Speaking about Presenting

What you need to know before your first presentation

Olivia Mitchell — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:59:02 +0000

Giving your first presentation or speech is daunting. I’ve worked with many new presenters and here’s the advice that has made the most difference to them.

1. Content is king

Your audience is there for what you are going to say. Not how you say it.

This is good news for you as a new speaker. That’s because though you may not be comfortable in front of an audience, you can prepare good content.

Preparing good content requires time and effort - but there’s no mystery or magic to it. You can do it - even if you’ve never presented before. For a simple planning process check out my Presentation Planning Guide.

2. Good content leads to better delivery

Here’s a benefit for you of spending time preparing good content for your presentation. If you’re happy with your content you will deliver better.

Its an awful feeling to be standing in front of an audience with a little voice in your head going “I’m waffling. I don’t know how to express this.” That little voice will influence the way you come across - you may become quieter, more tentative and um and ah more.

If you feel good about the content of your presentation, you will feel less nervous than if you feel bad about it. And therefore you will come across better.

3. Expect and accept that you will be nervous

Preparing good content won’t get rid of your nerves entirely. It’s normal to feel nervous about presenting (see this post Why do you have a fear of public speaking). Rather than panic about your nerves - which will make them worse - simply tell yourself “I’m nervous, that’s normal and I can handle it.”

For more on reducing your fear of public speaking see the Nervousness category of this blog.

4. Your nervousness doesn’t show as much as you feel it

I know this is difficult to believe. You’re so aware of your nerves, it’s difficult to comprehend that others won’t notice.

But here’s the distinction to get. Your perception of your nerves comes from feeling them. Your audience’s perception of your nerves comes from seeing them. You can feel your heart beating like its going to explode out of your chest - your audience can’t see it. You can feel the sweat trickling down your sides - your audience can’t see it.

Yes, there are some symptoms of nerves that you audience may be able to see or hear - but they will not be as obvious to the audience as they are to you.

5. An audience will forgive most things

An audience is not a monster. An audience is composed of individual human beings. And most of those human beings won’t mind you being nervous, they’re not expecting dynamic delivery (they’d be disappointed most of the time) and they’ll forgive the odd um and ah.

There’s one thing though that most people are slower to forgive - and that’s a lack of preparation leading to disorganized and rambling content. They’ve given up their time to listen to you - respect that by putting time into your preparation. For more on this see 4 reasons to spend time planning your presentation.

6. Rehearsal makes you better

Rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal. You may not enjoy rehearsing because it will bring up feelings of nervousness about the real presentation. But with each rehearsal you will incrementally improve. On our courses, our participants report that each rehearsal improves the content of their presentation and the way that they come across.

For more on rehearsal see How to go from good presenter to great presenter.

7. Talk to one person at a time

This is the one delivery tip I’m going to give you. There’s only so much you can focus on in your first presentation and this tip will make the most difference to the way you come across.

Before you start speaking, find one person to speak to. Talk to that person for a few seconds (this could be a phrase or short sentence) and look for their reaction to what you’re saying. Then find someone else to talk to, talk to them for a few seconds, look for their reaction - and repeat.

You already know how to do this. You do it in the everyday conversations you have with people. All you’re doing is transferring a skill you already have to a slightly different context. I call it Conversational presenting.

Go well with your first presentation - and let me know what you find most useful in this list.

Or, if you’re a more experienced presenter, what have you found to be the most useful piece of advice for new presenters?

How to tweet during a presentation

Olivia Mitchell — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:14:58 +0000

The latest academic research on Twitter and conferences addresses the issue of “snarky tweets” during presentations. What should be the guidelines of what is acceptable and what is not? My own experience of tweeting during presentations at Presentation Camp LA highlighted for me the new challenges we face around Twitter etiquette at conferences.

The research

Tony McNeil reports on a survey of 103 people from a conference on learning technology in April 2009: More than just passing notes in class? Reflections on the twitter backchannel.

More than a quarter of the conference twitterers said that they had sent dismissive or dissenting tweets during presentations. These usually related to disagreements around the content of a presentation. One tweeter admitted to tweeting that a presentation was boring and a waste of time.

Some of these respondents claimed that their critical tweets were no different than what they would have been prepared to say face to face.

Are snarky tweets a problem?

However, it does seem that negative tweets can be a problem:

Marieke Guy says:

I’ve watched Twitter back channels at events for some time now and have on occasions felt quite uncomfortable reading some of the personal comments made. It’s almost as if people think that because it’s being said using a social networking tool (rather than in the ear of the person next to them) it’s OK. Quite the opposite. I’m sure there is many a presenter who has put themselves through hell reading the unkind comments written about them.

Peter Bromberg had this to say after a conference:

Twittering snide, insulting remarks about your fellow committee members while they speak and marking it with #ala09 hash tag to ensure that the widest possible audience sees your comment: REALLY VERY NOT GOOD

Are guidelines needed to minimize negative tweets?

