How to cause applause.

"So those are the mating habits of the wildebeest."

Silence.  Oh dear.

Other than a single clap which died as soon as it was born, nary a peep from the audience.

What went wrong?  They were definitely listening.  They seemed to enjoy it.  So why no applause?

Because they didn't know you'd finished.

Like tipping a waiter at the end of a meal, applauding a speaker at the end of a speech is appreciation of a job well done.

But while tipping is a solo act, applauding is done in concert with others, simultaneously.  And that can be an issue.  No-one wants to be the only person in the audience clapping, so people tend to wait for others to start.  If no-one starts, there's no applause.

So how do you get people to put their hands together at the end of your speech, creating that rewarding and comforting buzz of appreciation?

The key is for there to be no doubt about when they're expected to start clapping.

You could use the method favoured by broadcasters, which is for the studio manager to hold up a placard with the word Applause! printed on it in nice big letters while making vigorous upward motions with their free hand to prompt compliance, followed by a winding movement to keep it going and a cutting action to signify enough's enough.  This works fine with studio audiences, but may be a bit too ambitious for the average AGM.

Or you could use the method favoured by political leaders at party conferences, which is to have someone planted in the front row - a sort of cheerleader, but in a suit and without the pom-poms -  tasked to kick-start the applause.  And not only at the end of the speech, but at significant moments throughout, so everyone can see how genuine and heartfelt is the solidarity between audience and speaker.

But the simplest, quickest, most natural and most graceful way of getting people to applaud is to pause after your final words, look at the audience, and thank them for their attention. This signals you no longer require it, meaning you've finished, meaning now would be the perfect time to show their appreciation.

''So those are the mating habits of the wildebeest.''

(Pause.)

''Thank you very much.''

(Applause.)

In other words, if you want to get a thank-you from them, thank them first.

Does your message have broccoli appeal?

A good message is founded on an audience benefit.

But this alone is no guarantee of engagement, because people don't always do what's good for them.

Take children and food.  As any parent knows, children have a profound resistance to eating things that are good for them.

Offer them something high in fat, sugar or salt (preferably all three) and they'll bite your hand off. But something green, healthy and plant-based? Umm, I'm not hungry.

With my little cannibals, I tried every technique in the book to get them to eat their veg.  Hiding it under the meat, mixing it up in the food, playing games with it, pleading, begging, cajolery, bribery and threats. It all ended in tears.  Mine, not theirs.

Until one day I noticed (and I can't be the first person to have done so) that a broccoli floret looks a bit like a tree, with its canopy of lush, dark green foliage branching over a pale green trunk.

Eureka.  "Tonight", I said "we're going to eat some trees."  Two pairs of eyes gazed at me.  "Look, here they are."  The eyes dropped to the plate and widened.   "I wonder who can eat the most trees?" A pause and then a flurry of broccoli-guzzling to warm the cockles of the parental heart.

Sprouts, too, were a success.  But only when 'sprouts today' (yuk) became 'who can eat a whole cabbage in one mouthful?' (wow), then 'eating baby cabbages' and then finally just 'babies for supper' (yum).

What learnings do I bring you from this rigorous field-study? That eight in 10 kids would rather eat a baby than a Brussels sprout?  Probably.

That for the audience to perceive a benefit in your message, it must appeal to their imagination? Definitely.

To do this you need to add a twist that takes the message out of the mundane and into the adventurous.

Here's an example, announcing your plan for this year's company conference.

With broccoli:

This year we're going to review our policies, procedures and systems to determine how we can work more effectively as an organisation.

Without broccoli:

This year we're going to rip up the rule-book and re-invent the business to make it work better for everyone.

The same message, but transformed to offer the potential of some excitement. (Not as much as the karaoke planned for later, but there it is.)

The thing about most business communication is that the default is set to 'boring'.  Consideration is needed to transform your message into something that will engage your audience.

But it needn't take much effort, so long as you use your own imagination to appeal to theirs.

Pondering the powerpointlessness of existence.

Why do we exist? Is that chair really there? What is the sound of one hand clapping?  Long have I pondered these mysteries, as I'm sure you have.

Sitting cross-legged, somewhere in the high Himalayas?

No, sitting in a meeting room, somewhere between slide 37 and slide 157 of a powerpoint presentation.

We have Bill Gates to thank for bringing verbal vomit into the digital age. Powerpoint makes it possible for people effortlessly to spew words onto slides, slide after slide, forever, mercilessly, to the last syllable of recorded time.

Actually, you can't blame Mr Gates for inventing a tool which, like any other, can be used or abused.

You can, however, blame Moses.  His coming down from the mountain is the first recorded instance in history of someone using visual aids in support of a presentation.

Two tablets of stone, five points hammered onto each.  A lot to take in. No wonder the human race finds them hard to follow.

There's a clue in the first word of the phrase 'visual aid' - and that's what a slide should be.

Whoever came up with the phrase didn't say 'verbal aid'.  Verbal aids include the lungs, throat, tongue, teeth and other bits we use when talking. Our brain, maybe.

Words belong in your mouth, not on your slides.  For a visual aid to be effective it has to be entirely or predominantly graphic.

Let's say I'm giving you a presentation about a dog.  Here's an example of a non-graphic visual aid.

The only graphic element here is the colour.  You may say there's useful information, but I can tell you all that.  I don't need to write it on a slide.

Unless I say nothing and let you read it in silence, I'm forced to read it out to you word for word.  Which is boring - and suggests you can't read.

Much better, surely, to use an image, such as a photo of the actual dog.

