Online Presentations: Place Camera at Eye Level

When you place your camera at eye level, good things happen! (1) You talk directly to people (not “down” to them). (2) You can use natural hand gestures in the bottom 1/3 of the screen. (3) Your body language underscores your message. (Upright posture says, “I’m present! I’m listening!” Slouching or leaning back deep in your chair says, “This is my 6th Zoom today … I don’t really want to be here.”

Last week I watched a webinar hosted by a professor at Harvard Business School. She was sharing some ground-breaking research and I was eager to learn about her findings. The material she presented was exceptional and she was clearly a rising star on the faculty.

There was only one problem: how she delivered the material. As I explain in this short video clip, her camera lens was too high. She peered up at us, the audience, from the bottom of her screen. It reminded me of being back in kindergarten at Birch Meadow Elementary School. Imagine me, a scrawny little thing, staring up at my teacher’s big desk — a wooden behemoth stacked even higher with papers and a globe. Walking up to that desk felt intimidating.

The Harvard prof reminded me of staring up at an authority figure. Only in this case, she was looking up at us, the audience. We were peering down on her from above. She’d flipped the script, inverting the position of teacher/student or expert/audience. The result? It felt like she was asking our permission to speak rather than commanding our attention. The placement of her camera had undermined her credibility.

Societal norms explain why.

In western culture, authority figures often physically and literally loom above us. Judges sit high on a platform. (Think the Supreme Court.) Speakers deliver remarks from a stage to an audience seated below. In Congressional hearings, elected officials sit high up in chairs beaming down on the individual testifying on the Senate floor below.

Another common mistake with camera placement is the opposite of what we’ve been talking about: people peering down at their audience. Here’s a short video example of staring down at your device. Let’s face it: no one wants to be looked down upon.

C-suiters who make this mistake further accentuate the existing power imbalance between them and their employees. Said differently, leaders should convince people to embrace their big new idea through evidence and persuasion – never by towering over them, or worse, intimidating them.

When your body language and words don’t match, what happens? People believe your body language.  A CEO can talk endlessly about encouraging workers to speak up but, if he talks down to people, he likely won’t elicit much by way of grassroots innovation.

The Take-Away

The ideal placement of your camera is eye level. Look straight ahead at the camera lens itself. Don’t just glance in the general direction of your monitor or laptop. If your camera lens isn’t at eye level, it’s easy to fix it. (Seriously, there’s no need to buy a fancy, expensive tripod.)

• If the lens is too low, prop it up with a few books or a sturdy box.

• If the lens is too high, simply stand up or move it to another location.

Once you place your camera correctly, your head and body should be in the center of the screen. This will help reduce distractions for your audience and keep your message on center stage. I’d also recommend standing about an arm’s length away from your device. (Think formal cocktail party.) This will create enough space between your device and your body to use more effective hand gestures, which should show up naturally in the bottom third of the picture frame.

All told, moving your camera to eye level will pay off handsomely in your next online presentation. You’ll not only look more polished and in command of your content. You’ll come across as a more credible speaker who talks “to” and “with” people instead of down to them.

To Memorize or Not to Memorize? That is the Question.

I’d like to feature a terrific blog by my friend and colleague, Teresa Zumwald. It caught my attention because several of my clients (like hers) have been asking whether they should memorize their speech or not. The answer is no. Instead, internalize it using these helpful tips by Teresa.

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Teresa’s Blog

Recently I helped several members of a C-suite prepare speeches for a national virtual conference. All of them wanted to know more about how to be confident when public speaking.

By far the ones who put in all the hard work ahead of time to internalize their speeches – and did not worry one minute about the need to memorize their speeches – came across much more engaging, authentic and real.

How do we know? Everyone told them so.

What is the difference between internalizing a speech and memorizing it?

And which is better if you are someone who wants to know how to be confident when public speaking?

Let’s go back to school

Think back to grade school when you were in social studies class.

Remember how painful it was to sit down after school and spend hours trying to memorize and repeat (and then memorize and repeat) dozens of different facts and figures about all those wars, battles and skirmishes in world history?

Ugh.

I remember forcing myself to know and spit back to the teacher the dates, places and names of officers and generals, heroes and enemies; recount the twists and turns of every conflict imaginable; and recall the reasons why all these people were fighting each other in the first place.