McNeil asked his respondents whether they thought guidelines were necessary. Forty-nine people were against having guidelines, and 40 were for.

Some of those against guidelines said they trusted their fellow twitterers to use the backchannel responsibly. But there were others who were adamant that having guidelines was against the spirit of Twitter:

“If you constrain me, I will buck the system just because!”

“I would resent greatly an imposed set of best practices for this tool.”

However, 40 people did agree with having guidelines. Most of these were more concerned with practical than moral issues eg: consistent use of hashtags. However, a number suggested guidelines to minimize “snarky” tweets. For example:

“Do no harm ie: conduct the conversations with the same level of courtesy and respect that one would expect of any professional interchange. No publicly flaming speakers.”

“Only tweet what you would stand up and say publicly.”

What should be the guideline?

I think it would be useful to develop a shared etiquette around tweeting during presentations. I think conference organizers could include such a guideline in the conference programme (personally I don’t think much of the maturity of a person who will rebel against a guideline just because).

I like the idea of the principle that you should only tweet what you would be prepared to say face to face.

But in practice, it’s quite challenging. At Presentation Camp LA I tweeted this:

Being stimulated by Jeanne’s acting workshop. But not convinced that bringing acting techniques into presenting is useful. #pcampLA

Now, I think it’s a perfectly polite tweet and I could have said this out loud during the presentation. But I didn’t. Partly because it didn’t fit with the flow of the workshop and partly because I didn’t want to.

So was it wrong for me to tweet this? Not necessarily.

A professor using twitter in classes (I don’t have the link at the moment - will add it when I’ve found it) found that some students who had never contributed before, started contributing through Twitter, and some started contributing out loud as a result.

Many of us are frightened of challenging people out loud, and I think holding people to the standard of only tweeting what you would be prepared to say face-to-face would stifle valuable debate. Instead, how about seeing twitter as a channel for encouraging dissent and challenge which has previously remained hidden out of fear or politeness.

And possibly this will then grow people’s confidence so that the debate does take place out loud - which I agree is the ideal.

So my suggestion is that the guideline should be that you should only tweet what would be considered acceptable to say face to face. What do you think?

Powerpoint custom animation experiment - check out the animation for yourself

Olivia Mitchell — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:27:33 +0000

Yesterday, I reported on the results of an experiment into the impact of Powerpoint custom animation on learning. I’ve now been given permission by the authors (Dr Stephen Mahar and colleagues) to publish samples of the screencasts used in the research.

Summary of the experiment

The purpose of the experiment was to test the hypothesis that:

incrementally introducing information on PowerPoint slides via custom animation decreases student learning over having all information shown on the slide at the same time.

Two screencasts were prepared - one animated and one non-animated. The screencasts are designed to teach basic technical information about internet security.

93 students were split into two groups. One group saw the animated version and one group saw the non-animated version. The students were tested on their knowledge before seeing the slides (five weeks beforehand) and just after seeing the slides. The test was composed of multichoice questions.

The samples published below are just under 3 minutes long whereas the originals were 17 minutes 30 seconds.

Non-animated version

Animated version

The results

Jan Schultink asked in the comments of yesterday’s post how the researchers calculated how much more the students had learnt. Here’s more detail on that:

Cognitive load

As I said in yesterday’s post, I think that the animation in this slideshow is generally simple. I don’t think the results of this research can be dismissed on the basis that the animation was flashy and distracting (with the exception of the zooming Dialog box).

However, I think the researchers didn’t adequately take into account the cognitive load (load on working memory) imposed by other features of the screencasts. Specifically:

Having to read bullet-points at the same time as listening to a narration
The lack of silence during the animations.

Guidelines for use of custom animation

I’m not ready to throw out custom animation on the basis of this research. But I think that animation has to be used carefully. In the next few weeks, I’ll review other relevant research and write a post with suggested guidelines on custom animation.

New research questions the benefits of custom animation in PowerPoint

Olivia Mitchell — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:43:16 +0000

I thought that simple, non-distracting animations that brought in slide elements one at a time as I verbally introduced them was helpful. I thought that it helped members of my audience focus on the slide element that I was talking about.

Seems I might be wrong.

Research carried out by Stephen Mahar, Ulku Yaylacicegi and Thomas Janicki found that students who were shown an animated PowerPoint slideshow learnt less than those that saw a non-animated slideshow.

When I first read of the research on Science Daily Could PowerPoint presentations be stifling learning? I thought the researchers might have indulged in unnecessary and distracting animation. The rather dramatic introduction to the Science Daily article did little to disabuse me of my assumption:

Bold and brassy titles slide into view, tasty slices of pie chart fill the screen one by one, and a hail of arrows spikes the points the lecturer hopes to highlight.