If you have to use words on a slide, then why not set yourself the challenge of using no more than five?  They'll have much greater impact that way.

Because there are so few words here, they become graphic elements in their own right.  Most of the slide is white space (well, purple).  This reduces the information load and gives impact to the few words that you do use.

But perhaps it's a blessing that we've moved on from stone-age visual aids.

There's a lot less wear and tear on arm muscles.

What we can learn from the humble nose-trimmer

A decade has passed since the Innovations catalogue last flopped onto British doormats between the pages of the Sunday papers.

Described as 'the source of gadgets that really ought to be useful', it was full of the stuff that gets a smile from Jones and a sneer from Meaden before Bannatyne puts the boot in.

Highlights included a 'handy portable shredder' and a 'fun, fur-lined, vibrating golf-club cover'.  Solutions in search of a problem. 

Another was the 'battery-operated nasal and aural hair trimmer'.

Now my first encounter with this device shocked me to the core. Maybe it was the picture, which showed a bloke shoving the product up his nose and then sticking it in his ear.

I couldn't see why anyone would shell out £9.99 (incl. P&P UK mainland only) for one of these (reduced from £89.99 hurry hurry hurry).  What's wrong with a pair of pliers?

But as a swift google reveals, the bottom hasn't dropped out of the electro-assisted rhino-depilatory business yet.  There are thousands of the things for sale out there.

They have survived the demise of the Innovations catalogue, and live on in the hearts and briefcases of hirsute Britons.

So I think we can learn an important - and comforting - lesson from the humble nose trimmer.

The fact you can't see value in something doesn't mean someone else won't.

This matters when you're selling something - a product, service, strategy, decision - that you don't entirely believe in.

Thinking about the emotions that drive audience decision-making will help you discover motivators that may work for them, if not for you personally.

Fear of rejection.

With Trimmo, no-one will ever again tell you to go and comb your nose.

The need for security.

Trimmo: sniff with confidence.

The avoidance of embarrassment.

Now you can light a cigarette without setting your nose on fire.

Whatever you're selling, time spent in reconnaissance of audience psychology is seldom wasted.

Except, perhaps, in the case of fun, fur-lined, vibrating golf-club covers.

The 180-degree shift

What's the worst presentation you've ever had?

Mine was when the speaker fell asleep 10 minutes into their own talk.  The speaker, mind, not the audience.  How we laughed.  Actually, perhaps it wasn't so bad.

That was unique.  The usual methods of destroying a presentation include: death by powerpoint, reading word-for-word, speaking in a dreary monotone, arrogance, bafflement, inaudibility, boring them, embarrassing them, patronizing them, confusing them, insulting them, making lame jokes....the list could go on.

Two points here.  First, no-one sets out to fail.  They don't get up in the morning and think 'what's the quickest way I can destroy my credibility today?'  Most speakers are doing their best. They're just going about it the wrong way.

Second, if you study the many reasons why presentations fail, you'll see there's just one root cause: failure by the speaker to engage their audience.

Whatever the purpose of the presentation, success is entirely dependent on engaging audience hearts and minds.  That is, engaging (a) their attention and (b) their commitment so that (c) they take the action you require.

I believe the starting point for engagement is a 180-degree shift: from talking about Me to talking about You.

We live in individual and separate universes.  Call it a design fault, but it's part of being human.  We are self-centred.  I'm at the centre of my universe.  You're at the centre of yours.

If I want to engage you, I have to get out of my universe and into yours.  I have to see things from your point of view, not mine.  And then use the insights gained to shape the substance, structure and style of my communication.

Why?  Because you're the person I need to get what I want, whether I'm selling my product, my big idea, my vision for the company, or simply myself.

How to turn your material from Me-centred to You-centred?

1 - Recognize that your default position, by virtue of being human, is set to 'Me-centred'.

2 - Take positive action to turn your material round through 180 degrees so that it's You-centred.

This means thinking of your audience from the moment you start planning and preparing the communication.

So.  Who are they? How do they feel about this?  How much do they know?  What will turn them on - and off?  Where's the best starting point for them?  How can I make what I want to say as simple as possible?  How can I make it really easy for them to buy into my idea?  What do I actually want them to do as a result?

Here's a warning.  Very often, what seems to us the best way to structure a presentation seems that way because it's structured from our own perspective.  It fits nicely in our own little universe.

For example, you're preparing a proposal changing the way your organisation does something.  Here's your first stab at the structure:

My proposal
'Corners'
NB Importance of timing
Implementation (not my problem)
How it will make things better

This is not a structure, it's a shopping list of points. If there's any logic here, it's in your universe only, no-one else's.  There's reference to something called 'corners'.  Only you know what that means.  This is an entirely Me-centred presentation.

A better way of ordering your material could be as follows:

What is my proposal?
How will it work?
How will it make things better?

This is logical, and easy to follow.  But just because it's logical doesn't make it engaging.  In fact it's still Me-centred: the subject of conversation is still your proposal.  The audience only get a look-in at the end (if they're still listening).  Bring the audience in at the beginning, as well as at the end.  Make them the subject of conversation - and take yourself out of it.

Why do we need to change?
What do we need to change?
How will it make things better?
How will it work? (Now that they're sold on the idea.)

In any communication, there's never a guarantee of success.  But by taking pains to put the audience first, you're far more likely to engage them.

You're the cleverest*/sexiest*/most powerful* person on the planet.

*Delete where not applicable.

Fear.

Even seasoned speakers experience presentation nerves.  Particularly when there's a big audience.

