BritCham Steve Copestake

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Transcript

0:07

Hello, and welcome back to the Brit jam Vietnam podcast. For today's podcast. We're looking back at an event we did in our branding series with Steve Copestake. For this event, we looked at communication. The importance of. And how to create effective communication, something so vital in everyday life, but particularly in business. You might have the best idea in the world, but if you can't communicate it. Then it's not going to go anywhere. Sit back. Enjoy. I forget. Take lots of notes.

Steven Copestake: 0:48

I've worked for some interesting companies along the way. Disney for many years, PepsiCo, Unilever, and some agencies, I run some agencies in the UK. Been quite high up in WPP, Wolf Owens, places like that. Long enough to get the gist of quite how bad a lot of people are at communicating. Basically landing a point. Speaking and writing with clarity and efficiency. And that's just an observation that I've picked up over that time. Which is strange, isn't it? Because we all instinctively know that good communication is a highly valuable life skill. There are very few jobs, very few situations in life where we're not at some point inclined to try and persuade someone, negotiate, land a thought. What I'm here to tell you about today is something you probably have already realized, which is we're not born into this. Communication was not very high up on that list of things that evolution had to get us ready for. And yet... There's an expectation, isn't there, particularly in a workplace environment, that we'll all somehow muddle through. We don't have that much meaningful instruction, but we'll muddle through. And I, speaking from my own experience, and probably reflecting your own thoughts, nobody muddles through public speaking or presenting without suffering in some way. That's why the main thing I want to talk to you about today is this idea of confidence. And how finding your own level of confidence can actually dramatically unlock your communication potential. Most of you have the basic skills, already. That's the good news. It's just that we don't always use them consistently and effectively. And I just want to, just before we get going, just want you to think a little bit about this concept of confidence. It's an interesting thing, and it's very personal. And for me, it's about the extent to which we feel comfortable in our own skin. Has the authentic version of yourself turned up to speak at a particular event or a particular occasion? Our confidence ebbs and grows. When we feel comfortable about what we're doing, we might feel comfortable about our knowledge of a topic, we might feel as though we're with people we respect and it's important, I think, in life, that you don't overextend beyond that level of authenticity. Most of the time, your audience will want the real you to turn up, and that's absolutely fine. The important thing is just to find a consistent platform that you're comfortable with. And then just work from that basis. That's all you need to do. And I talk a lot with the coaching about the importance of being fearless rather than faultless. There is no such thing as a faultless presentation. It's counterintuitive. But the state of being fearless is going to be a very important point or a very important landmark in you unlocking your own potential. So what we've got for you this morning is just a few tips and tricks about presenting or speaking publicly. It's very high level. I'm going to jog through this fairly quickly. So I've pulled out six things that can help us look and feel more confident in a public speaking or presenting situation. They should be things that you can all relate to. Some of us need help because we feel nervous when we speak. Some of us may feel that our preparation, perhaps, is inefficient, or we go off on a tangent when we're talking. Some of us might want a little bit of extra gravitas, you might have heard that word, greater authority in your communication. We're all concerned about connecting with the audience, you know, will they see what I say as valuable? Will they see me as credible? Will they see me as knowledgeable? So I'm going to talk about some of those things today, and I'm going to make it deliberately simple. Please don't be distracted by that. It's simple because I've done a bit of the thinking already. Not all of it, clearly, but I've done a bit. And, in my experience, simple things get understood, and simple things get acted on. And that's why we keep it very, very simple. What is the, one of the most important factors in delivering a message successfully? THe most important part, in my opinion and my experience, of any, Successful communication is to have proper structure. Structure. If you take nothing else away from this morning, please embrace the importance of clarity of message shape. Whatever type of communication it is. Virtual, face to face, written, etc. The right structure in your message will allow you to focus on how to lead an audience to where you take them, where you want them to go. Structure helps you take the audience to where you want to go. Structure will help you feel calm because it points to where you are in your narrative. importantly than both of those two things, Structure will help your audience understand your message more clearly. and crucially their role in acting on your message. So structure is our skeleton. We must have the skeleton before we add the meat. Okay? We must have the skeleton before we add the content or before we start thinking about our behaviour. This is my ideal framework. for a piece of communication. We call this a storyboard. You will have seen something like this before, I'm sure. This is my version of the storyboard. Introduction, purpose, agenda, etc. It is not complicated. And that is why it works. Because it is not complicated. It doesn't matter if you want to adapt this a little bit, bring sections in, take sections out. It doesn't matter. What does matter is the principle of thinking and planning in a structured way. So ask yourself, over time, if you want to improve, are you prepared to commit to the discipline of having a framework? Crucial question. When we start planning a piece of communication, where would we start? What's the best place to start? Think the most important aspect of any communication is your audience. Identifying and identifying with your audience. Number one key success factor. We have to try and stop thinking about, we're preparing to speak. The natural inclination is to start thinking, what do I need to say to these people? What is my message? What are my goals? What am I trying to get across? Park that. Stop that. Always ask yourself first, what does the audience need to hear? It's a very subtle distinction, very important. And the reason I say that is because of a communication fundamental. The key to connection is empathy. What do we think I mean by that word empathy? Feeling a connection, feeling some sympathy for the other person's point of view, which is counterintuitive. It takes us a while to work out that the best way