Sound familiar?

If you crammed for a day or two before the test, you might have been lucky enough to keep everything inside your head just long enough to eke out a passing grade.

For the time being, you might have known all these things.

But you certainly did not understand any of them.

Engineer and inventor Charles F. Kettering of Dayton, Ohio, explained this well when he said:

“There is a great difference between knowing a thing and understanding it. You can know a lot and not really understand anything.”

Engaging your head, heart and gut in the game

I see this phenomenon at play whenever I watch and listen to a leader practice his or her keynote speech for the first time.

The first run-through we do together is always rocky.

On the face of it, the speaker knows what the speech is all about. After all, we’ve worked together on the creative concept, the outline, the content and the script for at least several weeks, if not months together.

But despite that:

I can tell every time during the first run-through that this same speaker does not really understand the speech at all until he or she does the hard work required to internalize it.

Internalizing a speech is best if you want to know the secret behind how to be confident when public speaking.

So how do you internalize a speech?

You say it out loud – time after time after time – until your speech gets embedded in your head, heart and gut.

When it happens, you know it:

• Inside your head is the structure of your speech: the beginning, middle and end. You know every transition. And as you continue, you know exactly what’s coming next.

• Inside your heart is every key word, every key phrase, every key line of your speech. You say what you mean and mean what you say, and you do it with the right emotion. So your audience believes you.

• Inside your gut is the courage to share the story of your speech. You trust yourself. You are excited and unafraid.

Observations about a speaker who internalized her speech

One of those keynote speakers I coached recently ahead of that national virtual conference did an over-the-top job of internalizing her speech.

She was adamant about learning how to be confident when public speaking. So she did a lot of hard work on her own, polished up all the rough edges during our coaching session and ultimately delivered a phenomenal performance.

I studied the recording of her speech. Here’s what I observed:

Her speech was inside her head

• She paused in all the right places and emphasized all the right words.

• Phrases and lines flowed comfortably from one to the next. No part of her speech ran together.

• After introducing a key point, she paused to let it sink in. She did not race on to deliver the next line.

• She used vocal variety throughout, from start to finish, and never came off like a robot.

• When she made three points in a row, we could follow. We never got lost.

• She breathed.

• Her voice went up when she asked a question, and her voice went down when she was firm with a point.

Her speech was inside her heart

• She started off bold and nailed her first line with vigor.

• She smiled as she recounted a long-ago memory.

• She conveyed empathy to arouse emotion whenever it made sense.

• When a point she was making was either concerning or frustrating, her voice and her face showed the same.

• When she repeated a word for emphasis, it worked every time.

• She spoke with conviction. So she was believable.

• She articulated every word and enunciated with intention. Nothing she said was inaudible.

Her speech was inside her gut

• In her opening thumbnail, she was smiling, confident and looking at every member of her virtual audience.

• Her body language – including head nods and hand gestures, and facial expressions like smiles, eye squints, eye shuts and eyebrow movements – matched every word and every key point exactly.

• Nothing felt awkward. Everything felt natural.

• She used conversational language.

• She never ran out of energy.

 This is what it looks like and sounds like when you internalize a speech.

When you put in the hard work to really understand it.

And not just simply know it.

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Thank you, Teresa. If you’re interested learning more about this technique or working with her, feel free to reach out to Zumwald and Company.

The Neuroscience Behind Storytelling

Why tell a story? Because of the chemicals it naturally releases in our brains.

When people tell a moving story, our brains release cortisol and oxytocin. [Photo Credit: Paul Zak video, “The Future of Storytelling”]

In early November, I’m participating on a panel at a medical conference in Phoenix. The topic of the panel is storytelling. While preparing, one of my peers introduced me to a terrific video by Paul Zak. It explains – in 5 min no less – the neuroscience behind storytelling. 

A professor at Claremont Graduate University, Zak is the founder of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies. His video on storytelling is well worth your time if you’ve ever questioned its value. Once you watch it, you’ll know the answer. An emphatic “yes!” 

When people tell a moving story, our brains release cortisol and oxytocin. As the video explains, cortisol helps us focus our attention while oxytocin is associated with care, connection, and empathy. These two chemicals not only make stories memorable, but they cause people to take action. In this case, people who listened to a compelling story donated more money than people who didn’t. 

