When you use PowerPoint, are you actually diminishing your image as an expert – or even helping your audiences tune you out? If your answer may be YES, you need PowerPoint Presentation Tips for real speaking power.
Today’s VideoBlog gives you the solutions: PowerPoint Presentation Tips, Part 3. In previous blogs, I presented Tips #1 through 6.
Tip #7: At any point in your presentation where you plan to move close to your audience for dramatic effect, help focus audience attention by placing a black slide in your deck.
Tip #8: When you want to focus attention on yourself for a longer period of time, allow the screen to go completely dark. Use the “B” key for this.
Tip #9: Always make your final slide an image slide: this image should illustrate the inspirational closing that you will speak.
Finally, Tip #10: I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Don’t make PowerPoint your higher power. Allow PowerPoint to support you, and not the other way around.
When you use these strategies with PowerPoint, you’ll project your own unique power. You’ll enhance your image as an expert and your listeners will quickly realize that they cannot afford to tune you out. You’ll have them on the edge of their seats!
During business conversations and presentations, would you like to reduce your filler words, to sound more authoritative and get buy-in faster? You can do it with a technique that actors use when they are preparing to speak extemporaneously.
You already know that filler words (um, uh, so, well, like, you know) rarely add meaning and are usually just a distraction for your listeners. And that they jeapardize your ability to project confidence and commitment. Reducing your use of fillers will help you enhance your credibility and your leadership presence. Borrow this practice technique that actors use:
Set a timer for increasing time periods of time, two or three minutes to start, and record yourself as you speak in extended sentences on a topic of your choice. Choose a business topic that you know well, something you enjoy speaking about (but not your elevator speech or a sales pitch).
As you speak into the recorder, imagine that each word that comes from your mouth is connected to the next one, which is connected to the next one, and so on: the way pearls are connected on a string of pearls. When you feel the urge to use a filler
Stop yourself
Pause
Say the filler silently to yourself
When the timer rings, play back the recording and notice your fillers. Then repeat the exercise, with new topics of your choice.
As you become comfortable with this exercise, increase the setting on the timer, perhaps starting at five or seven minutes. Then, continue the practice until you can speak extemporaneously on new topics of your choice for fifteen or twenty minutes straight, without the use of fillers.
I guarantee: when you practice this on a regular basis, you will find that, over time, you are decreasing the number of fillers that you use. You will sound more confident and more authoritative. And you’ll increase your ability to influence!
In my last few blogs, I have described the value of applying acting objectives when you prepare to speak for business. Here are some additional benefits that you will experience when you use this technique. Pursuing acting objectives
#1: gives you laser-beam focus and simplifies the process, because it gives you just one thing to think about: what you are doing with your words as you speak
#2: galvanizes your energy toward your listeners; it’s the quickest and most powerful way to project energy, commitment, passion, and poise.
#3: provides a completely organic way to make your voice and physical demeanor support your content. It turns your voice, body language, and content into one seamless, unified message.
When you are speaking in business conversation or making a presentation, this gives you maximum power and delivers to your listeners maximum impact.
Whenever you speak/present in business, it’s very important to keep your focus on your listeners: on what you ultimately want them to feel or do. Nervousness (which is a focus on self) and a preoccupation with word choice or howyou are coming across can jeopardize your power to influence.
Listeners care about one thing: “What’s in this for me?” This is why speakers must always project a “you focus” and why rehearsing in front of a mirror is so dangerous: it trains you to focus on yourself and on how you look (which is often detected by the audience and can project either arrogance or anxiety).
In my blogs, I have presented a theater technique that helps business speakers focus the mind on listeners; the technique is the pursuit of what actors call “acting objectives”. “Acting objectives” are separate from the types of objectives that should be obvious from your content and which you might even articulate to your listeners. Instead, “acting objectives” have one purpose: they are designed to propel your energy toward your listeners and project a “you focus”.
Once you have chosen powerful acting objectives for each “beat” (see my previous blog about “beats”), keep your acting objectives private: they should be your secrets. Have you ever noticed that your secrets hold great power for you? For speakers, this is helpful; we want our acting objectives to hold power over our demeanor; we want them to give us an audience-focused delivery style.