The more formal the setting, such as when you're on a raised stage, the more you're likely to have a sense of alienation.

You're in an 'us v. them' situation, only much worse, because there's no 'us', just you up there.  All alone.

Particularly at the start.  There's ice to break and an abyss to cross before you can get going.  It's like going for a jog in the Andes.

So how to bridge the gap and melt the ice?

Why, by the usual method, of course: flattery.

If you think you're immune to flattery, or curl your lip at the very idea of it, it can only be for one of three reasons:

1 - You're a saint.  Far too wise to be charmed by a flatterer.

2 - You've never been flattered.  Poor you.

3 - You've been flattered, perhaps quite often.  But - and this is key - you've been flattered badly.

Let's be clear about this.  Just because you know you're being flattered, doesn't make it bad. After all, the very fact that someone thinks you're worth flattering is in itself flattering.

No.  Bad flattery is when it's so obviously false that it makes you embarrassed for the flatterer.  It's smarmy, unbelievable, undignified and cringe-worthy.

(Funny how we most often notice this when someone else is being flattered.)

So what's good flattery?

Good flattery, you might think, is sincere.  And you'd be half right, because, in order to feel flattered your audience needs to believe you mean what you say.

But how often do you meet people you genuinely admire?  Suppose none of them are in the audience you have to address tomorrow morning?

If the flattery isn't genuine, it has to be faked.  But properly-faked, with something of the care an expert forger would take over his first Leonardo.

How?  You have to make sure the flattery is (a) well-targeted and (b) evidence-based.  Any evidence will do.

Let's say that you've thought about the people you're addressing and you've decided what they really enjoy is feeling important.  

Don't say something silly, like:

"Wow!  It's such a privilege for me to address such an important group of people!" (Simper, simper.)

Anyone can say that, with no thought or effort.  Plus it suggests this is the first time you're addressing important people, which doesn't say much for you.

Instead, how about something well-targeted and evidence-based, like this:

"Last week I looked at the final confirmed list of people attending this conference.  And I have to say I was excited. Because sitting here, in this room, today, are the 300 most important people in the dog-biscuit industry. As you know, we're in a golden age of canine snacking.  And you're the visionaries who've made it happen..."

OK, it may be laying it on with a trowel, but it's evidence you've actually made the effort to research your audience.  This is flattering.  

The '300 most important' figure injects further evidence in the form of measurement.  Fact: there are 300 people in the audience.  You've bothered to count them.  Who's to say if they're the most important people in the industry?  A good handful of biscuit barons is good enough.

If you've read your audience right, and they do indeed aspire to being canine snacking visionaries, they'll happily take the credit for ushering in the golden age.

Good flattery does no harm.  It makes people feel positive about themselves and positive about you.

A good way to break the ice and bridge the gulf.

Are you a fiddler on the hoof?

How should I hold my hands?  What do I do with my feet?

These are strange questions.  We don’t normally give thought to our extremities.  It’s enough that they stay attached and do what they’re supposed to do.

But presentation nerves can put a sudden and unwelcome spotlight on them.

They become an unexpected source of embarrassment, like Grandma whipping her clothes off at your dinner party.  They intrude into the proceedings, demanding attention at a time when we've plenty else to think about.

"What do I do with these things?  Put them in my pockets?  Hold them stiffly down my sides like a guardsman? Play with my hair?  Pick up a pen and see how quickly I can click it?  Or perhaps hold them up casually behind my head, displaying the evidence of my nerves, in two saturated patches around my armpits?"

"And what about these other things? I don't want to look frozen.  So perhaps I'll sway from side to side.  Or pad about like a caged panther.  Or maybe stand on one leg? And now on the other.  Whoops, I’ve fallen over."

There's only one thing worse than fidgeting and being painfully conscious of it.  And that's fidgeting and being painfully unconscious of it.

Why? Because you can bet that your audience will be aware of it.  After all, they've got nothing better to watch.  And as they become fascinated by your erratic motion, they will cease to regard you as a source of information and start to see you as a source of entertainment, however appalling.  Which of course destroys your credibility, let alone distracting the audience from your message.

Happily, there's a simple rule here.  The only movement on-stage or on-screen that does not distract an audience is movement with purpose.

So if you use your hands in normal conversation, use them in the interview or presentation. If you don't, then put them behind your back. What's natural for you, works for you.  If your hands become a visual aid to support what you're saying, that's movement with purpose.

Similarly, if there's a good reason to walk from one part of the stage to another, such as to change a slide, that's movement with purpose.  If someone on the other side of the audience asks you a question, walking towards them is movement with purpose.

Pacing about just for the sake of it is distracting and irritating.  A bit like a film director trying to make a scene more interesting by getting the cameraman to shake the camera.

Pointless movement makes you look uncomfortable and unconfident, as if you're trying to escape.  When it comes to stance, the key is to stand still.  Let all movement be from stillness and return to stillness.

Here's something that may help you remember what to do with your hands and feet.  Think of a tree.

Trees do not move about the terrain, occupying one spot today and a different one tomorrow.  They are rooted in the ground.  But only dead trees are motionless.  Living trees have branches that move with the wind.

So unless you're moving with purpose, keep your feet rooted to the ground.  But allow your upper body - shoulders, arms and hands - to move naturally.

Be like a tree.

Cliché. An imperfect storm, going sideways.

Yes, I know.

It's a cliché to use a cliché to attack cliché.

But not all clichés are devil's spawn (whoops).  Some are useful.  For example, is there a more concise way of expressing the proverb 'old dog, new tricks'?  Or a more graphic way of describing the idea of 's**t hitting the fan'?

