Presentation Psychology Articles

Confident Presenters: Good or Bad?

Never underestimate mans’ ability to use fuzzy logic.

Just because good presenters are confident, does not imply that confidence makes good presenters. And yet most people, most presentation skills courses and, regrettably, most presentation coaches believe this to be true.

It is in fact a lie. Clearly a complete lack of confidence is a bad thing, but so too is complete confidence.

Darwin on presentations

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”

The confidence you derive from a well thought out, well prepared, well rehearsed presentation is seductive to audiences, but the confidence felt out of inflated self-belief is often perceived as arrogance.

I watched another presentation coach “help” a presenter. This consisted of a series of platitudes and sycophantic ramblings that had as much to do with massaging the coach’s ego as that of the presenter. While the exchange was enjoyed by both, I’m pretty confident it did nothing for the audience that had to sit through that presentation. Which, as far as I could tell, was just as bad as it was before the coaching–but now it would be presented with an air of arrogant self confidence instead of the (quite rightly) caution that it wasn’t really good enough.

Advice is cheap

But good advice is invaluable (as it is rare.)

For what its worth, my advice is that there is a time and place for boosting confidence and that time and place is after the hard work of producing a good presentation has been done.

• Know your audience
• Know your material
• Know how to engage your audience
• Know how to interact with your audience
• Practice the delivery

The confidence you get from this will see you through the event. Its ok to feel anxious, use it to fuel your performance. Anyone who says they don’t feel scared before presentations is either lying or dead.

Confidence is a double-edged sword, too little or too much can kill a performance. To quote Bertrand Russell,

“Those who feel certainty, are stupid.”

To misquote Bertrand Russell,

“Those who feel absolute confidence, are stupid”

What do you think? Ever seen a supremely confident presenter deliver a supremely bad presentation?

There is always someone better!

The art of competence

What are you good at? Chess, cooking, squash, sailing, wine appreciation, business, presenting or perhaps selling? One thing is for sure – you are probably not the best at all of them.

How good do you need to be to deliver an effective presentation about any of these subjects? Certainly not world class. Competent is the word that springs to my mind. You don’t need to be the best – just better than the average of the group. I have given presentations on all of the subjects above, but I am clearly not the best at any of them. The secret is to know that you don’t need to be. Continue reading →

NLP: Nothing Like Properscience!

About every other course somebody asks me about how Visual Cognitive Dissonance (VCD) sits with Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). My tongue-in-cheek response is that VCD is based on science and, as far as I am aware, is consistent with all the major religions, and so almost certainly consistent with the minor ones such as NLP.

Why do I compare NLP to a religion? Looking at the research, it’s at best inconclusive and at worst labeled as pseudoscience. Linguistics isn’t my main calling, but I’m pretty convinced that the fundamental tenants of NLP may be suspect. In fact I love the following quote from the founders of NLP:

We have no idea about the “real” nature of things, and we’re not particularly interested in what’s “true”. The function of modelling is to arrive at descriptions which are useful

Bandler, R. and Grinder, J. (1979), Frogs into Princes: Neuro-linguistic Programming, Moab, Utah: Real People Press
I also love the publisher! Moab, Utah…makes me think of the brilliant musical for the non-pious, “The Book of Mormon” – also beautifully relevant for this observation.
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Happy Birthday to Me!

I am 43 years old today and for the first time in about 10 years I am away from home and working on my birthday. The kids all phoned me this morning with birthday wishes, but the best present came in the form of a conversation with a delegate on the course I am facilitating in London.

Let me give you some context. 18 months ago, I was asked to speak at a conference about a consistent Value Proposition. I was give a one-hour time slot and was told that the delegates would have been working on a case study and have their draft VP’s ready. My talk was supposed to set up a presentation exercise afterwards. I had agreed with the organiser that when I arrived they would give me the list of VP’s and I would use this as the basis of my presentation. When I arrived, they hadn’t got that far in the exercise and so with 5 minutes to go I had to change the presentation.
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Managing the Details Without Losing Your Key Messages

I recently delivered the Killer Presentations course to a group of financial service industry sales professionals in New York City. An important learning in this training is to trim the information in your presentation to include only the most relavent data you want your audience to remember. A few days later, I got the following question from an attendee about all the other information that needs to be delivered eventually:

If the sales presentation delivers 4 or 5 key points you want the audience to know, what’s the best way to communicate the much weightier technical detail that lies behind those key points?

The first question is do you really need to get into technical detail in the presentation? When I am teaching kids to sail, I need them to know that to turn the boat, they must move the tiller in the opposite direction.  Do they need to understand the mathematics of how the rudder creates turning momentum on the stern of the boat?  No.
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