to get to what we want to say is to get first to what the other people want to hear. It's ever so slightly counterintuitive. Imagine two circles that are overlapping, a Venn diagram. One circle is all your knowledge, all the things you want to communicate. The other circle is what the audience needs to hear. Where those circles overlap, that's empathy. That's connection. That's successful communication. So we start our planning, always, by trying to understand the world of our audience. What do they already know? Do they need big picture or do they want detail? Are they going to agree with you? What elephants are in the room? What are the competing priorities, politics, etc? Very basic questions, but I would suggest very important questions, just as a starting point, that can then help you shape other things like content and priorities. And the more you know, the closer you are to being them, and, here's a little nugget, solving a problem. We communicate with audiences to solve problems, to build trust, and with that trust, we get more quickly to a better outcome. So you always begin with the audience, those on the receiving end of your message. Just as in the world of marketing, you have to think first about the customer or the client. Every marketing business begins with that. When we plan, we start our planning with the end in mind. We don't begin at the beginning, we always begin at the ending. And by ending what is the big thought that we need to land through our communication? Sometimes I call it killer conclusion, you might hear me say controlling idea. What's the single idea, and this is where it gets tough for people. This is a really difficult thing for most of us to do, by the way. We need one idea only. That is in some way, ideally, the resolution to a problem or the resolution to an emotion or a frustration that you know your audience is feeling. You want your audience to be saying, what is at stake if we don't respond to this opportunity so we always have to... We construct one single big, big thought, and we lead the audience to that big thought. How do we do it? We do it by a technique called what why. We just think of two things, two questions. The what question is the place we start. And the what question is always, what is the one thing that you want your audience to think about? Feel or do when you finish speaking or writing. Think, feel, or do. In an ideal world, you'd focus on the do. If you can possibly prioritize a do, that's always better. What's the one thing you want your audience to think, feel, or do? That's the what question. The why question is simply, why should the audience respond as I want them to? What information have I shared that gets them to that conclusion? That's the why question. You can construct your killer conclusion in a sentence or two by very simply joining the what and the why, the answers to the what and the why question together. And if you can, do it why followed by what. The reasons behind your big point followed by the action or reaction that you want your audience to take. Simple as that. That's it. Don't be afraid of simplicity, everyone. Simple is better. Don't ask your audience to add their own interpretation of what you're talking about. Simple things get remembered. It's a bit like when we were here before in March, talking about brands, and I said, Your brand is what people say about you after you leave the room, right? It's the same thing with communication. Can you land a controlling idea, a killer conclusion, one thing? If you cannot express that one thing with clarity, is it reasonable for your audience to hear it with clarity? No. Won't happen, will it? Very important. So we start at the end. And then we work our way around the storyboard. And I would recommend that you do it in a certain order. So we begin at the end. And the next section we prepare is... What we typically call the agenda. These are the points that will lead your audience to your killer conclusion. These are the things, the content, the substance that you want to say in order to get your audience to the grand outcome. Think of it as a river. You're on one side of the river. You want to take the audience by the hand and lead them across the river. to the other side, to your killer conclusion. Your agenda are the stepping stones in the river. That's the path you take to lead them to the grand outcome. And that's why I prefer the word pathway, by the way. Instead of agenda, try and start thinking about it as a pathway. What route are you going to take to get your audience to your grand conclusion? Here's a piece of motherhood about audiences. Audiences love the reassurance of understanding the pattern of your narrative. What do I mean by that? Audiences love to know, before you start a journey, where they're headed and how they're going to get there. So your agenda is your opportunity to give them that narrative reassurance. It's a bit like jumping in a car and somebody, the taxi driver says to you, don't tell me where you need to go, let's just drive and see what happens. That could happen here potentially, I don't know, but you take my point. It's deeply unsatisfying for an audience not to have some inkling of where they're going. There was this wonderful old adage from Procter Gamble about how to present things, and there's something in this. Tell them what you're going to tell them. Tell them what you've just told them. Audiences love that. There's a reason why every Pixar film ever made is a success, because it has a familiar narrative structure. The best narrative structures, I'm here to tell you, are where you solve a problem. So, all of these magical films, WALL E finding Nemo. Once upon a time there was a something world, where things happened every day. Suddenly, one day, unexpectedly, a different thing happened, and it caused a bit of a problem. Because that different thing happened, and was causing a bit of a problem, our main character, he, she, or it, in the case of WALL E, had to do something differently, and in doing that thing differently, they got themselves into a bit of trouble. Until finally it plays out and it's resolved and everyone lives happily ever after. That's the plot, of pretty much every Pixar movie. And it works because people like to know where they are in the story. Now, point number two about pathways. Best set out as three sections. Three. If you try and say more than three things, you're saying too much. So you have to have some discipline about finding the three stones across the river. If I came to you today and said, I've got some tips and tricks for communication, don't worry, there's only 38 of them. I know which presentation I'd rather be in, and also I know which presentation I'm going to remember more clearly. So you control the pathway with three things only. This is not a revelation. Three is the maximum number for mental assimilation, for us to process. But you are going to control what those three things are. And we have a technique for controlling what those three things are, and it's called Key Takeaway. So for each of your three agenda points, You need, first of all, to decide what the key