Tag Archives: Business presentations

General, Personal Competitive Advantage

The World Expert?

October 18, 2018 Stanley K. Ridgley

Who is the World Expert on Business School Presentations?

Assuming that there is one.

And depending, of course, on what we mean by “expert” and what we mean by “world.”

Those quibbles aside, that expert would be me.

Yes . . . me.

I’m the World Expert on Business School Presentations.

At least that’s what Google says.

And what Google says must be true, right?

The World Expert? What Bombast!

If you’re a regular reader – and there must be millions – then this assertion comes as no revelation. If you’re a new reader, this assertion likely strikes you as, at bare minimum, bombastic and riven with hubris.

Hubris of a sort that took down Dornish Prince Oberyn Martell.

On the other hand, it well could be true.

It could be true, because I Googled the search phrase “World’s Expert on Business School Presentations.”

My search results?

Of 1 billion websites worldwide, my site — this site right here —appears at the top of organic search results.

Go ahead, try it.

The World Expert!

So, what does this mean, practically speaking?

It strongly implies that I am the Best in the World at what I do. And what I do is train business school students to become especially powerful business presenters.

The World Expert on Business School Presentations?

Yes, that would be my first and quite natural inclination. I’ll savor that interpretation in my private moments.

But other than that it implies much about how we can create and develop a personal brand.

Especially Powerful Branding for Personal Competitive Advantage

Indeed, for didactic purposes, it shows the power of a consistent and focused brand.

And the power of brand-building over time.

It’s the same brand-building process I advocate in my seminars on personal branding as the foundation of your business presentation persona.

That brand-building process includes a big, hairy audacious goal – to become the Best in the World at what you do.

To become the World Expert on your subject matter, your skill, your service.

That’s a worthy goal and one you just might reach. And it’s a sure-fire way to build your personal competitive advantage.

For more on brand-building from the “World’s Expert on Business School Presentations,” have a look at the Complete Guide to Business School Presentations.

Case Competitions, Group Presentations, Imagination, Passion

“I never get an interesting topic”

June 2, 2018 Stanley K. Ridgley

Personal Competitive Advantage — Vintage Whine: “This topic just isn’t interesting.”

“I never get an interesting topic.”

I hear this lament more often that I care to.

No more vintage whine or self-sabotage exists than this one, uttered in ignorance of its true meaning.

Here are two scenarios. Both are possible.

You’re assigned your case, and you skim over it.

Ugh. It’s not “interesting.”

And you find that you must write a memo on the case, analyzing it and teasing out its implications for the strategic direction of the firm, and then you must work with a group of folks you probably don’t hang out, probably don’t know . . . or even like.

You groan as you don’t recognize the company or the people in the case.

Such an “Old” Case

The case isn’t dated last week, so you think it’s “old.”

You complain that you don’t understand why you’re assigned this “boring” case instead of a “modern” case on something hip . . . say, an Apple innovation or a product you heard mentioned in a commercial during the latest Kardashian reality TV offering.

No, you don’t understand why it doesn’t seem to speak to you and your needs.

Now.

This minute.

Roll of the eyes.

“Whatever.”

Especially Powerful — Personal Competitive Advantage does not mean focusing on “me.”

Never pausing.

Never pausing to examine the central factor that your lack of understanding is the problem.

Your framework is so cramped, your context so self-circumscribed, your interests so few that it’s impossible for you to situate the case in its proper place with the tools at your disposal.

You complain that it’s not “relevant” and so you make no attempt to understand its “relevance.”

It’s not an “interesting topic.”

You never get an “interesting topic.”

That’s one scenario of how it goes.

Another scenario is the Embrace. Opening the heart and mind to the new.

Embrace the Un-interesting Topic

You’re assigned your case, and you skim over it.

And you must write a memo on the case, analyzing it and teasing out its implications for the strategic direction of the firm, and then you must work with a group of folks you don’t know and probably don’t hang out with . . . or even like.

You scratch your chin, metaphorically, and you roll up your sleeves (again, metaphorically) and you ask yourself questions like these . . .

“What can I learn from this process? How can I turn this whole process into an experience I can craft stories about to tell in my upcoming job interviews? How can I take this case, digest it, and make it part of my growing context of business knowledge?”

And as for the inevitable public group presentation, ask yourself:

“How can I work best with these folks in my group to produce a spectacular presentation that will then become part of my resume?

How can I help mask the internal disagreements and personality conflicts so that our audience does not suspect that several of us detest each other?

How can I make this presentation interesting for my audience?”

Remember that there are no inherently interesting topics. Every topic has potential for generating great interest, if you do your job right.

Because please understand . . . no one cares if the topic interests you.

As a professor, I certainly don’t.

I want to know what you plan to do with the topic and the case.

Your job is to infuse the topic with power and generate interest about it for your audience. And if you do that, you gain tremendous personal competitive advantage.

Crown Cork and Seal is an example of such a case that many students don’t find “interesting.” It’s a classic case that almost every MBA student must read and analyze.

The Crown Cork and Seal case is about making and selling tin cans. And how a firm with resources identical to the other major can manufacturers managed to outperform the industry by a stretch.

That’s a mystery, and a great one to solve.

And it’s an interesting topic . . . if only you embrace the case.

For more “interesting topics” about personal competitive advantage, consult the Complete Guide to Business School Presentations.

General, Resources

Especially Powerful Business Presentations

July 7, 2015 Stanley K. Ridgley

I hate presentations can destroy your motivation — Develop your presentation skills to achieve a personal competitive advantage . . . and learn not to hate presentations

Here is the key to delivering especially powerful business presentations.

If you already feel reasonably confident, competent, and thoroughly satisfied with your presenting skills, then excellent!

I congratulate you and suggest that you pass Business School Presenting along to a buddy who might profit from it.

But if you are like most of the 1.3 million English-speaking business school population worldwide, you have muttered I hate presentations more than once.

And you probably have issues business presentations. Which is why you read this right now.

You don’t want to be just average. You don’t want to be merely good. You want to deliver especially powerful business presentations.

You’re ready. Energized. You’re in the right place — the center of the business presentation universe.

One in 255 Million?

According to NetCraft in its October 2014 Web Server Survey, the internet reached an estimated 1 billion websites worldwide.

Of that 1 billion, this is the only site devoted exclusively to business school presentations. I could be wrong about that, and I hope that I am.

Even if this is a lonely outpost today, we know that as quickly as the online community responds to the needs of its users, that could change tomorrow.

I trust you’ll let me know, so that I can link to these nooks and crannies of the web that may hold secrets that we all need. So go ahead. Check.

But right now, this instant, I do believe that this is it.

Think of this place as your Official College Guide to Business School Presentations.

Don’t hate presentations!

I believe, and you may agree, that business school students need credible, brief, and direct resources on presenting – solid information and best practices. Not vague generic “presentation principles” and not “communication theory.”

Certainly not a handful of “tips.”

In short, you want to know what works and why.

You want to know right from wrong, good from bad.

You want to know what is just opinion and what, if anything, is carved in stone.

You’ll find answers here to the most basic of questions.

What is this beast – the business presentation?

How do I stand? Where do I stand?

What do I say? How do I say it?

How do I reduce 20 pages of analysis into a four-minute spiel that makes sense and that “gets it all in?”

How should we assemble a group presentation? How do we orchestrate it?

Where do I begin, and how?

How do I end my talk?

What should I do with my hands?

How do I conquer nervousness once and for all?

How can I tell “what the professor wants?”

