Category Archives: Power

Confidence, Personal Competitive Advantage, Power

Power Words . . . Words of Power

Especially Powerful Power Words!
End self-sabotage in your business presentations with Positive Power Words!

We can remedy public speaking self-sabotage by the ready application of Power Words.

I think you already know that we sabotage our own presentations more often than we recognize.

Self-defeating behaviors come in many forms, but negative self-talk is one of the chief culprits.

We tell ourselves repeatedly that we’ll fail.

We envision humiliation, embarrassment, and complete meltdown.

We concoct a destructive fantasy that we then dutifully fulfill.

The Negative Spiral Down Begins . . .

Negative self-talk begins with the most ubiquitous cliche in business school – “I hate presentations.”  This is the chief culprit that leads to inevitably awful presentations.

It undermines everything we strive for in business school presenting.

How can we construct a positive presentation experience on such a spongy foundation?

Negative self-talk results in physical reactions.

We talk ourselves into failure.

Nervousness, trembling, faltering voice, shaking knees, sweating, and flushing.

Especially Powerful Power Words
Replace Negative Self-Talk with Power Words

Moreover, our sour and weak attitude ensures that we aren’t the greatest source of strength to our teammates if we happen to be delivering a group presentation.

The negative spiral guarantees that things get worse before they get better . . . if at all.

We have, in fact, no greater guarantee of failure and we forfeit personal competitive advantage.

How could anyone succeed at anything with this type of visualization?

Let’s try something different . . .

Think Like a World-Class Athlete

The world’s elite athletes train the mind as well as the body.  Visualization of successful outcomes is one of the techniques they use to prepare for competition.

At moments when confidence is most needed, many athletes go to their “power words.”

These are words that help visualize success and victory rather than failure and defeat.

The words can be anything that the athlete has found to negate nervousness.  It can be something as simple as mentally reciting “Power!” or “Victory!” at a crucial moment.

Say, just before a critical service in a tennis match.

This technique works.  And it can work for you.

I collaborate occasionally with sports psychologists and mental toughness coaches who train athletes in visualization techniques.  These psychologists affirm the utility of Power Words.

They assert that power words can affect performance in positive ways.

All of them are of one opinion that the mind-body connection – healthy or unhealthy – impacts performance tremendously.

Develop professional presence with power words for personal competitive advantage
Positive Self-Talk with Power Words is an Especially Powerful Technique

Lets leave aside the specific techniques for a later time and the psychological underpinnings of it that go back more than a century.

Let’s say here that we must at least rid ourselves of the negative self-talk.

We do this to give ourselves a fighting chance of succeeding at business presenting.

So why do we talk ourselves down into the morass of self-defeat?

Quite possibly, it’s the widespread ignorance of how to deliver a powerful presentation.  This ignorance can mean incredible uncertainty of performance.

Ignorance, uncertainty, and pressure to perform breed fear.

This fear of the unknown drives up anxiety and results in stage fright.  So the key to reducing that anxiety is uncertainty reduction – thorough preparation and control of the variables within our power.

Preparation is the second of the Three Ps of Speaking Technique – Principles, Preparation, Practice.

Can we foresee everything that might go wrong?

No, of course not, and we don’t even want to.

Instead, we plan everything that will go right, and we focus on that.

We leave to our own adaptability and confidence to field the remaining unexpected 10 percent.

Envision Your Triumph with Power Words

No one can win by constantly visualizing failure.

Envision this, instead – you deliver a tight, first-rate presentation that hits all the right notes.  One that weaves a story that grips your audience.

A story that keeps the audience rapt, and ends in superb closure, a major ovation and a satisfying feeling of a job well-done.

When we take the stage, we focus mind on our intent, and we charge forward boldly and confidently.

We execute our presentation with masterful aplomb.

We mentally recite our chosen power words to squeeze out the doubts and anxiety, wring them dry from our psychic fabric.

The right kind of preparation means we can deal capably with the handful of unknowns that nettle us.

Positive self-talk . . . power words . . . is an essential part of your schema for preparing an especially powerful presentation and developing personal competitive advantage.

Find more on preparing the right way in The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

General, Power, Stance
Powerful posing
Power posing leads to especially powerful business presentations

I truly don’t mean to be a pain to my long-suffering students, but one exercise that probably elicits more scorn than it deserves is called “Especially Powerful.”

It consists of everyone rising to a standing position to strike a confident stance with feet shoulder-width apart and arms outstretched to either side, palms turned upward.

Picture this.

This is a critical and powerful pose.

Then visalize a slight tilt of the head up and, in unison and in the best tradition of the deep-voiced Darth Vader, everyone repeats after me . . . “I feel especially powerful today!”