And that’s the catch: you must tell a compelling story. In other words, a description of an event is not a story. Nor is a laundry list of facts. Stories build up to a point of tension at their climax and, as Zak explains, often follow a universal story arc. He offers an example in the video or you can follow the story structure that I outlined in this blog by providing a setting, showing a struggle, and offering a solution.

Either way, telling a great story is required to release cortisol and oxytocin. Once you’ve done that, you, as a speaker, are more apt to move people to action.

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Looking for someone to talk about storytelling in your organization? Or someone to improve public speaking at your office? Click here for more info and reach out anytime. – Rose at rose@rosespeechwriter.com.

Storytelling 101: Three Elements for Compelling Stories

Statistics and data won’t move your audience to action – but stories will. [Photo Credit: Annie Spratt]

I worked for a CEO once who didn’t know how to tell a story. She was scary smart, an inspiring leader, and capable in just about every other way. She successfully made dozens of complex, high-level decisions day in and day out. 

But telling a story? Not in her wheelhouse. 

How Did I Know?

I realized my client wasn’t a storyteller the night before she was scheduled to address about 4,000 employees. We were having a private rehearsal in a huge, hotel meeting room. I stood about 15 rows deep from the stage, coaching her for the big day.

She started off strong with a captivating intro. She quickly nailed the timing of the slides and she avoided the podium, using the space around her effectively. And despite the vacuous room, she practiced making eye contact around the room, looking at three Audience Anchors in the left, right, and center of the room.

Then she hit a wall. I had a copy of her bullet points, so I looked down at them. They said, “Tell story about playground.” The CEO began like this:

“A long time ago, my father took me to a playground. I was young, really young. One section had monkey bars that moved on a track.  You held on and sort of swung, hand over hand, from them. I was scared to cross.” 

Then the CEO stumbled, exhaled, and began talking about the competition facing her company this quarter. 

“Wait,” I thought. “What happened? Did you cross the monkey bars? What did Dad do? What about the other kids?”

I knew we had a problem. The description she had shared wasn’t a story and she’d missed a golden opportunity to connect. I called a time-out in the rehearsal and together we fleshed out that long-ago day: her standing there, facing scary blue monkey bars, and in retrospect, explaining why this story was relevant to her audience.

What Makes a Story?

Telling a story is challenging for some, overwhelming for others. That’s why I like to draw on Ty Bennett’s book, The Power of Storytelling. In it, Bennett breaks down stories into three simple elements: 

• Set Up

• Struggle

• Solution

Set Up – Give the audience some context. In this case, I asked the CEO a few simple questions about her story: what grade was she in? What city was she in (and even better, what was the name of the playground)? Was it snowing, rainy, or sunny? Was the playground empty or full of laughing kids?

Struggle – What was she afraid of? How the monkey bars slid along a rusty track? Their height? The dirt below? What did she physically feel at the time (shaky legs, shortness of breath)? Did she say anything to her father or just balk, refusing to move?

Solution – What happened in the end? Did her father gently talk her across or threaten her to cross? Did the kids in line push in front of her? Did she turn back and climb down? 

After ending a story, I often add an “off ramp” in a speech. By that, I mean explain why the speaker shared the story. In this case, what was the connection between the little girl’s challenge years ago and the competition the company faced today?

In this case, the CEO’s story ended with another little girl showing her how to cross the monkey bars. The speaker then used the story to talk about employees sharing their expertise with one another, something their competition happened to be doing really well.

When you’re giving a presentation, stories don’t have to be long or difficult or overly intimate. But they must have, as a minimum, three elements to succeed. And when a good story lands, you’ll know it. Among other things, they fire up the mirror neurons in your audience, helping them envision – and feel – what you’re trying to convey.

Don’t get me wrong. Data, statistics, examples, and other forms of concrete evidence will help you back up the main point. They should be integrated into your remarks where appropriate. But they rarely, if ever, create the kind of emotional connection with other people that stories do.

Looking for another great example of storytelling? Watch Abby Wambach’s 2018 commencement at Barnard. Her opening story about the ESPYs has a clear set up, struggle, and solution (plus a smooth off ramp!). Thanks & please reach out anytime. – Rose at rose@rosespeechwriter.com.