The PowerPoint custom animation they used

I asked Dr Stephen Mahar, one of the authors of the paper, to send me the PowerPoint files he used. He generously sent me samples of the Camtasia files (Camtasia is screencasting software that lets you record narration as you click through PowerPoint slides). I don’t yet have his permission to post them on the blog (I’ll put them up if I do get permission) but meanwhile here is my description of the Camtasia files. Update: I’ve been given permission to publish the screencasts. They’re here: Custom animation screencasts.

Note: If you’re not interested in the details, skip this bit. But if you’re like I was and want to dismiss the results of the research because you think it was “bad” animation you need to read this.

The slideshows were designed to teach internet security principles. The samples Dr Mahar sent me were three minutes long and were composed of three slides:

One screenshot of a webpage
One bullet-point slide with four bullets
One bullet-point slide with five bullets - three with small images.

The slides and the narration of the animated version and the non-animated version were identical. The only difference was the animation. The screenshot slide had four animations:

A simple entry of a labelled arrow to the “https” in the address bar
A simple entry of a labelled arrow to the padlock in the address bar
A simple entry of a circle around the words “view certificate”
A zoom entry of the Certificate dialog box.

The zoom entry of the dialog box was a bit over the top, but all the other animations were pretty much what I would do, if I were having to present that information.

In the case of the bullet-point slides, each bullet-point was animated with a simple entry. I wouldn’t use bullet-points, but if I were forced to use bullet-points - this is how I would animate them.

The results

Ninety-three students were divided into two groups. They were demographically similar and got similar results on a test prior to the experiment. One group saw the animated version and the other saw the non-animated version.

Why would this be?

The authors give two reasons why animated slides may not help learning:

Animation increases the load on working memory (this is called cognitive load)
Animation decreases the time that students are exposed to the information.

Two limitations discussed by the authors

1. There was one question where students who saw the animated version got slightly more correct answers (58.93% to 56.76% for the non-animated version). The researchers speculate that this could be because the students were familiar with the concept tested by this question. Previous research has shown that where custom animation is used to deliver a familiar topic, the animation has a positive impact on student learning.

2. The authors also draw a distinction between teaching a conceptual topic (they classify internet security as a conceptual topic) and a problem-solving technique. As teaching a technique involves teaching one step at a time, with the steps building on each other, they speculate that in this situation the benefits of animation could outweigh the drawbacks.

My thoughts - the importance of cognitive load

1. Out of the sample that I was sent, two out of the three minutes of the screencast were based on bullet-point slides. If the proportion of bullet-point slides is similar in the full-length screencast (the length of the full screencast was 17: 30 minutes), the results may point to a problem with animating bullet-point slides. Trying to read bullet-point slides while the presenter talks increases cognitive load. Had the slides been more visual, the results might have been different.

2. The narration in the screencast was continuous. Students had to pay attention to an animation and the narration at the same time. This would definitely increase cognitive load. If the narrator had stayed silent during the animation, it would have reduced cognitive load and might have lead to different results.

This research has caused me to rethink my assumptions about simple animation. I’ll pay more attention to the amount of time my audience is exposed to different slide elements and ensure I stay silent as I introduce each animation. But I’m not yet convinced that all animation is bad. What are your thoughts?

How to create a “new” presentation from pre-existing slides

Olivia Mitchell — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 02:48:50 +0000

In a perfect world, every new presentation would be prepared from scratch, tailored exactly to the specific audience. But in reality, you sometimes have to cobble together a “new presentation” from pre-existing material.

How can you create an effective presentation in the shortest possible time using pre-existing slides from different sources?

There are two phases to this. First, organizing the content of the presentation and second, creating slides to go with it.

Organize the content

1. Gather all your pre-existing slides

First gather all the pre-existing slides you may want to use into one file. I suggest that you either print out the slides, two to a page and cut them out, or work in SlideSorter view. What you want to be able to do is see all of your material at a glance and be able to rearrange and discard slides.

Sort your slides into two groups:

Slides containing mainly text.
Slides with a visual element that you may want to reuse.

Set aside the visual slides for the moment.

2. Find a unifying theme

This is the essential first step to tying your disparate text slides together. What unites them? What’s the common idea or concept that most of them point towards. Identify this and then express it in one short sentence. I call this the key message of your presentation (also called the core message, or the big idea).

Now check: is this the right message for the audience you’re presenting to? This is critical. Many recycled presentations fail because they’ve been designed for a different audience. You may realize that these slides don’t fit for the audience you’re presenting to. If that’s the case, it’s better to find out now, than when you’re sinking in front of the audience.

3. Cut material that doesn’t support the key message

Be ruthless. Everything in your presentation should support and tie into the key message. If it doesn’t, out it goes.

See my post 9 ways to edit your presentation for more ideas on this.

You might have a worry at this point that you won’t be left with enough material for your presentation. This is a common pre-presentation concern which is hardly ever borne out in reality. It’s probably the main reason most presentations go on too long. So be brave - cut!

4. Isolate the most important points

Now out of the material that you have left, identify the main points that support the key message. I suggest three to seven points. If you have more than three points, chunk them into three groups. This is because presentations work best when structured in three parts. Andrew Dlugan has a great post on why this works so well Why successful speech outlines follow the Rule of Three.

