Michael Crichton was and still is one my favorite authors. His books were always interesting to me and I just love the way he tells a story. His books are full of action, usually surrounding humans dealing with technological advances. I haven’t read all of his books because he passwed away in 2008 and I’m kind of pacing myself. I don’t want to run out too soon.

A remarkably large number of Crichton’s books became movies. The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Sphere, Timeline, and Congo, just to name a few. He was also the creator of the long-running hit medical drama, ER. There was always a very visual quality to Crichton’s descriptions. Without becoming overly wordy or descriptive, he could make vivid images appear in my head of what was happening in his books. It almost seemed as if he was trying to write his books in such a way that they would easily lend themselves to cinematic adaptations.

There are a lot of similarities between movies and presentations. Both involve verbal elements, some written but mostly spoken. And both rely heavily on visuals. Even if you’re not using slides in your presentation, the way you look, the way you act and move and behave in front of the audience is a VERY important part of the presentation. Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ is a film that started out as a presentation and many of the best presentations I’ve seen involve very cinema-esque visuals.

The lesson I glean from Mr. Crichton’s writing is that any presenter would benefit from a study of cinematic storytelling. Learn to tell your stories through the integration of pictures and sound. You don’t have to incorporate video into your presentations to do this. Plenty of cinematic action can be conveyed “comics-style” through a series of sequential images.

Telling stories through pictures can reinforce the memorability of your presentation, too. Pictures can show children suffering due to lack of water or the happiness associated with a new birth in ways that are nearly impossible to do with words alone. A picture is worth a thousand words, and yet we understand pictures almost instantly. You can get large amounts of information across to your audience very efficiently by relying on visuals.

If you don’t think of yourself as a cinematographer, there’s still hope. There’re plenty of resources out there to help you learn to tell stories visually. Among them are Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, Cinematic Storytelling by Jenniefer van Sijll, and 101 Things I Learned In Film School by Neil Landau. These will get you started, but there are plenty more out there which will benefit you greatly even though you may never actually create a comic book or produce a film.

Michael’s lesson in a (few) word(s): Cinematic Storytelling.

This the fifth and final post in a series I’m calling “Build Slides Like…” in which I’ve shared a new idea about presenting taken from an inspiring creative type (non-presenter) each day. Others I blogged about were Duff Goldman, Dave Ramsey, and Mike Holmes. and Jillian Michaels. If you’ve enjoyed these posts, please consider subscribing to this blog via RSS or email so you won’t miss any future presentation tips and advice.

[image credit: Wikimedia Commons]

Don't be fooled. She's one tough cookie.

Anyone who’s ever seen an episode of The Biggest Loser knows Jillian Michaels means business. Jillian has established herself as one of the toughest trainers on TV. Her techniques in the gym can even come across as mean-spirited and harsh at times, but when you see the end result it’s obvious that Jillian was just doing what was needed to get results.

Watch the Biggest Loser long enough, though, and eventually you’ll see another side of Jillian. A side that is genuinely concerned not just with her subjects’ physical goals, but in healing the psychological issues that caused them to get to that weight in the first place. She spends time getting to know her contestants, asking them about their lives and family relationships. She asks when it was that they stopped taking care of themselves. It sometimes takes multiple sessions like this to get to the root of the problem, but Jillian is almost always able to get her subjects to open up and reveal their inner issues to her. At that point Jillian talks to them about how to overcome those hurdles and helps them make a plan to overcome them even after they leave the show and part company.

I’m always amazed by the transformations on The Biggest Loser. Contestants lose hundreds of pounds during the few weeks they’re on the show and leave looking and feeling great. There’s no doubt in my mind that the reason this kind of radical transformation is possible is that Jillian and her counterpart, Bob Harper, know how to motivate people to change. Sure, their contestants come to the Biggest Loser Ranch ready to work hard, but all of them have their moments of weakness and think about turning back. It’s Jillian and Bob’s ability to take an interest in them and persuade them to stick it out that gets them to their goals.

So what’s in this for us as presenters? When you get up to speak, think of yourself as a Jillian. You might look great, have everything figured out for yourself, and know your stuff, but you need to be able to persuade and empower others to change. Touch people on a personal level, connect with them, so that when you ask them to do the difficult thing and leave the room a different person with different opinions from when they came in, they’ll be willing to take you up on it.

The only way to accomplish this is to get to know your audience. What mental hurdles do they need to overcome? What kind of resistance will they face? If you can anticipate those hurdles and address them in your speech, your audience will have a much higher chance of getting through those difficulties when they face them.

