How to present to keep your audience’s attention | Mark Robinson | TEDxEindhoven
Summary
TLDRThis script humorously critiques the misuse of PowerPoint in presentations, using the iconic 'I Have a Dream' speech as a backdrop. It emphasizes the importance of engaging storytelling and interactive questioning to maintain audience attention, contrasting the power of these techniques with the monotony of text-heavy slides. The speaker shares personal anecdotes and suggests a simple four-question format to structure presentations effectively, advocating for the expression of unique ideas to captivate and inform audiences.
Takeaways
- 📅 The script imagines the audience as being in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963, setting a historical context for the speech.
- 👤 The audience is described as primarily African American, feeling both anger due to racial discrimination and excitement to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
- 🎤 The speech emphasizes the importance of delivering a message effectively, using the example of Dr. King's 'I Have a Dream' speech to highlight the power of oratory.
- 🚫 The script criticizes the overuse of PowerPoint and its potential to detract from the content of a presentation.
- 🤔 The speaker shares personal anecdotes to connect with the audience, discussing their own and their daughter's experiences with presentations.
- 🔍 The importance of capturing and maintaining the audience's attention is highlighted, with the natural tendency for attention to wane over time.
- ❓ The use of questions during a presentation is identified as a technique to recapture the audience's attention and engage them.
- 📖 Storytelling is presented as a powerful method to keep the audience interested and to make presentations memorable.
- 💡 The script introduces a simple four-question format to structure presentations effectively: identifying the problem, its cause, possible solutions, and the recommended solution.
- 🛠️ The speaker encourages the audience to practice storytelling and questioning as skills that can be developed over time, likening it to training muscles.
- 🌟 The final message is one of inspiration, urging the audience to find and share their unique message in a way that captivates and influences others.
Q & A
What is the main issue the speaker addresses in the script?
-The speaker addresses the issue of boring presentations, particularly in the business and technical fields, and how the use of PowerPoint can detract from the message being conveyed.
Why does the speaker use the example of Dr. Martin Luther King's speech?
-The speaker uses Dr. Martin Luther King's speech to illustrate that even the greatest content can be ruined by poor presentation techniques, emphasizing the importance of engaging delivery.
What is the speaker's opinion on the use of PowerPoint in presentations?
-The speaker believes that PowerPoint can be detrimental to presentations if misused, causing audiences to lose interest due to text-heavy slides and monotonous delivery.
What is the first technique the speaker suggests for keeping the audience's attention?
-The first technique suggested by the speaker is asking questions throughout the presentation to engage the audience and maintain their interest.
How does the speaker describe the use of questions in presentations?
-The speaker describes the use of questions as a way to 'hook' into the audience's brain and draw their attention back to the presenter, similar to how Jesus used questions in his teachings.
What is the second technique the speaker recommends for effective presentations?
-The second technique recommended by the speaker is telling stories, which are memorable and help keep the audience's attention and aid in the retention of information.
Why does the speaker argue that stories are powerful in presentations?
-Stories are powerful because they are memorable, engaging, and can help the audience remember key points and details of the presentation.
What objection does the speaker anticipate from technical presenters regarding storytelling?
-The speaker anticipates the objection that storytelling may not be applicable to technical presentations, but counters this by providing examples of how even technical topics can be made engaging through storytelling.
What is the simple format the speaker suggests for structuring presentations?
-The speaker suggests a format that involves asking and answering four questions: What is the problem, what is the cause, what are possible solutions, and what is the chosen or recommended solution.
How does the speaker's own presentation follow the suggested format?
-The speaker's presentation follows the format by starting with the problem of boring presentations, exploring the cause of audience disengagement, discussing possible solutions like questions and storytelling, and then presenting a comprehensive format that includes both techniques.
What is the speaker's 'dream' for the audience in terms of presentations?
-The speaker's dream is that everyone will be able to stand up and speak out their unique message in a way that captivates the audience from the first word to the last, thus sharing ideas worth spreading.
Outlines
🎤 The Power of Presentation
This paragraph sets the stage for a presentation about the importance of effective public speaking. It uses the historical context of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech to illustrate the contrast between powerful content and poor delivery methods, such as overuse of PowerPoint. The speaker emphasizes that even the best content can be undermined by a lackluster presentation style, advocating for ditching PowerPoint and focusing on storytelling and audience engagement.
