Positive Framing examples popping up on my hols

I’ve been taking an August break from the blog as I embark on some travels. Wherever I went, however, I discovered rather wonderful examples of the ‘positive framing’ technique that I discussed in my final pre-holiday post.

What I was saying was that, even if you have some rather negative things to say, you can still make a positive impact buy applying positive language. The first example came up on the train to Edinburgh for my visit to the Festival. How irritating do you find those signs listing all the different (sometimes unmentionable) things you are not allowed to throw down the loo?  So well done Virgin Trains for not irritating me and actually making me want to get involved in keeping their plumbing clear.

Security was tight in Las Vegas and David Copperfield had the additional concern of not wanting us to film his illusions. He achieved this by engaging us directly – asking us to take out our phones and send him an email. This created some interesting interactivity on the big screen and he then sent us an email predicting everything that was to about to happen in the show. We had to promise, though, not to look at it yet (that would spoil the show for us). Indeed he asked us, while our phones were in our hands, to now put them into a rather beautiful box on the table immediately in front of us. What is usually a nagging chore that washes over you had become a pleasure!

Finally, I am indebted to behavioural economics guru Paul Craven for a most charming example of asking people not to use their phones – it’s what Paul calls a ‘nudge’.

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‘Positive Framing’ gets you through the stickier bits of a business presentation

Business presentations are not all about trumpeting good news, advantages and benefits; in most cases they need to cover off less positive points – failures even. With ‘positive framing’, however, the overall upbeat mood can often be sustained and maybe even enhanced.

I was reminded of this recently while coaching post-graduate students and graduate trainees, all of whom showed admirable respect for doing as they had been told. The graduate trainees had been instructed to conclude with ‘Achievements’ and ‘Lessons Learned’, so we saw presentations with generally well-trumpeted ‘Achievements’, followed by phrases such: “Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to …...” – which formed the conclusion to their presentation.

My feedback focused on two key points:

1)    You simply must end on some positives, so see if you can slip ‘Lessons Learned’ in before ‘Achievements’. If you really can’t, then add a short, sharp and positive over-arching ‘Call to Action’ at the very end.

2)    Leave out negative words such as ‘unfortunately’ and reframe your ‘Lessons Learned’ along the following lines: ‘What I will do in future is make extra time to do X so that I can achieve a more thorough understanding of Y and Z.”

Many of the post-grads, meanwhile, were acutely aware that they had not been able to fulfil all the requirements of the pitch they were giving to join an incubator programme. Their instinct was to keep quiet about those elements and hope no one noticed or enquired.

My feedback here tended to be:

1)    Leave the ‘missing/lacking’ items in your agenda so it is clear that you are not hiding from them.

2)    When you get to the part about plans going forward come back to those ‘missing/lacking’ items and stress that these would be among your first priorities when you join the programme. Ideally, explain how much more effectively you will be able to address those issues at this later stage.

I am conscious that there is scope here to get into the realms of ‘spin’, if not actual ‘BS’. But I firmly believe that these examples qualify neither as spin, nor BS. They actually fall within the more general practice of using strong language and positives when communicating. Specifically, these examples also demonstrate that the presenter has learned the lessons/understood what was needed, together with how they are going to apply and prioritise those learnings in the future.

‘Say it, then show’ – the adage for presenters that is too little known, appreciated or remembered

There is a tendency among most presenters when using visual aids – in particular PowerPoint – to display a slide and then start talking about it. The result is that their presentation is then being driven by their slides – the visual support has ended up in the spotlight! Presenters need to remember that they are the show – anything else is simply to help them to deliver their presentation and the audience to understand it.

Hence the advice from Presentation Skills coaches such as myself: “Say it, then show.” The perils of doing the opposite – showing, then saying - become all the more acute when a presenter displays a list of bullet points, or a selection of visual images, all at once. This means that the presenter loses any control of where the audience’s attention is directed, as they will inevitably start reading ahead.  Most, but not all, slides therefore need to be displayed in a series of ‘builds’ so that the audience is looking at the point that the presenter is currently talking about.

Part of the reason for presenters taking a back-to-front approach to say it, then show is that they are often uncertain as to what comes next and use the appearance of a slide as their own prompt. To make an impact you must know what is coming next – so that you can ‘cue’ the reveal appropriately. This is made easy for you with the ‘Presenter View’ (aka Presenter Tools) facility that is built into Macs and is increasingly available on PCs as well. For me, this is the most valuable tool to any presenter as, rather than simply displaying the slide currently being projected, it also displays the next slide, the entire run of slides (enabling you to jump seamlessly to any point in the presentation) and other features such as Notes and a clock.

Finally, in order to make the say it, then show principle work to best effect you need a slide changer – and one with which you are completely comfortable, so preferably your own. And be sure to practice – cueing is, after all, about timing!

For effective communication, Prime Ministers and business presenters alike need to let a little light shine in on themselves.

As Theresa May lurched from one crisis to another, I was asked last week by Helen Dunne, editor of CorpComms magazine, for some advice to address the PM’s failure to empathise and communicate effectively. Above all, the brief was ‘to make the Prime Minister seem more human’.

The results from myself and other commentators can be found here: https://corpcommsmagazine.co.uk/features-and-analysis/view/theresa-may-needs-a-new-media-strategy on the CorpComms web site. The general thrust of my contribution, however, was based on advice I often give to clients in Presentation Skills sessions: ‘Let a little light shine in on yourself and your audience will warm to you. Then everything you say will sound more convincing, because it is coming from someone they feel they know and can trust’. This, it has to be said, needs to be rather more ‘real’ and spontaneous than a carefully stage-managed display of leather trousers. Arguably the most effective thing Mrs May did communications-wise over the Grenfell Tower disaster was reportedly to have shed tears over the victims’ stories. But, cynical as it may sound, she needed to be seen to be showing that emotion, not simply beavering away behind closed doors in Downing Street. Just look at how effective the Royals proved to be, simply by being seen to show up in a timely manner. And how much ‘PR credit’ have they banked of late by opening up on mental health issues?

So how do you apply the ‘Letting some light shine in on yourself’ principle as a business presenter as opposed to a Prime Minister or member of the Royal family? By way of example, I was working on a rather dry presentation with a senior packaging executive. It was a bit of a slog, so we took a break and over coffee he admitted that the new idea he was preaching had actually been sparked by his children over breakfast. I asked him if we could use that and he gradually warmed to the idea. What this meant was that the audience were now seeing: family man; cute kids (from a picture he dug out); a man willing to share credit on a day when the overall theme was ‘teamwork’; and a man prepared to think outside the box. As a result, his was the presentation that everyone remembered and talked about afterwards.

It’s quite simple really, but be warned – it needs a leap of confidence to get the process going. Note that my client’s key theme only emerged during an informal chat over coffee. This is often the case – most people are simply too coy to offer up aspects of their personal life in a more formal setting and need to have it coaxed out of them. So be brave and do it in consultation with others.

How to create an impact as you close your presentation – or kill the impact with a simple slip!

As I always say, Opening and Closing are the two most important parts of any presentation. Aside from being the elements that audiences are most likely to remember, your opening is key to engaging your audience so that they listen, and your closing is where you spell out what you want them to think and do as a result of your presentation.

So how do you create a real impact as you make that all-important final ‘Call to Action’? You could display a slide listing the key points of your presentation. And if you restricted those points to three (exploiting the ‘Power of 3’) and kept each to a one-liner, it would probably be quite effective.

But consider for a moment how much more effective your conclusion could be if you forgot the bullet points and worked with a blank screen. At this point in almost any presentation you are usually asking your audience to do or believe something. How much better is that going to be if it comes directly from you – with full-on eye contact – as you are seen to speak from the heart, rather than via a bunch of bullet points? Blanking the screen is easy in PowerPoint – you simply press the B key.

Let me conclude by pointing to a way that many people quickly kill any concluding impact they may have created, with a simple slip of the keyboard. They display a slide showing either: three short key points (quite good): ‘Thank You’ (not so good as this should be spontaneous); or ‘Any Questions’? (not so good either as Q&A are much better positioned earlier so that you can control your climax). Then they click on further, crashing out of the slide show and revealing their desktop – complete with latest emails, overdue software updates and their iTunes library, probably with Abba’s greatest hits on prominent display.

Any impact they may have created is going to be very short-lived and no amount of fumbling is going to make for an effective recovery!  How can you avoid crashing out of slideshow mode? Make yourself an ‘end slide’, ideally to display after you have delivered your Call to Action to a blank screen (using the B key). This could simply be a copy of your intro slide; or it could be an abiding image that underlines your Call to Action; or it could list your contact details. Having created the end slide, make a duplicate, so that you have two end slides and even if you press too far no one gets to see your desktop.

Like a great jazz performance an effective business presentation needs to be both scripted AND improvisational

There is always a debate when constructing business presentations – to script or not to script?

There are many pros and cons on both sides. With scripting you run the risk of the presenter just reading it out. Even if they memorise the script it is likely to come over as stiff, too pre-prepared and lacking in spontaneity.

Equally, one of the biggest ways in which many people let themselves down is that they don’t really know what they are going to say – they meander and repeat themselves in a way that would be deemed normal for a general conversation but unsuitable for a presentation where people have taken the time and trouble to gather and listen. Furthermore, it will almost certainly lack any real focus or impact, so may be a waste of (everybody’s) time.  

I therefore tend to avoid talk of actual ‘scripting’ – except for the opening and closing, which I stress are the most important parts of any presentation. As you open you need to get straight to your big agenda-setting point while also engaging your audience. As you close you need to send your audience away with a crystal-clear rendition of what you want them to remember and do as a result of your presentation. Your opening and closing therefore need to be both scripted and memorised – so that you are concise, word-perfect and can give full-on eye contact at the most crucial moments. In between you can afford to be a little more relaxed and informal.

Having long applied this principle to my Presentation Skills coaching, I was delighted to find a supportive view in TED Talks, via a contribution from Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness. I quote direct from Head of TED Chris Anderson’s excellent book TED Talks – The official TED Guide to Public Speaking:

Dan Gilbert thinks it’s not either/or. First of all he writes a script for his talks (being careful to use spoken English).  But then, when I deliver them I don’t stick to the script I wrote. So why do I write them? Because writing a story is how you find out where the holes are! A great talk is both scripted AND improvisational. It is precisely like a great jazz performance: First, the opening and closing are always completely scripted; second, the general structure is fully determined before the first horn blows; but third, what makes jazz interesting and captivating is that in the middle there is always some point (or several points) in which the player can go off script and spontaneously create something that captures the mood of that particular audience in that particular room at that particular moment in time. The player can take a few moments to do this, but he must always know when to come home, and he must always know where home is. A totally improvisational talk is like free jazz: an utter abomination almost every time it happens. A totally scripted talk is like a classical music concert: intricate, deep, and flawlessly executed, but often predictable enough to put the audience to sleep because they know from the start that there will be no surprises.

To me, that sums up the scenario perfectly, with key take outs being:

1.    A great talk is both scripted AND improvisational.

2.    The opening and closing are always completely scripted.

3.    He must always know when to come home, and he must always know where home is.

I do, however, love the references to free jazz and classical concerts.

Let’s put the old ‘93% myth’ on the impact of communication to bed once and for all!

We’ve all heard it so many times: “Only 7% of the meaning of what you say is in the words; 55% comes through body language, and vocal tone and modulation account for the remaining 38%”. And the formula has been perpetuated for more than 40 years through word of mouth, unscrupulous trainers and, of course, the internet.

Stop and think about it for a moment. If the ‘93% myth’ were true, Shakespeare would surely have had Mark Anthony calling on his Friends, Romans and Countrymen to lend him their eyes rather than their ears. The telephone would be a fairly useless tool. The radio industry would be out of business and, would there be much point even in reading?

So what gave rise to the 93% myth? It all goes back to the 1960s when Professor Albert Mehrabian, based at the University of California, conducted research into body language and non-verbal communications. The focus of his study was discovering how emotion was communicated. His tests would therefore include people saying something like “that’s nice”, but in an angry tone of voice or with threatening body language.

Professor Albert Mehrabian

The results can therefore be more fully and accurately summed up as:

7% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is in the words that are spoken

38% of meaning pertaining to feelings and attitudes is paralinguistic (the way words are said)

55% of meaning pertaining to feelings and attitudes is in facial expression

It is that crucial phrase pertaining to feelings and attitudes that has gone missing in action over the years. It’s frustrating for us Presentation Skills coaches that the over-simplification has taken hold and it clearly gets to Mehrabian too because his web site (www.kaaj.com/psych) includes a bolded disclaimer as follows:

Please note that this (7/55/38%) and other equations regarding the relative importance of verbal and non-verbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (ie like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings and attitudes, these equations are not applicable.

There you have it – from the originator himself. Clearly body language and vocal tone play a crucial part in effective communication, but these are to enhance the words that must – after audience focus - remain at the top of the communication hierarchy.

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