Lastly, though, give your audience a call to action: a clear vision of what they must do. You need to have the determination and resolve to tell your audience what they need to hear even if it’s not a pleasant message. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t present it tactfully, but don’t hold back from telling them exactly what’s at stake and what actions they’ll need to take to achieve their goals. Remember: your goal is to get them to act. It doesn’t matter how much you tickle their ears and how many nods and excited looks you get. If everyone leaves the presentation and fails to do anything, you’ve still failed.

Learn to tell people what they need to hear in a way that’s non-threatening. Get on their side and help them achieve their goals. It’s the only way for you to achieve yours.

Jillian’s lesson in a (few) word(s): Empower Others.

This week I’m doing a series of posts I’m calling “Build Slides Like…” I’m sharing a new idea about presenting taken from an inspiring creative type (non-presenters) each day. I’ve already covered Duff Goldman, Dave Ramsey, and Mike Holmes. Subscribe to this blog via RSS or email or come back each day to find out who else I’ll be featuring.

[image credit: WomensConference.org]

Mike Holmes knows his stuff.

Mike Holmes makes things right, as I’ve mentioned before. Mike arrives on the scene of a home remodeling or contracting disaster and just fixes things. He’ll occasionally get upset about the previous contractor’s negligence or incompetence, but he very quickly gets past that, tears down the old, and starts over, doing things the way they should have been done in the first place.

Part of what makes Mike so great is his knowledge of building codes and construction techniques. Mike can make it right because Mike knows where to turn for the answers. He reads the instructions. He knows his policies and ordinances. He literally wrote the book on how to do a proper home inspection (in Canada, at least). And when he’s in over his head, he calls in an expert for guidance.

When you go looking for information, it’s crucial to be able to find a reliable source. The internet makes it possible for anyone with fingers and an internet connection to publish anything they want. Boom. Out there for the world to see. Forever. But just being out there doesn’t make it accurate in the slightest.

For example, I spend large amounts of time looking around online for other people who are interested in helping people learn to communicate, and I’m shocked by the quantity of BAD advice out there. Some self-proclaimed experts (with significant amounts of fans/followers) recommend techniques and spout advice that is just plain wrong. My sympathies are with anyone and everyone who listens to them. If you’re reading this, you’re obviously interested in learning to get better at presenting, and for that I’m incredibly excited. I strive to give the best and most accurate information I possibly can here, but if you accept it without question, you deserve what you get whether it’s right or wrong.

My point for presenters in general is this: You need to be authoritative. You must be an expert on your topic. You need the kind of expertise that only comes from study and practice.

You can be a polished orator, an entertaining and engaging storyteller, and a PowerPoint wiz who builds killer slides at will, but if you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re lying to people. You’ve got to know your stuff. You’ve got to be the best at it. And if you’re not the best, you’ve got to read, and practice and learn from whoever is.

Know your stuff. And be confident that you know your stuff by doing your homework.

Mike’s lesson in a word: Authority.

This week I’m doing a series of posts I’m calling “Build Slides Like…” Each day I’m sharing a new idea about presenting taken from an inspiring creative type (non-presenters). Others I’ve shared include Duff Goldman, and Dave Ramsey. Subscribe to this blog via RSS or email or come back each day to find out who else I’ll be featuring.

[image credit: MikeHolmesInspections.com]

When I shipped off to college I was pretty clueless about money. I didn’t know how to make a budget, or even what kind of expenses to plan for, so I pretty much lived paycheck to paycheck, never really saving anything. It was hard for me to conceive of paying for a computer in cash, let alone a car, or fancy vacation, or wedding, or mortgage. As I got nearer and nearer to graduation and the prospect of life in the real world any thoughts about finance filled me with trepidation.

Dave Ramsey

It was during this time that my parents took a class called Financial Peace University taught by a guru named Dave Ramsey. They came away singing its praises and telling me that I HAD to take the class, too. Not long after I found myself in the thirteen week class watching videos of Dave on stage teaching the basics of budgeting, insurance, and investing. I was incredibly thankful for the knowledge that Dave was imparting in each of his lectures, information that seemed quite basic. Always make a budget. Live on less than you make. Have an emergency fund. Really simple in hindsight, but eye-opening to someone who hadn’t heard it before.

One of the things that was most helpful to me was Dave’s “baby steps” to financial peace. An Al-Anon twelve-step-program for the fiscally challenged, the baby steps took the process of getting out of debt, establishing an emergency fund, and beginning to build wealth out of the ether and made it easy to grasp. Made it bite-sized. Now, for the first time, I could see exactly where I was going and what I needed to do to get there.

I wasn’t alone in my financial ignorance as the millions upon millions of other Dave Ramsey disciples attest. But financial gurus had been around forever and the information Dave was presenting wasn’t anything new. So why was Dave so successful selling such ancient information?