🤯 Overcoming Presentation Anxiety
The speaker shares personal experiences with presentation anxiety, recounting a disastrous first attempt at public speaking as a teenager. Despite the initial failure, the speaker has since learned techniques to enhance confidence and audience engagement. The paragraph highlights the common challenge of maintaining audience attention and introduces the concept of using questions as a tool to recapture waning interest during presentations.
📈 The Impact of Questions and Stories
This section delves into the specifics of using questions and storytelling as presentation techniques. The speaker explains how questions can act as 'hooks' to draw the audience's attention back to the presenter, while stories serve as memorable devices to keep the audience engaged and help them retain information. The paragraph also touches on the historical effectiveness of storytelling in speeches, citing Jesus as an example of a great storyteller.
🛠️ The Framework for Effective Presentations
The speaker introduces a four-question framework designed to structure presentations for clarity, focus, and memorability. The framework involves identifying the problem, explaining its importance, exploring the cause, discussing potential solutions, and presenting the chosen solution. The paragraph also addresses common objections to storytelling in technical presentations, arguing that storytelling is a skill that can be developed with practice and can be applied to any subject matter.
🌟 Sharing Unique Messages Through Public Speaking
In the concluding paragraph, the speaker expresses a dream for all individuals to be able to effectively share their unique messages through public speaking. The speaker believes that unlocking this ability benefits both the speaker and the audience, as it allows for the spread of valuable ideas. The paragraph ends with advice on how to conclude a presentation effectively, using a planted question or a series of actions to signal the end and prompt applause.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Discrimination
💡Presentation
💡PowerPoint
💡Attention Span
💡Storytelling
💡Technical Presentation
💡Ted Talks
💡Software Engineering
💡Self-Confidence
💡Engagement
💡Memorable
Highlights
The importance of delivering powerful presentations without relying on PowerPoint.
The analogy of Dr. Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech to illustrate the impact of presentation style.
The pitfalls of using text-heavy slides and the recommendation to ditch PowerPoint for better engagement.
Personal anecdotes to connect with the audience and share the fear of public speaking.
The use of questions as a technique to maintain audience attention and engagement.
Turning normal sentences into questions to keep the audience interested.
The effectiveness of self-answering questions to transition between topics.
Involving the audience by asking questions and expecting responses to maintain engagement.
The historical significance of storytelling in capturing and retaining attention, exemplified by Jesus and Greek mythology.
The power of stories to make presentations memorable and impactful.
Addressing the common objection that technical presentations cannot incorporate storytelling.
Real-life examples of technical presentations successfully using storytelling to convey complex ideas.
The concept of 'eating your own dog food' in software engineering and its application to presentations.
A simple four-question format to structure presentations for clarity, focus, and memorability.
The idea that every presentation should tell a story, from problem identification to solution recommendation.
The speaker's dream of enabling everyone to share their unique message effectively through public speaking.
Strategies for concluding a presentation effectively, including planting a question and using body language cues.
Transcripts
imagine it's Wednesday the 28th of
August
1963 and we're in the United States of
America specifically Washington DC now
you are a primarily black or
africanamerican audience and you're both
angry and excited you're angry because
people still discriminate against you
based purely on your race there are
signs up saying whites only no
colors but you're also excited because
today you're going to hear your hero the
great Dr Martin Luther King come to
speak to you so imagine you see him walk
on stage and as he walks on a screen
goes on behind him and he says these
Immortal words good afternoon everyone
um I want to talk to you today about the
fact that uh I have have a
dream that uh one that one day this
nation will rise up and live
out the true meaning of its
Creed we hold these truth to be
self-evident that all men are created
equal and I've got some more slides on
that
later two that one day on the Red Hills
of Georgia the sons of former
slaves
and slave
owners will be able to sit down together
at the table of Brotherhood and I'm
going to show you that table later on in
my presentation for those of you taking
notes it'll be on slide
87 three uh we have to wait a few
moments for this animation
I got a bit carried away with
PowerPoint there's so many
features three that one day even the
state of Mississippi a state sweltering
with the heat
of
Injustice you can do all kinds of things
on PowerPoint look at that get words
going right across the screen oppression
that one took me an hour and a
half it's totally worth it we'll be
transformed into an oasis of freedom and
Justice so let's March on
Washington so why did I do this because
I want to show you that even if your
presentation has great content and this
is widely regarded as one of the
greatest speeches of the 20th century
even with great content you can destroy
your message simply by the way you
present it and you can kill it Stone
Dead with PowerPoint and yet this is how
most of the presentations I see in the
business world and particularly
technical presentations happen I see
very smart people standing in front of
other very smart people with just slides