5. Put them into a logical order

The order of your points must make sense, both to you and to your audience. There should be a flow from one point to the next. You might think of this in terms of what will the audience want or need to know first. Once they know that - what will they need to know next… and so on.

6. Support each point with evidence

Each point needs back-up. If you have just a list of points, your presentation may be as boring as a shopping list. It’s the evidence which makes a presentation really engaging. There are four main types of evidence:

Stories, case studies, examples, anecdotes
Statistics and numbers
Endorsements from other credible experts
Metaphors and analogies (OK these aren’t strictly evidence, but they’re great for explaining complex concepts).

If you can’t find evidence to support one of your points, ask yourself whether that point really is an essential part of the presentation.

Create slides

There are many different styles for designing PowerPoint slides. I’m going to show you a method to use when time is at a premium. You’ll have two types of slides: text slides and visual slides

1. Create a slide for your key message and each main point

Express your key message and each main point as a succinct but meaningful sentence. Create a new slide for each sentence. These sentence slides will act as anchors for your audience, emphasizing and reinforcing your main points.

If you have time, find a relevant visual image to add to these slides. But beware. Visuals added just for the sake of adding a visual are baaad. I would prefer no image rather than an irrelevant or far-fetched visual metaphor.

2. Select which of your pre-existing visual slides to reuse

Now go back to the visual slides that you set aside at the start. Select the ones which will enhance the content of your presentation.

Resist the temptation to add a visual slide that you already have just because it’s pretty or impressive. It must fit with the content of the presentation.

3. Make the design of your slides consistent

If your visual slides come from different presentations, you may find that they are using varying backgrounds, fonts, image styles. You also want your sentence slides to fit with the visual slides you’re re-using. Use one style and then convert all the slides to that style. For basic design principles see PowerPoint slide design - the basics and PowerPoint slide design - adding elegance.

Done. Present.

The secondary misinterpretation of Mehrabian’s research

Olivia Mitchell — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 08:19:07 +0000

Bert Decker has written a comprehensive reply on his blog to my first post on the Mehrabian myth. However, I disagree with his interpretation of Mehrabian’s research and in a moment I’ll show you why.

But before I do, I want to say that I greatly appreciate Bert and his contribution to the presentation and public speaking blogosphere. He is a great friend and mentor to me. He has encouraged me in my blogging and helped me to take my first steps on Twitter. Regarding this issue, we’ve had e-mail correspondence behind the scenes and I think we’re both quite comfortable about having an intellectual disagreement about the issues.

Bert is not the only blogger to make what I see as a misinterpretation. Since writing my first post, I’ve found that it’s a common secondary misinterpretation made by people who know you can’t apply Mehrabian’s formula to all communications.

The misinterpretation

Bert agrees that the application of the 7-38-55% formula to all communications is not warranted. However, he says that how a listener feels about a speaker depends 7% on words, 38% on vocals and 55% on the visual:

The most important takeaway is that when there is an inconsistent message, the listener will overwhelmingly judge the visual cues more as to whether they like (trust and believe) the speaker. [emphasis added]

In other words, Bert is saying that Mehrabian measured whether the listener liked or disliked the speaker. So Bert has interpreted the question being considered as “Does the listener like the speaker?” :

What was Mehrabian measuring?

Here were the instructions to the observers in Mehrabian’s 1967 experiments:

Each time you hear the speaker say a word, we would like you to judge the degree of the speaker’s positive versus negative attitude towards the addressee. “Positive” refers to liking, … and “negative” refers to disliking, … of the addressee. [emphasis added].

So the question being considered was “Does the speaker like the listener?”

Mehrabian was measuring how other people could tell whether the speaker liked the listener. The research measured the observers’ judgement of the speaker’s feelings about the listener- not the listener’s feelings about the speaker.

Therefore I believe that the interpretation that how a listener feels about a speaker depends 7% on words, 38% on vocals and 55% on the visual - is also wrong.

Note: For more information on Mehrabian’s 1967 research see Mehrabian’s studies in nonverbal communication.

Source of the confusion

This is an easy misinterpretation to make if you rely on Mehrabian’s web page about his book “Silent Messages”. Mehrabian shows this equation:

Total Liking = 7% Verbal Liking + 38% Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking

If you don’t know the context, it would be easy to assume that this equation is equivalent to saying “Your liking of someone depends 7% on their words (verbal), 38% on their tone of voice (vocal) and 55% on their facial expression”.

Going back to the original research, however, makes it clear that this equation means “When an observer is judging whether the speaker likes the listener the observer relies 7% on the verbal, 38% on the vocal and 55% on the facial”.

Does liking equate to trust and believability?

Bert has extrapolated “liking” to include “trust and believability”. If you accept that Mehrabian’s research was about the speaker’s feelings towards the listener, then whether liking includes trust and believability is no longer relevant.