Several times.

Feeling Especially Powerful?

“I feel especially powerful today!”

I’m not satisfied until the room reverberates with the appropriate tone and volume, indicating a robust and vibrant embrace of the exercise and what we’re trying to accomplish.

Which is . . . what?

Why do I engage in what, to some, might appear gimmicky or cute?

First, I don’t do cute.  Second, the exercise accomplishes several superb physiological goals that improve a range of characteristics associated with business presenting. Voice . . . stance . . . posture . . . confidence . . . poise.

In short, much of what we call body language.

Body Language

We hear in some circles that nonverbal communication – your body language – comprises more than 50 percent of your message.

Some studies contend that it comprises more than 70 percent.

personal competitive advantage
For good or ill, especially powerful posing has played a large role in history

For no other reason than this, we should be concerned with the messages we transmit with our posture, our expressions, our gestures.

Yes, body language is critical to conveying your message.

But it is essential for another equally important reason.

It’s a reason not generally well-known or understood, and it constitutes a secret that I’ve utilized with my presentation students for years to invest them with confidence and new-found presentation power.

Its core idea stretches back well more than a century, to one of the world’s first theories of emotion: James-Lange Theory.

William James and the Danish physiologist Carl G. Lange developed the theory independently of each other in the 1880s.

Here’s a taste of the real thing from Mr. James himself:

“My theory … is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion. Common sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. The hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of sequence is incorrect … and that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble …

Without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colorless, destitute of emotional warmth. We might then see the bear, and judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it right to strike, but we should not actually feel afraid or angry.”

So what does this have to do with powerful business presenting?

Everything.

We generally believe that our emotions affect our body language, and we ourselves have experienced the effects of stage fright.

Emotions influence the way you stand, the way you appear to your audience.

They influence what you say and how you say it.

So if we feel stage fright and lack of confidence, our body language telegraphs that.  Moreover, once we become conscious of the effects of our fears, they worsen, and we get caught in a downward spiral of cause-and-effect.

But what if we could reverse that cause-and-effect?  What if we could, say, strike a confident pose and suddenly find ourselves infused with confidence and personal competitive advantage?

Impossible, eh?

But James-Lange Theory suggests that very thing, that you can reverse the process.

Turn Negative Energy into Positive

You can use your gestures, movement, posture, and expression to influence your emotions.

You can consciously affect body language associated with the emotion you want to experience – namely, confidence – and so gain confidence.

personal competitive advantage is yours
You can control to a large extent how you feel by affecting an especially powerful pose

This means that we should lay the groundwork for our emotions to reflect our body language and our posture.

Consciously strike a bearing that reflects the confident and powerful speaker you want to be.

This may sound too easy and leave you asking “what’s the catch?”

No, there’s no catch.  Unless it’s this:

You actually must do it for it to work.

And now that recent research has scientifically confirmed the dynamic I just described, the secret is out.

Several theories later and after many attempts to debunk James-Lange Theory, the most recent research at Harvard University and the Kellogg School of Business would seem to give Mr. James and Mr. Lange the proverbial last laugh.

A 2010 Harvard study substantiated James-Lange Theory and found that power posing substantially increases confidence in people who assume them while interacting with others.

The Kellogg study yielded the same findings.

In short, the way you stand or sit either increases or decreases your confidence.

The study’s conclusion is unambiguous and speaks directly to us.

Our results show that posing in high-power displays (as opposed to low-power displays) causes physiological, psychological, and behavioral changes consistent with the literature on the effects of power on power holders — elevation of the dominance hormone testosterone, reduction of the stress hormone cortisol, and increases in behaviorally demonstrated risk tolerance and feelings of power.

This finding holds tremendous significance for you if you want to imbue your presentations with power.

Personal Competitive Advantage through power posing
Especially Powerful posing is the norm among the powerful figures of history

In our 21st Century vernacular, this means you should stand the way you want to feel.  Posing with power – “I feel especially powerful today!” – improves your entire presentation delivery tremendously and in ways you’ve likely not imagined.

Power Posing can flood your system with testosterone and can suppress stress-related cortisol.

You actually do invest yourself with confidence and relieve the acute anxiety that presentations sometimes generate.

The lesson here is to affect the posture of confidence.  Square your shoulders.  Fix a determined look on your face.

Speak loudly and distinctly. Extend your arms to either side and take up lots of space.

Seize the emotional energy flow and make it work for you.

And remember . . .

“I feel especially powerful today!”

