Category: Presentations
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Influence others by improving their FUTURE
To influence others, you must: Appeal to their self-interest Show your idea will add value to them Help them see it will make their future better than their present So, the more future-focussed you are, the greater your chances of success. But unfortunately, comms tend to focus more on the past/present, not the future. Examples:…
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‘Any questions?’ or ‘Thank you!’ ??
A presentation’s final slide usually says one of: “Any questions?” “Thank you” “Summary” Contact details Legal disclaimer And you can see the benefits in each: You might get questions – interactivity, engagement etc They feel thanked – a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling You’ve reminded them of your main points They can contact you if they…
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How to be interesting
Let’s start this week’s Tip with a Disney Quiz. Who is the only Disney title character that can’t speak? Who is the only Disney princess based on a real person? Which of the seven dwarfs didn’t have a beard? When you put the seven dwarfs in alphabetical order, which is the middle one? The…
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Turn your agenda into theirs
Have you ever been bored during someone’s presentation? Has someone ever been bored during yours? It’s hard to turn your agenda into theirs. But we have to. Or they won’t buy-in or act as we want. One simple fix: when preparing your content, play the Why’s That Good? Game. You do this by imagining your…
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The secret power of subtitles
When you make a presentation, the only aim of Slide #1 is that they want to see Slide #2. But most Slide #1s aren’t engaging – so don’t achieve this. We’ve all seen presentations called “Q3 Review”, “Update”, “Credentials Presentation”, or – my absolute favourite – “Excel Intermediate”. None of these are interesting. Which means…
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Ten Top Tips for written comms
Here are ten top tips to make your written communications brilliant. I know you’ll know them all. But do you do them all? Verbal better? Many written communications should never have been a written communication. Instead, they should have been verbal – phone call, Teams, etc. So, only use written if that is the best…
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Great presentations – the four steps to mastery
To deliver brilliant presentations, there are only four things to master: Interesting content Impactful delivery Impressive visuals Appropriate confidence Master all four, and your presentation will be brilliant. But if any one is missing, it could’ve been better. And if all four are missing, it could not have been worse. How do your presentations stack…
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Which communications do you do your best prep for?
Which communications do you do your best prep for? Most people’s answers to this are: On a first date; and In a job interview! They then tell me about all the time they invest in choosing carefully how they’ll ensure a great first impression. Also: deciding what topics to talk about, which questions to ask,…
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The perfect number of slides
When presenting, what’s the perfect number of slides? Too many, and we force our audience to watch us read lots of words to them But too few, and they might forget/miss some of our messages The obvious answer to ‘how many?’ is ‘it depends’. It depends on your presenting style, your audience, the presentation, etc.…
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Do NOT read this Tip to your team
Would you ever do this with a Tuesday Tip…? Gather your team in a room, and make them sit there, while you read it out loud to them? Nope. That’d just be weird. And something even weirder… Imagine that – before you gathered them in the room – you printed this Tip on a big…