But let’s say I was wrong on that, I would have an issue with this extrapolation. Liking someone does not necessarily mean that you trust and believe them. Nor does dislike automatically lead to distrust. For example, I might dislike a person but still trust that they’ll do what they say. The words “trust” and “believable” are found nowhere in the original research. If a psychologist were doing an experiment on liking and trust, I’m confident they would measure them separately. It’s possible that liking might correlate with trust and believability in some circumstances, but I would want to see research on this before saying they were equivalent.

Recap

My aim in this series of posts is to remove the confusion surrounding Mehrabian’s research. I think it’s important not to stretch research findings further than is warranted.

I agree with Bert that emotional impact is important and that the way a speaker comes across can increase or reduce that emotional impact. But I don’t think the emotional impact can be reduced to a formula, and I’m not convinced that the nonverbal cues are more important than the content of the message.

In my next post, I’ll be looking at research on nonverbal communication which has been carried out more recently and what that research tells us about the importance of nonverbal communication.

Why the stickiest idea in presenting is just plain wrong

Olivia Mitchell — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:25:58 +0000

Albert Mehrabian

The stickiest idea in presenting and public speaking is that the meaning of your message is communicated by:

Your words 7%
Your tone of voice 38%
Your body language 55%.

These figures are based on a formula first proposed by Albert Mehrabian in 1967. Despite being wrong, this idea is still being propagated 42 years later. And it’s being propagated by some well-respected experts in the presentation training industry. In a recent article, Carmine Gallo is quoted as saying:

“We know through research that 93 percent of the impression you leave on somebody has little to do with content and everything to do with body language and verbal ability-how you talk, sound, look and what you’re wearing,” Gallo says. “Only about 7 percent of the actual words or content is important.”

The first chapter of Jerry Weissman’s book The PowerPresenter is called “Your actions speak louder than your words”, and is dedicated to the idea behind Mehrabian’s formula:

At the Moment of Truth, the story takes third place behind the body language and voice.

The Mehrabian myth has been comprehensively debunked many times (just type the words “Mehrabian myth” into Google) , but still the myth persists. In this post, I’m going to:

Describe the experiments the Mehrabian formula is based on
Identify the limitations of that research
Launch a campaign to “Stop the Mehrabian Myth”.

This post is the lite version of my demolition of the Mehrabian myth. For the heavy artillery click through to here: Mehrabian’s studies in nonverbal communication. I describe the experiments in detail and quote from post-Mehrabian research (warning: academic references).

Mehrabian’s experiments

The Mehrabian formula comes from two studies in nonverbal communication carried out by Albert Mehrabian and two colleagues in 1967.

To summarize, Mehrabian’s studies asked participants to judge the feelings of a speaker by listening to a recording of a single word spoken in different tones of voice.

Yes, one single word.

In the first study, the participants had to rate the feelings of the speaker after listening to each of nine different words. The words spoken were often inconsistent with the tone of voice used. For example, the word “brute” spoken in a positive tone. Each time they had to make a rating just on the single word they had listened to.

In the second study, only one word was used. It was chosen to be as neutral as possible: the word was “maybe”. They listened to a recording of the word “maybe” said in different tones and at the same time were shown photos of different facial expressions.

It’s from these experiments that Mehrabian suggested - but did not prove - the formula. If you’d like more detail, I’ve described the experiments in more depth on this page: Mehrabian’s studies in nonverbal communication.

The limitations of Mehrabian’s formula

Mehrabian has himself attempted to limit the application of this formula:

Please note that this and other equations regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable.

In a personal email to Max Atkinson, reproduced in Max’s book “Lend me your Ears” Albert Mehrabian said:

I am obviously uncomfortable about misquotes of my work. From the very beginning I have tried to give people the correct limitations of my findings. Unfortunately the field of self-styled ‘corporate image consultants’ or ‘leadership consultants’ has numerous practitioners with very little psychological expertise. (31 October 2002)

So if we limit the formula to the specific conditions of the experiments, it is only applicable if:

a speaker is using only one word,
their tone of voice is inconsistent with the meaning of the word, and
the judgement being made is about the feelings of the speaker.

In other words, in the real world, Mehrabian’s formula is almost never applicable.

What do other researchers say

Mehrabian’s findings were frequently discussed in the psychological literature on nonverbal communication through the 1970s and 1980s. Researchers have made the following critiques of the methodology of his studies:

They only used two or three people to do the speaking for the experiments.
They take no account of the extent to which the speakers could produce the required tone of voice.
They were artificial situations with no context.
The communication model on which they were based, has now been shown to be too simple.
They take no account of the characteristics of the observers making the judgements.
The purpose of the experiments was not hidden from the participants.

For more detail on these critiques go to Mehrabian’s studies in nonverbal communication and scroll down.

The importance of delivery

I’m not saying that speech delivery is unimportant - it is. I think it can have a large impact on the credibility and persuasiveness of a speaker. I also consider content to be critical to credibility and persuasiveness. But I don’t think that their respective influences can be reduced to a formula.

