Guila Muir

Perfect Presentations: What Not to Wear

Guila — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 21:54:32 +0000

How to dress for credibility, while remaining true to yourself.

What to wear for a perfect presentation? As you design and polish your speech, developing visual aids and handouts, this question may fall into the background until dangerously close to the presentation. Suddenly, you look up: “Yikes! What am I going to wear?”

Your appearance impacts your credibility as a speaker. Don’t leave it to chance, and don’t wait until the last minute to decide what to wear. Just think of preparing your appearance as part of your overall speech preparation. Here are my favorite, possibly competing, guidelines:

Stay authentic.
Dress like your audience– but one step better.

Stay Authentic: Within reason, your attire must express who you are. If you feel like you’re wearing someone else’s costume, your verbal message may not ring true.

Dress Like Your Audience, But One Step Better: Appearing similar to, but slightly more dressed up than your listeners conveys respect both for them and for your subject. It enhances your credibility.

Use these five tips as a guide to dressing for credibility, while remaining true to yourself.

1. Wear well-made and well-maintained clothing.

Granted, no one will be checking your clothing’s seams or labels. But image consultants counsel that your audience can tell if you’re wearing a cheaply made dress or suit. You can probably feel it, too. Whether you choose to look conservative or creative, wear well-made clothing made from high-quality fabric. Avoid linen and other easily-wrinkled material.

2. Pay attention to details.

Even if your audience won’t see your shoes, make sure they are polished and that the heels are secure. Men should have a recent haircut and trimmed facial hair. Search for loose threads or inopportune gaps between buttons.

3. Wear your “Confident Clothes.“

Wear something that makes you feel sprightly and energized. This could mean sticking to the tried-and-true, so long as it’s one step above your audience and expresses your personality. Use a solid color that suits you near your face. (How do you know which colors suit you? Ask one of your color-savvy friends.)

4. Make sure it’s comfortable.

You are NOT allowed to tug at or re-arrange your clothes while presenting. Wear your outfit around the house a few days before your presentation to ensure that you can move comfortably. Then put your outfit aside, including all underwear, jewelry and shoes, and go back to prepping your speech.

5. Dress to look taller.

Consider wearing a solid color for both pieces of your outfit. This will help you appear taller and help you tap into the “Intensified You.”

So—to pull together both my responses to the question “What should I wear?” I leave you with these words: Let your personality shine through even as you “fit in” with each specific audience.

Read more articles about Presentation Skills. Learn about Guila Muir’s Presentation Skills Workshops.

Guila Muir is the premiere trainer of trainers, facilitators, and presenters on the West Coast of the United States. Since 1994, she has helped thousands of professionals improve their training, facilitation, and presentation skills. Find out how she can help transform you from a boring expert to a great presenter: www.guilamuir.com

3 Words to Weaken Your Presentation

Guila — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:09:55 +0000

I’m here with some good news for most presenters—along with some cautions you’ve probably never thought about.

The Good News: “Ums” Won’t Kill You

Speakers, don’t worry so much about using fillers like “um” and “uh. ” These only become problematic when other distracting factors are in play. Your audience will only notice your “ums” if:

You haven’t practiced, so you don’t know where you’re going next.
You don’t enunciate clearly.
You don’t exude enthusiasm about your subject.

To some degree, a speaker’s occasional “um” gives the listeners’ brains an opportunity to catch up—we can speak faster than we can listen. Michael Erard, bestselling author of UM…Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean sums it all up by saying: “Want people not to notice your ‘um’s’? Be interesting.”

The Caution: Three Words to Weaken Your Presentation

Some words we use to strengthen our presentations paradoxically weaken them instead. Which example below sounds more powerful?

I love you.

I actually love you.

I recall watching a woman presenter, extremely confident in most situations, speaking to a hostile and primarily male group. Not only was this group opposed to her message, it had the power to sway mass opinion throughout the organization.

To my surprise, this usually dynamic speaker came off extremely unconfidently. Her voice, dress, and manner were the same as usual, but I noticed that she used the word “actually” in nearly every other sentence. Unconsciously, she was attempting to ingratiate herself to this powerful audience.

