Geronimo Leadership Coaching

Learn To Speak Less. Speak Better.

In the very near future,presentations are going to look:

• More simple
• Shorter
• More personal
• More Interactive
• Collaborative
• More Fun

Today's lesson: Learn To Speak Less. Speak Better.

• Shorter

TED conferences last 18 minutes maximum. I love them, and posted a few on this blog.I used to watch them entirely, now I switch to shorter extracts, and wish they also offered "MicroTED".

Audience attention spans have grown shorter and shorter, so unless you have been assigned a talk of a specific length, make your talk as short as possible.About 10 minutes is ideal for a "classical" presentation, unless you are an exceptional speaker.

If you want to create an online video presentation, (a pitch, a tutorial, etc...), aim for 3 minutes. That's the maximum of time we will give you :)

Recently, I had to answer a tender for a major European bank. It was in a very challenging and innovative way.I had been asked to include a short 3 minute video of myself, presenting my CV and why I was  best suited to do the job. There was a very short notice to perform this exercise, and most of my colleagues, who also got the tender, had no clue on how to start with this video and eventually, missed the opportunity.

Among those who courageously took the challenge, they admitted the result was a poor reflect of what they expected.Anyway, it was an excellent experience which taught us to be ready, prepared for new way of presenting ourselves in the Corporate World as consultants and coaches.

I believe presenting with video in a limited amount of time requires a minimum of training, mentoring and coaching.

And practice, naturally...

If you really want to get attention, create micro presentations, lasting just a few seconds. Ridiculous? Not at all!

Do you know Ellen McGirt ? She's the Dean of a very special MBA The 30 Second MBA on Fast Company.

Yes. Thirty little seconds!

Yet, every week, Ellen McGirt and her team interview a very eclectic range of "30 Second Professors" who answer a question like "Leaders born or made

Look at what Andy Dunn , CEO of Bonobos, says: 

For Twitter, you have Bubble Tweets.
Bubble Tweet add Videos to your Twitter profile, called bubble messages. They are 30 second video clips that appear on a side when someone visits your profile.You may notice that I already have created mine, couldn't resist! It's at the top right of the blog navigation bar.

Still not convinced that we need to learn to make shorter and shorter presentations?

Have a look at what Robo.to .They aim for ...4 seconds!

"We have microblogging, so why not microvideoblogging. That's the idea behind Robo.to, a website that lets you publish micro videos - or visual status updates - that are no longer than 4 seconds in length. The videos can be distributed on Twitter, Facebook and other social media websites."

Okay, I stop there!

• How comfortable are you with watching a video of yourself?

• Have you ever tried recording a video presentation of you in less than 3 minutes?

• Why don't try, right now, from your office or from your home, with a flip cam, hand held or simply with your integrated video camera?

• What added value would it bring you if you were be able to present yourself shortly and efficiently?

Read related post How to pitch Yourself in less than 5 minutes

You know how to make me happy before Christmas? Join the discussion, and start right now by commenting, sharing YOUR stories of short (or too long!) presentations. Thank you! :)

6 Tips To Become a Better Online Speaker - Keep it Simple

In Picture Yourself Doing a Presentation in 10 Years, we had a quick look at our crystal ball.

We found out that presentations were going to look:

• More simple
• Shorter
• More personal
• More Interactive
• Collaborative
• More Fun

What does it mean for us, NOW?

• More simple

               "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." Leonardo da Vinci

We are looking for the core message. Go right to the essential.

Forget about complicated animated PowerPoints.

Forget about "looking the smartest"

Forget about "wanting to Impress "others

Don't try to say it all. You can't.

Look for authenticity and down-to-earth communication.

Find the flower of simplicity inside of you.

Nurture it. Make it grow. Share it.

Here's an illustration of the Flower of Simplicity and how it all started for Yoshi Arima, Interface Designer.

"The pivotal moment where the flower of simplicity manifested into reality was in preparing a presentation on simplicity for the Interactive Project Lab in 2007 at The Banff Centre, Canada.

Yoshi knew he had tapped into something very special when he presented it during that snowy, cold day in Banff."

Go "naked", be at ease with the few tools you are using.

Be "ZEN".

Be generous with your simplicity. Share it when you present to others :-)

Read related posts on how to be more simple :

The Naked Speaker
How To Give a Presentation Zen

Augmented Presentation

Let's imagine you're Dan.

It's 8:15 am.Dan is in his bathroom.

He's getting prepared for his next presentation at TAT.

He checks himself in the mirror, and also looks at his own reflection in his mobile mirror, (which looks like an iPhone on steroids).