To feel even more powerful, consult The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

General, People, Personal Competitive Advantage, Power

The Business Presenter

Cicero was doubtless as good at business presentations as he was at arguing before the Roman Senate

Before computers.

Before television and radio.

Before the bullhorn and all of our multifarious artificial means of expanding the reach of our unaided voices, the public speaker stood tall and apart.

The public speaker.  The Business Presenter.

The Business Presenter

From out of mists of time, of the earliest Greek history came the public speaker as especially powerful citizen of the state, a persuader, a doer, a person imbued with almost magical powers to sway the crowd . . .

From the time of Corax in the 5th century B.C., public speaking blossomed and developed into what was considered close to an art form.

Some did consider it art.

Public speaking – or the “presentation” – was the province of four groups of people:  Preachers, Politicians, Lawyers, and Actors.  The first to save your soul, the second to take your money, the third to save your life, the fourth to transport you to another time and place, if only for a short spell.

Other professions utilized the proven communication skills of presenting – carnival barker, vaudevillian, traveling snake oil salesmen.

These were not the earliest examples of America’s business presenters, but they surely were the last generation before modernity began to leech the vitality from public speaking.

Began to suck the life from “presenting.”

Skills of the Master Business Presenter

The skills necessary to these four professions were developed over centuries.

The ancient Greeks knew well the power of oratory and argument, the persuasive powers of words.

Socrates, one of the great orators of the 5th Century B.C. , was tried and sentenced to death for the power of his oratory, coupled with his unpopular ideas.

In our modern 21st century smugness, we likely think that long-dead practitioners of public speaking and of quaint “elocution” have nothing to teach us.  We’ve adopted a wealth of technological firepower that purports to improve, embellish, amplify, exalt our presentation.

Yet the result has been something quite different.

Instead of sharpening our communication skills, multimedia packages have served to supplant them, providing barriers between speaker and audience.  Each new advancement in technology creates another layer of insulation.

 

Seize every opportunity to deliver a powerful and persuasive business presentation, and you’ll find your personal competitive advantage increasing

Today’s presenters have grasped feverishly at the notion that PowerPoint is the presentation.  The idea is that PowerPoint has removed responsibility from you to be knowledgeable, interesting, concise, and clear.

The focus has shifted from the speaker to limp fireworks, and this has led to such a decline to the point where in extreme cases the attitude of the presenter is: “The presentation is up there on the slides . . . let’s all read them together.”

In many cases, this is exactly what happens.

The presenter pivots, shows us his back, and edges away from the stage to become a quasi-member of the audience.

PowerPoint and props are just tools.  That’s all.  You should be able to present without them.

When you can, finally, present without them, you can then use them to maximum advantage to amplify the superior communication skills you’ve developed.

In fact, many college students do present without PowerPoint every day outside of the university.  Some of them give fabulous presentations.

Most give simply adequate presentations.

They deliver these presentations in the context of one of the most ubiquitous part-time jobs college students perform – waiter or waitress.

On the Job Business Presentation Training

For a waiter, every customer is an audience, every welcoming a show.

The smartest students recognize this as the opportunity to sharpen presentation skills useful in multiple venues, to differentiate and hone a personal persona, and to earn substantially more tips at the end of each presentation.

Many students in my classes do not recognize the fabulous opportunity they have as a waiter or waitress – they view it simply as a job, performed to a minimum standard.

Without even realizing it, they compete with a low-cost strategy rather than a differentiation strategy, and their tips show it.

Business Presentation
The Waiter as Business Presenter

Instead of offering premium service and an experience that no other waiter or waitress offers, they give the standard functional service like everyone else.

As a waiter, ask yourself: “What special thing can I offer that my customers might be willing to pay more for?”

Your answer is obvious . . . you can offer a special and enjoyable experience for your customers.

In fact, you can make each visit to your restaurant memorable for your customers by delivering a show that sets you apart from others, that puts you in-demand.

I do not mean putting on a juggling act, or becoming a comedian, or intruding on your guests’ evening.

I do mean taking your job seriously, learning your temporary profession’s rules.

I mean crafting a presentation of your material that resonates with confidence, authenticity and sincerity, and then displaying enthusiasm for your material and an earnestness to communicate it in words and actions designed to make your audience feel comfortable and . . . heroic.

It means becoming an especially powerful business presenter.

The Hero in Your Audience

Yes, hero.

Every presentation – every story – has a hero and that hero is your audience.  Evoke a sense of heroism in your customer, and you will win every time.

I’ve just described a quite specific workplace scenario where effective presenting can have an immediate reward. Every element necessary to successful presenting is present in a wait-staff restaurant situation.

The reverse is likewise true.