How do I translate complicated material, such as a spreadsheet, to a PowerPoint slide so that it communicates instead of bores?

2,500 Years of Presenting

Business School Presenting answers every one of these questions and many more that you haven’t even thought of yet. You may not like the answers.

You may disagree with the answers.

Fair enough.

Let a thousand presentation flowers bloom across the land. Listen, consider, pick and choose your pleasure.

Or not.

But you should know that I offer here the distillation of 2,500 years of public speaking and presentation secrets, developed by masters of oratory and public speaking and refined in the forge of experience.

Folks who certainly did not hate presentations . . .

Especially Powerful Business Presentation

Cicero, Quintilian, Demosthenes, John Adams, Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama — all find their places in the pantheon of the most powerful presenters of all time.

They all have drawn upon the eternal verities of presenting.

In turn, they have each contributed their own techniques to the body of wisdom. You find those verities here.

Especially Powerful Business Presentations — The confidence and surety of President Reagan

On the other side of things, I’d like to hear your own presentation stories from your campus that illustrate challenges particular to your school and academic concentration.

The various subdisciplines in business – finance, marketing, accounting, human resources, and such like – have their special needs, even as they are all tractable to the fundamental and advanced techniques of powerful presenting.

So think deep.

Consider the personal competitive advantage that can be yours when you develop world class business presentation skills and the ability to deliver the especially powerful business presentation.

And learn not to hate presentations by consulting my book The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

General, Principles, Stance, Technique

100 Things – Business Presentation Alchemy

April 16, 2015 Stanley K. Ridgley

Perhaps it’s human nature that leads us to search for single answers.

The search for the Global Solution has gone on as long as men have searched for the Philosopher’s Stone (and perhaps even longer, but not jotted down).

Likewise, this is the case for business presentations.

No Easy Way Out

We seek easy solutions, the quick fix, the “secret” to turn a drab, staid, listless presentation into one that brims with vigor, zest, and elan.

An especially powerful presentation.

Failing that, perhaps just something that can flog a bit of life into our tired efforts.

One evening, we may see a memorable, delightful, scintillating presentation. It’s a show that engages us, that sparkles with memorable visuals and that implants core ideas and powerful notions in our minds. A great presentation!

What made it a great presentation?

Business Presentation Alchemy — No Global Solution Exists to Create Presentation Gold

Many folks answer with one – maybe two reasons. This is akin to medieval alchemists searching for a method to transform lead into gold.

A shortcut to wealth.

And so we contrive abstractions and unsatisfactory responses:

The speaker was interesting.

The topic was relevant and au courant. Torn from today’s headlines!

It was the audience . . . he had a good audience!

But none of these easy answers yield something that we can actually use . . . something we can operationalize in our show.

This is because no easy answer exists.

No one reason. No single technique.

There is no business presentation alchemy. Except in the notion that we must get lots of things right.

The superb business presenter does 100 things right, while the bad business presenter does 100 things wrong.

What are the “100 Things?”

Is it exactly 100?

Of course not, no more than great writing consists in getting exactly 100 things right, instead of getting them wrong.

For any talk, it could be 90 things, or it could be 150 things. Or something else.

The “100 things” trope suffices to convey that great presentations are planned and orchestrated according to set principles that can be learned, and those principles consist in proven practices.

Lots of them.

Practices that replace unthinking habits.

Techniques of posture, voice, syntax, gestures, topic, presentation structure, your expression, confidence, your movement . . . all of these done well or done poorly combine to yield either an especially powerful presentation . . . or a dud.

Go to Scott’s Lessons, the book that inspired and taught Abraham Lincoln as he grew into one of America’s great orators, and you will find a wealth of powerful techniques to transform even the most mundane of speakers into a champion.

More than 100 things? Surely.

The important lesson is that great presenting is assembled from the verbal and non-verbal construction materials we select.

Lots of mistakes make for awful shows. Getting those 100 things right yield a show that’s spectacular for no single, discernible reason. It’s the power of synergy.

Take just one aspect of your show – the way you stand. Have you ever thought about it? Where you stand? How you stand?

If you’ve never given it thought, then you’re likely doing it wrong. To learn how to adopt the perfect (for you) stance, go here and the secret shall be revealed. And you’ll have learned a handful of the essential 100 things to launch you on your way to presentation power.

The next step, of course, is to actually do it. In your next presentation.

More of the 100 Things that constitute Business Presentation Alchemy here.

Charisma, Imagination, Technique, Topic

Give an Interesting Business Presentation

April 7, 2015 Stanley K. Ridgley

Our goal: give an interesting business presentation.

That seems easy enough, but too often we simply assume that this somehow “just happens.”

And I wager that not many folks spend lots of time on the task.

Let’s look at how you can enrich your presenting in unexpected ways so to give an interesting presentation regardless of your audience.

Let’s discuss how to deepen and broaden your perspective so that it encompasses that proverbial “big picture.”

Let’s start with how to become a 3-D presenter.

3D Presentations

Now, this means several things. It includes how you utilize the stage to your utmost advantage, of course, but a major component is the exercising of your mind.

It’s the process of enriching your personal context so that you become aware of new and varied sources of information, ideas, concepts, theories.

It’s a process of becoming learned in new and wondrous ways. Think of it as enlarging your world.

You increase your reservoir of usable material.

As a result, you can connect more readily with varied audiences.

You accomplish this in an ongoing process – by forever keeping your mind open to possibilities outside your functional area. By taking your education far beyond undergraduate or graduate school.

The Interesting Business Presentation

That process increases your personal competitive advantage steadily and incrementally.

By doing something daily, however brief. Something to stretch your mind to establish connections that otherwise might have escaped you.

By reading broadly in areas outside your specialty. By rekindling those interests that excited and animated you early in life.

Read a book outside your specialty. Have lunch with a colleague from a different discipline.

How to give an interesting business presentation? Expand your Context.

Dabble a bit in architecture, engineering, art, poetry, history, science.

We sometimes cloister ourselves in our discipline, our job, our tight little world, forgetting that other fields can offer especially powerful insights.

For me, it means sitting in on classes taught by my colleagues. It means reading outside my specialty area. It means exposure to doctrines I don’t rightly believe, but probably ought to understand.

How will this help in preparing my own classes? At this point, I can’t be certain. But I know it will. At some point.

Without fail.

And that’s the beauty and potential of it.

I do know that it will enrich my store of knowledge so that my own presentations continue in 3-dimensional fashion. They’ll be connected to the “real world” – textured, deep, and richer than they otherwise would have been.

It will do the same for yours. And it will likely aid in your development into an especially powerful presenter, imbued with professional presence.

For more on how to give interesting, and especially powerful, business presentations, click HERE.

Case Competitions, General, Resources

Business Case Competitions Worldwide!

August 17, 2014 Stanley K. Ridgley

I often judge presentations in business case competitions, and I never fail to be impressed at the high caliber of students competing.

Versed in the intricacies of wealth-building and savvy in the ways of Wall Street, the next generation of business leaders is well-armed for the competitive battles of tomorrow.

And case competitions are the way to display those skills.

Case Competitions Worldwide

In my last post, I described the crucible of case competitions and how they can lead to increased opportunities in the business world.

If it interests you (and it always interests the best), then review this site that was recently passed to me. Appropriately enough, it’s called www.studentcompetitions.com, and its motto says: Compete. Show Your Skills. Get Awarded.

The site features a constantly updated database of student competitions worldwide. As of this writing, 334 contests and competitions are listed.

