Using Big Data to Create Better Presentations

Matt Abrahams has written a good article for Stanford Business School's Insights website. He describes the research conducted by Noah Zandan, founder and CEO of Quantified Communications. Zandan's company has used analytics to identify the key attributes of the most effective presentations by speakers and leaders of various kinds. Zandan's conclusions are based on the study of more than 100,000 presentations. Abraham's article is filled with great suggestions for improving your public speaking. Here are a few of the key points (excerpts below):

Avoid hedging language. Qualifying phrases such as “kind of” and hesitant language like “I think” can be beneficial in interpersonal communication, where they invite contribution and adjust your status relative to the person with whom you are conversing. But in contexts like presenting in public, they can reduce your credibility.

Vocal elements include volume, rate, and cadence. The keys to vocal elements are variation and fluency. Think of your voice like a wind instrument. You can make it louder, softer, faster, or slower. We are wired to pay attention to these kinds of vocal change, which is why it is so hard to listen to a monotonous speaker. In fact, even just a 10% increase in vocal variety can have a highly significant impact on your audience’s attention to and retention of your message.

Vital elements capture a speaker’s true nature — it is what some refer to as authenticity. For authenticity, Zandan’s team has found that the top 10% of authentic speakers were considered to be 1.3 times more trustworthy and 1.3 times more persuasive than the average communicator. Authenticity is made up of the passion and warmth that people have when presenting.  Passion comes from exuding energy and enthusiasm.

How to Give a Better Speech or Presentation

Lisa Evans has a great article at Fast Company about how to deliver a better speech.  Her essay is titled, "4 Common Vocal Mistakes Leaders Make."   She describes the following four errors:

1.  They lack passion for their own ideas.  They don't sound energetic and engaged.  If you don't care deeply about your ideas, why should the audience care?

2.  They speak in long rambling paragraphs.   They forget to speak in concise sentences, with breaks to enable the audience members to process what they are hearing.  

3.  They are monotone.  They don't use intonation to help emphasize key points, capture the audience's attention, and stimulate questions.  

4.  They fail to practice and then to listen to themselves speaking.   Therefore, they have no idea whether they are delivering their message effectively.   

I would add a fifth key error that leaders often make.  Many leaders fail to use stories to communicate their key message.  They rely on numbers, facts, and statistics.   However, research shows that storytelling is much more effective when trying to influence and persuade.   

PowerPoint Abuse

Megan Hustad has a good article at Fortune.com about PowerPoint abuse.   In the article, Warren Berger, design expert and author of Glimmer, argues that speakers use Powerpoint as a crutch.  It deflects the audience's attention away from the speaker, which is something many presenters actually prefer.  Berger argues that PowerPoint isn't the problem; the way people use it is the issue.  Speakers talk to the slides, rather than engaging interactively with the audience.  That lack of audience engagement harms a speaker's ability to persuade, influence, and impact.

Terri Sjodin,  author of Small Message, Big Impact, makes the argument that bullet points don't help the audience understand cause and effect.  A persuasive argument draws connections; it explains how and why one factor influences another.  Hustad ends the article with a story from the creators of South Park.  The story reinforces the notion that we have to draw connections when making a presentation.   The creators explain how they put "story beats" together: "We can take these beats, which are basically the beats of your outline, and if the words 'and then' belong between those beats, you're fucked, basically. You've got something pretty boring. What should happen between every beat that you've written down is either the word 'therefore' or 'but.' So it's not this happens and then this happens. Instead, it's this happens therefore this happens. Or this happens but this happens also, therefore something else happens."

Speakers, Have a Conversation With Your Audience

Nick Morgan at Forbes points us to a terrific TEDx Houston talk by Professor Brené Brown.  As Morgan writes, "Audiences long for presenters to be real with them, and just have a conversation.  Sure, they want a focused, smart conversation, not a rambling, pointless one like so many real conversations.  But they want an authentic connection with their speakers, and the way to achieve that is with a conversation."

Morgan goes on to explain that many presenters fear a conversation with their audience.  They want to control the situation.  Professors suffer from this same desire for control.  As a result, they sometimes shy away from interactive learning processes, because they are not sure how they will handle unexpected conversations and questions. 

I encourage you to read Morgan's article and watch Professor Brown's terrific talk:

Public Speaking in the Social Media Age

Fast Company's Drew Neisser has a good column on public speaking in the social media age.  I thought two of his points are worth emphasizing here, though I recommend reading the whole column.  

First, he argues: "Don’t Panic if They Aren’t Looking at You."   They might be on a portable device, such as an iPad or iPhone.  However, it doesn't mean they are reading email necessarily.  They might be taking notes, or tweeting about your presentation in real-time.  Both of those behaviors could be very productive and useful for you.  If they tweet your message, you could be reaching a much broader audience.  Telling them to put away their devices is NOT the answer, according to Neisser.

Second, he explains: "If You Don’t Speak Twitterese, It’s Time to Learn It."  In other words, you need to share your Twitter handle up-front. In that way, people can share their thoughts about your presentation, and you will be able to see those statements. Moreover, you need to provide some concise phrases and sound bites that will be amenable to tweeting. Think of capturing your message in a few phrases of 140 characters or less.