Getting back to the Soft Skills - Presentation Skills

I count myself lucky to have landed in my job at NetSuite (now part of Oracle). I get to do some amazing work with nonprofits and spend some time thinking about how we can assist small nonprofits with their operations and financials. So awesome. But another great part is the resources available. I recently got to spend a couple days at a Soft Skills training and learned a bunch of things. So I thought I would take a bit of time to share a few things from this training and other things I have learned along the way that are relevant to anyone who needs to do a presentation.

Get comfortable with the content

Death by PowerPoint is no joke. If you don't know your content well enough to present it without reading a script or reading from the slides. If you know your content, it allows you to be natural in your presentation and have some fun with it. So practice it.

Have a plan.

Building your slide deck is not a plan in my experience.  All you are doing is planning what you are going to say and when. This would work great if your style is just to present the material and allow for questions, which for some scenarios is the only choice.  But I find it useful to create a training design, this allows me to think through the flow and objectives for each part, not just the content.

Here is what I typically use, I create a sample in a Google Doc. Beth Kanter has a good post on learning design! (Beth is wicked smart and rocks at presenting, by the way)

Pick your style for the presentation.

I think the biggest mistakes I have made when presenting is trying to do it all in one session: tell a story, run a workshop, present, interactive exercises, humor, entertainment, high level learning, detailed deep dive, etc.  I think the ones which worked best were the simple ones. I picked one hook for my session and stuck with it all the way. One theme and one approach with a clear message. You can mix a couple of these styles in, but it has to make sense with the topic and flow. How many times have you been in a session and the group activity felt forced or the story seemed to be a stretch or they spent the whole time entertaining but you never seemed to get to the content?

Techy or technical presentation?
Peter Campbell has an awesome post on how to handle this!

Practice
Yeah, I think I already mentioned practice, but practice should be repeated. And this is even more key when you have a team or a panel. Don't just wing it, unless that is the style of your presentation. But if winging is the style, make that clear in the description. However, even with a wing it interview style session, you still have to plan the time by topic, questions you will ask, prep the panel and do a dry run of the flow. So yeah, I go back to my original statement, you have to practice.

Random tips from the training I attended:

Tell, Show, Tell

Tell what you are going to show, Show it, Tell them what you showed.   Basically this goes to recency and primacy.  People remember what was repeated and what was said most recently.

Rule of 3 

Things told in chunks of 3 are easier to remember.  Read this article about it.

Limbic and Stories

There is a connection between memory and emotions (limbic system), stories are a great way to make this happen. Read this article as an example.  But there are many ways to bring emotion into your presentation, pick ones that match the plan and style you picked earlier, don't force it.

Well anyway, that is all the time I have for this post.  There is so much more you can do, but thought I would share.

Here is my list of links for you to read more:

https://del.icio.us/sheye/presentations 

And finally I hope to see you at #17NTC, if you don't know what that is or want to connect with me there, read my post!

Song lyrics (lesson in engagement)

I have heard the song “Even Flow“ from Peal Jam so many times. I sing along, I like it!

But it never connected emotionally until I was sitting in church listening to a message about "getting off your Donkey", where they incorporated the song.

The message at church was all about how to turn empathy into action through compassion tied to your Faith. We all know the story of the Good Samaritan. Jesus uses this story to illustrate the need for all of us to STOP and be the hero. There are moments in our lives where we have the opportunity to STOP and help, make an impact, change a life.

But how often do we let the moment pass because we are too busy? I was intrigued and spurred to thought by the message, I know there have been countless times my life, my busyness, made me miss an opportunity to be that HERO!

My thoughts drifted to my work at The Cara Program. I love working at a place making a real and lasting impact on homelessness and poverty. I feel like I am making a difference and giving back! Just as I was connecting emotionally and understanding intellectually to the church message, the band came out. They started playing "Even Flow" from Pearl Jam.

Suddenly it hit me, the song is about a homeless man. As the lyrics appeared on the screen, each one connected with me and dug deeper. The context provided by the church message, combined with the power of the song, really connected with me.

I didn't just hear the lyrics, I connected with them:

Freezin', rests his head on a pillow made of concrete, again

Oh, Feelin' maybe he'll see a little better, set a days, ooh yeah

Oh, hand out, faces that he sees time again ain't that familiar, oh yeah

Oh, dark grin, he can't help, when he's happy looks insane, oh yeah

Even flow, thoughts arrive like butterflies

Oh, he don't know, so he chases them away

Someday yet, he'll begin his life again

Life again, life again...

The song had real meaning, brought clear visuals and spurred new thoughts.

• How many times had I heard "Even Flow" and missed the message? 
• How many other songs have deep meanings drowned out by my humming along? 
• Even though I work at a nonprofit, do I miss opportunities to be a Hero? How many times do I walk by a student at Cara and not talk to them?

This led me to think about engagement overall.  I wonder how many of the powerful stories we share about our orgs, our impact, or our work get missed just like song lyrics.

• Do people listen, hum along and enjoy it, but miss the impact? 
•  Does the way we tell our stories cause people to just walk on by just like the first two people in the story of the Good Samaritan? 
• Do we provide enough context and framework before talking about our work? 
• Do we work to engage people in understanding why we do what we do before showing out impact?

So how do we shift our song lyrics from something we sing along with to something that connects and spurs to action?