So if you are serious about bringing to bear all of your business acumen in a public demonstration of your abilities to collaborate across a range of sub-disciplines in business, then go now to http://studentcompetitions.com and see what awaits you.

No Time for Modesty or Mediocrity

The Case Competition is your chance to demonstrate a wide range of corporate business skills in a collaborative effort. You receive recognition, valuable experience, sometimes monetary reward, and perhaps an open door to corporate employment. The competition is a showcase for your skills.

You can also win anywhere from $1,000 to $75,000 in a single business case competition.

Click for more information on how to deliver Especially Powerful Business School Presentations and learn the key secret techniques of how to win the business case competition.

Conclusion, Technique

How to Stop Your Presentation

July 2, 2014 Stanley K. Ridgley

Every person needs a life-preserver at some point in his speaking career, and one of the most important is how to stop your presentation.

Here I reveal the best way to . . . stop.

Yes . . . stop your presentation.

Stop Your Presentation Now

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

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

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

How to Stop your Presentation — Stop your presentation the right way and leave a lasting impression on the audience

When your talk winds down and you feel yourself suddenly spent . . .

When you begin to spiral out of control and can’t collect your thoughts . . .

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

Grasp for two words.

Your life-preserver.

“In conclusion . . .”

That’s it. Just two words.

Magic Words . . .

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

“In conclusion . . .”

These two words work a magic on your psyche that is almost inexplicable in terms that a logical, reasonable person would believe.

As soon as you speak them, the path to the end of your talk becomes clear. Your presentation opens up. Speak these magic words, and suddenly you know what to say and do.

You confidently add another crucial 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? How incredibly easy it is to get out of the sticky wicket of a talk spiraling out of control!

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

. . . stop!

You’re done.

For more on especially powerful presentations, consult the Complete Guide to Business School Presentations.

General, Technique

McTips, anyone?

June 1, 2014 Stanley K. Ridgley

With regard to presentations, 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 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 . . .

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

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

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 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 . . . Presentation McTips!

The second view is the opposite of the first.

This “McTips!” perspective would have us believe that delivering effective presentations is a snap. 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 12 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.

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.

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 fastfood drive-in window, unless you want to ply presenting at the lowest common denominator of mundane slide-readers that 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 doggoned easy, then why are 9 out of 10 presentations such awful forgettable bore-fests?

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) offers 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, 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 shorn 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.

A method that transforms you.

Choose the Red Pill. Step boldy 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. 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. 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.

General, Resources

Great Business Presentation Sites

April 14, 2014 Stanley K. Ridgley

You have arrived at the most important website on the internet . . .

. . . on delivering the great business presentation in business school.

In fact, it’s the only site in the world in English devoted exclusively to business school presenting . . . and that’s out of almost 1 billion sites.

One billion?

Great Business Presentation Websites

The internet should reach the 1 billion website milestone by the end of 2014. And while no other site focuses on the challenges of business school presenting, plenty of other sites offer superb advice on this or that aspect of delivering a great business presentation.

I’ve compiled a great many of the best presentation sites, and links to them appear on the right of this site’s home page.

So go up-top to the menu, click “home,” and then look for great links to great sites . . . on the right, in its own column.

Go ahead . . . take a look.

Click and enjoy . . .

General, Technique, Transition

How to Transition Between Speakers

March 26, 2014 Stanley K. Ridgley

One of the least-practiced aspects of the group presentation is how you pass the baton – the transition between speakers.

Yet these baton-passing linkages within your presentation are incredibly important.

They connect the conclusion of one segment and the introduction of the next.

Shouldn’t this connecting link be as strong as possible, so that your audience receives the intended message? So the message isn’t lost in a flurry of scurrying presenters moving about the stage in unpracticed, chaotic fashion?

You forfeit tremendous personal competitive advantage if you ignore this seemingly small aspect of your presentation.

Don’t Lose Your Message!

It sounds absurd, but group members often develop their individual presentation segments on their own. Then, the group tries to knit them together on the day of the group show.

A formula for disaster.

The result is a bumbling game of musical chairs and hot-baton-passing.

Imagine a sports team that prepared for its games this way, with each player practicing his role individually and the players coming together as a team only on the day of the game and expecting the team to work together seamlessly.

Sports teams don’t practice this way. Serious people don’t practice this way.

Don’t you practice this way.

Don’t yield to the tendency on the part of a team of three or four people to treat the presentation as a game of musical chairs.

How to Transition Between Speakers?

This happens when each member presents a small chunk of material, and the presenters take turns presenting.

Lots of turns.

This ungainly dance disconcerts your audience and can upend your show.

Minimize the passing of the baton and transitions, particularly when each person has only three or four minutes to present.

How to Transition between Speakers! — Smooth transitions can bequeath personal competitive advantage to you and your teammates

I have also noticed a tendency to rush the transition between speakers.

Often, a presenter will do fine until the transition to the next topic. At that point, before finishing, the speaker turns while continuing to talk, and the last sentence or two of the presentation segment is lost.

The speaker walks away while still citing a point. Perhaps an incredibly important point.

Don’t rush from the stage.

Stay planted in one spot until you finish.

Savor your conclusion, the last sentence of your portion. It should reiterate your Most Important Point.

Introduce your next segment. Then transition. Then pass the baton with authority.

Harmonize your Messages

Your message itself must mesh well with the other segments of your show.

Each presenter must harmonize the message with the others of a business presentation. These individual parts should make sense as a whole, just as parts of a story all contribute to the overall message.

“On the same page” . . . “Speaking with one voice” . . .

These are the metaphors that urge us to message harmony. This means that one member does not contradict the other when answering questions.

It means telling the same story and contributing crucial parts of that story so that it makes sense. So that each of you acquires, incrementally, personal competitive advantage as you progress through your show.

This is not the forum to demonstrate that team members are independent thinkers or that diversity of opinion is a good thing.

Moreover, everyone should be prepared to deliver a serviceable version of the entire presentation, not just their own part. This is against the chance that one or more of the team can’t present at the appointed time.

Cross-train in at least one other portion of the presentation.

Remember: Harmonize your messages . . . Speak with one voice . . . Pass the baton smoothly. Transition between speakers with authority and confidence for an especially powerful business presentation.

You can find more discussion on how to transition between speakers in The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting, your key to personal competitive advantage in business school and beyond.

General, Personal Competitive Advantage, Slides, Technique

Touch the Cave Paintings for a Powerful Business Presentation

March 19, 2014 Stanley K. Ridgley

Touch your own cave paintings in your especially powerful business presentation — Take ownership of your business presentation and embrace 10,000 B.C. technology

It’s 10,000 BC, and you’ve painted a detailed graphic on your cave wall for your upcoming business presentation.

It depicts your keen analysis of the recent successful hunt.

Now, you offer to show it to your group, perhaps young hunters seeking essential knowledge.

How would you deliver your hunting presentation?

Would you stand to one side and gesture vaguely at your cave wall graphics as you give your presentation on how to take down a mastodon?

Would you?

More likely, you’d take ownership.

And if you did, you’d take your first step to achieving personal competitive advantage.

Here’s how you’d do it . . .

Own the Business Presentation . . .

You’d step over to the wall and run your fingers over the colored lines.

You’d trace the outline of the images as you shared the story that the painting illustrates. You’d use the graphic to bring your presentation to life.

Likewise, in your own business presentations today, when you interact with your PowerPoint slides, I suggest that you use 10,000 BC technology – you should “touch the cave paintings” to meld with your presentation.

Especially Powerful Mastodon Business Presentation — Breathe life into your Business Presentation!

