to facilitate her presentation to the technology company managers, consciously aware of the effect doing so could have.

My colleague is a devout user of computers produced by one of the company’s competitors. Using one of the company’s machines placed her in a more favorable light than if she had used the competitor’s machine during the presentation. She was able to persuade the company to provide the grant for the computer or technology classrooms.

Graphics, Slide Design, and Oral Presentations

Graphics tend to be used extensively in oral presentations. While a graphic can be formatted the same way for a print document and for a presentation slide, it may need to be modified on the slide. Slide design involves formatting information on the slide so that it is visible by all in the audience. However, just as with a graphic in a document, be sure to enlarge the graphic so all can view it clearly. Further, avoid placing a lot of text on a single slide; viewers do not want to have to read a portion of your presentation script. So limit the amount of information on a slide.

You can use colors to enhance the image and make the presentation more dynamic. Select colors that include enough contrast so they appear clearly for the audience; make sure there is enough contrast between the background and any text or graphic so the text or graphic stands out. Sometimes when trying to integrate several colors, a presenter winds up placing yellow text on an orange background; the text is not visible. The theme and mood of the presentation will also help you decide on color selections, as particular colors are associated with certain subjects and attitudes.

A presenter must also be concerned with the use of space in slide design. Though Prezi is growing in popularity, we will focus on PowerPoint as the primary slide show tool. PowerPoint continues to be prominent in business settings for two main reasons: (1) more people are comfortable with it because of wide accessibility and prior experience with it), and (2) it was designed with business presentations in mind.

Some graphic experts, including Edward Tufte and David Walbert, have given PowerPoint low marks as a presentation aid, citing its simplicity.^{5, 6, 7} However, in business settings, this simplicity can be a strength. The templates provided for slide development facilitate short bursts of information using bulleted points, and specific information can be easily emphasized with color highlighting and larger and different fonts. Its tools also allow for “animation” within a slide to help focus the audience’s attention by revealing or emphasizing text when the presenter is ready to talk about it.

Walbert developed a rubric for assessing slide show effectiveness.⁸ Among the specific criteria for assessing content, which are often applied in assessing traditional forms of writing, he identified focus, organization, development, and mechanics. Focus pertains to how well the product addresses a specific issue or topic. Organization pertains to how logically the presentation flows from one point to the next. Development pertains to examples and use of outside sources to illustrate and clarify a give point. Finally, the print-linguistic text on each slide ought to reflect proficiency with conventions of spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Linking Walbert’s guidelines to the neuroscience formula, we can consider focus to be how well each slide addresses some portion of that purpose. This helps to eliminate irrelevant material; something Tufte also encourages. Including only the most relevant information helps the audience to focus on the particular point of the slide or set of slides.

Content and development could include the elements of audience considerations, since responses to those questions guide development of the content. These would be focused on meeting the information needs of the audience while affecting neural response.

Organization simply applies principles of good writing or communication generally; the slide show should flow smoothly from one point to another point. In creating an effect, for example, a proposal should move from identifying the problem and helping the audience understand why it is a problem that needs to be addressed, to identifying a solution or possible solutions, and their strengths or weaknesses in addressing the problem, to identifying and explaining which is recommended and how to implement it. Depending on time limitations, one could eliminate the discussion of different options and go directly from the identification of the problem and why it needs to be addressed to identifying the recommendations and its justification.

Too often, students will orally repeat text on a slide, as if using the slide as a script. This is not productive. As a visual aid, PPT should supplement or complement the narration. This advice differs from what is practiced in many instructional settings, where a slide for a lecture may facilitate note taking.

Slide design involves use of space on the slide and size of text or images as well as color. There should be enough contrast between the text and background that the text stands out. Any text or images should be large enough that those in the back of the room can view the information on the slide easily. Avoid putting too much text on a single slide—often a problem when using a slide show as a script.

The oral delivery should be complemented by the visual elements. By facilitating use of both the audial and visual channels, people can better process information than they can when too much of one system is used.⁹ Case 9.1 provides the opportunity to apply the principles of graphic design to the creation of presentation slides.