Hero Business Presenter
The Hero in Your Audience

The principles and techniques of delivering a powerful presentation in a restaurant and in a boardroom are not just similar – they are identical.

The venue is different, the audience is different, the relationships of those in the room might be different.

But the principles are the same.

So, back to the early practitioners of oratory and public speaking.  Here is the paradox: a fabulous treasure can be had for anyone with the motivation to pluck these barely concealed gems from the ground, to sift the sediment of computerized gunk to find the gold . . . but few bend to pick them up.

Adopt the habits of the masters.  Acquire the mannerisms and the power and versatility of the maestros who strode the stages, who argued in courtrooms, who declaimed in congress, and who bellowed from pulpits.

They and their secrets offer us the key to delivering especially powerful presentations.

For more on powerful presentations, have a look at The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

Confidence, Executive Presence, General, Power

Executive Presence for Competitive Advantage

Business Presentation Colossus and Executive Presence
Develop Especially Powerful Executive Presence for Personal Competitive Advantage

Executive Presence is a quality we all wish we could have.

With it, you can become a presentation colossus!

The good news is that we can develop executive presence by choosing wisely, and then acting . . .

. . . and executive presence is a source of personal competitive advantage.

The Paradox of Executive Presence

The paradox for some folks is that those with the most potential for especially powerful executive presence often intentionally diminish their capability for it.

It’s a kind of self-sabotage.

Many folks engage in it.

One client I have from a foreign country has incredible charisma and the fundamental tools to develop personal magnetism and powerful personal presence.  But he plays it down.

He tries to diminish his presence.

Self-consciousness is his worst enemy.  So we’ve worked together on getting him to relish his natural attributes, such as his height and a distinguished bald pate.

He now extends himself to his full 6’2” height.  He employs his deep, resonant voice to full effect.

He has a persona that draws people to him, and now he utilizes that quality in especially powerful fashion.

In short, we’ve worked on developing especially powerful executive presence that attracts attention rather than deflects it.

How can you go about doing this?

Review my short instructional video here on developing the basis for a powerful initial stance and an aura of Executive Presence . . .

Confidence, General, Power, Principles, Professional Presence, Stance

Especially Powerful Posing

Power Posing
Power Posing Yields Presentation Confidence

I don’t mean to be a pain to my long-suffering business students, but one power posing exercise that elicits more scorn than it deserves is called “Especially Powerful.”

It consists of everyone standing up and then striking a stance of confidence and power.

Feet are shoulder-width apart and arms outstretched to either side, palms turned upward.

Picture it.

This is a critical and powerful pose.

Power Posing Personified

Then visualize a slight tilt of the head up and, in unison and in the best tradition of the deep-voiced Darth Vader, everyone repeats after me . . . “I feel especially powerful today!”

Several times.

“I feel especially powerful today!”

I’m not satisfied until the room reverberates with the appropriate tone and volume, which indicate a robust embrace of the exercise and what we’re trying to accomplish.

Which is . . . what?

Why do I engage in what might appear gimmicky or cute?

First, I don’t do cute.

Second, the exercise achieves superb physiological goals that improve many characteristics associated with business presenting.

Voice . . . stance . . . posture . . . confidence . . . poise.

In short, much of what we call body language.  Power Posing.

Especially Powerful Body Language

Especially Powerful Posing
Power Posing Carries Gravitas

We hear in some circles that nonverbal communication – your body language – comprises more than 50 percent of your message.  Some studies contend that it comprises more than 70 percent.

For no other reason than this, we should be concerned with the messages we transmit with our posture, our expressions, our gestures.

Yes, body language is critical to conveying your message, and power posing is some of the most effective body language you can use.

But it’s essential for another equally important reason.

It’s a reason not generally well-known or understood.  It’s a secret that I’ve use with my presentation students for years to invest them with confidence and new-found presentation power.  Its core idea stretches back well more than a century, to one of the world’s first theories of emotion: James-Lange Theory.

William James and the Danish physiologist Carl G. Lange developed the theory independently of each other in the 1880s.

Here’s a taste of the real thing from Mr. James himself:

“My theory … is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion.  Common sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike.  The hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of sequence is incorrect … and that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble …

Without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colorless, destitute of emotional warmth.  We might then see the bear, and judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it right to strike, but we should not actually feel afraid or angry.”

And if you aren’t satisfied with the narrative of a 19th Century social scientist you never heard of, then take the theory of Charles Darwin, who in 1872 was one of the first to speculate that your body posture can have an effect of generating emotions rather than simply reflecting them.

The free expression by outward signs of an emotion intensifies it.  On the other hand, the repression, as far as this is possible, of all outward signs softens our emotions . . . .  Even the simulation of an emotion tends to arouse it in our minds.