Just because a word or phrase is widely-used doesn't make it a cliché.  The word 'yes', for instance.  Or indeed the most frequently-occurring word in English: 'the'.

Few of us, I imagine, pull our hair out (whoops again) when we hear the word 'the'.  But if you google 'cliché', you'll be surprised at the diversity of the phrases that drive people up the wall (oh dear).

My personal hate is the term 'going forward', which I'm pleased to see is starting to lose traction (help).

I once worked with someone who used it all the time when talking about the business.  Going forward this, going forward that.  I suspect he was trying to persuade himself the business was going forward.  We all knew it was going backwards.

What really gets my goat (enough, now) is US corporate-speak.  Phrases borrowed from middle-management somewhere in America and brought over here in slavish imitation.

'Going forward' is of course an example, as are 'heads-up', 'perfect storm', 'reach out', 'hard-stop', 'above my pay-grade' and so on.  Don't get me started.

I have nothing against American English.  I think it injects vitality into the language.  It's the liaison between the lady of the house and the game-keeper that restores jut to the receding chin of an aristocratic blood-line.

But as someone with a professional interest in communication, I have long given thought to precisely why cliché is dangerous.  I did have three good reasons, but to avoid that old chestnut, I have reduced them to two.

Non-communication.  Using cliché is not just poor communication, it's non-communication. If you use jargon, your audience will blank it out.  You're effectively stripping out meaning: you might as well replace the phrase with blah-blah-blah.  'In today's competitive market, bleeding-edge businesses seeking to maximise returns need scalable solutions that empower the C-suite to define core competencies...'.  Snore.

Second-hand thinking.  Using a second-hand phrase to express a big idea is even more dangerous, because it signals the idea itself is second-hand.  And therefore your thinking.  If it matters that you come across as original, then use original language.

Only use a cliché if you can give it an original twist.  Don't boil the ocean.  Steam a puddle.

It ain't what you say. It's way say that you it the.

It was in 1955 that the brilliant Noam Chomsky, famed as the father of modern linguistics, coined the following nonsense:

'Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.'

He was seeking to demonstrate that a sentence can be at once perfectly correct and perfectly meaningless.

To push home his point, he contrasted it with:

'Furiously sleep ideas green colorless.'

The first sentence is semantic nonsense.  (Ideas don't sleep.  Nothing sleeps furiously. If ideas are colourless, they can't be green.)

But at least it has the decency to follow the rules of grammar.  Whereas the second pokes you in the eye by breaking the rules of syntax, too.

You have two different kinds of nonsense here: content and structural.  It's the structural variety that is the most disruptive to clarity of communication.  Because, worse than nonsense, it's gibberish.

This suggests - and it comes as some relief to me - that it's OK to talk rubbish, so long as you talk rubbish properly.

Now I'm not sure that's how Chomsky would put it.   He was looking at language, not at communication in its wider sense, but I think there's a parallel here.

If clarity depends as much on structure as on content, then the order in which you make your points is as important as the points you're trying to make.  Isn't it?

Human ingenuity can find meaning in nonsense.  But it requires effort to find sense in gibberish.  Who's going to make that effort?

So perhaps it's worth giving at least as much thought to the structure of your communication as to the content of it.  Perhaps even to make structure the starting point for planning it.

For example, I know I'm going to say three things.  Now, what are they?

Or, I'll discuss the problem first and the solution second.  Now, what's the problem and what's the solution?

Or, I'll use a house as a metaphor for my topic.  Now where do I enter, what's downstairs and what's upstairs?

To prove my point about human ingenuity finding meaning in nonsense, here's an entry to a literary competition held by Stanford University in 1985.  Contestants were invited to make sense of Chomsky's sentence in no more than 100 words.  It's by C.M. Street, courtesy of wikipedia.

It can only be the thought of verdure to come, which prompts us in the autumn to buy these dormant white lumps of vegetable matter covered by a brown papery skin, and lovingly to plant them and care for them. It is a marvel to me that under this cover they are labouring unseen at such a rate within to give us the sudden awesome beauty of spring flowering bulbs. While winter reigns the earth reposes but these colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

Keep calm. But don't carry on.

Do you have the Godfather Gene?

When people fail to show you the respect you deserve, do you find yourself wanting to make them offers they can't refuse?  Through gritted teeth, in a rasping Italian-American whisper?  I know I do.

There's an unwritten contract between presenter and audience.  A key clause in this contract is that the audience will give you their full attention during your presentation.  Or at least, have the courtesy of appearing to do so.  Failing to respect this is a breach of contract.

For example, there you are delivering your state-of-the-nation report on why the company needs more coffee machines.  And suddenly Maureen starts fiddling with her mobile phone.

In Maureen's mind, there's a perfectly legitimate reason for this criminal breach.  She's booking a hairdresser's appointment.

(A wise guy might say that, if people are fiddling with their phones, it's your fault for not making your presentation more compelling.  But you and I know that if there were any justice in this world, it would be bed-time for Maureen, with a horse's head to keep her company.)

Here's the point.  As in the streets of Little Italy, so in your presentation.  If someone breaks the contract, you have to be seen to do something about it.  Because if you don't seem to care whether people listen to you, it suggests you have nothing worth saying.  And if you have nothing worth saying, why should anyone listen?

Carrying on regardless is not an option.  When one person starts fiddling, and gets away with it, other people start fiddling.  Pretty soon everyone's fiddling.  You've got to nip it in the bud.