takeaway is for each of those three points. Then, and only then, can you layer in the data, the content, the research, the information. They must all lead to the key takeaway, and you decide that. You decide that. You don't leave the audience to decide that. And they'll thank you for it, because it's only three, and the takeaways help with progression. These are the stepping stones across the river. They want to know where they are in your story. They want to know that they are being led to the solution in a way which has meaning to them. So that's pathway. We do that next, and we do the takeaways, and then summary. Very simple. When we're making a presentation, and we've made our three key points, we summarize those key points. We tell them what we have already told them. And you're probably already thinking, as many people do, Hmm, that's a bit of repetition, isn't it? A bit dull, repeating myself there a little bit. Yeah, it is repetition. It is repetition. And that's precisely why we do it. The key to successful communication is to make your points simple and memorable. We don't need to... Over speak here. We don't need to use different language that we've used the preceding section. If what you said here was right, then your summary is right. No need to go beyond that. Keep the language the same. You don't need to elaborate it. If you elaborate, it dilutes the message. Stick to the same message. Simple technique. You take each of your pathway headings, your agenda headings, And you add the key takeaway, a sentence for the key takeaway. That's your summary. And then finally, in terms of preparation, but obviously these are the things that we speak to first, what I call introduction and purpose. Very simple. Introduction is the introduction to you. There is only one thing really that matters when you introduce yourself. Nice as it is to hear about people's life story. You have to establish some level of credibility. To be the person talking about this topic today. That's all. I used to work here, I've done a bit of marketing, you know, I've seen a few things. People want the reassurance of a little bit, OK, now I understand why this guy's talking about it. That's all. And then purpose, of course. We state our purpose. We say up front, we tell them what we're about to tell them. We say up front what we're about to say and why it matters to this audience. In stating your purpose, if you can just hint at your big idea, just hint at it. We used to say, show a bit of leg. We don't say that anymore. Not in public, anyway. But just give them a little hook. Guys, we're going to talk today about something that I think is going to be really important to the success of your business. You're stating the purpose very clearly, people want to know why they're here. In the real world, most meetings are, at best, a minor inconvenience. Especially if, they're not your meeting. You have to make it very clear, you have to retain control, and you have to address how you're going to talk about certain things. So that's tip number one. Structure. Structure, structure, structure. Use the storyboard. The point of it is, over time, I promise you, it becomes automatic. It's a great tool. Any kind of communication, any kind of presentation, just as a sense check, a filter. A lot of the people I work with print it out and, they'll have it with them on the day. They just fill out a couple of boxes, a couple of sentences in each, just as a reassurance, just as a way to know the path through. Storyboard. You have to lay out the structure first. You have to have that skeleton before you add the meat. Once you get used to using it, once it becomes automatic, you'll find the confidence will grow. Crucial tip and trick in building your confidence. Yeah, being simple is a real challenge. But the framework is there to try and, I promise you, once you get used to using it, try it a few times. This exercise about re filtering an old presentation through this framework is a very, very useful exercise. Could I have prepared that presentation more efficiently? What on earth was I really trying to say there? Was I trying to say three things, or one, or ten? Doesn't make any, just go through it and be, it is difficult, you have to be ruthless with yourself. Your audience will appreciate your ruthlessness, your observation of framework, they'll appreciate your clarity. Your presentations will be shorter, they'll be prepared more efficiently and quickly and effectively. You'll find that you start to gain in confidence because you have the framework there and you get used to using it. It's simple as it may seem, it's very compelling. So let's move on to some of the other tips and tricks. Tip number two. Do what you possibly can to make a connection. When we speak. We worry a lot about things like, will people see me as interesting? Will people see me as worth listening to? Will people find value in what I say? What can we do to bring our message to life? Make a connection. It's a very broad topic, this, necessarily. Some of these tips and techniques for making a connection are easier than others. Some presenters are more engaging than others. It doesn't matter. What I would suggest you do, in the pursuit of confidence, or greater confidence, just pick one or two of these things that I'm going to talk, the one or two of these things that suit you, just start practicing them a little bit if you can, just try them out if you're not already using them, or if you are and you feel comfortable with them, double up the efforts on those things if they work for you. What we have to keep in mind, of course, with communication, and we're constantly reminded about this every day, Attention spans are falling away very, very quickly. Really quickly. The average attention span for a meeting, efficient attention span for a meeting, is about 15 minutes. Not 2 hours. 15 minutes. There are some exceptions to that. little bit more engaging than that. But even within that 15 minutes, you'll find that the audience's attention dwindles, it gets less as those 15 minutes progress. And if you think about that in raw terms, it's quite a scary thought. What can we do to retain or dial up our audience's attention and engagement? Tip number one. I've just been talking about it. Structure. It's one of the reasons why structure is so important. But now we're looking at it from the point of view of the audience, not your preparation. You can keep an audience connected to your message through structure because they are brought into and bought into your pathway. That's why structure is so important. It doesn't matter how engaging you are if the narrative of your story is back to front. Clear framework, clear pathway. is a crucial engagement technique. Good communicators use structure as a reassurance to the audience. It's the platform, as I say, that you then add content and tone and everything else. Structure. Here's another one. Story. What are the very important six words that you can say to an audience. Let me tell you a story. Let me tell you a story. Stories allow us to be authentic. Stories show a little bit of our vulnerable side. They show a little