So how does this relate to powerful business presenting?

Every way you can think of.

We generally believe that our emotions affect our body language.  We ourselves have experienced the effects of stage fright.  Emotions influence the way you stand, the way you appear to your audience.  They influence what you say and how you say it.

So if we feel stage fright and lack of confidence, our body language telegraphs that.

Moreover, once we become conscious of the effects of our fears, they worsen.  We get caught in a downward spiral of cause-and-effect.

But what if we could reverse that cause-and-effect?  What if we could, say, strike a confident pose and suddenly find ourselves infused with confidence?

Impossible, eh?

But James-Lange Theory suggests that very thing, that you can reverse the process.

Especially Powerful Positive Energy

You can use your gestures, movement, posture, and expression to influence your emotions.  You can affect body language associated with the emotion you want to experience – namely, confidence – and so gain confidence.

Power Posing
Power Posing is an especially powerful component of Confidence and Charisma

This means that we should lay the groundwork for our emotions to reflect our body language and our posture.

Consciously strike a pose that reflects the confident and powerful speaker you want to be.  This is power posing.

This may sound too easy and leave you asking “what’s the catch?”

No, there’s no catch.  And now that recent research has scientifically confirmed the dynamic I just described, the secret is out.

Several theories later and after many attempts to debunk James-Lange Theory, the most recent research at Harvard University and the Kellogg School of Management would seem to give Mr. James and Mr. Lange the proverbial last laugh.

A 2010 Harvard study substantiated James-Lange Theory and found that power posing substantially increases confidence in people who assume them while interacting with others.  The Kellogg study early this year yielded the same findings.

In short, the way you stand or sit either increases or decreases your confidence.  The study’s conclusion is unambiguous that power posing can actually imbue us with power.

Our results show that posing in high-power displays (as opposed to low-power displays) causes physiological, psychological, and behavioral changes consistent with the literature on the effects of power on power holders — elevation of the dominance hormone testosterone, reduction of the stress hormone cortisol, and increases in behaviorally demonstrated risk tolerance and feelings of power.

This finding holds tremendous significance for you if you want to imbue your presentations with power and yourself with professional presence.  If you want to acquire personal competitive advantage.

In our 21st Century vernacular, power posing means you should stand the way you want to feel.

Power posing – “I feel especially powerful today!” – improves your entire presentation delivery in ways you’ve likely not imagined.

Power Posing can flood your system with testosterone and can suppress stress-related cortisol, so you actually do invest yourself with confidence and relieve the acute anxiety that presentations sometimes generate.

The lesson here is to affect the posture of confidence.  Square your shoulders.  Fix a determined look on your face.

Speak loudly and distinctly.

Extend your arms to either side and take up lots of space.

Seize the emotional energy flow and make it work for you.

And remember . . .

“I feel especially powerful today!”

For more especially powerful guidance on power posing, consult The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

Power, PowerPoint, Technique

How to Develop PowerPoint Skill

PowerPoint Skill
PowerPoint, done well, can be a Powerful Tool of Communication

Microsoft’s PowerPoint multimedia software has gotten a bum rap, and this unfair reputation springs from the thousands of ugly presentations given every day from folks who have not developed their PowerPoint skill.

It also stems from awful articles like this one, which appeared recently in something called Business Insider.

The article is so bad that I actually recommend that you read it to get the perspective of someone 1) who doesn’t know how to make a cogent argument, and 2) who obviously understands nothing about PowerPoint or how to use visual aids in delivering presentations.

His “argument” is akin to offering criticism of a bad high school football team as a reason to eliminate the NFL.  Moreover, his lead sentence is a textbook exercise in the straw man argument . . . such argument as exists at all.

PowerPoint is a brilliant tool.

Yes, brilliant.

But not for those such as the hapless fellow writing in Business Insider.

But just as any tool – say, a hammer or saw – can contribute to the construction of a masterpiece . . . or a monstrosity, PowerPoint can contribute to the creation of an especially powerful presentation.

And it can serve as a source of your own personal competitive advantage.

Or . . . it becomes the weapon of choice to inflict yet another heinous public-speaking crime on a numbed audience.

PowerPoint Skill a Necessity

PowerPoint isn’t the problem.  Clueless presenters are the problem.

So just how do you use PowerPoint?

You can start by consulting any of several PowerPoint experts who earn their living sharpening their own skills and helping others to hone theirs.