Using the Speaker's Triangle: How to Avoid Blocking the Screen

In my last blog post, I talked about three major mistakes people make with PowerPoint and how to avoid them. Today I’ll discuss using the space between the screen and audience more effectively via the Speaker’s Triangle.*

What’s the Speaker’s Triangle?

The Speaker’s Triangle is an area between the slides and audience. It’s on one side of the stage with the screen on the other. The space shouldn’t overlap with the projected image at all. (In other words, don’t move into the line of sight — like this picture. That projects the slide on your face and blocks it. Big no-no’s.)

Instead, stand in one of three spots in the Speaker’s Triangle. Where? It depends on what you’re saying.

Where Should I Stand?

The Speaker’s Triangle – Use the stage more effectively by standing in one of these three spots, based on the type of material you’re presenting.

• Position #1 is closer to the screen than the audience.  Stand here when you’re talking about detailed material on the screen, such as a graph or map. Don’t face the screen, but gesture to the axis or location you’re addressing.

• Position #2 is half way between the screen and the audience. Speak from this spot for the majority of your presentation.

• Position #3 is closest to the audience. It’s a great place to tell a story or share something that’s meant to have a significant emotional impact. It’s also the best spot for answering questions during Q&A.

Common Questions
Q: Why should I spend most of my time in the middle of the Speaker’s Triangle?

A: Position #2 is a neutral spot. Being too close to the audience for the entire talk (#3) can come across as overbearing. It also eliminates the chance for you to move forward and “disclose” something personal or heartwarming. On the flip side, being too close to the screen (#1) suggests you may be relying on your slides too heavily (or worse, you’re anxious and therefore standing really far away from the audience!)

Q: What if the stage isn’t configured this way?

A:  You can still use the three general principles of the Speaker’s Triangle. The most important take-away for your presentation is to plan ahead. Before you start talking, know where you want to stand during different parts of your speech. Again, let the substance of the material guide you (or send me an email … I’ll help too).

Q: What if I need to get to the other side of the stage?

A: You can’t really. You shouldn’t walk behind the screen (ever) or across the front of it, projecting images on your face. If you’re doing Q&A after your presentation, my advice is to turn the slides off. Speakers rarely reference or need them during Q&A so frankly, they can become a distraction. With the projector turned off, you can move freely to the middle of the stage. Or better yet, you can move to the side of the space, depending on where the Q&A mics are located in the audience.

*PS - I came across the term, “Speaker’s Triangle,” about 5 years ago. If you know who coined the term, please let me know.  

Thanks and I’d love to hear your stories about stages and slides. – Rose.  rose@rosespeechwriter.com.  

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Avoiding Death by PowerPoint: Three Common Mistakes with Slides

How many times have you sat in a dim meeting room only to be bombarded by an endless slide deck? Or attended a conference where speakers made a point of reading every bullet?

Don’t use slides as a reminder of what comes next (as in, ‘Oh yeah — the slide w/ the stars. That’s my cue to talk about space’). Instead figure out what you want to say, then build your slide deck. [Photo credit: Kyle Wong]

Death by PowerPoint is, sadly, all too common. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

As a speechwriter and speech coach for nearly 15 years, I’ve sat through hundreds of talks. Here are the three most common mistakes when it comes to slides and, even better, how you can avoid making them.

Common Mistake # 1: No Go

The Scenario:  You watch a speaker walk onto the stage. He hits the clicker but it won’t advance the slides. Then the screen goes black. Someone (the IT guy?) walks onto the stage and fiddles with something on the podium. Meanwhile, the speaker becomes increasingly uncomfortable. He tries a joke or two, but it’s too late. People around you start to talk among themselves.

The Message It Sends: When AV fails, it tells the audience that the speaker doesn’t care about them. He didn’t take the 5 minutes required to test it out in advance.

The Solution: Show up early and make sure your slides will work. I’ve seen instances (especially going from a MAC to PC) where the font sizes become too small or images become blurry. If you can’t show up early (and if the slides aren’t confidential), email your deck to the event organizers. Like you, they desperately want to avoid the appearance that this is “amateur hour.”

Bonus Tip: Always carry a backup copy of your slides on a thumb drive or email them to yourself, so you’ll have them handy in a pinch.