bit of the true you. If you can use a story to surface an issue in a presentation. That is, personal to you or personal to your experience of a matter, people will trust you more. People will see your authenticity, the trust will be there. If you're going to tell a story, make it short, we don't need Lord of the Rings. If you're going to tell a story, here's a few little things about stories. Stories are best told in the present tense. I'm walking down the road. I'm in Ho Chi Minh City. I'm walking down the road. You'll never believe it. I see a giant pink elephant. It's in the present tense, right? It feels as though you're there. You're more connected. It's more engaging. Present tense. Give a little bit more detail than you necessarily need to. That elephant was pinker than Barbie's bedroom. I don't need to say it, but it's a little bit more detail, engaging, connection. If you can bring conversations into your story, it's another good thing. So I walk over, I sit down next to the guy, I say to him, What are you doing here? It doesn't make any sense. And he says to me, Yeah, I had to sit down, I've just seen a pink elephant. It's a conversation. People feel drawn into the story. So stories are important, if you can possibly surface them. Another engagement technique which we all forget is questions. You as a presenter can ask questions to the audience as well as them asking you questions. It's an underused technique. Questions are a great way of making interaction happen, making engagement happen. It helps you perhaps steer the topic in the direction that you want it to go. It helps you read the mood of the room. It helps you gauge the level of understanding of the issue in the room. You can ask individual people in the audience a question that helps you land your point, because you know that they, you predict what they will say. It also allows you as a presenter just to take a little bit of a breather. You'd be amazed at the number of anxious presenters I work with who suddenly come alive when there's a, when there's a bit of this going on, when there's a bit of a conversation in the room. Takes the pressure, they feel as though it takes the pressure off them. But you have to use questions to steer it in the direction you want it to go in. How we speak makes a big difference to how confident we seem. Sometimes this is about tone. What tone should I adopt? Should I be knowledgeable? Should I be authoritative? Should I show my passion? Those things are all very worthy. My advice, my feeling on it, is much better just to be conversational. Just to be you. To be the authentic you. By being conversational, When you need to dial up things like authority and passion, it'll be all the more impactful when you move to that. Most of the time, you can just be, it's a conversation. With speech, simple things make a big difference. The technique of rhetorical questions, which I'm sure you all use and you all understand. If you don't, it's a great engagement technique. It's a very easy one. Most people's brains are on constant Alert in case a question comes their way. So you can use that to make sure you retain engagement and connection. Rhetorical questions, what would that look like for our business? How would you feel if you were going through that situation? How would you feel if I was to stand here all day, just asking rhetorical questions. These things are engagement, they're engaging, they draw an audience in. What does this look like in the real world? How does this idea affect us? Rhetoric. If we can, and this is difficult, let's try and avoid all those little throw away words that we can't help ourselves say. Every presentation ever made in the history of mankind usually ends with I just want to add. One last point. I just want to quickly touch on one last point. You've heard that before, in presentations. I just want to quickly touch on one last point. If he's just going to touch on it quickly, it's probably not that important, okay? But if I said, we must remember one other point, I will make one other point. Very subtle difference, very powerful difference. If you're in doubt, you can start virtually any presentation by saying, Great to see you, let's get straight into this. Confident. Little thing, big thing. Words like just and hopefully, weak words. Words like must and definitely are stronger. You don't want to start a presentation by saying, Great Hi everyone, today I was hoping to talk a little bit about how not to start a presentation. It's weak, and it doesn't need to be said. It's hard not to do, but it's worth not doing. Inclusive language. We all do it, we may not even realize we're doing it. Inclusive. You feel as though it's, we're all in this together. You feel as though we're part of something special. I don't, I don't mean that in a weird way, but it's join, enjoining. It's joining up people. You can reference specific individuals. Matt, I know you'll be thinking about the IT implications of what I'm talking about. Made a great point outside about what it's like to be in Vietnam, to be in Ho Chi Minh City. He actually did make a great point. But Joe hearing that I thought he made a great point just brings Joe into it a little bit. People like that, generally speaking, and you can use that. That's why chit chatting outside, that's why there is drinks outside in an anti room before a presentation, because you can use that just to break the ice and then reference people. One of the questions I get asked about a lot is to do with humour, and whether or not people should try and add humour to a presentation setting. Most of the time that question comes from people who are worried about trying to be funny and it not working. Or they might be talking about something technical and they're worried about, lightening the tone might affect their credibility. Obviously, particularly in this day and age, you need a certain amount of emotional intelligence to know whether or not it's appropriate to say something. To know whether or not to step away from the facts, to step away from playing it straight. But, we can all access the value of humour. And do it in a way that is authentic to us, to you as an individual. That's the most important thing. Humour is important. It creates a bond. It's engaging. It gives the audience a little bit of relief. It helps your message stand out. It helps people trust you a little bit more. There's a very famous, you may not have heard of this gentleman, some of you will, English comedian called John Cleese. Who was part of, a long time ago, was part of something called Monty Python and has done other things since. A strange man, but a very, very funny man. And he said, famously once, If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better. Which makes you more open to my ideas. So there is a role for humour. And what I say to people is, try it. If you're comfortable doing so, try it. It's as simple as that. And the reason I say that is because of what it's not about. It's not about laughter. It's not about getting people to fall off their chair, laughing and, hilarious. The guy's hilarious. Wonderful. It's much more about bringing