Research by Erickson, Eind, Johnson and O’Barrr discovered that a few specific words deprive a speaker of power. Surprisingly, we often use these words to underline or “pump up” the importance of our message. By over-reinforcing our message, we seem to be “protesting too much.” Our credibility takes a hit.

These words are:

Really, (really) As in: “It’s really, really a good cause.”

Truly, As in: “It’s truly the best software.”

And, or course, actually.

Watch your use of these words, particularly when faced with an audience that challenges you. Strip them out, and your speech will be more powerful, direct, and credible.

Read more articles about Presentation Skills. Learn about Guila Muir’s Presentation Skills Workshops.

From Your Head to Theirs: Make It Work!

Guila — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:43:43 +0000

Here’s a simple, often-overlooked tool that hugely impacts your success as a trainer. It’s essential for individual, group, or on-line training.

Learning Objectives Are Not Enough

You know the definition of learning objectives: They are statements of what the learner will be able to do by the end of the training session.

Quality trainers use these statements as guarantees of learning. Towards the beginning of the session, they state aloud: “You WILL be able to do the following things by the end of our session.” After listing the objectives, they deliver a training that enables the participants to do these things.

But there’s an essential tool beyond learning objectives that even seasoned trainers can overlook.

What’s YOUR Job Description?

State your job description for the session BEFORE stating the learning objectives. This could sound something like:

“My purpose today is to enable you to communicate effectively with an irate customer.”
“The purpose of this training is to introduce you to the art of fly fishing.”
“I’m here today to demystify the _______ process and to show you how it will make your job easier.”

Your job description is called the Training Purpose. It plays a huge role in preparing the participants’ brains to focus on your message.

Unlike learning objectives, your Training Purpose doesn’t need to be measurable or quantitative (although it can be evaluated at the end of the session).

How the Training Purpose Helps You Design the Training

It’s essential to design your Training Purpose first—even before developing the learning objectives. Here’s the initial formula you should use:

“The purpose of this training is to (VERB) (WHAT) to (WHOM.)”

When using this formula, your Training Purpose will sound very simple. Note that the “WHAT” and the “WHOM” can be interchanged:

“The purpose of this training is to teach customer service representatives the basic principles of active listening,” OR
“My purpose today is to teach the basic principles of active listening to customer service representatives.”

Often, settling on the right verb is the hardest part of your design process. What IS the realistic purpose of your session, given its length and audience? Is it to introduce, orient, train, enable, teach, ensure, help…?

Once you have solidified your purpose, you will find it much easier to develop your entire training session. Everything you do MUST fall under the umbrella of the Training Purpose.

WWIFT?

If you choose, you can even take your Training Purpose Statement further. When you are satisfied that it describes exactly what you’ll be doing in the session, you can use it to address the question: “What’s In It for THEM (the participants)?” Now, you can drop the formula we discussed above. You can transform the Purpose into a benefit statement. This helps participants see (and feel) the training session’s value:

“The purpose of this training is to help you decrease complaint calls.”
“The purpose of this training is to enable you to design presentations that persuade people to take action.”
“The purpose of this training is to make your job easier by ensuring you have the skills to….”

Your Training Purpose should still be relatively short, concise and non-academic-sounding. If you put it on a PowerPoint slide, it should fit on the slide using a 32 inch font, with plenty of “white space” around it. It should use the word “you.”

Training Purpose: Your Rocket Ship

Those trainers who are clear on the job description for each class they teach, and who have used it to formulate a clear Training Purpose, hold a huge advantage over those who do not. The Training Purpose guides the entire training in a focused, sleek and powerful way. If things get off track, you can use the Training Purpose to guide everything back on course.

Give it a try!

Read more articles about Training Development. Learn about Guila Muir’s Trainer Development Workshops.

Guila Muir is the premiere trainer of trainers, facilitators, and presenters on the West Coast of the United States. Since 1994, she has helped thousands of professionals improve their training, facilitation, and presentation skills. Find out how she can help transform you from a boring expert to a great presenter: www.guilamuir.com

© 2010 Guila Muir. All rights reserved.
You may make copies of this article and distribute in any media so long as you change nothing, credit the author, and include this copyright notice and web address.