Common Mistake #2:  Info Overload

The Scenario:  The speaker is an expert. You’re excited to hear what she has to say, but things immediately get technical – and the slides don’t help. In fact, they confuse the issue because they’re impossible to decipher. One slide shows the world’s most complicated wiring diagram. Another has an x- and y-axis with font so small it looks like Japanese rather than English. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The slides will be available later, so you pick up your phone to check email until this speaker is done.

The Message It Sends: The speaker doesn’t know how to translate this visual story for the audience. As a result, she has included way too much information on the slides. It’s not easy to translate data or stats — agreed — but the alternative of overwhelming your audience isn’t an option.

The Solution: Don’t try to tell the whole story in a single slide. Keep it simple. Breaking down your story into manageable chunks and walk the audience through a broader, more meaningful narrative. In other words, bridge the gap between what you’re saying and what (you hope!) the audience is hearing. You can check this by practicing in front of someone with roughly the same level of knowledge that your audience will likely have.

Bonus Tip: Check out this TED Talk by Hans Rosling, a Swedish physician and professor of International Health. He offers a great example of how to translate complex data on global health and economic trends in a way we all can understand.

Common Mistake #3:  Too Many Slides

The Scenario:  It’s only two minutes into the presentation but you’ve already seen 25 slides. Every point the speaker makes is captured in a list of bullet points, a heartwarming image, or a funny video. Rather than focusing on the material, your mind wanders. You ask yourself how many more slides will she race through in the next 20 minutes?    

The Message It Sends: The speaker doesn’t know her material well enough. She may also be using PowerPoint as a reminder of what she needs to cover next. (Oh, it’s the slide w/ the night sky. That’s my cue to talk about space.)

The Solution: Figure out what you want to say first, then build your slide deck. That will prevent you from upstaging yourself and relying too heavily on slides. Resist the urge to “throw in” that amazing pie chart because it’s just so good.

Bonus Tip: I don’t have a good rule of thumb for how many slides you should use in say, a 20-minute presentation. What can be helpful, however, is thinking about AV as a tool to underscore your key points. Don’t upstage yourself. Slides should be an exclamation mark to what you say, not a script to keep you on track.

Looking for more guidance on using slides effectively? Here are some more tips and examples from TED Talks.  Thanks & reach out anytime. – Rose at rose@rosespeechwriter.com.

Four Tips to Rehearse More Effectively

In the end, the stakes are just too high not to practice. [Photo credit: Charles Deluvio]

Your last talk to employees didn’t go well. You were nervous standing in front of them. You paced as thoughts of self-doubt crept into your voice. You kept looking down at your notes but couldn’t find your place. After a few minutes, you lost track of what you were hoping to accomplish. More than anything, you just wanted to sit down and be done.

Now that’s a bad day at the office. The only good outcome from this kind of dreadful experience is the determination I hear in a client’s voice afterwards. They resolve never to ‘wing it’ again. Never to stand in front of their people without preparing. Never to show up as a boss who can’t motivate, can’t communicate, can’t lead.

How exactly should you practice before your next talk? There are any number of approaches, but I’ve found these four steps to be particularly effective.

Rehearsing Effectively

 1. In private, practice what you’ll say from beginning to end. Re-start wherever you need to. If you stumble on a section repeatedly, change the wording.

2. Once you can deliver the entire speech without stumbling, time it. Trim it, if too long.

3. Ask two or three trusted colleagues to listen to you as you practice. Get their feedback on what was unclear and on any distracting tics you may have such as pacing or jittery hands. (An alternative is to videotape yourself on your cell phone. This is a simple way to check your posture, eye contact, and hand gestures.)

4. If possible, practice in the venue where you’ll deliver the speech. (This is essential for big speeches.) Find out if you’ll have a podium and mic. If so, what kind? (For example, a hand-held mic, podium mic, or lavalier mic?)  Ask who’s presenting before and after you, if you’ll have a bottle of water on stage, and whether they will be filming you. In short, now’s the time to get the scoop so you can be your best as a speaker and as a leader.

