TJ’s Insights

Obviously your introduction bio should vary according to what group you are addressing. An introduction in front of the Securities and Exchange Commission would be different than the bio introduction used for a speaker about to give a high school commencement address, even though it is the same speaker presenting. But another consideration is how long your bio should be for a particular audience. Different audiences who are listening to you in different formats need different lengths of a bio.

So many presentations are boring because their pace is exactly the same throughout. Whether the speaker reads a script, follows a PowerPoint or just works from an outline, the word flow is coming out at roughly the same speed and same volume. The result?

Boredom. The audience falls asleep.

Practically anything you can do to alter or change the pace of your speech is a good thing because it will make you stand out from all of the other speakers who never change their pace. This is why when a speaker makes a seemingly spontaneous remark, the audience responds favorably. When uttering a spontaneous remark, whether louder than usual or under the breath as an aside, the speed and volume change. This variety makes the speaker more interesting.

In general, I shun those who offer quick fixes to serious management problems. However, I do have a quick fix for most bad speeches. Here it is:

Eliminate 95% of the content that talks about how great you are.

Why is that?

Because your audience doesn’t care about you; they care about themselves!

“But don’t you have to tell people about all of your accomplishments, credentials, and achievements in order to be credible?”

No!

So many executives fret and worry and obsess over the possibility of not being able to answer a question at the end of a presentation. Why? I could understand this obsession if there were some direct correlation between failure to answer questions and loss of peer respect or being fired from jobs.

But there isn’t!

Sure lots of us can remember a time when we couldn’t answer a question thrown at us by a boss, client or customer. But how many of us can remember someone else who failed to answer a question successfully?

Clients often ask me the following:

“TJ, what resources (magazines, websites, etc) would you recommend to learnthe unique personality of various TV news programs and how to succeed in each show? Are there such resources?”

They don’t always like my answer, but I recommend that people NOT use magazines or websites to learn about TV personalities on news programs. Instead, you need to actually watch the shows–this is the only way to learn about the hosts.

Respect the medium! You need to watch video to learn how someone behaves in a video environment.

There once was a time when politicians were afraid to come across as too glib for fear that journalists would criticize them as slick. The “sound bite” was a phrase known only to insiders who lived inside the DC beltway or Manhattan.

Not anymore.

The June 9, 2006 New York Times Editorial page wrote an entire editorial praising New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for his increasing use of inflammatory sound bites!

Here is an excerpt:

“…Imagine our surprise then, when the button-down chief executive (Bloomberg) suddenly became the master of the explosive sound bite.

Nearly every human being has had a great personal, one-on-one conversation with another close friend or family member at some point. What makes for a good one-on-one conversation?

1. Really listening to the other person.
2. Sharing of ideas.
3. Looking for non-verbal cues to see if someone is understanding you.
4. Pausing to let the other person absorb what you said.
5. Pausing for emphasis.
6. Pausing to think/reflect.
7. Acts of spontaneity.
8. Asking real/non-rhetorical questions.
9. Recounting real stories involving real people and real examples.
10. Conveying emotion about how you feel about the subject.

Much of what I do and what other presentation and speaking experts do is try to create rules, do’s and don’ts, and checklists to help speakers minimize mistakes and maximize their strengths. People in my profession like to systemize and measure in order to help as many people advance in regular stems. Sometimes, we even like to imagine that we are dealing with presentation learning issues in a scientific manner that can be quantified.

Whether you work for a Fortune 100 Corporation or you are a one-person consulting person working from home, you have three main ways of marketing yourself or your company whenever you speak.

1. Credentials/position/title
2. Topic/subject matter/process
3. Results you get for people

All three are important; they make up three important legs of a stool. But the problem I see with most speakers is that they spend a disproportionate amount of time on credentials and topic/process and very little time on results. Audiences, whether they are investors, voters or customers, tend to care primarily about results.

One of the hardest presentations to make is the entrepreneurial pitch. You have a great idea for a business and you want someone to give you money to make it happen. The problem is that venture capitalists, angel investors, and even rich uncles are heavily predisposed against you. Why? Because 99% of the pitches they hear sound like sure-fire prescriptions to lose money!

If you are pitching investors to give you money for a new venture, you should subscribe to the following rules: