For impact and engagement in your business presentations – go back and learn how to write!

I have spent the past few weeks learning how to write. Yes, almost 40 years after leaving school I have been making a proper study of the English language, this time without looking out the window or passing notes at the back of the class. The experience has made me realise that the tools with which to add engagement and impact to your communication are more plentiful than I thought. Like any good tool, though, they only work to best effect with some technical knowledge and plenty of practice! 

I started by participating in an excellent PRCA webinar on grammar.  Reassuringly, I found I was up to speed in this area, but it has already proved invaluable to some of the PR Apprentices for whom I act as Assessor. Next stop was the book The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth and this has opened my eyes to the detail and depth of principles that I had simply absorbed by osmosis over the years.

Much to my personal delight, Forsyth starts his book by standing up for Alliteration. Far from sneering at it, as some do, he suggests we should embrace it, just as both Shakespeare and Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, Pickwick Papers, A Christmas Carol) did. Alliteration, he says, makes your words memorable, with the result that they are believed. Hence ‘it takes two to tango’, even though it takes the same number to waltz and we go ‘the whole hog’ rather than the full pig.

As a presentation skills coach who is always urging people to deploy the ‘Power of Three’, I was pleased to read about Tricolon – ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’. Having always said that it’s about rhythm - two is not enough and four (Tetracolon) is too much information, I was reminded that you need a ‘Rising’ Tricolon to make the Power of Three truly powerful. And by the way, did you know that Obama’s short victory speech contained no less than 21 Tricolons?

To make a proper three-some here, I can also report that the discovery of ‘Litotes’ has caused me to re-think slightly my exhortations to avoid negatives – because they need to be unscrambled before they can be understood. While politicians have used Litotes to good effect, the most memorable example is probably Tom Jones’s ‘It’s not unusual’. However the extreme use of Litotes by the Japanese Emperor in 1945 has served to underpin my anti-negatives stance. Having been hit by two atomic bombs the Emperor announced: “The war situation has developed, not necessarily to Japan’s advantage”.

Other gems from The Elements of Eloquence include: Diacope: ‘Bond. James Bond’; Syllepsis – one word used in two incongruous ways: think Jagger and “she blew my nose and then she blew my mind”; and Anaphora - using the same word at beginning and the end, as Paul McCartney did in ‘Yesterday’.

One of the charms of the book is the many musical references that Forsyth uses alongside extracts of great literature. As he says: “I do not believe that The Beatles had any idea what Andiplosis was, any more than I believe that the Rolling Stones knew about Syllepsis. They knew what worked, and it did”.

So it’s not about being clever and knowing all the technical terms, but there is much to be gained from a bit of pro-active study if you want to give your language a lift. As for how this relates to business presentation skills, I always say that your opening and closing are the two most important parts of any presentation. In order to make them important to your audience as well as yourself they need to be scripted.

Finally, there’s another musical link that led me to The Elements of Eloquence – it came as

a gift from Lesley-Ann Jones, a great friend who is widely admired for her best-selling rock biographies. I now know a few of the secrets that help to make LAJ such a fine writer. Alongside Freddie Mercury – the Definitive Biography and Ride a White Swan – The Lives and Death of Marc Bolan, her beautifully-crafted words have been wrapped around many of the world’s most famous people and served up in the biggest-selling newspapers. I can’t wait for Lesley-Ann to apply her pen to a novel based on her life or, better still, her own autobiography. If ever you wanted proof of the pleasure and power of good writing, here are some very good starting points: www.lesleyannjones.com; @lajwriter

How rock band Queen showed the way to becoming champions of the short presentation

Last week I discussed the importance of keeping to time when giving a presentation.  There are plenty of reasons for sticking to time and you can read about some of them if you scroll down.  

I would now like to expand on the theme by looking at the challenges presented by being given a very short time slot in which to present.  The fact is that, unless you have plenty of experience at giving short presentations, it really is quite difficult.  Anyone can give a long presentation – it is achieving the same (or greater) effect in much less time that requires expertise. As Mark Twain once said: “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” 

My favourite example of the way that a short time allocation needs more work, not less, comes from the world of rock music.  Anyone who remembers the original Live Aid concert in 1985 is likely agree with Bob Geldof’s assessment that “Queen where by far the best band of the day”. Queen succeeded against the odds, as they were not exactly at their peak at this time. Perhaps that’s why they took their planning for the event so seriously, with shortage of available time being at the very front of their minds. They went for a greatest hits set, morphing them into a medley and culminating in a ‘We are the champions’ singalong. 

Lesley-Ann Jones

Then they did something that I only discovered when I read Lesley-Ann Jones’s excellent book Freddie Mercury: the definitive biography. While other bands regarded 20 minutes at Wembley as something they could knock off in their sleep – Dire Straits admitted that as they were playing at the Arena next door “we just wandered across the car park with our guitars” – Queen committed to some serious rehearsal. They booked The Shaw Theatre in London’s Euston Road and spent a week rehearsing for that short 20-minute slot.  And once they had it perfect they re-worked it so as to come in just a little under time.  As a result of all this preparation – and attention to timing detail - they stole the show and people are still talking about it to this day.

As I say, editing yourself down to a short time is difficult and you need to be brutal – I may come back to this one day with a discussion of ‘Killing your darlings’ as they say in the movie business, but start off your editing process like this:

• Script what you would ideally like to say as if you had no time restriction
• Carve it all up into a) what you must say, b) what would be good to say and c) what would be nice to say.
• Start rehearsing and keep rehearsing until you come in at just a little under the time you have available – and be ruthless!

For the record, my own most challenging presentation came when I was invited onto the Chris Evans Show on BBC Radio 2 to explain the Rules of Magic and how they could be applied to good effect for businesses during the recession.  One catch: I had three-and-a-half minutes!  I can’t possibly cover the topic in such a short time, I thought; on the other hand I was very interested in the opportunity of addressing 6.5 million listeners.  I applied the must say/good to say/like to say principle and then adjusted it all to suit radio broadcast.  As a result, I received enquires that took me all over Europe and eventually led to a publisher asking me to write my book Presentation Magic.   

So you can do it if you’ve got the right incentive.  Next week I’ll have a look at how the movie makers distil their messaging with a principle known as ‘High Concept’.