some levity, levity meaning lightness. It's much more about bringing some levity and affability to your delivery. Some people have a gift for seeing humour in a situation. They're born with that gift. They think in a certain direction. They're invariably sardonic, ironic. They're usually extremely self aware. And we have a word for people like that. We call those people funny. Not everyone is wired that way, but it doesn't matter in this context. It's not about telling jokes. Jokes are hard. We're not comedians. Jokes require cadence and certain other aspects of delivery. We're not roasting anyone. We just want to keep it authentic and organic, just enough to build a connection. For example, if you're presenting something really complex... You could just simply say out loud the opposite of what you think the audience is thinking. It's just a little thing, just bringing some lightness. Extremely complex information, you could say, I know what you're all thinking. This is really simple, right? This is really going to work. Just enough to bring a smile to people's faces. What else? Observational things are important. Things that you see every day as you go around town. If you can make a reference to one of those things in a conversational way, that in some way embellishes the point you're making, do it. People will relate to that because they've seen it as well. Might be a funny exchange you had with a client. Might be something one of your children said that was, unwittingly ironic. It could be something about yourself. A good source of light hearted content is yourself. If you're able to be a little bit self effacing, and tell a funny story about, that mistake you made when you first joined the company, seemed like a big deal at the time, now not so much, if you mess up during a presentation, it's okay, don't, don't kill yourself, but it's okay to say, look at me, the technical king has struck again. People like that because they see themselves in your experience, they see themselves in you. One of the things I do is I keep a story file, you know, if I see stuff, Airports usually, or other places where people seem to behave strangely. I'll make a note of it and I'll use it if I can. Just a little tip. Just everyday things. Very important. So that's tip number two. Making a connection. Tip number three is about PowerPoint and visuals. Old friend PowerPoint. I know what you think about PowerPoint, because it's the same as what everyone thinks. Let's give them something to look at. I don't want to be up there on my own, just talking. Possible. Just give them a few slides, let them, the problem with it is, and I'll go into this from the perspective of some sort of best practice reminders, and I say best practice lightly. It doesn't matter, it doesn't seem to matter how many times, we, we admit to these failings, and talk about these things, it never changes. People, this is the one area of presenting, uh, technique, if you like, that is consistently badly done. Consistently. And it's strange, because we all instinctively know, if you use slides in the right way, That can significantly add to your level of engagement, right? We all know that, it's instinctive. But just as equally, if we use slides in the wrong way, it can take away your capability, your credibility your impact, your engagement. The first question that never gets asked is, Do you need any slides? Do you actually need this? The first question that never gets asked. If this was a small audience, and we were talking about something that was data intensive, complex, nuanced, what I might choose to do is use PowerPoint, but I use PowerPoint to make a report, and then we sit round the table and we read the report together. The power of reading is much underestimated. PowerPoint is a good format for making that report. But it's not necessarily the best format if I then want to project that complex information in a presentation setting. There's this sort of, I think it might be Apothical, I don't know, Jeff Bezos, the guy who runs Amazon. A reasonably large company, apparently, for senior people anyway, has banned PowerPoint. Since 2004, I think it was, because he feels as though it's a constraint, in some ways, on proper communication. So think about that, for example, give these people some information. Should I be doing it on the screen, or should we sit around the table with, with a pre read, or a post read? Rather than rely on, if you present stuff that's too complex, you will lose control, potentially, over the message. Must maintain control. Second thing is, PowerPoint is such an automatic behavior, isn't it? How many of us have got a presentation coming up and we think, oh, I'll just use the presentation that I did last time. I'll just, I'll maybe tweak it a bit, but fundamentally it's okay, I'll just use that, or worse, your boss he gives you the presentation that he did three weeks ago, to a completely different audience, and says, yeah, you're fine, just show them that. Slides are meant to be an aid to your delivery, but if you don't use them properly, they will get in the way of a proper framework, the structure that we've talked about. You are the presentation. PowerPoint is a support. It shouldn't be saying the things for you that you need to say. How many presentations have we been in where somebody puts up a slide, and then they start to read it to you? They read the slide to you? Please don't do that. Information, generally speaking, is usually only interesting once. You read something that people can already read for themselves, starts to feel repetitive. So do your storyboard first, as you've just done, then think about whether PowerPoint or something similar can add to the delivery of that. Only then do you revert to PowerPoint, once your framework is done. This is the biggest problem with PowerPoint. It is biologically problematic. for human beings to read a lot of text on the screen and listen to what somebody is saying at the same time. It's impossible. There's a very intelligent Australian gentleman called John Sweller, who's devoted most of his life to something called Cognitive Load Theory. And what Cognitive Load Theory is about, as you might already have realized, is the processing power of the brain. If you speak over text heavy slides, 90 percent of what you say is gone within 30 seconds. Gone forever. Talking to text heavy slides will actually draw attention away from the points that you're trying to make. What will be remembered is zero. So text heavy slides are probably the single most limiting aspect of PowerPoint. And we all do it, right? We've all put a load of bullet points up. We put a load of bullet points up and then, we just talk to them. Less text. Much better, if you can, to take the view that a picture will always out word all the words. Because we're visually wired. People remember. 