The answer is simplicity. Dave’s message alone isn’t what makes him so popular. It’s his presentation of that message.

Before Dave, no one took the time to explain the basics of finance to the layperson. In order to learn the secrets of handling money, you had to find someone who knew the secrets already and convince them to share them with you. But Dave took those precious secrets and distilled them into rules and patterns anyone could follow. He broke his information down into actionable steps. His audiences left the room knowing exactly what they needed to do.

There’s a huge lesson here for ANYONE giving a presentation. It’s important to have good information; rock solid advice or evidence. But if you can’t explain that information in a way that makes it easy for your audience to understand what they need to do with it, you might as well not get up to speak in the first place. Find the essence of your information and then share it with your audience. Don’t hold it back or disguise it by being subtle or cryptic.

It’s not easy to achieve this kind of simplicity. It takes time to get to the root of an idea. That’s why no one did it before Dave. It’s something I’m sure Dave worked and worked to refine over time. But it’s obvious now that that extra effort was well worth it.

In the end, every second you spend making your message clear and actionable is time well spent. And if you choose to skip out on simplification, it can mean the difference between the failure or success of your ideas.

Dave’s lesson in a word: Simplicity.

This week I’m doing a series of posts I’m calling “Build Slides Like…” Each day I’ll share a new idea about presenting taken from an inspiring creative type (non-presenters). Today’s inspiration is (obviously) Dave Ramsey. Yesterday it was Duff Goldman. Subscribe to this blog via RSS or email or come back each day to find out who else I’ll be featuring.

[image credit: DaveRamsey.com]

If you’ve never seen an episode of Ace of Cakes on The Food Network, you’re missing out. Charm City Cakes in Baltimore, Maryland is a cake bakery (cakery?) owned by a Duff Goldman, a man who makes cakes like no one else. It’s not uncommon for Duff’s cakes to feature fireworks, flashing lights, sound effects, moving parts, and many other…unique touches. Ace of Cakes chronicles the day-to-day goings on at Charm City Cakes, where Duff and his staff of very unique individuals cavort and cut-up while producing some of the most amazing sugar-based creations you’ve ever seen.

Duff Goldman

What makes the show so great is, in a word, Duff. Duff’s personality shines through in every aspect of what he does. He’s confident about what he likes and he’s not afraid to be himself, a rare trait on so-called “reality” TV shows. And not only does he let his personality show, but what a personality it is. Close your eyes and imagine a stereotypical pastry school graduate. Now picture the exact opposite. That’s Duff. He’s a snowboarding, bass-playing, hockey-loving, reformed-graffiti-artist-turned-classically-trained-pastry-chef.

The most amazing thing about Duff, though, is his ability to tap into and amplify others’ personalities, as evidenced in his hyper-personalized cakes. Duff and friends have built cakes shaped like all manner of animals, automobiles, aliens, spaceships, musical instruments, fictional characters, and architectural structures (what’s a cupola?). But even beyond their outlandish shapes and sizes, Duff’s cakes include details that make them incredibly personal to the client. He’ll listen closely as they describe their love of sushi, sharks, and badminton and then find ways to work those details into a cake version of Yankee Stadium. His cakes are unique expressions of both Duff’s style and his client’s personal tastes. It’s the cake the client would have made themselves if they could. And therein lies the magic.

There’s a lesson here to keep in mind the next time you’re designing a presentation, and that is to let your personality shine through. You can spend days and weeks reading up on how other people create their slides and looking at examples of their work. But your audience didn’t come to see how well you copy someone else’s style. They came to see you. Make your slides your own. Make your whole presentation style your own. Give a presentation no one else can give. There are lots of presentation “rules” but who says you can’t break a few of them? Be original. Experiment until you find your unique voice, then give every presentation that way. Make it all you. If you need help finding your voice and making it your own, call me.

If you create slides for someone else, you can learn even more from Duff. Don’t just create the slides you think are best. Get to know the client. Take a page out of Duff’s book and make the slides that person would have made if they’d made them. Add touches that are uniquely theirs. There’s no doubt in my mind that if Duff made presentations instead of cakes, that’s how he’d do it.

Duff’s lesson in a word: Personality.

[image credits - Duff at top: foodnetwork.com, Slideshow: charmcitycakes.com]

This week I’m doing a series of posts I’m calling “Build Slides Like…” Each day I’ll share a new idea about presenting taken from an inspiring creative type (non-presenters). Today’s inspiration is (obviously) Duff Goldman. Subscribe via RSS or email or come each day to see who else I’m featuring.