Booher BanterBusiness Communication Consultant

Do you recognize a skeptic’s stare—the polite nod of acknowledgement and inward glare of “Never in a million years.”  I see it occasionally when coaching technical presenters to loosen up a bit, to use an anecdote to make a point memorable, to put their personality into play.

Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments, echoed that advice in a recent Fortune magazine interview as she gave tips for a memorable presentation.   “Personalize it,” she says. 

When she’s making investment presentations to clients and prospects, she talks about how her business partner’s father (John Rogers) gave him stocks instead of toys every birthday and Christmas starting at age 12.  Ariel was a childhood hobby that became an obsession that eventually became a full-fledged company.  When she’s speaking to not-so-savvy clientele, she talks about growing up in a home where the stock market was never discussed and where they didn’t have much money.  Her intention is to help people feel safe enough to ask questions and reveal what they don’t know so she can address their concerns.

Obviously, that philosophy about speaking on technical topics has paid off for her.  Ariel Investments is a mutual fund company with $5 billion under management. 

Serving as a board member for Estée Lauder, Starbucks, DreamWorks Animation SKG, and Investment Company Institute, she herself has no doubt heard a few technical presenters sink or swim based on their ability to engage an audience and drive home a point.

So take it from Mellody or me, when you’re called on to present technical information, there’s no reason to check your personality at the door.

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Posted at 3:32pm in Communication—Oral | Permalink | Add Comment » |

A coaching client recently brought her slide deck for review as we hammered out her message for a major presentation to the executive team—annual update and strategy meeting for her business unit. There peppered between the big themes, accomplishments, goals, and challenges popped up meaningless slides that I call “placeholders.”

Placeholders include slides that say nothing more than “Costs” or “Next Steps” or “Now What?” or “Follow-up Actions” or “Questions?” In other words, they’re the speaker’s notes at transition points for what comes next in the presentation. If you add them to your slideshow to remind yourself what to do next during your practice, fine. Just make sure to hide those slides so that the audience never sees them during the real event.

But placeholders aren’t the only meaningless slides that clutter presentations. In our presentation skills training programs, it’s common to see presenters on the first go-around with enough slides to kill any presentation.

You may want to use the following checklist to cull the unnecessary:

• Is the slide an actual visual representation of your concept—or just text?
• Does the chart, bulleted text, or image emphasize the trivial or irrelevant?
• Can you include this tidbit of information in another graphic without cluttering it?
• Does the graphic convey the idea better than your words alone?
• Does the slide make the concept quicker, clearer, or easier to understand?
• Does the graphic add impact—or just duplicate what you’ve said?

Make the slides you use memorable. Then consider all that time saved in building meaningless charts that you can now use to improve your delivery.

 

Our answer? ProPoint Graphics. Let ProPoint Graphics help you create the perfect presentation. Get their free template pack and presenter’s guide when you request a no-obligation estimate.

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Posted at 3:29pm in Communication—Oral | Permalink | Add Comment » |

All too often they don’t. A quick scan through the subject lines of the messages in my inbox provides very little useful information. 

The subject lines read…

• A Quick Question  (They never are…)
• Time Sensitive  (What isn’t?)
• May I Ask a Question?  (No, I don’t have time.)
• Are You Available Friday at 3:00?  (It depends.)
• CRD Coding  (What about it?)
• Registration Details  (Are you giving them? Do you want them?)
• Following Up  (With what? About what?)
• One More Thing  (What’s the THING?)
• Last-Minute Details  (On what?)
• Forgot to Mention This Earlier  (This what?)
• Brighton Event  (What about it?)

Can you imagine opening your daily newspaper and finding headlines like the above? Where would you start to find items of interest? Or how about opening your document center and skimming such vague folder titles to grab the file you need? What a headache.

Unless you’re writing novels for a living, turn subject lines into informative headings.

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Posted at 4:09pm in Communication—Written, Email Hints | Permalink | Add Comment » |

Texting has become a hybrid language unto itself—like sign language for the hearing-impaired or the slang teens invent to create a world all their own.

Texting shortcuts such as gr8 or C U 2moro tossed into a formal document suggest that some naïve soul fails to understand the importance of language to his or her career. Unfortunately, CEOs and hiring executives screen out many otherwise capable employees because their writing is inappropriate for the occasion and purpose.

Think of it like this:  You don’t wear jeans to a wedding. Neither do you wear a tux to a football game. You dress for the occasion. The same is true for writing. You write for the purpose and the occasion. Informal abbreviations and sloppy grammar may be permissable in texting, but not in a résumé, a cover email, or a sales proposal. Writing too informally for the occasion can be just as damaging to your career as dressing inappropriately.
 
Stuffed-shirt writing with overblown language and excessively long sentences has never been “in style.” But neither do texting shortcuts—more appropriate for your T-shirt—carry much weight with executives. The issue is not “right” or “wrong,” “old-fashioned” or “new trend”; the matter centers on appropriateness for the purpose.

Text c u l8r to the top at your own risk.

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Posted at 10:00am in Uncategorized | Permalink | Add Comment » |