Rehearse the way actors do: rehearse aloud, rehearse often, and rehearse at top energy. As you speak the words of each beat, focus on the underlying acting objective. Your energy and commitment in this pursuit are key. As you speak the words of each beat
Focus on the acting objective (what you want the listeners to do or feel), rather than on the exact words you are speaking
Keep the acting objective at the forefront of your mind
Pursue the acting objective with complete commitment: as if your life depended on it
Finally, always be sure that your demeanor communicates, “My message is important for you, so I love being here with you.”
Pursue “acting objectives” to focus your mind where it belongs: on your business listeners — to engage them fully and increase your power to influence.
Would you like your business listeners to trust you more? Would your business improve if you could convince prospects that you will be a true business partner for them? Would you like to generate more new business and keep more the business you already have?
If you’re answer is YES, you won’t want to miss my exciting program called “Enhance Your Leadership Presence with Acting Improvisation.” You’ll learn how to enhance your leadership presence by using acting improvisation, storytelling techniques, and the “yes and” mindset to transform your communication skills. You’ll learn how to generate business by deepening interpersonal connections, speaking with authenticity, building trust, and engaging your listeners. And you’ll learn how to address the changing needs of your existing clients by expanding your creativity and spontaneity.
I describe this work as “serious fun”. You’ll be engaged in playful, interactive activities: acting improvisation, theater and imagination games, and mind, body, and voice techniques that will help you project a spirit of collaboration and convince your prospects that you can (and will) help them solve their business problems.
Let me tell you how acting improvisation will enhance your leadership presence:
#1: Whenever you speak for business, your listeners have one over-riding concern: they want to know what’s in it for them. Acting improvisation addresses this concern. Early in their training, actors learn that the audience is always asking the question, “Why are you telling me this?” Acting improvisation teaches that you must answer this question, and answer it in a way that is compelling for your listeners. This is a skill that every business leader needs! If you’re not answering this question in a way that is compelling for your listeners, you’re losing business.
#2: To generate new business and keep the business you already have, you need to engage your listeners. Acting improvisation teaches what a message is made of, what needs to happen; it teaches you how to discern when the beginning should be over, when your listeners have had enough of the middle, when it’s time to move on to the ending, and how long that should last, etc. Leaders who use this knowledge and the timing that it develops become truly engaging: become masters of engagement. And they have a measurable competitive edge!
You, too, can become a master of engagement. Acting improvisation will teach you how! Don’t miss the opportunity to experience this innovative program: you’ll take away powerful techniques to transform your leadership presence.
Discover how play will enhance the way you work. And get ready for some serious fun! I look forward to working with you.
You can build your credibility by building listener belief in the way that actors do: Create and pursue acting objectives. An acting objective is an action that lies underneath the words you speak; and ACTION that you take toward your listeners as you speak. It is a specific, active verb; it expresses what you want to do to your listeners; what you want to make them feel or do.
Choose objectives that are personally appealing and for you to pursue, so that you’ll be motivated and project energy. There are three ingredients for an effective acting objective. Each objective should have the following qualities. It should be
a specific, active verb, Directed toward the listener
personal and appropriate to the spoken message and the listener’s situation.
truthful (not necessarily actual, but believable)
Pursuing an objective gives you energy and focus as you speak, because it is a powerful action to take toward your listeners; a powerful action that lies underneath the words. Listeners pay a lot of attention to the actions underneath the words you speak.
Here are some power verbs that might be useful at acting objectives (think, “I wish to __ my listeners”): welcome them; stir their pride; impress them; honor them; warn them; make them laugh, etc.
Keep your acting objectives private; they should be your secrets. The longer you keep a secret, the more power it holds for you. You want your objective to have power of you; to have power to affect your delivery. Keeping your acting objectives private will strengthen your motivation to speak and galvanize the commitment and passion in your voice and your gestures.
Actors write their acting objectives in the margin of the script, right next to the dialogue. Identifying power verbs as your acting objectives for each beat of your presentation will help you organize your ideas, internalize your message, and prepare you for the next step: pursuing your acting objectives, as if you life depended on it!