of text and often just reading it why do
we do that isn't there a better way well
yes there is and it starts by ditching
PowerPoint now I have to tell tell you
that I'm by no means a natural speaker
in fact the very first presentation I
ever gave was a complete disaster I was
13 years old at school in England here
in the Netherlands of course it's
different uh my daughter was just six
years old when she gave her first
presentation and she chose to speak
about England so she took some things
with her to show her class she took uh a
large British flag she took a mug with
the Union Jack printed on the side and
she took me along
so that her school friends would know
what an Englishman looks
like now because my wife trains in
presentation skills she taught us some
techniques and was practicing with her
in the runup to it and as a result her
presentation went really well now
compare that to mine when I was a
13-year-old first of all I was nervous
who here would admit to being nervous if
you had to speak in front of such a
large
group that's at least 90% of you it's
natural to be nervous well actually I
was more than nervous I was terrified I
was shaking and I went completely white
maybe the topic I chose didn't help
because I chose to speak on the locked
SR71 Blackbird
aircraft it must have meant something to
me at the time there's worse things for
13-year-old boys to be interested in so
I gave my talk and after a couple
minutes when I finished the teacher said
to me well that wasn't very long can you
you speak some more so I had to speak
spontaneously in front of 30 unimpressed
teenagers about the bloody
Blackbird and so I left there thinking I
would never be able to speak in front of
a group now since then I've leared a few
techniques which enable me to have more
confidence when I speak in front of a
large group and I want to share the two
most important techniques with you today
but before I do that let's agree what
the problem is we know that there are
many boring presentations in the
business world
but why are they boring what's
happening when you stand in front of a
group or anyone stands in front of a
group they have to keep audien's
attention for a certain period of time
now what happens naturally with any
audiences they'll give you their
attention at the start but just
naturally people's attention will drop
unless you're reading slides to them and
then it just nose Dives and it doesn't
matter what you're saying how good your
content is cuz when it gets to hear
nobody's listening anymore so what we
need as presenters is a way that when
people's attention starts to drop we can
pull it back again and that not just
once but multiple times throughout the
presentation how can we do
that well I said I'll tell you two
techniques that I use and the first one
is hidden in this graph
it's questions I ask questions
throughout my
presentation have you noticed you see
how easy it
is I could ask questions like this all
the time and I would keep your attention
wouldn't I but it would be annoying
after a while wouldn't
it see question I that's one way I ask
questions I ask question then uh I turn
a normal sentence into a question just
turn a normal sentence into a question
format another way I can ask questions
is when I ask a question and then answer
it myself for example just now I said
why are so many presentations boring and
that gives me the opportunity to answer
it it's a way to introduce the next
topic and the Third Way is when I ask a
question but then I expect an answer
from you so just now I said who here
would be uh nervous if you had to speak
in front of a large group now I'm not
conducting market research I already
know n the answer it's going to be at
least 90% of people the only reason I
asked a question is to keep your
attention you see question marks are
shaped like Hooks and all I'm doing is
hooking into your brain and drawing your
attention back to me as the
presenter and great orators really great
orators use tricks and techniques to
keep people's attention one of the
greatest presenters of all time one the
greatest speakers perhaps the greatest
was a man who lived 2,000 years ago and
he had crowds following him for days I'm
talking about Jesus he used questions to
keep people's attention questions like
what are people saying about me who do
people say that I am and who do you
think that I am and by doing that he was
keeping people's attention and getting
them thinking but he's not best known
for that what's Jesus best known for in
terms of
speeches he's most famous for the second
technique which is telling stories now
do you see how I use Jesus then as a
bridge from one topic to the
next you might have heard of some of his
stories stories like the Good Samaritan
or the prodical Sun and these are
stories which exist in our culture even
2,000 years later you see stories are
memorable you can go much further back
for example to Greek mythology stories
like the wooden horse of of Troy and who
has heard of the expression Trojan Horse
right just take a look around now you
see the trick even works when you know
about
it that was my own trojan horse in this
presentation so stories are powerful
because they keep people's attention and
they are memorable and because they are
memorable memorable you can use them to
help your audience remember things for
example a few moments ago I told you two
stories the first was about my daughter
when she was at school just shout out
the answer what topic did she speak
about England that's right and when I
told you about when I was a very nervous
13-year-old what topic did I speak
about Blackbird aircraft you see this is
completely useless
information but because but because I
put it in story format you remember it
it stays in your mind so stories are
very powerful to keep people's attention
and to help them remember details
now whenever I tell audiences or people
about the power of Storytelling I always
get the same objection and I heard it
recently when I was speaking at a
company that hires software staff and