Folks such as Nancy Duarte, who has elevated PowerPoint design to a fine art.  You can subscribe to her newsletter here by scrolling to the page bottom and signing up.  You can also enjoy her supremely interesting blog here.  She’s done all the heavy lifting already – now you can take advantage of it to develop your PowerPoint slide skills.

Garr Reynolds is another giant of the PowerPoint kingdom, and his concepts approach high art without being too artsy.

Meanwhile, if you want immediate help to develop not only your PowerPoint slide skills, but also your technique of working with your presentation projection, do have a look at my own short video on how to work with PowerPoint.

It’s enough to get you started and, I hope, whet your appetite for more instruction in PowerPoint skill.

For once you create those marvelous slides inspired by Nancy and Garr . . . you then must use them properly in a ballet of visual performance art called a business presentation.

This short video reviews several of my own techniques that provide basic guidance on how to work with PowerPoint.

Have a look-see and start building competitive advantage today . . .

Conclusion, Power, Technique

Crafting Your Presentation Conclusion

Presentation conclusion with Power and Grace
These Magic Words provide an especially powerful presentation conclusion

Let’s toss out a life preserver on how to conclude a presentation.  Because everyone needs a life-preserver at some point in a speaking career.

I’ve tossed this rescue device out many times to students in trouble during a business presentation.

At times, even the finest presenters get themselves in trouble.  Having this rescue device near to hand can salvage a speech that is careening off-course, that is flirting with disaster.

Your Life Preserver

Occasionally we must be reminded of this quite simple device that can serve us well near the end of our talk.

When your talk is winding down and you feel yourself suddenly spent . . .

When you begin to spiral out of control and cannot remember your train of thought . . .

When your pulse quickens and your mind goes blank . . .

Grasp for two words.

Your life-preserver.

“In conclusion . . .”

That’s it.  Just two words.

A Pithy Presentation Conclusion

These two words have rescued thousands of presenters before you.  They’ll rescue you as well.

These two words work a magic on your psyche that is almost inexplicable in terms that a logical, reasonable person would believe.  Speak them, the path to the end of your talk becomes clear.

Speak them, and suddenly you know what to say and do.

Here is what you do.  Confidently tack on another phrase . . .

“In conclusion, we can see that . . .”

“In conclusion, our recommendation makes sense for reasons just given . . .”

“In conclusion, this means that . . .”

See how it works?

You see how incredibly easy it is to get out of the sticky wicket of a talk spiraling down out of control?  To craft a presentation conclusion with punch?

“In conclusion” leads you out of the wilderness.  It puts you back onto your prepared path.  It leads you to restate your thesis in concise manner and then . . .

. . . stop!

You’re done.

But you’re not done building your Personal Competitive Advantage by improving your business presentation skills.  Consult The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting for more on especially powerful techniques on the presentation conclusion.

Career, General, Personal Competitive Advantage, Power

The Fallacy of “Presentation Tips”

Especially Powerful Presentations
It takes more than “Tips”

With regard to presentations and so-called “presentation tips,” I deal with two large groups of people.

For descriptive simplicity, let’s call these two groups “Natural Born” and “McTips!”

“Natural Born” and “McTips!” represent two extreme views of what it takes to become an especially powerful and superior business presenter.

Neither view is remotely accurate.  And neither group is what might be called enlightened in these matters.

Members of both groups are frustrating and irritating in their own ways and completely self-serving.

Here is why . . .

Tale of Two Errors

We often look for folks to excuse us from what, deep down, we know we ought to do, or what we can do.

If we look hard enough, we find what we search for, and excuses are extremely easy to find.  Let’s look at these two excuses that hold us back from fulfilling our potential as especially powerful presenters.

The first view would have us believe that great speakers are born with some arcane and unfathomable gift, combining talent and natural stage facility.

Especially Powerful Speaking
No, it’s not “natural born” talent

The first view would have us believe that Bill Clinton sprang from the womb declaiming that he feels our pain.

That Ronald Reagan was born orating on lower capital gains taxes.

That Oprah Winfrey began her talk show career in kindergarten.

If these great speakers were born with rarefied talent, then how might we become like them if we haven’t the genes for it?

Business Presentation Tips?

Doesn’t this sound foolish?

If the first view holds that great speakers are born with a gift, then quite logically this view leaves the rest of us to strive with middling presentation skills.

It’s an excuse for us not to persevere.  Why bother to try?

Why not, instead, hire some of these natural born speaker types to do the heavy presentation lifting?

The rest of us can skate along and pretend that we’re not actually lazy . . . or frightened . . . or disinterested . . . or unambitious.

The second view is the opposite of the first.

This “McTips!” perspective would have us believe that delivering effective presentations is a snap.

The Second View . . . Presentation Tips!