The question is: how?

Option #1: The Sicilian Defence. Have your boys arrange Maureen's withdrawal from the room in a hail of bullets.  Satisfying, yes. But as the smoke clears and the emergency services arrive, you may find it hard to pick up where you left off.

Option #2: Engage Sarcasm. Say something cutting so Maureen gets the point.  'ARE WE TRENDING??!!' you quip in a choked voice, shaking with rage.  No: mobile phone fiddlers seldom get the point.  Your anger will just alienate the audience.  You have to keep calm.

Option #3: Rise Above.  The best thing you can do is to take action so that Maureen's fiddling ceases to be your problem and becomes a problem for her.  And to a lesser extent, for the audience.

A problem for Maureen, because you're about to make her the centre of attention.  A problem for the audience, because her fiddling is holding up proceedings.

To achieve this, all you have to do is (a) gaze at Maureen and (b) stop speaking.  (It helps if you can smile happily while you're doing this.)

The audience will notice the sudden hush and look to you to see what's going on.  They'll see you smiling at Maureen.  Maureen will look up to find all eyes on her.  She'll mutter an apology and put down her phone.  You'll smile graciously, thank her and carry on.  All this can take less than five seconds.  And it requires nothing from you but silence, a look and a smile.

This technique works just as well for other events that threaten to derail your presentation.   People whispering to each other instead of listening to you.  People falling asleep.  People actually snoring.

If you appear unfazed and unflustered, the audience will act as your ally against the offender.  For no other reason than they want you to get the presentation over and done with.

So keep calm, but don't carry on.  Not until you've dealt with the problem.

How to be an Alien

One day a little green man lands on Earth, gets out of his spaceship, comes up to you and says: "Take me to your leader".

"Aha", you think.  "An Alien."

Actually he's not totally alien.  He may appear to have more ears than you.  But he's looking at you, speaking to you and expecting a response from you.

Not so the human Alien.  This is the presenter who, after just a few moments on-stage, is able to convey the mind-boggling distances in space between one thing and another.  In this case the distance between you and him.

He achieves this alienation by talking to his feet.  To the ceiling.  Talking to the notes in his hand. To the screen. In fact talking to anything, except to you.

You know this because he isn't looking at you.  He may glance furtively in your general direction from time to time, pretending to look at you, in the same way that he’s pretending to talk to you.  But he isn't.

Because to look into someone’s eyes is to acknowledge their existence.  And that is the last thing the human Alien wants to do.

If you’re in a crowded carriage, pressed against another person like two sardines in a can, how do you cope with the invasion of your personal space?

You’re standing close enough to have a sexual encounter with a stranger who is neither attractive nor especially fragrant.  You can't get away.  This is intolerable.

There is only one thing you can do: avoid eye contact.  If you don’t look at them and they don’t look at you, you can pretend they’re not really there.

Mutual alienation – the denial of each other’s humanity – makes the journey in the crowded carriage unpleasant, but possible.

The human Alien doesn’t look at you and so denies your existence.  Whatever his ethnicity, his colour is green.

I once met a little green man in the form of a lecturer at a university.  We were talking about presentation nerves and he said: “Oh, I have no problem with that at all.  What I do is focus my attention on the ceiling at the back of the room.  There’s a little bit in the left-hand corner where the plaster has dropped off.  I talk to that.”

For the learned professor, his students didn’t really exist.  If, while he looked at the ceiling and banged on for fifty minutes, one of them had died – possibly from self-strangulation in a desperate attempt to escape – he wouldn’t have noticed. 

There are university lecturers who would see nothing odd about this approach.  "Students being what they are", they would say, "you may as well talk to a wall."

But it’s not a strategy that makes for an engaging presentation, because people want to be talked to.  As a minimum, they expect to be looked at.

Some say that when you have a large audience, it’s impossible to look at every person.  Not true.

It takes about a second to look at someone.  Let’s say you have an audience of 300 people, and five minutes. In that time you can look at each individual once.

In a 20-minute presentation to the same number of people, you can make eye contact with each individual four times.

I’m not suggesting you should scan mechanically around the room back and forth like a light-house.  That would be most disturbing.

I’m saying that the reason why the human Alien avoids eye contact has nothing to do with logistics.

Instead it has a lot to do with the philosophy of the ostrich, rooted in fear.  If I can’t see you, then you don’t exist, so you can't be a threat.

The human Alien doesn’t really want to talk to you.  So instead, he talks to an object.  The trouble is, objects can’t hear.  So as no-one is listening, he ends up talking to himself. 

Smiling on television: mere lip-service?

So you're miked-up, ready to go, having a laugh with the interviewer.

Then the red light goes on.  And with it the transformation of your personality.

Where there was natural human spontaneity, now there's a Soviet-era bruiser in an oversized fur hat with a red star in the middle, handing out one-way cattle-class tickets to Siberia.  Gordon Brown has taken over your face.

Unless we're American, we tend to find the business of smiling to order challenging.  And distasteful, too.  There's nothing more cringe-worthy than a false smile, we think, so best not smile at all.

And of course, as Americans delight in pointing out, the British have bad teeth.  (Although the new obsession with cosmetic dentistry over here means US grins are more widespread.)

The trouble is, when you're on telly, not smiling is not an option.  Not smiling doesn't make you look professional.  It makes you look unfriendly.  This is because smiling on television has nothing to do with humour.

A TV smile is the same smile of greeting, which, accompanied by a raised eye-brow or two, you give someone when meeting them for the first time.

It's a visual hand-shake with the viewer, who is indeed meeting you for the first time.  Or, if you're famous, seeing you again after an interval, which amounts to the same thing.

Smiling is not a pretence.  It's a courtesy.  Looking happy to see someone is as much a greeting as the words you use. Think of it in this way and you may find it easier to smile to order.

But crucially, it's got to be a proper smile, and this means more than mere lip-service.  If you think smiling is something you do with your mouth, then I'm afraid you've got it wrong.

I'm sure you're aware that on either side of your mouth you have a set of two muscles called Zygomaticus Major.  You use these to lift your lips into a smile.  But as any decent smilologist will tell you, if you only use these, your smile will be perceived as bogus.

The muscles you really want to be focusing on are the Orbicularis Oculi.  As their name suggests, they're around your eyes.  They're the ones that make your eyes crinkle into crow's feet.  And the ones that turn a fake smile into a genuine one.

You can see them in action in the pic below of sultan-of-suave George Clooney.

A man who knows his Orbicularis Oculi from his Zygomaticus Major

Now I don't know about you, but I'm not one of those body-builder blokes who's able to locate, isolate and twitch individual muscle groups to music.

So how to co-ordinate your mouth and eye muscles so you can produce a genuine smile to order?

Having spent far too long grinning at myself in the bathroom mirror, it occurred to me that the raison d'etre of the Clooney Zygomaticus could simply be to help push up the Clooney cheeks so that they in turn lift the Clooney Orbicularis to produce the eye-crinkling that makes feminine hearts throb the world over.  (You may have detected I'm not a physiologist.)

Add to this the raising of the eyebrows, (using another pair of muscles, the Occipitalis-Frontalis) and you have a general upwards movement from your mouth, through your cheeks, to your eyes and above into your forehead.

So could thinking 'up' help you produce a genuine pleased-to-see-you face to order?  Get into that bathroom and give it a try.

Because in the deeply superficial world of television, your face is worth a thousand words.

Pace: the final frontier.

Have you ever had a Scotty moment?

There you are, giving your presentation and doing your best to keep it on the straight and narrow as, boldly, you go.  But an irresistible force is taking over the ship.  A black hole?  The Klingons?

As the engine whine reaches screaming point, and bits of your presentation start breaking off, the engine-room sweat runs into your eyes.  Then, a crackle on the intercom.  A clipped command from the Bridge. ''Steady as she goes, Scotty."

"I canna hold her, Captain", you mutter through clenched teeth. "I'm giving her everything I've got.  But I canna hold her!"

What's happening here is that you've lost control of your presentation. You're rushing it. Your rate of words per second has exceeded the pace at which the ship's computer that is your brain is able to process what's supposed to be coming out of your mouth.

To keep control of your presentation, what you need is time.

Time to think.  Time to choose your words.  Time to remember where you've got to and where you're going next.  Time to look at the audience and check they're still engaged.  Still awake.  Still there?

If you go too fast, you don't have time to do these things.  And then, indeed, you canna hold her.

But if you speak slowly and calmly, the pace of time itself seems to slow down.  You now have plenty of time for things that were impossible a moment ago.  Control is restored.  The engine quietens down to a comfortable hum.

So a slow pace gives you time to think.  Which makes you sound more intelligent.

It also actually improves your voice, in two ways.

Firstly, having time to breathe properly means your voice is well-supported.  This makes it deeper and more resonant.

Secondly, it makes your voice more engaging.  A monotonous voice is one in which there is no contrast, none of the ups-and-downs that make for an interesting landscape.  To add contrast, you need to add emphasis.

Emphasis isn't a shouty thing.  It's not about saying one word louder than other words.  It simply means pausing before and after the word to be emphasized.  Leaving white space around it.

Does all this seem logical, Captain?  If so, here's an earth-bound metaphor to help put theory into practice.

On a German motorway, you're driving a Ferrari in a straight line at 180 mph.  No problem - everything under control.  But now you're coming off the motorway and into a town.  What do you do?  You slow down. You have to slow down to create time to react.  And the slower you go, the more control you have.

So if you ever feel you're about to lose control of the presentation, try taking your foot off the accelerator.

Does the world need the sound of your voice?

Are you worthy of attention? Is it fair to expect an audience to listen to you banging on for half an hour?

If your answer is a modest 'umm, well, not really', then you're not alone.  Many of us fear speaking in public or appearing on TV and being unmasked for the charlatans we suspect we are.  And we know the world will survive quite happily with or without our contribution.

The trouble is if you don't appear to think you're worth listening to, then your audience will most likely agree with you and switch off.  Or switch over to someone who does appear to think they're worth listening to.

So how to build your self-confidence to a level that makes people think you're worthy of attention?

You could sign up for some assertiveness therapy.  But if you haven't time because you're on in five minutes, how about a quick fudge exploiting the fuzzy logic of human reasoning?

What we tend to do when we don't believe we're worth listening to - but have to do the interview all the same -  is rush it.  We try and get it over and done with as quickly as possible.  We reason something like this:

'I'm not worthy of attention, so if I speak really, really quickly, the audience will forgive me for wasting their time and I'll be OK.'

Sounds silly, I know, but it's human.

Meanwhile, your audience is also human.  Their fuzzy logic goes something like this:

'This person is speaking really, really quickly.  So she doesn't think she's worth listening to.  If she doesn't think she's worth listening to, she probably isn't.  So I won't bother.'

Now the good news is that by speaking really, really slowly, you can harness the same fuzzy logic to create a magical transformation.