Wild Classroom: How to Prevent the Chaos

Guila — Thu, 06 May 2010 21:57:36 +0000

Have you ever worried about your participants going wild, tuning out, or exhibiting other potentially disruptive behaviors? The concept of “classroom management” will help.

Good classroom management is the ability to run your training sessions smoothly. Research shows that good classroom management enables students to learn and retain more.

Surprisingly, research also shows that good classroom management has nothing to do with the trainer’s personality, or even whether participants like the trainer. Rather, it has everything to do with the trainer’s behaviors–how you act in the classroom.

Dominance and Cooperation

Research shows that a trainer keeps control of the classroom by exhibiting appropriate levels of both dominance and cooperation.

Dominance

A trainer’s dominance doesn’t mean forceful command and control. Instead, educational researchers define appropriate dominance as the trainer’s ability to provide clear purpose, strong guidance, and consequences for unacceptable behavior.

Think of the best classroom experiences you have had, either as a trainer or as a participant. Did the trainer set out clear goals for the session? Were expectations about behavior clear? Did the trainer provide clear instructions, both visually and verbally?

It’s important to use assertive body language. Maintain an erect posture. Speak deliberately and clearly, especially in the face of inappropriate behavior. Keep your cool.

Very rarely, a trainer must ask a participant to leave the session because of behavior that is impeding the learning of others. This consequence is at the far end of the continuum of classroom management. In more than twenty years as a professional trainer, I have never had to take this step.

Cooperation

Cooperation is characterized by a concern for the needs and opinions of others. Whereas dominance focuses on the trainer as the driving force in the classroom, cooperation highlights a sense of teamwork between trainer and participants.

Often, a trainer models cooperation by asking what participants want to get out of the session, and then integrating these elements into the lesson plan. Cooperation involves other aspects as well, including:

Taking a personal and authentic interest in participants.
Learning about participants’ interests and passions outside of class.
Talking informally before and after class.
Greeting each participant by name.

You can also demonstrate your interest in non-verbal ways. These include making eye contact with everyone, moving toward the participants, and ensuring the seating arrangement allows clear and easy ways to move around the room.

Good Classroom Management: Just a Set of Behaviors

There have been many quests for the essential traits that make a teacher great, and each quest has come up empty-handed. According to a special report in the New York Times, extensive research shows that neither an extroverted personality, politeness, confidence, warmth, or enthusiasm make a great trainer.

However, the educational researcher Doug Lemov has identified one trait that separates great trainers from the rest: good classroom management. Lemov discovered that what looks like natural-born teaching genius is often deliberate technique in disguise.

It all boils down to two sets of behaviors on your part. By balancing your dominant behaviors with your cooperative behaviors as a trainer, you’ll create an environment that encourages learning and is pleasant for all. Have fun!

Read more articles about Training Development. Learn about Guila Muir’s Trainer Development Workshops.

Guila Muir is the premiere trainer of trainers, facilitators, and presenters on the West Coast of the United States. Since 1994, she has helped thousands of professionals improve their training, facilitation, and presentation skills. Find out how she can help transform you from a boring expert to a great presenter: www.guilamuir.com

How to Keep Meetings Active and Productive

Guila — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:54:31 +0000

As a facilitator, you are responsible for achieving the meeting outcomes, maintaining full participation, and ending on time. How do you maintain meaningful, focused conversation throughout?

These five tips will help.

1. Playback.

Reiterate what a participant has said as closely as you can. Try not to infer meaning.“Greg, I’m hearing you say that you want this to go a little more slowly. Did I get that right?”

2. Consolidate.

Pull together ideas, showing their relationship to each other. “As you can see from Juan’s and Cathy’s comments, there seem to be enough resources and commitment to take this on.”

3. Play Devil’s Advocate.

Disagree gently with a participant’s comments to stimulate further discussion. (Remember, you maintain your neutral role even though you put out the Devil’s Advocate statement.) “Is that always the case?” “This has worked elsewhere. What makes this different?”