So easy, in fact, that one of my colleagues assured me confidently and with not a little hubris that he could teach his undergraduates “everything they need to know about presenting in 30 minutes.”

He also assured me that “all that other stuff you talk about is B.S.”

Has the presentation landscape changed so much that what was once taught as a fine skill is now mass-produced in 30-minute quickie sessions of speaking “tips”?

I actually saw a headline on an article that offered 10 Tips to Become a Presentation God!

Have the demands of the presentation become so weak that great presenting can be served up in McDonald’s-style kid meals . . . “You want to super-size your speaking McTips?”

Hardly.

Especially Powerful Business Presentations
McTips – Presentation Fast Food

In the 1800s, public speaking was refined to an almost-art; “elocution” was the new science/art, and departments of elocution and public speaking flourished in universities throughout the land.

In Philadelphia, on Walnut Street in fact, the National School for Elocution and Oratory became a Mecca for would-be stars of the pulpit, the stage, the bar, and the political wars in the 1890s.  It published books like this one.

On into the first decades of next century, public speech was regarded with respect and a high-skill to be mastered with much study and practice.

The fact is that despite however much we might wish otherwise, today’s PowerPoint high-tech software multi-media offerings cannot change the fundamental truth that it is still you who must deliver the presentation.

So no . . . you cannot learn “everything you need to know about presenting in 30 minutes.”

You cannot become an especially powerful presenter at the fast-food drive-in window, unless you want to ply presenting at the lowest common denominator.  Unless you want to become one of the multitude of mundane slide-readers who populate every business and law firm from New York to Nashville, from Boston to Baton Rouge, from Savannah to San Diego.

Ask yourself . . . if learning to deliver top-notch presentations is so fabulously easy, then why are 9 out of 10 presentations such awful forgettable bore-fests?  (and that’s a kind estimate).

The Third View – The Power Zone

There is a third group, and it is destined to remain small.

This group is privy to the truth, and once you learn the truth about presenting, you can never go back to viewing presentations the same way.  Consider this pop culture analogy from the 1999 film The Matrix.

In The Matrix, humans live in a world that is not what it seems. In fact, everything they believe about the world is false.  Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburn) promises to reveal the truth to Neo (Keanu Reeves) about his existence.

Morpheus offers Neo a Blue Pill and a Red Pill.  The Blue Pill returns him to his old state of ignorance.  The Red Pill reveals the secret, and once he learns it, Neo cannot return to his old life.

The process of presentation discovery is much like the red-pill/blue-pill choice that Morpheus offers to the young computer hacker Neo . . .

You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Likewise, you can stop reading this article this instant – the blue pill – and return to the righteous and relaxing world of “Natural Born” or “McTips!”  Both viewpoints allow the average presenter to remain mired in mediocrity with an excuse that sounds plausible.

One perspective means you don’t try at all, while the other means you offer token effort as befits a low-level pedestrian task.

So, if you decide to take the Blue Pill, close this site and go your own way.  Bon voyage!  I wish you a hearty good-luck and Godspeed, and perhaps you will be happier for your choice.

But if you are one of the few who thinks for a moment . . .  “Hmm. What if the Professor is right?”

Then . . . Take the Red Pill

Then you can read on to the next brief paragraph – the red pill – and be forever stripped of the excuse for mediocrity.  For the truth is in the Power Zone, and once there, you will never be satisfied with your old presentation life again.

You cannot go back.

That’s the paradox, the Curse of Freedom.  It is completely within your power to seize the fruits of great presenting.  It’s your choice.

You can launch an auspicious presentation career right now, right this minute.  Or you can dismiss this site as yet another fraudulent claim to revealing secrets to you . . .  only to have it exposed as a method that requires you to actually do something.

Presentation Tips? No way!
Choose the Red Pill and Become an Especially Powerful Presenter

A method that transforms you.

Choose the Red Pill.  Step boldly into the Power Zone.

The Power Zone is the province of the privileged few who understand the truth that anyone can become a great presenter, with the right kind of hard work and the willingness to become a great presenter.

To join this third group requires you to take on a new state of mind.

A willingness to learn about stance.  About voice.  About drama.  About gesture.  About movement.

About 100 seemingly small things that add up to an especially powerful business presentation.

If you already carry this view, that’s superb.  If you don’t . . . you can decide now to adopt it or forever be relegated to the other two groups – believing you’re not good enough, or believing you are good enough when you’re actually not.

Public presentations – great presentations – require study and practice and preparation and technique.  Not “presentation tips.”

A deep philosophical, academic, and professional history undergirds public speaking.  This history informs the very best presenters and their work.  You dismiss it only to your great loss.