If you speak slowly - holding your pauses - it shows you're comfortable with silence.  If you're comfortable with silence, it's because you expect people to listen.  If you expect people to listen, you're confident you have something to say.

By behaving like a confident person, you become a confident person.  In the eyes of the audience, that is, which is what matters when you're on TV.

The audience reasoning changes to something like this:

'This person is confident, so she knows what she's talking about.  If she knows what she's talking about, she's probably worth listening to.  So I'll listen.'

I am indebted to the Reverend Ian Paisley for the following quote, which is great for practising slow delivery.

'Today was to be the day when the gun was to be finally taken out of Irish politics.'

To say those simple words quickly is to kill them dead, removing their terrible significance.

But say them slowly and you feel the power.

Now this is a bit of a leap, but to test my suggestion, let's think of something really banal and give it the Paisley treatment.  For example:

'This (long, long pause) is a great (long, long pause) cup of tea.'

See?  It works.  The words are about the topic.   The silence is about you.  That's where the power lies.

You are not a sponge

Whatever you think of Barrack Obama, you'll probably agree he's a first-class public speaker.  Let me suggest why.

It's not so much about the content of his speeches - superbly-written as they are - but about the pace at which he delivers the content.  That's all his own work.

Here's the opening of his State of the Union speech on 28th January 2014.  It will take you about 15 seconds to read.

 "Mr Speaker.  Mr Vice-President.  Members of Congress.  My fellow-Americans.
Today in America a teacher spent extra time with a student who needed it and did her part to lift America's graduation rate to its highest levels in more than three decades.  An entrepreneur flipped on the lights in her tech start-up and did her part to add to the more than eight million new jobs our businesses have created over the past four years. An auto worker fine-tuned some of the best, most fuel-efficient curves in the world and did his part to help America wean itself off foreign oil..."

If you read it aloud, it will probably take you twice as long as reading it to yourself. There's about 30 seconds of content here.  Difficult to do it any quicker, but you can try.

With his long pauses, though, Obama doubles that to a full minute.  Effectively, his speech is 50 per cent content and 50 per cent silence.  And I believe it's the silence that makes him a first-class public speaker. Because that's where you come in.

By creating silence, Obama's giving you a place in his speech. Those pauses for thought are pauses for your own thought as much as for his.   You're not a sponge.  As you process what he's saying, you're not passively absorbing content.  You're actively, albeit silently, providing your own internal commentary on it.

If you're not given time to do this, your voice will not be heard and you will not be engaged.  But when you're given space and time to think, the monologue becomes a dialogue.  The speech turns into a conversation: he's not talking at you, but with you.

So in fact it's not him that's doing the persuading, it's you.  If you're persuaded by what he says, it's because you have been given time to persuade yourself.

That's what Obama's long pauses are for and you can enjoy them at http://www.obamadownloads.com/mp3s/state-of-union-speech5.mp3

You didn't want to start from here.

"Our house is right in front of it.  You'll see a big tree. Go to the end of the road and turn left."

It's nonsense, but not complete nonsense.  If you reverse the order of the three sentences, you'll find it makes complete sense.

The words are identical, the instructions are the same.  But instead of giving directions from the end point, now you're giving them from the start point.  Much better.

Scarcely rocket science, you may be thinking. Pretty obvious that's the only logical way to give directions.

And so it is. But if it's so obvious and logical, why don't people use the same approach when explaining other topics, so they don't lose the audience?

Topics like, say, how our new technology will change the world. Or what next year's market looks like. Or why staff need to work harder for less pay.

Here's why.  Because on the surface, these topics don't look as simple to explain as how to get from A to B.

Assumptions.  Giving directions, you know exactly where the audience is now.  With other explanations, you have to make assumptions about audience knowledge.  That can be difficult, especially where the audience is diverse.  How much do they already know about the new technology? Will I patronize half the audience and leave the rest behind?

Structure. Giving directions, there is a ready-made structure for the explanation.  In fact, there's only one way of doing it: a sequence of instructions in a specific order.  But there are myriad ways of explaining other things. What's the best way to structure my presentation about next year's market?

Common ground. Giving directions, there is perfect accord about the end point of the explanation: getting to your house.  It's non-controversial. You have a shared purpose and a common goal: they want to get to your house and you're going to tell them how.  But what if there is a perceived conflict of interest between you and your audience?  Or between one part of it and another?  My plan for staff to work harder for less pay may appeal to investors.  But in the lamp-light of that extra midnight oil I'm asking staff to burn, it's going to look a bit dim.

Topics like these don't seem simple to explain, but you can make them so, if you choose.

Never assume

'Assume' makes an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'.  (Doncha love it?)

Don't assume audience knowledge about the topic.  Much safer to assume zero knowledge. Work out the lowest common denominator of knowledge in your audience and plan from there.  To avoid patronizing those who think they do have knowledge, preface your explanation with the magic words 'as you know'.

"As you know, cloud technology is now one of the top three determiners of competitive advantage"

If they knew, they're not offended by your telling them, because you've acknowledged they knew.  And if they didn't know, they do now.

By the way, as well as zero knowledge, much safer also to assume zero interest.  Command interest with a dramatic opening.

"You're probably very happy with the technology you're using at the moment and if you want an easy life, that's fine.  If on the other hand you still want to be in business tomorrow, you're going to have to throw it all out.  Let me explain..."

Structure everything from the audience view-point

Explain the topic from the audience viewpoint, not your own, as you do when giving directions.

So instead of...

"Let's begin with some key features of next year's market..."

Try...