4. Relieve Tension.

State what you see calmly and without evaluation. “Bill and Mary are bringing out two different sides of this issue.” “I see many furrowed brows. Let’s take a quick break to reflect on this.”

5. Change the Process.

Alter the method of participation. “Let’s break into small groups to see how many alternate options you can come up with.”

Try implementing these skills in your next meeting. Chances are, it will move along faster and be more productive.

3 Tips to Deal With Audiences From Hell

Guila — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:35:35 +0000

Resistant dynamics can be found in any audience. Here are three essential techniques to stay sane as a presenter.

1. Check Yourself.
Ask yourself: What am I feeling about this audience? Why? What’s the worst that could happen?

Prepare yourself emotionally and physically. Make sure you’ve had enough to eat, and drink plenty of water. If you find yourself going “on stage” expecting the worst, or not being prepared for many questions and challenges, you set yourself up for failure.

2. Don’t Let the Hostile Faces Hook You.
Your goal is to present to the best of your ability, to everyone in the room. Don’t get emotionally connected to the few unhappy audience members.

Acknowledge and respect the dynamics in the room. Detach from them. Most likely, these have nothing to do with you.

3. Present as if Everyone Were Uncommitted.
I borrow from Don Pfarrer’s book, Guerilla Persuasion, for this incredibly helpful final tip. I’ve used it often, to great success.

Assume that every audience is comprised of four different groups. Each group is either friendly to your message, hostile, indifferent, or simply uncommitted.

Here’s the strategy: Focus on the uncommitted. In this way, you will successfully address everyone in the audience. By focusing on the uncommitted, you will construct and present your message more thoroughly and persuasively.

All 4 Audience Segments Benefit When You Focus on the Uncommitted.

Audience Segment	What Do They Want From Listening to You?	Dangers of Focusing Only on This Segment	How This Segment Benefits When You Focus on the Uncommitted
“Friendlies”	Satisfaction, affinity.	Too easy — you may assume too much.	Their knowledge and commitment is deepened.
“Hostiles”	To see you fail.	Increases your own defensiveness. You may come off abrasively and unlikable.	They experience human respect, openness and reason from you (and are likely to mirror the behavior).
“Indifferents”	To be left alone and unchanged.	You may tie yourself up into knots trying get a response.	They may get the message, while not being hammered by you.
“Uncommitteds”	To experience a reasoned, well-thought-out, good-natured exposure to the issues.	NONE!	They get the best of YOU: affinity and reason. You won’t cut corners by assuming support where it might not exist.

The bottom line is: KNOW YOUR STUFF. Be ready for questions and challenges. By checking yourself, not getting “hooked” by hostility, and focusing on the Uncommitted, you take great strides towards more resiliency and professionalism as a presenter.

Read more articles about Presentation Skills. Learn about Guila Muir’s Presentation Skills Workshops.

Avoid Audience Overload: Less Is More

Guila — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:41:00 +0000

Picture it: You’re a student in a classroom. The instructor is throwing out fact after fact. At first, you listen intently, trying to grasp everything that’s going on. After about 15 minutes, your attention drifts. After trying to focus a few more times, you feel so overwhelmed (and possibly irritated and bored) that you just give up.

Hey-how did you like being on the receiving end?

Trainers, have some sympathy. The instructor was just trying to “cover the material.” (How many times have YOU used this line?)

The fact is, more content does not produce more competencies. Information overload can produce confusion, anxiety, and indecision. It does NOT help students transfer learning into the real world.

Training Rule: “Less is More”

Identify the most important pieces of content. Spend training time to ensure that participants can process the information and apply it to real-world situations.

Here is a short list of instructional strategies you can use to bring your lesson’s content alive:

Discussions
Surveys
Contests
Case studies
Drills
Reflective writing
Mind maps
Jigsaws
Brainstorming
Role-plays
Simulations

The moral is: By trying to “cover all the material,” you do just that—cover up what’s really important.

Train! Facilitate! Present! September, 2009

Guila — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:59:59 +0000

What Managers Must Know: the 7 Laws of Training

Make sure your business’s training is superb. Obey the Seven Laws of Training

Tongue-Twister “Hook” Challenge

The “sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick” is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language. Can you use this a the basis for a “Hook” for one of your presentations?