Campaign to “Stop the Mehrabian Myth”

The main group of people who have propagated the Mehrabian myth are presentation trainers, public speaking coaches and other communications consultants. As a presentation trainer, I’m embarrassed that these figures are still being trotted out on a regular basis, when there is no substance to their real-world application. It’s damaging to the credibility of the training industry.

I’m also concerned about the persistence of the Myth because of the impact on presenters:

The Mehrabian Myth puts unwarranted pressure on people who are nervous about speaking. They’ve been led to believe that their delivery can make or break their presentation. This is just not true. If they prepare well-organized valuable content and deliver it at least adequately they are likely to get their message across.
The Mehrabian Myth leads some “wing-it” presenters to under-prepare their content under the misapprehension that so long as they can deliver with energy and dynamism they’ll get their message across. Again, not so.

That’s why I’m starting the “Stop the Mehrabian Myth” campaign.

Stop the spread of the myth

Many presentation trainers and public speaking coaches are doing their bit to stop the spread of the myth. These are the ones I’m aware of who have posts about it:

Lisa Braithwaite - The Truth about 7%-38%-55%

Andrew Abela - 93% of communication comes from non-verbal signs… or does it?

Joey Asher - Does what you actually say matter as much as how you look

Susan Trivers - Public speaking mistakes

John Windsor - Sacred cow tipping

Steve Denning - Dr Condoleeza Rice tells her story - form vs content

Alan Stevens -The 7% myth

Laura Fitton - The 3Vs disease

Jeff Bailey - Everything that you know about Mehrabian’s Rule may be wrong

Max Atkinson - Body language and nonverbal communication (Max has a brilliant cartoon demonstrating the absurdity of the myth)

Jon Thomas - Mehrabian’s rule and the puzzle that is presenting (I like this way of putting it “In whatever bubble that experiment took place in, I’m sure his findings were appropriate. We don’t live in that bubble though, at least not in respect to presentations. “)

Martin Shovel - Mehrabian Nights - a tall tale about communication, in which common-sense is stretched almost to breaking point

Phil Jones - Mis-use of Mehrabian statistics

Simon Raybould - My 7% rant! (But 93% of it won’t work……apparently)

Andy Smith - 7%38%55% - The facts

MJ Plebon - It is all about the story

Chris Witt - Words, tone of voice and body language reconsidered

Justin O’Brien - Mehrabian

Bob Mathers - Mehrabian’s Myth - does bullshit kill or just discredit

Presentation experts against the myth (without a current blog post):

What can you do

If you come across a blog post or article on the internet which quotes Mehrabian’s formula as if it were true, comment on the post or write an email to the author. If you don’t have time to go into detail, just refer them to this post.

When you’re speaking with colleagues, should the myth ever be quoted, speak up and let people know the Mehrabian myth is false.

Bloggers

If you’d like to be added to the list above, let me know (write a comment below, e-mail me or tweet me). If you’ve got a post I can link to, do include that.

Write a post with your views on the Mehrabian myth, and let me know so that I can link to it.

Toastmasters

Deliver a speech on the Mehrabian myth to your club.

Update: I’ve written an extra post to respond to a secondary misinterpretation of Mehrabian that has come through in the comments: The secondary misinterpretation of Mehrabian’s research

New survey: How people are using Twitter at conferences

Olivia Mitchell — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:27:57 +0000

Wow. Some academics have written a paper about tweeting at conferences (thank you @tonyramos for tweeting about it).

I’m more impressed that somebody would write such a paper, than by the paper itself.

The paper reports on a survey of tweeters at five different conferences.

The methodology of the survey seems a little light. Only 41 people responded to the survey (the url for the survey was circulated using twitter and the conference hashtag). The paper doesn’t mention how many people in total were at these five conferences and how many of those were tweeting. But, 41 seems a pretty low number. There’s no discussion of sample size or statistical significance.

The authors of the paper (Wolfgang Reinhardt, Martin Ebner, Gunter Beham and Cristina Corta) do not appear to be native English speakers. I totally admire anyone who can write an academic paper outside of their mother tongue, but it does lead to awkward phrases at times.

Still, I’m not aware of anyone else having done a survey like this, so it’s interesting to see what results they got.

The purpose of the survey was to “understand the motivational aspects of the use of Twitter during conferences.” The researchers asked about the purpose of tweeting. I’ve reproduced below the actual chart of the results as it appears in the paper:

I assume the vertical axis is the percentage of respondents who ticked a specific purpose, and I assume they could tick more than one (this is not clear from the paper).

In summary, ‘ sharing resources’ and ‘communicating with others’ were the most important uses of twitter for these respondents.

The researchers also asked open-ended questions which resulted in comments very similar to the stream of comments you find on conference blogs about the use of twitter. The most interesting question asked the respondents’ opinions on the value of tweeting in conferences:

Twitter helps you reach out to others with similar interests, provides networking potential, and allows people who could not attend to gain some value from your experience.