"Let's begin with where the market is today and then look at where it's going next year..."

Find common ground

If there are differences and conflicts, search for the common ground to bring people together.  Build a boat and then put everyone into it.  A bit like Noah.

So instead of...

"There's no easy way to put this, I'm afraid.  You're all going to have to work harder for less pay."

Try...

"I know we all love this business.  I know we're all worried about whether it will pull through these difficult times.  All of us have worked really hard and we've all felt the strain of the past few months.  So what I'm going to ask of you is not asked lightly...."

Or even...

"I have today cut management salaries by 10 per cent until further notice -  including my own - and I will personally be working every weekend until we get through this difficult period.  In return, what I'm going to ask of you..."

Hmmm...

Whatever you do, you won't go far wrong if you plan the explanation as a journey from one point to another and make sure everyone follows you every step of the way.

Why it's wonderful no-one cares about you.

Fear of addressing an audience is one of those enduring things like death, taxes and the UK's unpreparedness for weather.  It passes from generation to generation like a malicious gene.

And indeed there are many good reasons to be fearful.  I have identified 10, ranging from fear of being judged ('Doesn't know what he's talking about') to fear of letting the side down ('Thanks to you, we lost the pitch') to fear of people seeing that huge pimple on your nose ('Doesn't she have a mirror?')

When you feel fear, positive thinking is of no use to you.  There's little comfort in mantras like 'I am a powerful and totally amazing individual' when your tongue has become bonded to the roof of your mouth and your brain has shut up shop and gone fishing.  Denying the reality of what you so evidently feel is pointless. It just makes you more confused.

What to do about it?  PG Wodehouse advised nervous speakers to imagine the audience sitting there in their underpants. I have to say it has never worked for me: too much to think about already without that.  And does he mean M&S, or are we talking Rigby & Peller?

If it's the shakes you've got, that's because of excess adrenalin coursing through your body.  So you can dissipate the adrenalin by physical exertion. Finding somewhere private and running on the spot often does the trick.  But you can't do that when you're already on stage.

I used to get very nervous before presentations until one day I woke up with a wonderful realisation: a eureka moment that came with a surge of relief.  It was this: who the hell cares about me?

For years I had been slave to the preposterous notion that my audience were actually interested in me. And therefore interested in how I performed.  Whereas in point of fact they weren't.  They, not I, were at the centre of their individual universes.  All they were interested in, quite properly, was themselves: their own hopes, fears, problems and pimples.

So because they didn't care about me, I didn't need to care about me.  And that left me free to care about them, which is a lot easier.

Not convinced? Think about what goes through your mind when you're on the receiving end of a presentation.  I'll bet your thoughts and feelings are more focused on yourself than on the speaker.

Hope I get something out of this.  Hope it's not a waste of time.  Hope it helps with my problem.  Hope it's worth the effort of listening.  And so on.

If you like this little nugget gleaned from nights of insomnia, then next time you feel the fear before a presentation, stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about the people in front of you.  They're the ones that matter, not you.

Where do I begin? Try the middle.

Your name is Melvyn/Melvynetta Parrott.  You're a health and safety consultant.  And you're about to do a presentation to a bunch of people who don't give a damn.  They're fiddling with their smartphones as you stand up to speak.

How do you start?

Some say you should begin by introducing yourself, saying what you’re there to speak about, how long you’re going to speak, what you’re going to cover, the order in which you’ll cover it, and so on.  Here’s an example.  Read it in your best nerdy voice:

"Good morning.  My name is Parrott and I am delighted to be here with you today.  My topic 'Health & Safety in the Workplace' is one of significant importance as I hope to demonstrate to you.  I have restricted myself to one hour, which will allow plenty of time for the many questions I'm sure you will have.  I have divided my presentation into just 17 parts.  First I will consider why health and safety is important. Then I will give instances of..." and so on.

Well, it's safe.  And methodical.  So it shows the speaker is...safe and methodical.  But as an opener, it's not especially electrifying.  How about this, instead?

“Last year, 500 people died at work.  Of these 149 were electrocuted, 81 were burned, 153 were mangled in machinery, 57 fell off buildings and 60 died from stress-related disease.”

Or this?

"You'll notice that my left arm has been amputated.  It happened in an industrial accident 10 years ago.  That's why I became a health and safety consultant and that's why I'm here today."

Now get back into role and read that last opener again in a nerdy voice.  Still much more engaging, eh?

So the moral is: find the drama at the heart of your topic and begin there.  Time for introductions later.

You blew and blew, but did the dog come back?

Management gurus tell us there are three key measurements for a project: input, output and outcome.

These words are precise in meaning, but easily confused.  And they're not terribly exciting.

So how to remember them and use them in a more dynamic way?  Whip out your dog-whistle.

Input = did you blow the whistle? (What resources were invested in the project?)

Output = did the whistle work? (What did the input produce?)

Outcome = did your dog come back?  (What did the output achieve?)

Using dog-whistle metrics lets you understand what went wrong much more easily than silly old management metrics.

Because at the end of the day there are only four scenarios:

1. Not enough puff to produce a good, long whistle. Input failure.  Sack the junior staff.

2. Plenty of puff, but whistle blocked.  Output failure.  Sack the managers.

3. Whistle worked, but dog didn't hear it.  Outcome failure.  Sack the project director.

4. Dog heard whistle, ignored it and ran off down rabbit-hole.  Disaster.  Sack everyone and get a new dog.

What does all this tell us about life?  Not a lot, really. Except that, imperfect as they are, metaphors are more memorable than management-speak.