Send me your ideas. I will pick the top three winning Hooks! Remember, the criteria for a great hook are:

relevant to your topic (you make it so!)
involves emotion, even if minor
everyone in your audience must be able to relate in some way

The prize…Training Treasures Issue 12, a glossy, wonderful, 20-page resource full of science tricks, magic metaphors, and tips for training.

Course Design Made Easy

Have you wondered how to design courses cheaper and faster? Our flagship course enables the experts in your organization to develop lively, interactive workshops. Check out our video, too!

What Separates Great Trainers From the Merely “OK?”

Guila — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:25:47 +0000

Many training participants would respond,“Great trainers make the learning easy and fun.” If probed further, they might mention the use of engaging training activities, or the trainer’s personal style.

But most won’t be able to identify an important action that differentiates expert trainers. This action is subtle and powerful. It helps lubricate the session and increases learner retention. Though mostly invisible to the untrained eye, it truly separates the “Greats” from the “OK’s.”

What is this seemingly magic characteristic of great training? It’s the use of transitions.

What are Transitions?

Transitions are verbal checkpoints. They connect disparate pieces of material and move the session forward. In using transitions, the trainer operates much like the pilot of a plane: “We’ve just gotten a good look at the Colorado River. Next, we’ll be flying over Hoover Dam.”

This verbal framing helps the participants’ brains organize all the new content they’re receiving. It also readies them to process new input.

What do Transitions Look Like?

Transitions typically have two parts, the summary and the transition statement.

Summaries reiterate, check for, or test key points.
Transitions move the training from one stage to the next.

Here are three examples of effective transitions.

A. “We’ve just introduced (reviewed, talked about, etc.) ___________.

“Now, let’s move on to_____________.”

B. “We’ve just reviewed ___________. What are the _______, ___________, _____________?”

“Next, we’ll take a look at ____________.”

C. “Each of you has demonstrated that you can _____________. Now, you will have the opportunity to ________________.”

By building in transitions like these, the trainer makes the whole session flow better. There is a built-in silkiness, fluidity, and logic between chunks of content. And best of all, the trainer has the opportunity to test for participants’ understanding before moving to the next issue.

Try using a few well-thought-out transitions between modules in your next training session. You’ll be amazed at how much more smoothly the class goes, and how much more the participants retain.

Can You Hear Me Now? Three Tips to Rise Above the Crowd

Guila — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:58:46 +0000

WOW, the pressure on public speakers is great. Speakers and audiences realize that PowerPoint won’t save anyone anymore. The focus now shines on YOU more than ever before. How can you be heard above the crowd?

1. Do your homework.

What are your audience’s needs, wants, anxieties, biases, “personality?” What history do people bring into the room? What do you need to know to ensure that your message fits this audience?

Presenters who don’t ask these questions are like basketball players trying to dunk in the dark. All they can do is hope for the best.

2. Raise your fitness level.

Quality presentations demand energy. You owe it to your audience to exude vitality. To increase your energy and vitality, you must build your physical endurance outside of speaking situations.

It really doesn’t matter how what size you are. It does matter that you increase cardiovascular fitness in your everyday life. Do whatever turns you on, from walking the dog faster to taking up some scary and exciting new sport.

3. Start with the end in mind.

Always ask yourself: “What do I want to this presentation to achieve?” Don’t move ahead to organize your presentation until the answer satisfies you.

Yes, audiences expect more from speakers these days. But you can rise to the challenge–and rise above the crowd–simply by integrating these tips into your life as a speaker.

Read more articles about Presentation Skills. Learn about Guila Muir’s Presentation Skills Workshops.

Guila Muir is the premiere trainer of trainers, facilitators, and presenters on the West Coast of the United States. Since 1994, she has helped thousands of professionals improve their training, facilitation, and presentation skills. Find out how she can help transform you from a boring expert to a great presenter: www.guilamuir.com

© 2009 Guila Muir. All rights reserved.
You may make copies of this article and distribute in any media so long as you change nothing, credit the author, and include this copyright notice and web address.