Take ownership of your business presentation, and touch the cave paintings you’ve created to flesh out and support your message.

Step to the screen when you’re ready to refer to a chart or a graph.

Orient us to what we’re about to see.

Explain the vertical and horizontal axes so that we can quickly grasp the data.

By stepping to the screen and gesturing, you enhance your participation in the presentation, becoming the animation for the slides under review.

And you preclude using one of the most heinous devices ever created that can destroy potentially outstanding business presentations.

The Laser Pointer.

Think of the Laser Pointer as a Presentation self-destruct button.

That’s right . . . self-destruct button.

Don’t Self-Destruct!

Even the best of us occasionally thumb that laser pointer self-destruct button that is built into most remote control clickers.

But you want to deliver a Laser Pointer Presentation, don’t you?

You’ve waited your entire life for the chance to legitimately use that laser pointer!

Haven’t you?

You’ve pictured yourself be-suited and commanding the room . . . standing back, perhaps with a jaunty posture, as you sweep the screen behind you with the little bobbing speck of red light. The meekest among us is invested with bombast and hauteur by even the most inexpensive laser pointer.

Don’t do it.

Put down the light saber, Skywalker.

The laser pointer is 21st century overkill technology. It distances you from your presentation message at the exact moment you should meld yourself with it.

How so?

If something is so crucially important on your slideshow – perhaps a graph or a series of numbers – that you must direct audience attention to it, then step into the presentation. Gesture to the data with your hand.

Use 10,000 B.C. Technology

Merge yourself with the data. Step into the presentation so that you, in essence, become the animation that highlights your points of emphasis. Don’t divide audience attention between you, the data on the screen, and a nervously darting red speck.

Instead, concentrate your audience focus on your major points, touching the screen, guiding us to the facts and figures you want us to internalize. It’s a cave painting, so run your hands over the cave wall.

Show us what you want us to see with your hand.

Now, I issue a caveat here.

If the screen behind you is so high that you cannot reach it, then you might be justified in using the pointer.

But probably not.

Instead, if you want to highlight or draw attention to your points of emphasis, then utilize the highlighting animation available on most multimedia platforms.

Nothing is more gratuitous in modern business presenting than the laser pointer. And few things more irritating than the laser pointer presentation.

Rid yourself of this awful affectation today. Pledge never to deliver another laser pointer presentation in your business life.

Instead, run your hands over the cave wall, touch the cave paintings to meld with your presentation and communicate with your visuals in especially powerful fashion to gain especially powerful personal competitive advantage.

For more on Business Presentations, consult my book The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

General, Preparation, Principles

Business Presentation Prep . . . The Second P

March 4, 2014 Stanley K. Ridgley

You are assigned the ToughBolt business case to analyze and to provide your recommendations in a business presentation.

Your task is to prepare the business presentation . . .

. . . the right way.

After all, you’re performing before the directors of the Toughbolt Corporation . . . and you get one shot to get it right. Shouldn’t it be your best shot?

Your group has produced a written analysis. It’s finished.

What now?

How do you “prepare?”

“Prepare” has such a sterile sound. Almost vacuous.

And yet too many students stumble over this most mundane of activities. They rush.

They fumble. They grope blindly. Perhaps you grope blindly . . . and decide at the end to “wing it.”

But here is where you tuck away one of the most important gems of wisdom necessary to giving a first-rate show.

Prepare the Business Presentation

Apply the sound method of correct Preparation – the second of the Three Ps.

Your task is clear. It’s time to present your conclusions to an audience in the most direct and cogent manner possible.

And in this task is embodied a verity for you to internalize.

Your business presentation is a completely different product than your written report.

Let me repeat that, because it is so misunderstood and ignored.

Your business presentation is a completely different product than your written report.

It’s a completely different mode of communication.

Do you wonder how this is possible, since you prepare the business presentation from a written report? How can the products differ significantly simply because one product is written and the other visual and vocal? But they are different.

Completely different.

It is different in exactly the same way that a film is a completely different product than a novel, even if the story is supposedly the same.

How Different?

It is different in the way that a play read silently from the page differs from a play acted out on stage.

You operate in a different medium.

You have time constraints.

A group is receiving your message.

A group is delivering the message.

You have almost no opportunity for repeat.

You have multiple opportunities to miscommunicate.

In short, you are in a high-risk environment and you are vulnerable, far more vulnerable than you might be in a written report, where the risk is controllable.

Look at the chart below.

These many differences between the written report and the business presentation are, to many people, seemingly invisible. Or, at least, they are not considered significant.

Many folks believe that there is no difference.

And this is why those same folks believe that delivering a presentation is “easy.” It consists of little more than cutting and pasting a written report’s points onto a half-dozen cramped slides, and then reading them in public.

As absurd as this might appear in print, it actually has currency. People believe this, because they’ve not been told otherwise.

Numbers Trump All?

Finance people are especially prone to this habit, believing that the “numbers tell the story.” As they prepare the business presentation, one thought trumps all . . .

The more numbers, the better.

The more obtuse the spreadsheet, the tinier the font, the more complex the chart, the more stuff packed on each slide . . . the better.

Such a vague, incomprehensible, numbers-heavy mess seems to be the currency of many business presentations.

It’s wrong, and it’s wholly unnecessary.

Part of your preparation is the crafting of clear, compelling, and on-point graphics that support your message . . . not obscure it. Rid your presentation of chart junk. Zero-in to achieve what I call über focus.

“How come I never get assigned an interesting topic?”

Perhaps you’ve said that? I’ve certainly heard it.

“How come I never get assigned an interesting topic?”

Now, whether any topic is inherently interesting or not is irrelevant to your task. It’s your duty to craft a talk that interests the audience. Cases are not assigned to you so that they will interest you.

Your tasks as a project manager or consultant don’t come to you on the basis of whether they interest you.

No one cares if they “interest” you.

That’s not the point.

We all would love to be spoon-fed “interesting” topics. But what’s an “interesting” topic?

I have found the following to be true:

The students who complain about never getting an interesting topic actually do get assigned inherently interesting topics. They don’t recognize them as interesting. And they invariably butcher a potentially interesting topic as they prepare the business presentation.

And they miss every cue and opportunity to craft a great show.

Moreover, it is your job to presenting an especially powerful and scintillating presentation, regardless of the topic.

Face it. If you don’t take presenting seriously, then you won’t prepare any differently for an “interesting” topic than you would for a “boring” topic. You simply want an interesting topic for yourself . . . not so you can do a bang-up job for the audience or client.

Let’s shed that attitude.

Great presenters recognize the drama and conflict and possibilities in every case. They invariably craft an interesting presentation whether the topic concerns tenpenny nails or derivatives or soap.

Crank up Interest

How do you generate interest? Public speaking master James Winans provides several suggestions:

[I]nterest is, generally speaking, strongest in old things in new settings, looked at from new angles, given new forms and developed with new facts and ideas, with new light on familiar characters, new explanations of familiar phenomena, or new applications of old truths.

Let’s go . . .

The typical start to a presentation project is . . .

. . . procrastination.

You put it off as a daunting task. Or you put it off because you believe you can “wing it.” Or you lament that you don’t have an “interesting topic.”

Let’s say that your task is to provide a SWOT within the body of a group presentation, and your time is 4-5 minutes. What is your actual task here as you prepare the business presentation?

Think about it.

How do you usually approach the task? How do you characterize it?

Here is my guess at how you approach it.

You define your task as:

“How can I fit X amount of information into this limited time?”