80 percent of things that they see. 80%. So most people will remember more if you talk to an image rather than if you talk to text. Who's going to be brave enough to try that next time in front of the CEO? Not many, but try it if you can. It'll make a massive difference. One message only per slide. If you have five things on a slide, what happens is people will remember one versus the other, but largely forget all of them. One message only per slide. PepsiCo actually has an interesting way of dealing with this. You might want to consider it. What they do, what they expect people to do, in the heading of your slide, that's the point that you want that slide to make. So your slide heading... is the key point from that slide, and then the body of the slide is the information that supports that heading. Worth thinking about if you can make that, if that's useful to you. PepsiCo protocol. One message only per slide. Simple. Size does matter. Slides need to be super clear. It's not an eye test. Okay? The challenge I put to people is, 28 font size minimum, pictures ideally, big numbers, big words, less words. We've all been there. Somebody puts a slide up, and then what's the next thing they say? If you know they won't see it, don't use it. And I know what you're thinking, right? If I put less information on a slide, doesn't that mean there's going to be more slides? Yeah, it does. It does. But the number of slides in your presentation, I promise you, has never really been the problem. It's the amount of information on each slide that is the issue, that is counter to proper engagement. and Procter Gamble, I mentioned them earlier. We have a rule at Procter Gamble. Four slides only per presentation. Less is more. Let's get, let's make it punchy. What happens? People take all the things they want to say and they cram them into those four slides. Totally counterproductive. Meaningless. The number of slides you have is largely irrelevant. There's something quite satisfying about jogging through a number of slides quite quickly, because each slide is clear and it's doing its job. Something to think about there. Tip number four. Nerves. Anxiety. If you have even the slightest level of consciousness, self awareness. Standing up and talking to people will make you feel something. It will. Is anyone brave enough to say, Love it. Bring it. No. No. No. Anxiety is 100 percent normal. Successful communicators are able to control that anxiety, not stop it, but control those feelings to a certain extent and get to a place of calm. They find an advantage by finding calm. What do you think are the top five things? This is real research. Facts. What are the top five things do you think that people are most scared of in this world? What human beings, what's your phobia? What's your anxiety? What is that top five? I'll give you number five. It's one I can relate to. Yeah. Acrophobia. The thought of standing on that ledge and looking, down over the cliff. That kind of verti whatever that is, vertigo, fear of falling. We don't like falling off buildings. The falling itself is fine, it's the sudden ending that's the issue. Acrophobia, number five. Number four, the dark. Ghosts. It's to do with what you can't see in the room, right? What's hiding in the room? The dark. Nyctophobia. The next one usually gets a reaction. Arachnophobia is number three. Particularly amongst ladies, by the way. It's the way that they move. It's a wonderful word in English for the movement of a spider. Do you know that word? Scuttle. That's how a spider moves, in the bath. It it's uncoordinated to our eye. Arachnophobia, number three. Number four. Death. Not many people that keen on death. I don't think death itself is the issue. Dying is the problem. Death is, quite dark for a long time. But dying, we don't embrace that particularly. You can see where I'm going on this. The number one stated public fear. Public speaking. It's called glossophobia. Strange word. Glossophobia. Four out of five people say that that is their worst fear. And if four out of five are saying it, it's going to be, it's probably four and a half out of five. Ninety percent of us will have anxiety when we speak. I'm here to tell you that life is too short. You can manage this. Your weekend doesn't need to be ruined. You can do this. Honestly, that's what the confidence is. You can do it. You have all the tools. There's a... American... Actress, writer, director, lady called Nora Ephron. Wonderful. She said, be the hero of your life, not the victim. That's what public speaking is like. You somehow feel at the mercy of the audience. We worry about the judgement of it all, don't we? We worry that we're going to mess up, lose our train of thought. We're going to screw this up and then everyone, everyone's going to be looking at me. The eyes will be on me. That's in our DNA. That's, not so many years ago, let's say a hundred thousand years ago, when as a species we were literally hunting and gathering. Eyes on you in the darkness. was usually death. It was usually a predator of some sort. You don't want those eyes on you. So it's, we're wired to, we don't want to make a mistake, we don't want to, we don't want to be badly judged by an audience, because we need the reassurance of that social group, just as we did, when we were living as tribes. We didn't want to fall outside of the tribe, to be badly judged by the tribe, because that was, that was also death. Which happens to be number two fear, so that, all so we're just wired that way, that's how we are. There's a great, another great quote, George Jessel, American guy, he said, The human brain starts working the moment you're born and it keeps working and it keeps working right up until you have to stand up and talk in front of a group of people. We freeze, we find it difficult. If you feel nerves, it does not mean that you are a bad communicator. There is no connection between the anxiety you're feeling and your ability to get your message across. None. Other than the constraint that that anxiety puts on you in delivering your message. Fear can prevent us sharing an idea with an audience that is in need of that idea. It might be something inspiring that you've done at work or anything. If you let your fear overcome your ability to transact that information with the audience, it's everyone's loss, right? So think about it a little bit as a transaction. You're here to tell them something that will be useful to them. There are some other things to think about. One of them is perspective. It's quite a big word. I think, I was thinking about this this morning. Let me tell you a story. It's not an easy story, but as I, sometimes when I move around Ho Chi Minh City, I see people who are clearly in a bad place. They're sitting in the, in the street, they're sitting by the side of the road, and they're trying to get money to live. And I, I understand that's part of the real world. When I see that, I sometimes think to myself, hmm. My goodness, is the biggest anxiety I'm going to deal with today, really, talking to a bunch of people at a BritCham Masterclass? Is that the sum of my worry about life? Perspective. Really. All those neurotransmitter chemicals in your brain, serotonin, dopamine, all those things that make us feel nervous and anxious, believe it or not, those are the same chemicals. That make us feel excited about something, when we're, when we're happy about something, so one perspective is, maybe treat