I'm Marion Chapsal and the aim of this blog is to help you create your unique Leadership and Communication experience for 2010 and beyond!
What could you do NOW to make 2010 the year you deliver outstanding presentations and develop your Leadership & Communication style?
Here's what you will find:
The basics on designing a presentation from scratch
Best online resources and links to help you Present
Reviews of blogs on presentations and leadership
Articles following discussions started on Twitter or LinkedIn
Useful Tips for your next presentation
Myths about presentation
Cartoons , pictures, TED videos, stories...
Personal experiences and testimonials of clients
Flexible, simple and creative online coaching tool
Please make your self at home, muse in the different categories thanks to the tag cloud and share your questions, opinions and ideas in the comments here or on Twitter or LinkedIn.
"My purpose is to coach women, and men too , using my generosity, creativity and passion, to communicate with confidence and enthusiasm and achieve their goals."
The secret impulse, which triggered this post, is that it's one of my favourite TED Videos, along with Jill Bolte Taylor's Stroke of insight and a dozen of others I will share here in this blog.
What can you learn from this presentation, that you could use in Your Next Presentation?
You can perform on a stage with nothing else but your presence,yourself, no technology.
You can rely on stories and myths to give flesh to your talk.
You can be perfectly structured with elegance and flow.
AnotherNaked Presentation
If you look at this video, you will notice that Elzabeth Gilbert embodies simplicity.
She is all dressed in black, with a very simple and casual black turtle neck (is it the new Steve Jobs Fashion?), black pants,ballerines, no jewels, very little make up.No laptop, no remote control, no visual aids, no notes,not even any back screen image. Black stage. Empty
Yet, she's shining
We follow her expressive face, her hands like butterflies, we watch her "dance" on stage and hear her inspired voice and delicious humour charm us along her talk, very simply.
No PowerPoint, no beam of light except the light that shines through her eyes, and her Passion.
And she's not a one woman show professional actress! She's a writer!
I know corporate settings don't always allow us to make such simple presentations and that when it comes to presenting charts, graphs and results, slides are necessary.
However, speaking in public doesn't only refer to formal presentations settings.
Every time you're asked to speak during a meeting, or in any professional conversation, you're having an opportunity to make an impact, be heard, be understood, make a change.
This TED presentation show us that you can achieve that very simply.
Again, the Power of Stories and Metaphors.
Elizabeth Gilbert takes us back to Greeks and Romans.
She's looking across time, other societies," to see if they might have had better ideas about how to help creative people manage the inherent emotional risk of creation".
When she talks about demons and geniuses, she does it by giving examples (Socrate) and also evocative images (hilarious when she compares the greek Genius divine entity to Dobby the House Elf)( In Harry Potter Publishing JK Rowlands)
How does she make us understand that during the Renaissance, we did a "huge error"? She uses a fantastic metaphor"It's like asking somebody to swallow the sun"
The presence of god in the artists projects ?"It's like rubbing fairy juices on their projects"
I'm going to leave you listen to her two stories of the American poet Ruth Stone and the musician Tom Waits. Commenting on them would only give you a pale idea of the wonderfully evocative power of her words. Her language is multisensorial and it just gives me "goosebumps" (and not "goosepumps", like I thought it spelled...)
She speaks about her meeting with Ruth Stone two extraordinary minutes (from 10 to 12 min in her talk). Really worth watching!It's actually like watching the scene with her playing all the roles. She's miming with her whole body the beautiful phrase:
"Ruth Stone would catch the poem by its tail and she would pull it backwards into her body" (This reminds me of Robert Frost definition of poetry, a way of "taking life by the throat")
Her interview with Tom Waits is also a peak moment of her speech, which brings unexpected laughter.Watch it, it's between 13 and 15 minutes in the talk.
Now, is she just very gifted and just improvising?
How to structure your talk with elegance?