He selects which social networks he wants, including Twitter, Slideshare, Facebook, YouTube,etc...

As he clearly comes out of a very joyful and busy party night, he doesn't want it to show on his public profile. So he switches off face book and Twitter and morphs into more professional appearance, leaving only slideshare and contact infos (he could have added LinkedIn)

It's 9:30 am. The presentation has started.

Through their mobiles, people can now easily find and use Dan's information.

They can also rate Dan's presentation and comment ("Backchannel on Twitter"), and even chat while Dan's presenting.

So, imagine you're Dan. How do you get ready for the backchannel?

• I received yesterday this link via Twitter " @cliffatkinson Free webinar Dec 18 "Getting Ready for the Backchannel – with guest @OliviaMitchell" 

• If you want, you can also read at Pistachio How To Present While people are Twittering by Olivia Mitchell or better, download her free ebook on her site

This is happening now, not in 2020...

When I first watched this video on Michelle Martin's  Blog, The Bamboo Project, I thought it belonged to Science fiction. Even now, I must admit it still scares me to "scan" people like  a bar-coded product...

Images of Minority Report, George Orwell's 1984 and even excellent Wall-E rush to my mind (as you can see, my tastes are quiet soft, because that's the scariest it gets!)

• Read in Fast Company  if you want to understand what augmented reality is

" Augmented Reality Is No Longer Science Fiction" 

• Oh, and just when I'm writing this, on friday afternoon, I google "Augmented Reality" and discover an Article by Kit Eaton, from Fast Company, written today... Read more Exciting new examples of applications to travel and Art...

As he says    "The mind boggles as to how this will get used." 

Change  is happening now. Let's understand it and be prepared.

Picture Yourself Doing A Presentation...In Ten Years!

Picture yourself in 10 years...

 

You've been selected to present for a major professional event, high stake for you and your company.

 Chances are high that your presentation will be live and online.

It could be broadcasted on many media, corporate social networks, may be on The Next Corporate "WeTube" and directly on personal mobile electronic devices, in your clients' pockets.

Your presentation will be at the same time global and local, "glocal". You might even perform from your home office, or from any virtual room, rather than from a big convention center.

You're likely to reach thousands or more rather than dozens. Their attention span might be even shorter than it is now...They (your audience) will be able to switch and zap you in seconds, too! They will comment and even grade your presentation, publicly chatting while you're speaking...

You'll have to be entertaining as well as informative!

It's likely that the content will be completely free and sharable on web 2.0.

How would it look like? Definitely not like a PowerPoint!

• More simple
• Shorter
• More personal
• More Interactive
• Collaborative
• More Fun

Why?

Because Gen Xers, Millennials and Gen 2020s will integrate at work their social and personal lifestyles, the totally Milennial approach.

What is " a totally Millennial approach"?

" It's optimistic, proactive, innovative, and it utilizes social media."

(Quoted from MillennialGeneration.org)

Here are some questions for you:

• What does it mean for presentation training , NOW?
• What are the skills we need to develop to be ready?
• How to protect professional data?
• How to deal with challenging  time zones? (you're in US, east coast , your team is spread between San Francisco, India and Europe )
• Will pandemic diseases reduce dramatically the corporate travels?
• How will the companies be able to pay the ecological and financial costs for travel expenses?
• When will face to face meetings and presentations will really be essential?
• Will physical PRESENCE become the ultimate luxury?

I am sure you have other ideas and suggestions in your own crystal ball, please add them in your comments!

Meanwhile I'm going to answer my totally Millennial Birthday Card!

A Totally Millennial Birthday Card!

Saturday November 28th, was my birthday.

Usually, I receive a one or two hilarious & creative electronic birthday cards, mainly from my American friends .

I also have still some faithful friends (2) who write by hand and post by traditional mail a hand picked birthday card.

Mainly, I'm lucky to have my big family around to give me birthday hugs, and that's the most precious.

This year, however, was different...

Look at what I received,thanks to my wonderful friend @elizeweiland, from all other the world!

Boulder, Colorado, London, Mubai India, Brussels, Montreal, Hadrian's wall UK, Warsaw, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Fort Collins, Colorado, Ascott UK, Mexico

 

This is a personalized & worldwide video birthday card

Are these international friends geeks , professional actors, or both?                                                        Well, most of them aren't, except maybe @TanveerNaseer..., from StarTreck Production. But look at what they've created, altogether, with "genuine fondness" (@TimDouglasHR 's quote!)