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Want to learn a few more practical tips for rehearsing your next presentation?  Let’s talk.  – Rose (rose@rosespeechwriter.com)

The Telephone Test

In “Bad Writing Costs Businesses Billions,” Josh Bernoff talks about how much time we waste slogging through terrible writing at the office. He notes, “Poor writing creates a drag on everything you do. It functions like a tax, sapping your profits, and I can quantify it. American workers spend 22 percent of their work time reading; higher compensated workers read more.” Bernoff estimates this problem costs American businesses an astonishing $400 billion annually.

Unfortunately, bad writing often seeps into presentations as well. Consider how this speaker summarized her remarks:

“I have attempted here to socialize the personnel and financial resources needed to solve this pressing problem. I now respectfully ask for your endorsement of the proposed course of action so that we can operationalize it in coming weeks.” (Word count: 41)

If I were listening, I wouldn’t know what was being asked of me. Words like “socialize” and “operationalize” sound like committee-speak. That's a form of communication in which people are more interested in impressing co-workers than expressing an idea.

What if this speaker said this instead?

“I’ll close this afternoon by asking for your approval on this project.  We have the resources lined up and the right people in place. We need the green light from you to move ahead.” (Word count: 34)

This ending is not only more concise, it’s easier to understand. And it is written in plain language defined as “communication your audience can understand the first time they read or hear it.” This definition, by the way, comes from Public Law 111, The Plain Writing Act of 2010, which urges government officials to write in ways that people can understand. (It’s amazing to me that the problem is so bad that we actually had to pass a law.)

How can we avoid jargon-filled, verbose writing? By using the Telephone Test, a simple tool I learned years ago from my smart colleagues at the US Air Force Academy. The Telephone Test means imagining how you’d say something on the phone.

How many times do you call your spouse and say, “After work, I’ll proceed to the aforementioned market for the items requested. Please inform me if additional items are needed.” I’m guessing never. Instead, you probably say, “I’ll pick up milk on the way home from work. Need anything else?”

The Telephone Test is an easy tool to help you communicate more clearly & concisely. [Photo Credit: rawpixel]

The Telephone Test helps ensure you’re using direct words, more pronouns, and simple sentence structure. I use it when I find myself writing an overloaded sentence (20+ words) or a long bullet point.  

Another tool is plainlanguage.gov. Unlike some government websites, this one is easy to use and offers ample resources including examples, guidelines, and training. 

Before you draft that next email or speak up at a meeting, review what you’ve prepared. Can you say it in a way that’s easier to understand? More crisp? More logical?

Bernoff found that we all waste a great deal of time at the office due to bad writing. By investing more time upfront, you’ll stand out and, even better, your co-workers will actually understand what you’re trying to say.

 

What tools do you use to communicate more clearly & concisely? I’d love to hear them. Email me at rose@rosespeechwriter.com.

Make It About Them, Not You

A wonderful way to change the focal point of your remarks – and put the emphasis where it should be – is to replace the word “I” with “you.” Here’s a classic example from Steve Jobs and the team at Apple:

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently…You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.” 

Jobs could have said “I can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing I can't do is ignore them.” By turning the tables, he invites us into the conversation.

A similar trick is to replace “I” with “we.” Check out this example from Boris Johnson, the former Mayor of London. In this 2016 speech, he was advocating for BREXIT (i.e., that the United Kingdom should leave the European Union).

“Thanks to the referendum given to this country by David Cameron, we find that a door has magically opened. We can see the sunlit meadows beyond. I believe we would be mad not to take this once in a lifetime chance to walk through that door because the truth is, it is not we who have changed. It is the EU that has changed …”

[Photo Credit: Karla Alexander]

What I like about this excerpt is how Johnson uses “we” to create allies. A “magical door” has somehow opened. If we walk through it together, he seems to say, we’ll all get to the “sunlit meadows beyond.”

Notice too that Johnson is not saying follow me. He’s asking folks to move ahead in step with him.  Whatever your thoughts on BREXIT, using “we” in this passage makes his argument more persuasive. (And, well, the vote for BREXIT passed as we all know.)

Next time you’re preparing a presentation, do that one final and supremely important edit. Search for “I” and replace it with “you” or “we.”  It may take you all of two minutes (tops!), but it’ll leave a lasting impression with your audience.

Try this easy trick in your next speech. For more speaking hacks, click here to subscribe, email Rose@rosespeechwriter.com, or follow me @RKing_Portland. -- Rose