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We present to shift the audience's perspective. We want to sell...we want to educate...we want to motivate.

None of this can happen until you awaken your audience and get their attention.

How to awaken your audience:

Surprise them.

Attention is captured by the unusual.

Do Something Different!

When the audience knows what you are about to say, or how you are about to say it, they're ahead of you. Gradually their minds move on to something else.

Ways to awaken your audience:

- Catch the audience off guard by sweeping them into active participation.

- Employ a dramatic gesture at an unexpected moment.

- Reveal an interesting prop, or use an object in the room in an usual way.

- Tell a story about an experience you had that reveals something personal about you.

- Move with a sudden dynamic burst.

- Release a sound from your voice heretofore unheard.

- Make a percussive sound by clapping, stomping a foot or hitting your hand on a table.

- Use an unusual facial gesture.

- Tease the audience.

- Stop and be silent.

GESTURE

We communicate with all kinds of gestures. Whether hailing a taxi or blowing a kiss, the meaning of the gesture is understood accurately and quickly.

Actions Speak Louder than Words

Early on we learn that a person's body often speaks more truthfully than their words. If the speaker's behavior does not align with their words, which do you trust?

Imagine someone talking to you about an important topic. Imagine how much they would communicate if at just the right moment they:

- Blushed

- Blinked

- Yawned

- Looked away

- Started shaking

Instinctively we know to trust body language above spoken words. People carefully arrange their words to put their best foot forward; less frequently do they successfully monitor their physical behavior.

STILLNESS

Often, the most important movement is it's complete absence: calm, powerful stillness. Unfocused extraneous movement decreases your power and credibility, and can distract the audience from your message.

When you are not making a gesture or movement that supports your missive:

Choose stillness.

When you can confidently stand perfectly still in silence, the audience tends to interpret is as power and control.

GESTURE, MOVEMENT AND STILLNESS

Tips to Successful Use of Gestures, Movement and Stillness

Be Selective

Craft gestures to match your key points. Don't use the same gesture over and over. Avoid walking and talking (or your movements may obscure your words). Larger movements are best done before or after a point, while gestures can be used before, during or after speaking.

Be Specific

Practice more precise and differentiated movement. Don't just generally wave your arms. Chose dynamic, specific movements and gestures that elucidate or emphasize what you are conveying.

Be Surprising

Use varied rhythms and move at unexpected moments to gain maximum audience alertness. For example, don't always gesture at the end of a sentence or point.

Be Still

Practice the power of stillness. Don't fidget. Don't wander. Don't rock nervously back and forth. Stillness is extremely powerful, especially when contrasted with purposeful movement.

Be Subversive

Whatever gesture patterns you establish, mindfully break with them and create an ongoing variety of gestural expression.

Terry Gault has been a coach, trainer and consultant in communications skills for 14 years. He has trained hundreds of professionals at Oracle, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, PeopleSoft, Visa, EMC, PTC, and hundreds more in other large organizations. Terry joined the Henderson Group in 1997, where he coaches individuals and leads workshops in presentation and communication skills. Terry also develops workshops and has played a major role in the development and delivery of the online communication programs at the Henderson Group. Visit
http://www.hendersongroup.com/art_pres_info.asp for more information.

There's a fast way to put the commands and buttons you use most often within easy reach put them on the Quick Access Toolbar. This row of buttons above the Ribbon already contains several buttons by default, but you can add new commands. The demo shows you two ways to do this, as well as how to remove them later if you want to.

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When we think about about a presentation we typically consider the presentation itself, its preparation, planning and rehearsal. But it's also critical to consider how we engage our audience -- how we actively encourage their listening, understanding and belief in us. Just standing on the podium and speaking won't do the trick.

Fortunately there are some techniques that we can use. And a major technique is the presentation theme. There are 5 things to bear in mind, though, when we use a theme in our presentation.

1. Make it memorable. Themes help our audience to remember our presentation. And when our audience only retains some 10% of our speech that's important. Themes are remembered by an audience because they can be. They work in much the same way as logos, slogans or catch phrases. They are typically creative, clever and appropriate for the task.


2. Keep it simple. Our theme should be both simple and consistent. The simplicity is critical for memory -- we don't want our audience struggling with complexity at this stage of the event. Consistency is all important. We should neither deviate from the theme during the presentation nor be tempted to make adjustments as we go along.


3. Be practical. Our theme should evoke practicality and purpose. If it has these qualities it will be familiar to our audience and prove more meaningful. Practicality suggests utility and benefit -- both are of interest to our audience. When our audience can sense practical benefits attributed to listening and engaging their engagement increases.


4. Be thorough. There is no need to struggle for ideas when thinking of a theme for our presentation. There are many workable approaches to getting it right. We can talk to the conference organizers. We can establish whether the conference itself has a theme. Or we could identify if our particular day has a theme to it. In either case we should aim to use this theme -- or tweak it slightly to our own purpose. Using something that has resonance elsewhere will be productive. As an alternative we can look at all the other presentations on the agenda and establish whether there is a theme that runs through all of them. If there is, then use it. We could also think about some of the pressing issues that our audience will recognize from their work or professional interests. Issues such as: competition, globalization, outsourcing, innovation or quality. Such issues might be both relevant and familiar. Therefore, they could prove useful in building a theme that is practical, consistent and simple.


5. Consider the objective. As we finalize our theme we should recall the purpose or mission for our presentation. We are looking to achieve something with our audience. Change their ideas. Change their opinions. Or, change something that they do. Our theme should help us in this mission. Both our purpose and our theme should be aligned.

Our audience will only recall some 10% of our presentation. Our task as speakers is to increase that percentage or, at least, ensure the right 10% is retained. A practical and memorable theme will boost an audience's memory retention and assist their engagement.

Andrew Ivey is the principal presentation skills trainer at Time to Market the UK-based presentation skills training resource. Time to Market provides presentation skills and public speaking training for managers in single day and half day courses at training centres throughout the UK. Their newsletter 'Telling it Straight', provides more ideas and techniques for effective presentations and public speaking.

This article now contains brand new mini-demos that clock in at around one minute and highlight several of the new features in PowerPoint 2007. Check it out!

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