In your own mind, the objective is not to communicate clearly to your audience. Your only objective is to “fit it all in.” And if you “achieve” this dubious objective, then in your mind you will have succeeded.

Unfortunately, your professor might agree with you, since many b-school professors look only for “content.” They do not evaluate whether the content has been communicated clearly and effectively.

And this is what is missing – you don’t analyze how or why or in what way you can present the information in a public forum.

If a written paper has already been produced, this complicates your task.

You feel the irresistible allure of cut ’n’ paste.

The result is less than stellar, and you end up trying to shovel 10 pounds of sand into a five-pound pail. And this result is predictable.

Your slides are crammed with information.

You talk fast to force all the points in. You run over-time.

You fail.

You fail to deliver a star-spangled presentation for lack of proper preparation.

This Time, Procrustes has it Right

Take the Procrustean approach when you prepare the business presentation. This approach is named after Procrustes, a figure from Greek mythology. The Columbia Encyclopedia describes the myth thusly:

He forced passersby to lie on a very long bed and then stretched them to fit it. If they were too tall to fit his bed, he sawed off their legs. Using Procrustes’ own villainous methods, Theseus killed him.

Surely Procrustes was a villain, what with sawing off people’s legs or stretching them to fit an arbitrary standard. In modern-day parlance, it has retained its negative connotation with the term “Procrustean solution.”

“Procrustean solution” is the undesirable practice of tailoring data to fit its container or some other preconceived stricture.

A common example from the business world is embodied in the notion that no résumé should exceed one page in length.

But in this case, let’s give Procrustes a break.

Your Procrustean Solution

Take a Procrustean approach and make a better presentation. Consider this:

We have no choice in the length of our presentation. It’s four minutes. Or five minutes. That’s our Procrustean Bed. So let’s make the most of it and manipulate the situation to our benefit and to the benefit of our audience.

We’re not stretching someone or something. And we’re not hacking off legs.

We are using our mind and judgment to select what should be in our show and what should not be in our show.

And if you find the decision of what to include too difficult, then let’s do even more Procrustean manipulation. Pick only three major points that you want to make.

Here is your task now:

Pick three points to deliver in 4-5 minutes. If you must deliver an entire SWOT, then select one strength, one weakness, one opportunity, and one threat.

Why do we do this? Here’s why:

If you try to crowbar an entire SWOT analysis into a four-minute presentation, with multiple points for each category, you overwhelm your audience.

They turn off and tune you out. You will lose them, and you will fail.

Presenting too many points is worse than delivering only one point.

Especially Powerful Paucity

If you present, say, a total of 5 strengths, 3 weaknesses, 4 opportunities, and 3 threats, no one remembers it. None of it. And you irritate your audience mercilessly.

Your presentation should present the results of analysis, not a laundry list of facts on which you base your analysis.

The SWOT is, in fact, almost raw data.

You want the audience to remember how you massage the data, analyze it, and arrange it. You want the audience to remember your conclusions.

You take information and transforming it into intelligence. You winnow out the chaff and leave only the wheat.

You reduce the static and white noise so that the communicative signal can be heard.

You are panning for gold, washing away the detritus so the nuggets can be found. When you buy gold, you don’t buy the waste product from which it was drawn, do you?

Do you buy a gold ring set in a box of sand?

Of course not, and neither should you offer up bucketfuls of presentation sand when you present your analytic gold to your client.

As you prepare the business presentation, you sift through mountains of information, synthesize it, compress it, make it intelligible, then present it in a way that is understandable and, if possible, entertaining.

Digest this Preparation guidance, try it out in your next presentation, and watch yourself produce and deliver the most powerful presentation of your young career.

Discover how to Prepare the Business Presentation in The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

General, Personal Competitive Advantage, Video

Business Presentations Video Short Course

January 13, 2014 Stanley K. Ridgley

I’m gratified to be working with Soundview Executive Summaries again, and this new product of theirs is impressive.

Soundview is moving briskly onto the cutting edge of online learning. SoundviewPro launched today, and it’s a powerful business model that delivers great value.

Here’s how it works . . .

Business Presentations Video Instruction . . .

I’ve joined a number of other instructors to provide instruction in areas of expertise — mine, one hopes, is business presentations. Here’s the short promotional business presentations video . . . and no, as much as the still shot might suggest it, I’m not going through a facial transformation scene.

The description for my own business presentations video course appears here:

Far too many business presentations feature a speaker that could easily be part of the background. Stanley K. Ridgley, Ph.D. will put you in the command position and teach you to be (rather than give) your presentation.

Ridgley packs weeks of learning into six strategically designed classes that cover everything a business presenter needs to know. You’ll learn how to structure your message, the correct way to create visuals that match your critical points, and how to deliver a story that is as mesmerizing as it is memorable.

You’ll even learn the vital mechanics of presenting that are too often overlooked: posture and movement, voice techniques, hand gestures and how to interact with your visuals. In an entertaining course loaded with historical examples, you will discover that great business presenters aren’t born; they’re made. This is your opportunity to make yourself the next marquee speaker.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

•The importance of the Power Zone.

•A foolproof presentation structure.

•The power posture that projects confidence.

•How to transform an ordinary slide into an extraordinary visual.

•Why it is essential to make your audience the hero of every story.

Go to: www.soundviewpro.com to sign up for Soundview’s Business Presentations video course . . . it’s free.

The course is based on my business presentations book and has loads of visuals and supplementary materials available in addition to the videos.

General

The Ultimate Business Presentation?

January 6, 2014 Stanley K. Ridgley

You don’t hate business presentations?

You feel reasonably confident, competent, and thoroughly satisfied with your presenting skills?

Excellent! I congratulate you and suggest that you pass Business School Presenting along to a buddy who might profit from it.

But if you are like most of the 1.3 million English-speaking business school population worldwide, you have muttered I hate presentations more than once.

And you probably have issues with your business school and its treatment of presentations. That’s why you’re reading this blog.

One in 600 Million?

Of an estimated 600 million websites worldwide, this is the only site devoted exclusively to business school presentations.

I could be wrong about that, and I hope that I am.

Even if this is a lonely outpost today, we know that as quickly as the online community responds to the needs of its users, that could change tomorrow. I trust you’ll let me know, so that I can link to these nooks and crannies of the web that may hold secrets that we all need.

But right now, this instant, I do believe that this is it.

Think of this place as your Official College Guide to Business School Presentations.

Don’t hate Business Presentations!

I believe, and you may agree, that business school students need credible, brief, and direct resources on presenting – solid information and best practices, not vague generic “presentation principles” and certainly not “communication theory.” In short, you want to know what works and why.

You want to know right from wrong, good from bad.

You want to know what is just opinion and what, if anything, is carved in stone.

You’ll find answers here to the most basic of questions.

What is this beast – the business presentation?

How do I stand? Where do I stand?

What do I say? How do I say it?

How do I reduce 20 pages of analysis into a four-minute spiel that makes sense and that “gets it all in?”

How should we assemble a group presentation? How do we orchestrate it?

Where do I begin, and how?

How do I end my talk?

What should I do with my hands?

How do I conquer nervousness once and for all?

How can I tell “what the professor wants?”

How do I translate complicated material, such as a spreadsheet, to a PowerPoint slide so that it communicates instead of bores?

2,500 Years of Presenting

Business School Presenting answers every one of these questions and many more that you haven’t even thought of yet. You may not like the answers. You may disagree with the answers.

Fair enough. Let a thousand business presentation flowers bloom across the land. Listen, consider, pick and choose your pleasure.