your nerves as a form of excitement. Maybe it's just a, sign that this is important. Get comfortable with the idea that discomfort is part of it. Just a little bit of discomfort, it's part of it. This is something that matters. If you can, use your anxiety to fuel you a little bit. It doesn't have to swamp you. Here's some other things that will help with your nerves. Structure. You've got your storyboard. You've prepared. You know what you're going to say. You know what you're going to say after that. That's your rock. People find calm by knowing where they are in their own story. It's important. Make it more personal in your mind. There's just something wrong with this phrase, public speaking. Public speaking is always a strange... We don't say public walking, public driving, but it's the same thing, right? We've just got used to it over time by practicing talking and having conversations. It becomes automatic, just like driving or walking does. I don't think about presenting to 30 people. I'm presenting to one person 30 times. It's a conversation. It's like talking to somebody one to one. Same tools, you're using the same instruments. This is nice, especially in the work context, or perhaps a wedding speech, something like that. When we're communicating, most of the time what we're doing is contributing. We're not competing. Let me just tell you what I mean by that. Let me explain what I mean. If you are authentic, It means that you don't need an inner perfectionist to make a valuable contribution to a work situation, something of that nature. So having a sense of the value of what you are saying is very important. You're part of a bigger picture. You're contributing to the we, not the me. And having that reference, perspective point. takes away some of the drama that you might be feeling. You're making a contribution. You're shifting from performing to communicating. From being evaluated to being of value. Just a little trick you can play in your mind. Slow down and breathe. Yeah, We need to breathe. But what people sometimes don't realize. is that voice is breath. We breathe out to speak. We breathe in to gather our thoughts, stay calm. It's a cycle. Try it when you get home tonight. Try and speak when you're breathing in. People will very quickly think you're strange. But you should give it a go. What the hell. think about that cycle. If you can master that cycle, you can quickly get on top of your breathing pattern. It's really hard for human beings to control an emotion. It's a bit like stopping a sneeze. Hard to do, right? It's not always easy to stop a sneeze. But strangely enough, breathing, respiratory, is one of the things that we can control. It is one of the things that we can control. Your breathing and the rate at which you speak shows people that you are nervous. We have this expression in English, Canary in the coal mine. It's an indication that there's a problem. The most controlled person of authority in the room is usually the person with the steadiest breathing pattern. You will find that if you are able to control your breathing, Your voice will be a hundred percent better. If that's the key to dealing with nerves, try it. Find a bit of time before you start speaking. Do the square breathing exercise. Breathe out for four seconds, hold it for four, breathe in for four. It's a cycle of things. Very important. This sort of thing is important in yoga and that sort of thing. Not that I'm a natural yogist. But, try it. It does work for people. A lot of people speak very quickly when they're nervous. You've heard fight or flight, that's the flight reflex cutting in. We start going too quick because, oh my god, I mean if we, if I just speak a bit more quickly this will be over and then I can go home. Normal conversation pace is 125 words a minute. Sounds a lot, but that's it. We don't need 250 words a minute. It's counterproductive. Try practicing with a friend. Strange. Your friend might not at first be too keen, but speak out loud to a friend, practice your presentation, get them to put their hand up when they think you're going a little bit too quickly. It's a great way of just realizing that there is a pace that suits your audience and it's not always the pace of your brain. It's not a race. Body language. My goodness. Our physicality shows people what our state of mind is. They say that 93%, 93 percent of all communication is non verbal. So we can use our body language to make the point that we are confident, we're in control. We can just as equally let our body language send the opposite message if you're not careful. Most of it is about posture. Just standing, crazy as it might seem, just standing in the right way, allowing the larynx, the diaphragm, all that stuff to work properly. Just standing in the right way, believe it or not, will help your voice, it will help you, and it'll help you feel comfortable. When we do rehearsals, we get every kind of movement possible. I've seen, senior executives are doing this, and they're nervous. The body's moving around. We get a lot of closed body language. Great, great to see everyone really looking forward to this. They're not looking forward to it. They can't, help themselves express what they're really feeling. In that sense, the best tip is, just stand still. It's one less thing to think about. Most people's stage presence can be dramatically improved by not moving. If you want to move, and you can feel as though you can move, with some smoothness and assurance, great. Move. It's much more engaging, it's more interesting. We don't need all kinds of weird movements because we're, we're a little bit nervous and it'd be great if you liked me. We don't need that. If you want to emphasize a point, Move periodically. You want to make a point, move towards an audience, just ever so slightly. It's the signal that you're about to say something that they should really hear. A lot of the time we get asked, what do I do, if you're going to stand still, rely on your hands. A lot of the time we get asked about what do I do, I've got these two floppy things that hang down from the side of my body, I'm not sure what to do, what do I do with my arms? I would say to you, use your hands to emphasize a point. If you're uncertain about what to do with your hands, just leave them here. Just, you can have them in this sort of navel area, tummy area, and move them from this position to emphasize a point, and then bring your hands back here. Once they're here, if they're lightly clasped, you don't have to think about your hands, until you need to use them again in order to make a key point. Gestures from this part of the body. are shown by research to connote trust. People trust you when you move your hands from this part of the body. You can do it with virtual presenting, you can still use your hands to make a point. So if you're worried about your hands... Another thing, eye contact. Really important. It freaks us out, doesn't it? Look, eye contact. We don't like it, really. But it's important. And while I'm speaking, you'll see that I'm... Occasionally I'm looking at people, but you know, it only has to be a few seconds, and