You get to know unexpected but interesting topics and persons. This emerges networking and knowledge building [sic].

…alerted delegates to the emerging issues and discussion they might otherwise have missed.

Twitter can be distracting. For people actually there, they maybe spend more time with their computer or phone than talking to people.

So that’s it, the first academic paper (that I know of) on Twitter and conferences.

How Obama could eliminate his ums (and so could you)

Olivia Mitchell — Mon, 25 May 2009 21:06:48 +0000

A number of high-profile presentation bloggers and authors have commented recently on Barack Obama’s speaking style - when he doesn’t have his teleprompter in front of him.

Bert Decker

In interview settings particularly, and other informal communication situations he has a lot of non-words (ums and ahs) and his eyes cast down more often than not. These are not the hallmark behaviors of a leader. Pausing and looking directly, always, will correct these confidence leaking distractions.

Jerry Weissman

Barack Obama, whose superior speaking skills undoubtedly contributed to his ascent to the presidency, is known to lapse into unwords whenever he departs from his trusty teleprompter and speaks extemporaneously.

Here’s an example of when Obama’s um’s and er’s got the better of him:

I agree that Obama’s speaking style in this segment lowered his credibility. But before I suggest how Obama could eliminate his um’s, here’s an important point:

Saying um and ah occasionally is OK

Yes, really. There are a few hyper-sensitive people (usually Toastmasters or public speaking coaches :-)) who notice and cringe, but most normal people don’t notice. Or if they do notice, they don’t cringe. Just about everyone does um and ah occasionally. Mike Erard, who wrote a book called Um: Verbal blunders and what they mean reports that one out of 10 or 15 words that people utter is an um or other filler word. I love what Steve Arrowood has to say about it:

Unless you are one of the masterful top 1% of verbally talented and trained public speakers, do not fret about fillers. Fillers are what bean counter minds like to tally mark about another speaker at a Toastmasters event. Ever heard of majoring in the minor? If you hone [sic] in on fillers as your main coaching point, you have no idea what you are doing. Stop It.

The rest of his post on this the topic of fillers is excellent reading - so do click through and read it (once you’ve finished reading this one!)

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach to senior executives. Here’s his view on “disfluencies“:

I hate speech coaches who don’t let you say “Um!” I listen to a lot of speakers, and a few “Uhms” don’t bother me. They make the speaker seem normal and conversational.

Research has even shown that an occasional um can increase the audience’s memory for the word that comes after the um.

However, I do agree that too many um’s and ah’s do reduce the credibility of the speaker - as in the segment of Obama above.

How to eliminate ums and ahs

So, if you do really have a bad case of um’ing and ah’ing what should you do?

Conventional advice is ineffective

Conventional advice is to first become aware of your fillers:

Some experts like to suggest you put tiny “um” and “ah” stickers on your computer or cell phone to remind you to be listening.

I disagree. This will only make you cringe every time you um.

The second piece of conventional advice is to insert a pause and learn to enjoy the power of silence.

Good speakers enjoy their silence. They take patience between points to let them sit. And when lost allow themselves a few moments of silence to sort things out in their own mind. If you notice when a speaker is silent they draw in more power from the room, like a wave going out before it comes back in.

I agree that pausing and silence are immensely powerful. But silence is a vacuum. And by the time you think to yourself I must pause and be silent, you will have um’ed. Trying to insert a pause is not substantially different from trying to stop saying um. It’s difficult to do.

Focus on chunking

To be effective at stopping the habit you have to focus on something else - something positive that you can do, as an alternative to um’ing. That alternative is chunking. Chunking is talking in short chunks of words with breaks in between the chunks. When you chunk you get into a rhythm: burst of words/break/burst of words/break….Focus on that rhythm and your um’s will go.

Pam Slim, author of the book and blog Escape from Cubicle Nation, naturally chunks. Note the lack of um’s:

Here’s the video that I showed in my You don’t have to slow down post of Tony Blair chunking:

Practice chunking

To begin with it will feel unnatural and uncomfortable. This is normal with a technique that you haven’t tried before. It’s different from how you normally speak, so just like crossing your arms the opposite way to normal, it will feel weird. You will need to practice chunking before it becomes easy and feels natural to you.

Practice chunking in normal conversation and get comfortable with it, before you try it in a presentation or speech. Most people listening to you won’t notice you’re doing a “technique”. Though they may notice with surprise that you’re not um’ing!

Once you’re comfortable with it, use it in a presentation - and I’d love to know how it goes. Let me know in the comments section.

Note to presentation trainers and speech coaches: With this technique you don’t have to tell people that they um and ah - and have them go through the painful cringe everytime they do it. Just teach them chunking - then let them know that their um’s have gone.

Should you display the live twitter stream on a large screen?