Apart from the fact that it moved me to tears of joy, and will remain one my best birthday surprises,it also shows us the impact of new technologies in our daily life and the necessity of adopting with simplicity and confidence this new online media.My tittle, "Millennium Birthday Card" refers to Gen Y, also called "Millenniums", who grew up with social media and the web 2.0. (More about Generations in Five Generations Of Speakers, Which One is Yours? )

Here are a few tips for you!

Recording a video may be easier than you think.                                                                                

 " Maybe your laptop comes with a camera. If you have a Mac, click on your QuickTime Player, select File, and then New Movie Recording.  Click on the red button at the bottom of the screen, and viola, you’re recording!  Easy, peasy! You can record and trash as many attempts as you need. (I must have tried a couple of dozen times until I got my recording down to :14 seconds.)

If you have a PC, here’s one link that might help you get started. You can search & find others, as well:

http://dvr.about.com/od/tvcapturemethods/ht/ht1.htm

You can use a fancy home video camera and upload it to your laptop and then to our site. Even small digital cameras often have video features that allow you to do the same." 

by Janice Jensen, Executive Producer , creator of TweetaVision.

Follow her on Twitter, she's creating the Next Generation of Television!

My warmest thanks and hugs to , (in order of appearance...) :

Elizabeth Weiland Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Tim Douglas Ascott UK.

Amy Bryant Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

Skip Zilla Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

Gurrpriet Siingh-Joy Mumbai, INDIA.

Dorothy Dalton Brussels, BELGIUM.

Tanveer Naseer Montreal, CANADA.

Monica Diaz Mexico City, MEXICO.

Colin Lewis Warsow, POLAND.

Sharon Eden London, UK.

Kendall Thiessen Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Andrew Crane Adrian's Wall, Northern UK.

Lolly Daskall New York City, USA.

Peg Rowe Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Ava Diamond Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.

Each of them is exceptionally talented, with a genuine gift that can change your whole life. Visit their websites, blogs, twitter streams, believe me, they're precious and you'd better watch them in the coming years, they're going to "Play Big"!

International Thanksgiving!

When I watch this video

• It makes me want to dance the crazy Matt's dance
• It makes me want to travel the world
• It makes me want to laugh
• It fills my heart with gratitude for Humanity

Wherever you're from, wherever you are now in our big big world

                Happy International Thanksgiving!

Thanks to Mark Raison! I found this fantastic video this morning at 5 am on his site Yellow Ideas. Funny when I think about it, Mark is also the reason why I started on Twitter. I told the story there. And when I'm on twitter, I feel very much like I'm doing the crazy happy dance like Matt, having fun learning and playing with each of you around the world!

When you think about it, Matt's idea is pretty simple. He shows up, does his silly crazy dance, smiles and he gets watched doing it.

Sometimes, it's just what presentations are about : show up and do your dance!

And it takes a lot of courage!

Olé to You! Don't Be Afraid, Just Do Your Talk!

Why a whole post on Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray,Love ?

1. I started a series on Powerful Women Speakers
2. In this TED Video, Elizabeth Gibert is totally "naked"
3. She illustrates the magical power of metaphors and stories

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.

• Another Naked 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.

1. Brief history of demons and genius in ancient Greece and Rome
2. The huge error of rational humanism and Renaissance
3. Story of the Poet Ruth Stone
4. 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.

Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of Eat, Pray,Love, the mega Best Seller which is soon to be a movie starring Julia Roberts.

So, Olé to you , show up for your next presentation, and do your job!

If the glimpse of god visits you, Ole!

If not? Ole to you anyway, just for having the courage to show up and talk.

How a Woman Can Move Mountains with Words

How To Create an Impact using the 4 "P"s?

Watch how Cat Lainé  from The Business Innovation Factory, is taking us into her story with Purpose,Presence,Passion and of course,Preparation.

 Awesome.

How does she do this?

With the four "P"s:

• Purpose
  
• Presence
• Passion
• Preparation

What is her purpose?

"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 projects like these have a dramatic effect on quality of life."

This lady is on a Mission. This alone has the power to move mountains.

How "Present" is she?

In her introduction,she uses a metaphor, tells us the story from the Greek mythology Tantalus.

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 a new 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?

You want to make an impact? Tell stories!

Here you see Steve Job's Speech at Stanford, back in 2005.

He very simply starts with: "Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories."

One perfect example of presenting without Power Point. Although he's reading from a lectern,in a robe, the impact of his speech is tremendous because he makes it personal and includes the audience, us, into his life's story.

A great inspiration for "Naked Presentation", with an Orator in Toga...

He's naturally using the Rule of Three.

He's applying his own rule: "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

You can find Steve Job's transcript here. 

"You've got to find what you like in life"