Or not.

But know that I offer here the distillation of 2,500 years of public speaking and presentation secrets, developed by masters of oratory and public speaking and refined in the forge of experience. Folks who certainly did not hate presentations . . .

Cicero, Quintilian, Demosthenes, John Adams, Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama – all find their places in the pantheon of the most powerful presenters of all time.

They all have drawn upon the eternal verities of presenting. In turn, they have each contributed their own techniques to the body of wisdom. You find those verities here.

On the other side of things, I’d like to hear your own business presentation stories from your campus that illustrate challenges particular to your school and academic concentration.

So think deep.

Consider the personal competitive advantage that can be yours when you develop world class business presentation skills.

And learn not to hate business presentations by consulting my book The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

Charisma, Confidence, Passion, People, Structure, Technique

Malcolm X was a Great Presenter

December 19, 2013 Stanley K. Ridgley

Like snapping a towel to skin, you want to sting your audience in a good way. Malcolm X was a great presenter, and he used this technique better than most.

He could snap his audience to attention. He compelled his listeners to sit up straight, to focus on his message.

You can do this several ways, too. It’s up to you what method you choose, but it should fit your audience and your presentation.

One effective method is the use of a “grabber” line. This is a surprising and unconventional sentence or an unusual fact that immediately alerts the audience that its about to hear something special.

Not just another canned talk.

One of the finest public speakers – or presenters – of modern times was the late Malcolm X. Yes, Malcolm X was a great presenter, and his speeches are textbook examples of how to grab an audience, mesmerize it throughout his presentation, and then mobilize it with an especially powerful call to action.

The Effects of Rhetoric

Whether you agree or disagree with him is irrelevant to the point that he was a captivating communicator. He drew from a deep well of powerful presentation techniques.

Malcolm’s speeches are just that – speeches – and they are written for the ear and not the eye. As such, they are best read aloud so as to absorb the measured beats, to feel the repetition of key phrases.

And to learn the effects of certain rhetorical flourishes.

And when you read sentence after sentence, you sense the power and the deep moral outrage coming through, sometimes explicit but most often through a steady recapitulation of ideas using different phrases, but key words.

You gain a sense of the gathering storm. You almost hear rolling thunder in the distance.

Today, I mine his speeches for their cadences, their imagery, their use of allegory, anaphora, and turns of phrase.

With respect to grabbing an audience’s attention, too many presentations and speeches begin with routine thank-yous and ingratiation of the audience.

Bad presentations launch with a peppering of routine phrases, a gripping of the podium and a squinting at notes or jerky backward glances at an unreadable projection screen.

Remember that a speech is tremendously different from a written document. Pauses and repetition, tone and inflection are essential with the spoken word.

Especially Powerful Technique

Let’s look at the beginning of a typical Malcolm X speech and see how he grabs his audience. Read it with his spoken delivery in mind.

This speech – Message to the Grass Roots – was delivered in Detroit on November 10, 1963. Irrespective of the time and place and circumstance, which of course leavens our approach, note that Malcolm begins his talk by immediately establishing intimacy with the audience.

We want to have just an off-the-cuff chat between you and me . . . us. We want to talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand.

We all agree tonight, all of the speakers have agreed, that America has a very serious problem. Not only does America have a very serious problem, but our people have a very serious problem.

In the space of four sentences, Malcolm has drawn in his listeners. He has laid out a situation statement that, at that moment, captivated his audience.

He established a mood of confidentiality and rapport, and then makes a bold statement – “America has a very serious problem . . . We have a very serious problem.”

Who wouldn’t want to hear what comes next?

Malcolm X was a Great Presenter with Power and Depth

Notice that he did not engage in throat-clearing and chit-chat.

No “Thank you Mr. Chairman” . . . no “So good to see so many committed activists tonight and familiar faces in the crowd.” Notice also the use of repetition of key phrases: “Very serious problem.”

Straight to the point, and a bold point it is. See what comes next . . .

America’s problem is us. We’re her problem. The only reason she has a problem is she doesn’t want us here. And every time you look at yourself, be you black, brown, red or yellow, a so-called Negro, you represent a person who poses such a serious problem for America because you’re not wanted. Once you fact this as a fact, then you can start plotting a course that will make you appear intelligent, instead of unintelligent.

Has Malcolm studied his audience? Is he reaching out with a message that is directly relevant to his listeners?

Most of all, has he grabbed your attention?

He surely has.

Malcolm was expert at executing Presentation Snap, grabbing his listeners in a way that zeroed in on them . . . on their needs, concerns, desires, hopes . . . framing the issue in colorful language, and creating listener expectations that he will offer bold and radical solutions to real problems.

For now, focus on the grabber to seize the attention of your audience. Mull this excellent example from Malcolm’s talk. Ask yourself how he contrived it . . . and how it works.

In subsequent posts, we look at more examples from Malcolm X as he moves through delivery of his presentation and builds to his call for action at the end.

For more on how you can use Malcom X’s techniques to develop especially powerful business presentations, consult T he Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

Movement, Technique

Move Around During Your Presentation

October 14, 2013 Stanley K. Ridgley

Shouldn’t you move around during your presentation?

Consider this.

A student approached me after class and shared this experience:

“I stand in one spot for the most part during my presentations,” he said.

“But another professor told me to move around when I talk.”

Hmmm.

Move around when you talk.

“Did he tell you how?” I asked.

“Tell me what?”

“Did he tell you how to ‘move around?’ Did he tell where to go . . . what to do . . . when to do it . . . tell you what it would accomplish?”

“No, he just said to ‘move around’ when you talk.”

“Just ‘move around?’”

“Yes.”

Ponder that piece of advice a moment. Ponder that advice and then reject it utterly, completely. Forget you ever read it.

What Rotten Advice

Never just move around during your Business Presentation.

Don’t wander aimlessly.

Never just “move around” the stage.

Everything you do should contribute to your message. Movement on-stage is an important component to your message. It’s a powerful weapon in your arsenal of communication. Movement can and should contribute force and emphasis to your show.

But some people move too much. Like the professor urged, they just “move around” because they don’t know better.

And why should they know better, when some professor urged them to start prowling the stage for the sake of it.

Just as some folks are rooted to one spot and cannot move while they speak, some folks just can’t stop moving. They stalk about the stage like a jungle cat.

They move constantly, as if dodging imaginary bullets. They fear to cease pacing lest their feet put down roots.

This kind of agitated movement is awful.

Aimless pacing around the stage is worse than no movement at all.

Aimless movement indicates indecision, the sign of a disorganized mind.

It’s usually accompanied by aimless thoughts and thoughtless words.

“Move around when you talk.”

It’s not the worst piece of advice a professor has ever given a student, but it’s incredibly naive.

At first, the advice seems innocent enough. Even sage. Aren’t you supposed to move around during your presentation? Don’t we see powerful presenters “move around” when they talk? Didn’t Steve Jobs “move around” when he presented at those big Apple Fests?

Yes, we see them “move around” quite well.

But do you know why they “move” and to what end? Do you understand how they orchestrate their words and gestures to achieve maximum effect?

Do you recognize their skilled use of the stage as they appeal to first one segment of the audience, and then another? Do you think that Bill Clinton or Barack Obama just “move around” when they talk?

If I tell you to “move around during your presentation,” what will you actually do?

Think about it for a moment, how you might actually follow-through with that sort of vague advice.

Will you flap your arms? Do Michael Jackson isolations with your shoulders? Shake your fist at the crowd?