Let me guide you through the underlying structure of this talk, which seems to be flowing spontaneously like a river from her. Again, this hides careful preparation. ( When Elizabeth says her creative process is one of "a mule", I suspect she may have prepared this talk, with "mulishness", in order to be caught by the "glimpse of god")
Observe how she very elegantly, and with humour, keeps her audience on track:
"Stay with me, because it does circle again back!"
She gives us some clues about where she's going to take us, how she will do it, and how she will take us back... Beautiful, very clever!
So her plan looks more like a circle:
Starting her circle with:
Her personal story, how having written this huge success "Eat ,Pray and Love", could have driven her to anxiety or depression.
Brief history of demons and genius in ancient Greece and Rome
The huge error of rational humanism and Renaissance
Story of the Poet Ruth Stone
Story of the Musician Tom Waits
Circles back to:
The impact of these stories on her writing and how accepting this "glimpse of god" could save TODAY creative people from madness.
My tip: The more aligned you are with your words, the better they will flow...
Again:
You can perform on a stage with nothing else but your presence,yourself, no technology.
You can rely on stories and myths to give flesh to your talk.
You can be perfectly structured with elegance and flow.
Just imagine yourself, with your kid or grandchild, reading his (her) favorite bedtime story,with a classic children book
and ...your iPhone!
Watch this incredible (very short 1:53 min) video where a classical children book is being read WITH the kid, thanks to an iPhone touch screen inserted in the book (I love the moment when the little red fishes are attracted like magnets by the finger)
"I was completely blown away by this video the first time through. Such a simple, low-tech, solution produces such an amazingly rich, engaging experience that’s just bursting with possibility for further creativity.
While it’s just a concept at this point, you can see how it can make a new kind of storytelling available to the masses in a way that wouldn’t have seemed possible not that long ago."
Alex Rainert. His twitter bio:"I love design. I'm partial to the intersection of mobility & social behavior. Years ago I co-founded dodgeball. I currently run the Design group at Schematic NY".
So, what does it have to do with Presentation Skills and Public Speaking?
I see the future of Presentations including Storytelling, interactivity and creativity.
I'm not sure yet how it will be implemented, but there is room for innovation, and this could just be fantastic!
Imagine if we could design workshop books and masterclass like that?
Our audience would be able to follow what we say and show and at the same time experience with their touch the discovery of new concepts..., at their own rythm.
Therefore, we need to develop storytelling skills, as well as creative narrative design and skills.
I'd love to collaborate with designers and learning experts to create innovative learning tools...
Mixing the most ancient oral tradition with the most sophisticated technology.
"As Deputy Director of Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG), Lainé has worked to bring renewable electricity and solar hot water to families and agricultural workers in Guatemalan villages, and dry composting latrines to women in the Cap-Haitien marketplace in Haiti. Simple infrastructure projectslike these have a dramatic effect on quality of life."
This lady is on a Mission. This alone has the power to move mountains.
She calls upon our ancient memories, the myths we may have learned at school.
She's excited about it and even laughs just at the thought of it, before telling us her story. We can only listen, in awe and impatient to know more.
Look at her: she is relaxed, she moves on the stage, makes eye contact, smiles, let her emotions show on her face. She also uses her voice accordingly to the effect she wants to produce. Her intention is clear: she really wants us to get involved and act on it by participation,taking action.
100 % Present and "A-Live", here and now.
She creates a sense of intimacy and closeness with us. She invites us in her space.
What about Passion?
Here is what she says about passion:
"Your dedication to the cause is what gets you through those moments," she says. "What you can't learn is passion. If you have that, it will get you so much farther than a degree."
Let it show, share your inner fire with your audience, and people will listen to you!
Preparation
This natural and casual talk is not improvised.
"With AIDG, Lainé attempts to stretch the goals of a traditional NGO by throwing savvy "business acumen" into the mix. She brings her own scientific background to the table when the group spearheads anew project, but she also knows the value of a good old-fashioned sales pitch."
And she must have prepared for this video, just like Steve Jobs does relentlessly before the release of Apple latest toy.
The result is :
Simplicity and natural.
The essence of an excellent presentation
What about you?
Will you use the 4 "P"s for your next presentation?
