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Blogs I Like: Nick Morgan’s PublicWords

By on May 31, 2011 in Speaking
michael mclaughlin

Nick Morgan

Whether you’re presenting to a client, leading a team meeting, or just participating in a conference call, your ability to influence others begins and ends with how well you communicate.

Whenever I need market-ready advice on presentation or communication skills, I always start with Nick Morgan.

In case you don’t know him, Nick Morgan is a top communication theorist and coach. In addition to his books, Morgan has written hundreds of articles for local and national publications. He served as the editor of the Harvard Management Communication Letter and he’s a former Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Morgan publishes a high-value blog at PublicWords.com that can accelerate the development of anyone’s presentation skills.

For example, he recently launched a series of podcasts on his blog summarizing the concepts from his books, Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, and Give Your Speech, Change the World: How to Move Your Audience to Action. So far in the series, Morgan has done a great job reinforcing the basics, but he always takes things a step further.

If you only have time to listen to one post in his series, make it 10 Quick Tips to Make Your Next Presentation Wildly Successful. You’ll get a great sense of Morgan’s strategies and approach to communication.

Morgan offers lots of advice and it works. If you haven’t seen his blog at PublicWords.com, don’t wait until the night before your next speech to check it out. And you might be interested in my most recent interview with Morgan, a podcast on Seven Steps to a Great Speech.

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Book Review: Speaking PowerPoint

By on May 4, 2011 in Books, Speaking

michael mclaughlinWhen I started reading Bruce Gabrielle’s book, Speaking PowerPoint: The New Language of Business, I was skeptical. I wasn’t sure I could get through another book about PowerPoint, especially since there are so many good ones out there already.

But Gabrielle’s book grabbed and held my attention–once I understood its purpose: To offer design techniques for presentations targeted at boardroom audiences (decision makers), not ballroom audiences (conference attendees).

That is, the presentation design techniques in the book help the reader build presentations for audiences who will actually use the slides for discussion and decision making. Think final presentations for consulting clients, for example.

Gabrielle calls his approach the Mindworks Presentation Method, and it includes three parts: Story, Slide, and Design. The book emphasizes the logical structure of a persuasive presentation and uses lots of examples to demonstrate the important concepts. Toward the end of the book, I was able to use Gabrielle’s method to diagnose the problems with the example slides included in the book.

In the back of the book, Gabrielle included a Mindworks Presentation Method Manager’s Checklist, which is a handy reference guide to keep nearby as you prepare a presentation.

Many of you are highly experienced, so you’re probably already doing a lot of what Gabrielle suggests. Even so, you’ll learn plenty of new techniques from this book. I know I did. This one’s a keeper.

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You Know Your Presentation Is Bombing When…

By on March 24, 2011 in Client Relationships, Speaking

mindshare consulting

  • You notice that even the summer intern is yawning
  • One of your audience members made an origami dragon from your handout
  • You say “before we get started” after you’ve been talking for five minutes
  • An audience member calls for a coffee break before you’ve finished your introduction
  • When you turn up the lights, you’re asked to turn them down again
  • You start to fall asleep during your presentation
  • Your presentation software crashes and the audience applauds
  • You hear the music from Angry Birds playing in the audience
  • Three of your audience members are in a yoga “corpse” pose
  • An audience members ask to leave because she has to immediately file an expense report
  • You offer to give your audience your slide deck and no one responds
  • You’re forced to  say “please bear with me” at any time during your presentation.

Here are four great resources for ensuring that your presentations don’t bomb.

Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft® Office PowerPoint® 2007 to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire, by Cliff Atkinson.

Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, by Nick Morgan.

Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, by Garr Reynolds.

Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story, by Jerry Weissman.

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Interview with Nick Morgan

By on December 11, 2010 in Books, Management Consulting News, Podcasts, Speaking

“Audiences find lists irritating, but they love attitude and perspective.” – Nick Morgan

For this month’s issue of Management Consulting News, I interviewed communication expert and speaking coach, Nick Morgan. He’s the author of the ebook, 7 Steps to a Great Speech, and the books Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma and Give Your Speech, Change the World: How to Move Your Audience to Action. I asked Morgan for his best advice on preparing and delivering a great speech every time.

Get my (podcast) interview with Nick Morgan (~16 minutes).

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Laser Pointer Abuse

By on July 28, 2008 in Speaking

I’ve written before about some of my presentation pet peeves. Here comes another one.

Now I enjoy listening to good speakers, particularly those who can hold my attention, communicate their message, and throw in a little entertainment. I remember one such speaker from a meeting. He had energy, enthusiasm, and a compelling message.

He didn’t really need the seemingly endless string of PowerPoint slides he used, which all looked the same. Each slide included six or seven complete sentences—in bullet form, of course—and one small, animated graphic crammed into the lower right corner. But that’s not my complaint.

Because each slide was so packed with stuff, the speaker used his red laser pointer to highlight every sentence on every slide. Granted, he was a true marksman with that pointer and never missed his target.

