Communicationz

Five tips for teleconference presentations

Imagine this:

It is 10 pm.  You are in your office on your own, making a technical presentation to an internal audience.  This audience is, however, spread around the globe and viewing your complex slides on their PCs.  Every so often a side conversation breaks out in a different office and in a different.

Tough presenting?  Yes and you can expect to do more teleconference presenting, especially in New Zealand and Australia.  The use of this type of presentation is increasing rapidly, because the technology enables huge savings of time and money and helps reduce the carbon emissions involved in air travel.   Unfortunately, the NZ end of such presentations is often scheduled at late evening hours to fit in with northern hemisphere timetables.

So, if there will be far more teleconference presentations, how can we make the best of them?

Get the protocols right:

 Make sure that a facilitator is appointed to manage the whole process.  Get the whole group to agree on the etiquette that will be followed, including aspects such as: no side discussions, speakers always going through the facilitator and always identifying themselves as they start to speak,

Help the audience concentrate:

Take into account that this type of presentation is difficult for the audience's concentration as well as your own. Help them with the listening process as much as you can:

1. Use repetition. 

Plan to include a preview of your presentation early in your presentation, so the audience get a sense of what to expect. Regularly repeat key words and summarise the main points so far. Make a final summary near the end

2. Plan for variety

Structure your presentation so that it has a variety of short segments, with some differences in approach between segments.  Make sure your slides use varied visual effects and take the time to briefly orient the audience to more complex slides. Include some humour in your slides

3. Build a personal connection

Form a mental picture of someone in your audience at their particular location and imagine that you are speaking to them.  Create this impressions by using names of people in your audience. Ask questions that get the audience involved and as you ask them, use someone's name.

Work on getting your personality to come through, so that the audience can get some sense of personal connection. Do this via voice variety, turns of phrase, metaphor and anecdote. • Use people's names to keep them focused on your presentation.

Use plenty of pause. We do this frequently when speaking to a visible audience and you need to replicate this with your invisible audience. 

4. Manage the logistics 

For the audience, provide a PDF of your presentation online, in case the slides don't show on their screens.  Keep  a paper copy of the slides handy in case the slides don't show up on your screen. For a good personal touch, think about emailing a summary of your presentation after you have finished.

These teleconference presentations are here to stay, it is up to presenters to 'get with the programme'.  For some more tips - on the technical side look at: chacocanyon and on the communication side look at:coachboz

Is there a gender difference in social intelligence?

 What do you think?

The answer, in the work context, depends on the particular skill and on whether the leader is highly effective.

Recent research relating to people's behaviour at work, shows that on average, women are better at immediately sensing people's emotions; whereas men tend to have more social confidence.  In the general work population these differences are quite marked, even at executive level.

However when the research focused on just the most successful leaders, these gender differences are almost completely absent.

This research is highlighted in an inset in an interesting article in this month's Harvard Business Review.  In the article, Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis are  writing about Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership. They quote research by Margaret Hopkins, at the University of Toledo. Hopkins' research showed that amongst the most effective leaders, men and women exhibit very similar emotional and social intelligence, as well as similar levels of general competency.

Admittedly this research was at only one financial services company.  There is another reason as well for us women not to get too excited - Hopkins' research also showed that amongst these very effective leaders, the men were assessed as more competent; even when the competency levels of males and females was similar!

KISS and presenting: The working memory is limited

Our son's rehabilitation from a severe brain injury caused me every day to be amazed at the complexity of the human brain. One aspect  of memory that caused him big challenges was the importance of the working memory.  We use this ability to remember the thread of a story, to remember what happened earlier at a meeting and so on.To get a better understanding of the working memory, look at the interesting blog: Lumosity: Reclaim Your Brain 

The working memory has a crucial role in the effectiveness of your presentation.  During your presentation, a person in your audience uses this part of their brain to remember the logical thread of your speech and to examine your ideas in relation to their own experience.

If you want the audience to do something as a result of your brilliance, you need to communicate effectively enough for the working memory.

When you plan and rehearse your presentation, take the limitations of the working memory into account.

1. We can only remember about seven ideas at one sitting, so keep your content simple

2. We can only concentrate for a limited time - typically about 10 minutes. Every ten minutes,you must recapture attention somehow. Keep your presentation short.

     3.  We can't easily do two complex things at once.  If you want the audience to read a slide, don't                speak. If you want to speak, don't change slides.

    4.  Use all the techniques you can to help the working memory write to its hard drive - repetition,           story telling, metaphor and so on. Without them, we will forget.

Even as you read this blog, you are using your working memory. At least here you can look back on an earlier sentence. In a presentation, it just keeps on moving on, so help out the working memory and we will better grasp your message.