No, you need not become a scholar of public speaking.

In fact, few people have that deep an interest in the subject and even fewer can claim that kind of knowledge today.

But what you can and should do is this:  Open your mind and heart to the possibilities of found treasure.

You actually can become a capable presenter.  You can become a great presenter.  When you enter the Power Zone, you are both cursed and blessed with knowledge.  This knowledge represents two sides of the same coin.

You are cursed with the knowledge that the only limitation you have is you.  You are blessed with the knowledge that you can become a good – even great – speaker.

An especially powerful presenter.

Now, you have no other real excuse.  It’s totally up to you.

For the ultimate guide to developing your personal brand as an especially powerful business presenter, CLICK HERE.

Passion, Power

How to put Passion in Presentations

Passion in Especially Powerful Presentations
The passionate presentation can win the day over the staid and uninteresting

Do you put passion in presentations, or do you settle for being an emotionless automaton?

Do you save your passion for other things?  Meaningless things?

Do you even know what infuses you with passion?

Think about it.

What is it you long to do?

What is it that fills you with the thrill of discovery, the adrenaline of newness?

What can compare with the natural high of applying yourself to a task that excites you?

What’s Your Passion?

What generates those endorphins?  What brings a smile to your face involuntarily?  What furrows your brow?

Is it “world hunger?”

Or European football?

Is it social injustice?

Especially powerful personal competitive advantage
Passion can be a source of personal competitive advantage

Is it political theory?

Is it comic book collecting?

Is it Chess?  Numismatics?

Tennis?

Travel to exotic locations?  Helping others solve problems?  Writing essays?  Fashion design?  Financial manipulations?

Reading a good book?

What’s your passion?  Do you even have one?

Yes, you do have a passion.  But likely as not, it’s been buried under a ton of necessity, the debris we call the business of life.

Is your Passion buried?

If you find that your passion is buried, then this is the time to rescue it as one of the most potent factors in delivering your most powerful presentations.

Once you explore your own visceral feelings, your passion, it becomes that much easier to invoke passion in presentations.  To actually feel passion for the subjects of your shows.

Can you generate passion?  Of course you can.  Will it be “artificial” passion?  Of course not.

With a tip o’ the hat to Gertrude Stein . . . passion is passion is passion.

Passion in presentations
Passion can help you build professional presence as well as convey your presentation message in a powerful way

Unless you have passion for a subject and demonstrate that passion, you will always be at a disadvantage with respect to those who passionately embrace their subject.

If you are in competition with several other teams pitching a product or service to a company for millions of dollars – and there is no noteworthy difference in the quality or price of the service – then how does the potential customer decide?

On passion.

Put Passion in Presentations!

If he sees a real passion for the work in one team, if he feels the energy of a team driven to success and truly excited about the offering, don’t you think he’ll be inclined to the team that stirs his emotions?

The team that makes him see possibilities?

The team that demonstrates passion in presentation?

The team that helps him visualize a glorious future?

The team that shares his own love and passion for his product or service and sees in you a shared passion for achieving something special in partnership?

Reread the previous paragraph, because it encapsulates so much of what is absent in presentations today, and so much of what is needed.

Passion cannot substitute for substance . . . but when it augments substance, it wins every time.  And you gain personal competitive advantage by virtue of it.

Passion has served as a crucial element in verbal communication for centuries.  Two of my favorite quotations on its power follow:

“True emotional freedom is the only door by which you may enter the hearts of your hearers.”

Brees and Kelley, 1931

 “Earnestness is the secret of success in any department of life.  It is only the earnest man who wins his cause.”

S.S. Curry, 1895

Recognize in yourself the capacity for passion and the necessity of putting passion in presentations for power and impact.

Recognize that you have the wherewithal to embrace even the most staid material, the “dullest” project.

Remember always that it is you who make it better.  You who invest it with excitement.

You are the alchemist.

It’s your job to make it interesting

Many times you hear an “interesting” presentation about an “interesting” topic.  It is well-done, and it engaged you.

And you wonder why you never seem to get the “interesting” projects.

Have you ever admitted to yourself that you might be the missing ingredient?  That perhaps it is your task to invest a project with interest and zest?  That what makes a project “interesting” is not the topic . . . but rather the interaction between material and presenter.

Ultimately, it is your task to transform a “case” or business situation into an interesting and cogent presentation.  It is your task to find the key elements of strategic significance and then to dramatize those elements in such a way that the audience is moved in powerful and significant ways.

Yes, you can do this.  You don’t need an “interesting” case to do it.

You just need passion.

More on passion in presentations in The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.