then I move on to someone, then me, and then yourself, because it's connecting. Don't overdo it, that's a bit weird, you don't need to stare at someone. But if you find it difficult, just pick three or four people who look quite nice, and imagine that they're an old friend, you're just talking to them about something, I've been working on this thing, and it's, it's great. Just bringing you up to speed with it. And the last thing is smiling, which everyone forgets, right? I know I'm so nervous, but even if you just smile twice, at the beginning and maybe when you're doing your conclusion. Smiling is another connecting thing. And people will notice you smiling, whatever you're talking about, because I'm smiling, people think, oh, that's good, nice, nice guy. Call me useless, but he was smiling, last thing, silence. you have an ace up your sleeve and we call this the power of the pause. And again, it's one of those things that people find difficult. Just realising the value of silence in a communication and not being afraid of that silence can be one of your best friends. Just adding a little bit of space between some of the words will give you time to think a little bit and to receive. In some ways, recognizing the need for silence brings, brings a certain calm as well. It's about being relaxed within yourself. Being silent is a confident thing to do that makes people see you as confident. Pausing can... Break up the content for an audience so they can process it. It can have quite a dramatic effect. If I pause, it can add a certain anticipation. It can add a certain drama. Easy thing to do. Easiest thing in the world is to say nothing but hard to remember to do. It can also help you manage your anxiety. You know it's a good opportunity for you to breathe. A lot of the time, pausing is the most reliable way to get rid of all those ums and uhs. We call these modifiers, these are filler words. Everyone does it, impossible to stop. But you can make it less by getting in control of that pausing methodology. Rather than say an um or an uh, close your mouth. At the end of every sentence, close your mouth. Take a breath, start again. Very easy thing to say, very difficult thing to do. Just try it. You'll find over time, it should work for you. The most confident people in the room, usually, are those people who can just stop talking for a second, and then start again. You will have heard that expression, you make a point that's important, and you'll expression, you could have heard a pin drop. You know that? You could have heard a pin drop. No one's going to hear the pin drop if you're still talking. So let it be heard. One of the great things about pausing and being quiet is that it helps you hear things. Something that we don't talk about enough, I think, in communication. The ability to listen. Are you listening carefully? It's an important question because When people say that they are listening, most of the time, they're not really listening. They're just thinking about what they're going to say next. This is where this phrase, active listening, comes from. It's a greatly underestimated source of understanding and control, and it's really difficult to do. If you're a good listener, you can hear what's not being said, as well as what is being said. What we might call thoughtfully silent. It's complex, it's hard. Reading what's explicit, what's implicit. Controlling your emotions. Conveying interest in what the other person is saying, either verbally or non verbally. It's a tough skill. Something worth working at. The good news is... Even if you improve just very slightly on this, it will make a big difference. Some things to think about when you're listening, when you're going in to be a listener. There's something called attention intention. So, I'm gonna make a conscious effort, attention intention, to focus about that topic. I'm training myself to just focus on that. Try it, it'll make a world of difference. I'm going to occasionally repeat the last few words that he said. That's my way of showing him that I heard him. And I mean repeat. It seems awkward, but I mean the same words. I don't mean add your own interpretation. Just repeat the last few words, just to give him that connection. While he's speaking, I can offer non verbal cues that I'm listening. Nodding, attentive posture, a few yeses,. While he's speaking, I'm going to make a conscious effort not to rehearse what I'm going to say next. Now, we all do it, right? Somebody's speaking and you're thinking, as soon as this guy's got to the end of this sentence, I know what I'm going to say. Try and take it all in. And then the last thing is keep calm. We don't, the best thing possible is that you don't respond in an emotional way, because what that's mainly going to do is cause disengagement. Try not to tune out what you don't want to hear, is another way of putting it. So just, just some thoughts there about becoming a better listener, which is part of tip number six. So those are my six tips. Just a little footnote. I used that word earlier, gravitas. And we, often, we get asked a lot about authority. How can I carry some authority when I speak? How do I get people to anticipate value in what I say? The answer is simple. Be yourself. Be yourself. We don't need a version of you other than the real you. You'll carry all the gravitas you need by thinking about three things. It's always three things. On top of being you. Know your subject. That's important. Know what you're talking about. Have a way of delivering that information that is structured. The plan. And number three is, be yourself. Bring the passion that you have to the discussion. That's all that people really want to hear. Honestly. There's a word in, if anyone can remember what magic is, what a magician is, or was, or does. We used to be a big thing in the old days, magicians. And they used to say, abracadabra. I'm going to cast a spell on you. Abracadabra. It's actually, abracadabra is a Hebrew word, which means, I will create as I speak. All of this stuff about communicating, all of this stuff about just picking one or two things, perhaps from the list of things that I've spoken about, just to get a little bit better. To me, that requires a certain kind of courage, which may seem strange. The word courage in English, it's a Latin word. The root of the word is core, C O R, it means the heart. Just being yourself and speaking authentically from the heart, in a way that you're comfortable to do. is all you ever need to do. That is confident communicating. That's it. You don't need to be any more or any less than that. And everyone can do it. Fearless. Not faultless.

1:05:05

And that was our effective communication podcast and event that happened earlier this year. I hope it's given you some real, tangible takeaways that you can use in your business and your everyday activity. To download our podcasts and podcast series. Please go to your normal podcast platform. Whether it's Spotify or apple podcasts. Search Brett sham, Vietnam and download. for more information. On Brett champ. Please go to www.britchampion.com. Thank you for listening and see you next time.