But following that red dot was like watching an Olympic ping pong match. My neck was killing me trying to follow the action. It was nothing short of audience abuse.

I’m not saying there’s no role for a laser pointer in a presentation, but give it a rest. It’s possible to reduce the clutter on a slide so it doesn’t detract from the message, and then the audience can follow along without a pointer to illuminate your every thought.

The Laser Institute of America (yes, it’s a real organization) believes additional safety regulation regarding laser pointers is an important legislative priority. I hope any new law includes a provision for protecting audiences from laser pointer overload.

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Speaker’s Anxiety

By on July 17, 2008 in Speaking

It’s normal, even expected, to feel anxious before speaking to a group. Maybe that’s why Amazon offers almost fifty different titles on performance anxiety. Some offer tips of dubious value, like pretending your audience is naked.

I’m not sure that image would reduce anxiety as much as it might make me want to bolt right out of the room.

You might be able, though, to overcome one common source of performance anxiety: The belief that the audience is keenly aware of your inner nervousness. Psychologists call this false belief the “illusion of transparency.”

Research has shown that observers are not as aware of your anxious state as you may believe. What’s troublesome is that this belief often causes unneeded stress and can lead to a poor performance.

In a 2003 article published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers explored the possibility that speakers could reduce performance anxiety with a simple reminder that their inner turmoil was not written all over their faces.

The researchers gave some speakers a short reminder about the “illusion of transparency” before a speech; they gave others no reminder. Afterward, the speakers who got the reminder evaluated their performances more positively, expected their audiences to rate their presentations more highly, and judged themselves as appearing more relaxed than the speakers who didn’t get the reminder.

Furthermore, when audience members evaluated the presentations, without knowing which speakers were which, they rated the reminded speakers as being more relaxed, composed, and effective than the speakers who didn’t get the reminder.

Next time you head to the podium, remember the “illusion of transparency.” The audience has no idea how nervous you are. Try to resist spoiling the whole thing by telling them that you are.

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Beyond Bullet Points

By on January 10, 2008 in Books, Speaking

If you missed the first edition of Cliff Atkinson’s book, Beyond Bullet Points, be sure to check out the expanded second edition. Atkinson redefines how we use presentation software (Microsoft PowerPoint in his case), by offering an innovative approach to creating a persuasive presentation structure. He also shows readers precisely how to use his concepts with presentation software.

The new edition of Beyond Bullet Points includes seven new presentation examples, an expanded explanation of key concepts, and many new tips and techniques. The book also includes a companion CD, an updated Story Template and Storyboard Formatter, and PDF versions of ground rules and checklists.

You might also want to read our past interview with Atkinson:

Cliff Atkinson Goes Beyond Bullet Points

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PowerPoint Rules

By on December 12, 2006 in Speaking, The Guerrilla Consultant

In today’s corporate environment, managers are squeezing more and more meetings into a day than most of us could have imagined. And where there’s a meeting, it’s a good bet that the speaker will be displaying slides using Microsoft’s PowerPoint.

With the surge in speakers and meeting leaders using PowerPoint, it’s become fashionable to bash the software and its makers, implying that a lowly computer program is somehow responsible for the poor quality of many presentations.

In this month’s issue of the Guerrilla Consultant, we’ll look at why it’s just silly to blame software for lackluster presentations, and what we can do about it.

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The 189 Percent Solution

By on September 23, 2005 in Speaking

As the lights dimmed, the speaker’s first words were, “Some of you won’t be able to read this chart.” No kidding. The culprit: an overwhelmingly dense PowerPoint presentation.

I was squinting so hard that I felt a dull headache coming on. I wouldn’t have been able to see that presentation with binoculars. But the speaker bravely plowed on, slide after slide–brimming with images, animation, and bulleted lists.

My recollection of the presentation’s key points? Next to nothing. I thought it was me, but then I saw a reference to a study that convinced me otherwise.

Richard E. Meyer, a professor at the University of California, studied the impact of multimedia presentations on human memory. He found that when irrelevant words and pictures were removed from such presentations, people experienced a 189 percent improvement in remembering the information.

Sometimes we pack so much stuff on a set of slides that we’re actually defeating our purpose. Next time you’re preparing a presentation, just repeat to yourself, “189 percent…189 percent.”

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Beyond Bullet Points

By on April 4, 2005 in Speaking

These days, not many consultants head into meetings without the requisite set of PowerPoint slides. But critics are taking aim at PowerPoint and question whether it helps communication or shuts down thinking.

Cliff Atkinson, author of Beyond Bullet Points, believes he’s built a better mouse trap. Like others, he too wants us to dump boring, bullet-riddled slides. But Atkinson has a creative solution: he taps Hollywood-style storytelling to transform PowerPoint presentations from endless lists of bullet points into compelling communications.

Beyond Bullet Points is an accessible guide for bringing life to your message using PowerPoint. Atkinson relies on examples, templates, and downloadable information from his site to wean the reader off mind-numbing bullets.

I interviewed Atkinson for Management Consulting News. Read the interview with Cliff Atkinson.

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