Move Around During Your Presentation, You Say?

How? Where? When? Why? How much?

Awful advice. We will never know how much damage such well-meaning naiveté has done to our presentation discourse. Like much of what is said, it carries a kernel of truth, but it is really worse than no advice at all.

Centuries of practice and delivery advise us on this question. Edwin Shurter said in 1903 . . .

Every movement that a speaker makes means – or should mean – something. Hence avoid indulging in movements which are purely habit and which mean nothing. Do not constantly be moving; it makes the audience also restless. Do not walk back and forth along the edge of the platform like a caged lion. Do not shrug your shoulders, or twist your mouth, or make faces.

You are well on your to mastering your voice and to speaking like a powerful motivator.

Now it’s time to incorporate essential movement. What must you actually do during your talk? Where to do it? How to do it? Why should you do it . . . and when?

In my next post, I answer those questions and show you how to incorporate meaningful movement into your presentation – exactly the types of movement that add power, not confusion.

Interested in more especially powerful techniques for your business presentation? Click here and discover the world of business presentations.

Principles, Technique

Business Presentation Principles . . . The First P

July 14, 2013 Stanley K. Ridgley

Overarching the craft of developing an especially powerful presentation is the guidance provided by the “Three Ps,” and the first of these Ps provides a solid foundation of powerful business presentation principles.

The first P is Principles, and there are seven of them.

These Seven Principles of Especially Powerful Presenting constitute the building blocks of your presentation persona. And you’ll not find a PowerPoint slide in sight.

These principles, in short, are you.

Stance . . . Voice . . . Movement . . . Gesture . . . Expression . . . Appearance . . . Passion

Elsewhere, I have characterized these principles as “secrets.”

Business Presentation Principles are Secret?

They are secrets. In fact, they could be the most open secrets that mankind has ever known.

But they are difficult secrets.

They are difficult, because they require you to actually do something. I think that perhaps when we think of a secret, we tend to equate it with magic. We automatically believe that there is some magic involved that will help us circumvent hard work.

But that’s just not so.

The good news is that these secrets actually are secrets that truly work. They also constitute the dimensions along which we can gauge our speaking ability and judge how much we improve.

This is the most important aspect of these business presentation principles – they allow us to tear away the veil from those who pose as merely talented and to understand this beast called The Presentation.

Now, let’s plot our dimensions on a 7×7 Chart.

Break-Down of Business Presentation Principles

Take, as an example, the chart below, which is labeled across the top with our seven dimensions and along the vertical axis with a seven-point scale of value:

Unacceptable, Below Average, Average, Good, Very Good, Superior, Professional.

The chart plots the seven dimensions against a seven-point scale and provides a thorough evaluation of the presenter’s level of skill. From the chart, we see that this speaker carries a professional-grade stance and is superior with his gestures.

All other dimensions indicate work is needed. The advantage of this chart, is that it disaggregates your various speaking tasks so that you can manage them.

It separates them out, so that you can identify your weaknesses in a logical and comprehensive way. It also informs you of your strengths, so that you may build upon them.

Business Presentation Principles for Power and Impact

The upshot is that this First P of Especially Powerful Presenting – Business Presentation Principles – guides us to master the Seven Secrets, to transform ourselves into truly adept presenting instruments. To put us at home in front of any audience and able to connect across a range of subjects and and in a multitude of venues.

Elsewhere, I have addressed the Seven Secrets in detail, and I’ll revisit them again soon.

For now, let’s remember that the especially powerful presenters of the past 50 years have used these Secrets – Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King. They don’t announce that they’re using secret techniques and tricks of the trade, of course.

They simply let you believe that they were gifted with special talents. Not a chance.

It’s mastery of the Three Ps.

Next . . . Preparation.

For all three Ps and a complete distillation of Business Presentation Principles, have a look at The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

Career, General, Personal Brand, Personal Competitive Advantage, Professional Presence, Technique

How to Give a Business Presentation

March 27, 2013 Stanley K. Ridgley

Do you know How to Give a Business Presentation?

Business students need credible, brief, and direct resources on how to give a business presentation.

You want solid information and best practices, not generic “presentation principles” and certainly not “communication theory.”

You want to know what works and why. You want to know right from wrong, good from bad.

You want to know what is just opinion and what, if anything, is carved in stone.

Think of this place as your Official College Guide to Business School Presentations, because here you’ll find answers here to the most basic questions.

What is this beast – the business presentation?
How do I stand? Where do I stand?
What do I say? How do I say it?
How do I reduce 20 pages of analysis into a four-minute spiel that makes sense and that “gets it all in?”
How should we assemble a group presentation? How do we orchestrate it?Where do I begin, and how?
How do I end my talk?
What should I do with my hands?
How do I conquer nervousness once and for all?
How can I tell “what the professor wants?”
How do I translate complicated material, such as a spreadsheet, to a PowerPoint slide so that it communicates instead of bores?

Business School Presenting answers every one of these questions. It answers many more that you haven’t even thought of yet.

You may not like the answers. You may disagree with the answers.

Fair enough. Let a thousand presentation flowers bloom across the land. Listen, consider, pick and choose your pleasure.

Or not.

2,500 Years of How to Give a Business Presentation

But you should know that I offer here the distillation of 2,500 years of public speaking and presentation secrets. Secrets developed by masters of oratory and public speaking and refined in the forge of experience.

Cicero, Quintilian, Demosthenes, John Adams, Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama – all find their places in the pantheon of the most powerful presenters of all time. And all of them knew how to give a business presentation.

They all have drawn upon the eternal verities of presenting. In turn, they have each contributed their own techniques to the body of wisdom.

You find those verities here.

In our modern-day world of multimedia extravaganzas, who needs business presentations? It’s all done for us now, right?

The presentation is contained in the software, and all you need do is plug in the specifics. Right?

With all of these high-tech prosthetic presentation devices, anyone can be a presentation hero!

Right? Right?

You may wish it were true, but of course you know that this is wrong. Horribly wrong.

You’ve seen enough endless, boring, unintelligible slide-a-thons to know that something is amiss here.

Why are 99 percent of business presentations so boring? Why is it that only 1 percent of corporate America seems to know how to give a business presentation in a coherent, interesting manner?

The answer’s here, and on this site.

Why Bother with How to Give a Business Presentation?

If you discovered that there was one thing – business presentation skill – you could learn that would immeasurably increase your chances of getting a great job after graduation, wouldn’t that be great?

What would you think of that? Too good to be true?

And what if you discovered that this skill is something that you can develop to an especially powerful level in just a handful of weeks?

What would that be worth to you? Would it be worth the price of a book to get you started?

Think of it – business presentation skills you can learn in 4-5 weeks that can provide you lasting competitive advantage through the rest of your working life. A skill that few people take seriously.

A skill in high demand by America’s corporations.

Companies haven’t nearly enough personnel who can communicate effectively. Nor logically. Comfortably. Clearly. Cogently. This is why corporate recruiters rate business presentation skills more important in candidates than any other trait or skill.

Capable business presenting is a high-demand skill.

This is the Secret Skill You Knew They Kept from You

The Secret Skill – the edge – you’ve always sought.

You, as a business student or young executive, gain personal competitive advantage vis-à-vis your peers, just by taking presenting seriously. You gain advantage by embracing the notion that you should and can become an effective and capable business presenter.

In other words, if you actually devote yourself to the task of becoming a superb speaker and learn how to give a business presentation with competence and confidence, you lift yourself into that rarefied 1 percent of business students and executives.