Olivia Mitchell — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:31:10 +0000

Twitter is now a reality at many conferences. Now the question is: should you display a live twitter stream on a large screen so that everyone (not just the tweeters) in the audience can see it?

Sir Ken Robinson speaking at "Hacking Education" organised by Union Square Ventures. Photo used with permission from Fred Wilson

Having twitter on a large screen can enrich the conference experience. Here’s a report from the Museums and the Web conference 09:

So when the conference delegates arrived at the auditorium for the conference welcome and opening talk we found two computer displays: one of the speaker’s slides and the other a display of Twitter posts tagged with the #mw2009 tag, using the Twitterfall software, And judging by comments made on the conference blog, many people found that this live display of tweets in the opening session provided a valuable way of developing a shared sense of community and active participation which continued throughout the conference, with many newcomers subscribing to Twitter, following the more well-established Twitter users and engaging with the discussions themselves.

Twitter can also allow the conversation to continue after the conference. At the Travolution Summit 2009 , 200 of the 1,150 tweets using the #travsummit hashtag were after the event. The organiser, Kevin May, comments:

Now this is where it gets interesting. Post-event analysis and continuing the conversation was, until now, the Holy Grail of event organisers.

However, there is a downside. Distraction:

Museums and the Web conference 09

Which is not to say that everyone found the Twitterfall display useful: some participants, for example, did find the display distracting.

Richard Mulholland at NetProphet 09

…looking around the room, more people are watching the twitter screen than are listening to Arthur’s great preso.

But you can get the benefits of conference tweeting without the distraction by choosing carefully when to display the twitter stream on a large screen. The decision depends on the nature of each session: is it a presentation, panel or a discussion? Let’s look at each in turn.

Live twitter screen during a presentation

My advice is to only show the twitter stream when it adds to the presentation- just like any visual. With an actively tweeting audience, a twitter stream can move extremely fast. It will be very hard for the audience not to pay attention to the constantly moving screen - so it’s likely to be distracting. If it’s on the large screen it’s no longer an opt-in experience.

However, I think that Twitter can be a great audience participation tool. And it will be much more inclusive if you do display the twitter stream, so that non-tweeters can see it too. So have the twitter display ready to go (use the remote of the datashow projecter to hide the screen) and turn it on just when you want it. That could be when:

you ask for audience input on a particular point
you ask the audience for questions
you take “twitter breaks” specifically to look at the twitter stream and address any issues which have been raised.

For more ideas on this see my posts 8 things I learnt about using Twitter as a participation tool and 7 ways to use Twitter to engage your audience.

Live twitter stream during a panel

Twittering during a panel allows the audience to have direct input into the questions being asked of the panel. It allows the tweeters in the audience to mould the experience in a way that otherwise would not be possible. This can take place without the twitter stream being displayed - but that excludes those not on twitter. Having the twitter stream displayed also allows panelists to refer visually to specific tweets as they respond to them. Mike McAllen (@mmcallen) reported back from Blogworld 08:

In one of the panels I attended they had the breakout screen projecting a twitter search feed (http://search.twitter.com) To make it work the moderator made up a conference room tag #PR08 and the people sitting in the audience had a running dialogue with what the presenters were talking about. This dialogue was between audience members, and of course anyone else who wanted to see what was going on anywhere in the world (with an internet connection)

So the audience was real time commenting and asking and forming the best questions together for the panel. It was fascinating. I find panel discussions usually frustrating because each panelist is usually fighting for time to speak or someone drones on and on. This way the audience is the real moderator.

Live twitter stream during a discussion

This is where Twitter really comes into it’s own - allowing more than one person to have a voice at the same time: Fred Wilson describes his experience:

It is hard to moderate a conversation of 40 people and there are times when several people want to make a point but one gets the opportunity. I started to notice that the others would simply post their thought to twitter instead which allowed the rest of the room to see what they wanted to say in parallel with the point that was being made live.

Downsides of displaying Twitter

There are some other downsides of displaying Twitter on a large screen:

1. Spammers and trolls may be attracted by the attention they can get

And once the tag was included in the top tags of the day it, perhaps inevitably, attracted the attention of Twitter spammers, with a tweet from ‘PantyGirl’ - and an associated image being included in the live Twitterfall display. [from Brian Kelly at the Museums and the Web conference 09]

Tweetchat allows you to block users if this becomes a problem.

2. Negative comments about the speaker or panelists

Most reports seem to be that people are courteous about what they tweet if they know it’s going to be displayed on a large screen. But there’s still a risk of this happening - and it’s something to accept.

3. Off-topic tweets

From Kevin May of the Travolution Summit

If the on-stage content started to wane, people would Tweet *other* observations, such as comments regarding the panel’s socks and footwear!

From the comments on Kevin’s post, it seems most people enjoyed a little light humor.

4. Libellous tweets

I haven’t found any reports of this happening, but it’s a risk to be aware of. This would be the one situation where it would be wise to pull the stream from the display.

Your views

What do you think? When would Twitter on the large screen add or detract from your conference experience?