In order to make choices about actions and identify acting objectives, actors divide the script into units (called “beats”).
Business speakers should do the same. Take a deep dive into the notes for your presentation and divide it into beats. Each beat is a separate topic, smaller than the overall subject of the message (not what you are doing with your words, but what you are talking about).
In the margin of your notes, label each beat: a simple noun or noun phrase.
When you know what each beat is about, you will be ready for the next step: identifying an acting objective for each beat.
Savvy professionals apply acting techniques to help enhance their credibility and gravitas when they speak for business. They know that they need to build belief within the listeners, so they borrow techniques that actors have used for decades. So can you.
Crafted actors spend years perfecting a craft that is designed to build belief. This is why advertisers so often rely upon actors and their craft: they understand that actors’ techniques and performance skills are fundamental to the business of selling any idea, product, or service.
When actors are preparing a role, they make careful choices about what actions to take, to help the audience believe that the make believe situation is real. For actors, it’s all about actions; for actors, actions speak much louder than words.
To prepare, actors create “acting objectives”. These are actions that lie underneath the words – actions they plan to take toward their listeners. This helps actors to be motivated to speak the words that the playwright or screenwriter wrote, and speak them truthfully, authentically, and conversationally.
In rehearsal and performance, actors pursue their acting objectives as if their lives depended on it. This helps the audience believe that the actor and the character are one and the same: that the actor IS the character.
This applies to you when you speak for business for two important reasons:
You want your business listeners to believe something: to believe that you have solutions to their problems, for example. The more rigorously you pursue your actions (your acting objectives), the more completely your audience will believe: believe that you and your message are one and the same; believe that you are your message.
Whenever you are speaking for business, when you make listeners believe, they are very likely to overlook minor shortcomings or mistakes you might make.
Throughout my acting career, and as a professional speaker, I have occasionally neglected to rehearse with the use of acting objectives. Invariably, whenever I have neglected to use this technique, I lost the acting job or failed to engage my business listeners.
Your business speaking/presentations will never be perfect; there will always be something to improve upon and something that you might consider to have been slightly “negative” in your “performance”. Without the use of acting objectives in your preparation, you significantly reduce your ability to make business listeners believe. When that happens, your listeners have little to focus on BUT the negative.
Once you have helped your business listeners believe, you’ve won them over to your side. After that, they will forgive you almost anything!
Maria’s program, “Enhance Your Leadership Presence with Acting Improvisation”: Learn how to enhance your leadershippresence by using improvisationand storytelling techniques to transform your communication skills. You will learn how to land new business by making deeper interpersonal connections, building trust, speaking with authenticity, and engaging your listeners. You’ll learn how to address the changing needs of your current clients by expanding your creativity and spontaneity. Discover how you can project a spirit of collaboration and convince prospects that you can and will help them solve their business problems!
One way that successful speakers engage their listeners is by pacing effectively and allowing each idea to “land” before going on to the next idea. This helps listeners understand fully and gives variety to the delivery. I recommend a rehearsal exercise based on one that I learned from the Academy-Award-winning actress, Olympia Dukakis.
Today, I’ll present the first step in this process: Think in thought groups, rather than thinking in words. This will help your pacing become organic, authentic, and compelling.
Research tell us that people don’t think in words; we think and listen in complete thoughts. Match the way you speak with the way your listeners listen! Apply my adaptation of Olympia’s technique, which was originally created to help actors internalize the sections and emotions of a scene. I have adapted Olympia’s technique for business speakers, so that you will develop greater sensitivity to your listeners and more consistently pause, tune in, and allow each idea to “land” before you go on to the next idea.
Begin rehearsal for any business talk with a simple exercise:
Set out a few chairs, as you would for the game musical chairs. Begin by sitting in one of them.
As you rehearse aloud, move to a different chair each time you complete a thought. Speak each complete idea from a difference chair.
Repeat this exercise until your mind and your body have internalized the moments when each complete thought has ended and the next one is about to begin.
This simple exercise will increase your awareness of your thought groups. It will help you become more sensitive to your listeners and be better able to pause, tune in to the listeners, and allow each idea to “land” before going on to the next idea.
You listeners will understand more fully and be more fully engaged!