And the task is not as difficult as you imagine. But it isn’t easy, either.

You actually have to change the way you do things. This can be tough.

Most of us want solutions outside of ourselves. The availability of an incredible variety of software has inculcated in us a tendency to accept the way we are and to find solutions outside ourselves. Off the shelf. In a box.

This doesn’t work. Not at all. You cannot find the secret to great business presenting outside of yourself.

You already carry it with you.

But you will have to change.

But Great Business Presentation Skills Mean Change . . .

This is about transformation.

Transforming the way we think, the way we view the world. Transforming the lens through which we peer at others, the lens through which we see ourselves. Transforming you so that you know how to give a business presentation and deliver power and impact every time.

And it begins with your uniqueness. Each of us applies our own uniqueness to the tools and verities that make for great business presentations. We mark our presentations with our own personal brand.

Your realization of uniqueness and belief in it is essential to your development as a powerful business presenter.

Yes, you are unique, and in the quest for business presentation excellence, you discover the power of your uniqueness. You strip away the layers of modern mummification. You chip away at those crusty barnacles that have formed over the years without your even realizing it.

It’s time to express that unique power in ways that support you in whatever you want to do.

Explore the truths here on how to give a business presentation and begin today to energize your personal brand and gain personal competitive advantage.

For more on how to give a business presentation with power and impact, consult The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

Books, People, Resources, Slides, Story, Technique

The Best Presentation Books for 2013!

January 17, 2013 Stanley K. Ridgley

One of the Best Presentation books of 2013 — Best Presentation Books

It occurred to me to compile a list of the best presentation books to recommend to readers of this blog.

It’s really an obvious exercise, isn’t it?

“Best of” lists are always popular.

To recommend books chock full of presentation wisdom to hone our skill set. Great advice to lift our presentation to what we all sometimes refer to as “the next level.”

And then the equally obvious thought occurred to me – that list already exists.

The List of Best Presentation Books

In fact, I’m certain that several lists are already out there making the rounds.

And so I do the next best thing in this space . . .

I offer you a list of the 35 best presentation books compiled and judged by giants in the field . . . (and I offer my own view of what I consider to be the top three on the list). Yes, you can learn something about business presenting from a book. Quite a bit, actually.

The trick is to find the right book.

My Top Three Best Presentation Books

My personal favorites are Presenting to Win, by Jerry Weissman and Slide:ology, by Nancy Duarte, The Story Factor, by Annette Simmons.

These three books, for me, capture the spirit, the art, and the craft of especially powerful business presenting.

They advocate change. You must change the way your deliver your presentations in ways that, at first, may discomfort you. But they are changes that you must accept to become an especially powerful business presenter.

Best Presentation Books for 2013 — Best Presentations Books . . . this one on PowerPoint Slides

The Story Factor, in particular, is strong in transforming your presentations into sturdy narratives that capture an audience and propel your listeners to action. Consult Annette Simmons for deep learning about the power of storytelling.

A fourth book does not appear on the list. Actually, it does, but only in a modified form. This is Dale Carnegie’s The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking. This is an “updated” version of his classic from mid-way the last century Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business. In my view, the update strips much useful material from the book, and so I prefer the original.

You can find dozens of copies of the original classic for sale on ebay. This, in my opinion, is the most useful public speaking book ever penned.

Best Presentation books — Best Presentation Book on Storytelling

If I were forced to choose one . . . this would be it. And My Book?

My own just-published book, The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting, does not appear on this superb list of 35 books. And so here I offer the most generous and self-aggrandizing interpretation possible . . . it just hasn’t circulated among the cognoscenti nearly enough to have created a buzz-worthy impact.

I know that you, as do I, eagerly await its appearance on next year’s “Best of” list.

Until then, enjoy the creme-de-la-creme of the best presentation books as exemplified on the 2012 list!

Slides, Video

Better PowerPoint for 2013! — VIDEO

December 31, 2012 Stanley K. Ridgley

Better PowerPoint can be the boon of many a business presentation.

If you correct even a few of the most egregious errors, you can lift your presentation to a much more professional level.

One key to improving is recognizing that you might be part of the problem. And that like most any musical instrument, you can tune yourself up to play more beautiful melodies.

One strategic way of doing this is to begin broadening your professional perspective.

Your Learning Curve for Better Powerpoint

It’s the process of enriching your personal context so that you become aware of new and varied sources of information, ideas, concepts, theories. You become learned in new and wondrous ways.

Think of it as enlarging your world.

You increase your reservoir of usable material. And your business presentation can connect more readily with varied audiences.

You do this in a pleasant and ongoing process – by keeping your mind open to possibilities outside your functional area. By taking your education far beyond undergraduate or graduate school. And that process increases your personal competitive advantage steadily.

By doing something daily, however brief, that stretches your mind. Or allows you to make a connection that otherwise might have escaped you.

Expand Your World for Better PowerPoint?

By reading broadly in areas outside your specialty, you sharpen your acumen in your specialty. You understand its place, its context.

Read a book outside your specialty. Have lunch with a colleague from a different discipline. Dabble a bit in architecture, engineering, art, poetry, history, science.

It also means sampling some of the best offerings in the blogosphere on business presentations.

For instance, my three favorite PowerPoint gurus are Nancy Duarte, Garr Reynolds, and Gene Zelazny. Sample their online work . . . purchase their books, as I have.

Their works are invaluable tools of my trade. If you become a serious business presenter, they’ll become your friends, too.

Light-Hearted Improvement

For a more immediate fix some of the worst PowerPoint pathologies, have a look at this fellow.

In this video, engineer Don McMillan demonstrates the most common PowerPoint presentation mistakes in a way that, well . . . have a look!

The World Expert? What Bombast!

The World Expert!

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Such an “Old” Case

Embrace the Un-interesting Topic

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One in 255 Million?

Don’t hate presentations!

2,500 Years of Presenting

Especially Powerful Business Presentation

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No Easy Way Out

What are the “100 Things?”

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3D Presentations

The Interesting Business Presentation

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Case Competitions Worldwide

No Time for Modesty or Mediocrity

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Stop Your Presentation Now

Magic Words . . .

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The First View

The Second View . . . Presentation McTips!

The Third View – The Power Zone

Then . . . Take the Red Pill

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Great Business Presentation Websites

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Don’t Lose Your Message!

How to Transition Between Speakers?

Harmonize your Messages

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Own the Business Presentation . . .

Don’t Self-Destruct!

Use 10,000 B.C. Technology

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Prepare the Business Presentation

How Different?

Numbers Trump All?

“How come I never get assigned an interesting topic?”

Crank up Interest

This Time, Procrustes has it Right

Your Procrustean Solution

Especially Powerful Paucity

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Business Presentations Video Instruction . . .

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One in 600 Million?

Don’t hate Business Presentations!

2,500 Years of Presenting

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The Effects of Rhetoric

Especially Powerful Technique

Malcolm X was a Great Presenter with Power and Depth

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What Rotten Advice

Never just move around during your Business Presentation.

Move Around During Your Presentation, You Say?

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Business Presentation Principles are Secret?

Break-Down of Business Presentation Principles

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2,500 Years of How to Give a Business Presentation

Why Bother with How to Give a Business Presentation?

This is the Secret Skill You Knew They Kept from You

But Great Business Presentation Skills Mean Change . . .

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The List of Best Presentation Books

My Top Three Best Presentation Books

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Your Learning Curve for Better Powerpoint

Expand Your World for Better PowerPoint?

Light-Hearted Improvement

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For Especially Powerful Business Presentations