all their software staff need to go
through something called the software
introduction course and I was speaking
to the presenters of this course and I
was telling them about storytelling and
one of them raised this objection I
heard all the time he said well listen I
can't tell stories I've got a technical
presentation
and before I could respond two other
people spoke up one of them said well my
topic is software architecture and I
tell the story of how we came to have
the good architecture we have today and
then someone else said well my topic is
software version control which sounds
like the most dull topic on planet Earth
and he said and I tell a story of what
happened when we didn't have good
version control that we released version
one to the customer we later found out
it had a bug so we released version two
to fix that def effect and when we
released version 3 with lots of new
features that first bug reoccurred and I
left there thinking if you can tell
stories on a software introduction
course you can tell stories anywhere the
problem isn't that we can't it's just
that we're not used to it it's like a
muscle we've never used it's like Kiana
Reeves in The Matrix okay so here's a
spoiler alert when when comes out of the
Matrix he realizes that he's never used
his muscles before and he has to learn
over weeks and months to use them and
that's the same with storytelling at the
start it's hard but with practice you'll
be including them naturally in your
presentations so how can you use these
two techniques I'm going to show you now
a very simple
format which if you use will make your
presentations more clear more focused
and much more memorable you simply ask
and answer four
questions the first question is what is
the problem what is the problem that
you're addressing with your presentation
whether it's in your company your
department your school
wherever here's a great opportunity to
tell your first
story story of how you encounter this
problem and then you can tell us why
it's important to you and while you say
this you can also say why it's important
for us because if there's one question
that every audience member has on their
mind during every presentation it's
this what's in it for me you're there
talking all this time taking a half an
hour or an hour of my life I'm never
going to get back why should I listen to
you always tell people why they should
listen that's why for example I just
said using this simple format your
presentations will become more clear
more focused and much more memorable
always tell people where they should
listen to you second
question what's the cause why did this
problem occur here's a great opportunity
to tell your second story a story of how
you got to the bottom of this problem
and really investigated it and found out
what's going
on third
question what
are
possible
solutions and here's an opportunity to
tell multiple stories you say we tried
out solution a and that completely
failed because and then we tried out
solution B and tell the story of how
that seemed to work better and so on and
then finally what's
your
chosen solution
or recommended solution depending on the
content context and if you've already
implemented this you can tell the story
of how it's affecting your original
problem how it's solving it and this
whole format forms a story a story of
how you found a problem how you
investigated it how you tried out
different solutions and how you came to
the format that you're recommending the
solution you're
recommending and this simple format
works for different kinds of
presentations it works for management
presentations it works for technical
presentations and to my surprise it even
works for Ted
Talks because I didn't realize this
until right at the end of my preparation
but my talk actually follows this format
because I started with the problem
boring presentations with Martin Luther
King trying to work out
PowerPoint then I told you the cause we
don't know how to keep an audience's
attention
then I told you possible solutions
questions and storytelling and I've got
one format which includes the lot so
apparently I'm following my own
advice which is a happy
coincidence I'm a software engineer and
in the software world we call this
eating your own dog
food which is why they don't let us
write slogans
[Music]
anymore so why am I telling you this
it's because I also have a dream a dream
based on a conviction that all of you
are unique and all of you have a unique
message within you but sometimes you
don't know how to share that message so
it stays locked inside and that's a
tragedy because if you can share that
message everybody wins you win because
you get a spotlight put on yourself and
your ideas and you gain the kind of
self-confidence you can only get through
effective public public speaking and the
world can win we can win because we get
to hear and potentially Implement your
ideas so I have a dream that one day all
of you will be able to stand up and
speak out that unique true message
within you in a way that keeps your
audience's attention from the first word
to the last and in so doing you'll all
live up to Ted's Creed to share ideas
worth spreading thank
you that was
great
so I have a question
yes it's a fast learner yes
yeah what do you do after giving how do
you leave the stage after giving a great
presentation
how you give a presentation it's always
good if you give a presentation it's
always good to have a planted question
someone who comes on with a question
that you already know about so when you
want when you finish your presentation
uh the best way to finish is just to say
thank you and then everybody knows that
it's finished but if you are in a
situation like this where you're
expecting Applause you can encourage
that I did four things in the very last
second did anyone spot what it was
I said I said thank you very much I took
a little bow I clapped my hands
together and then I took a step back and
in that vacuum you all started
applauding so that's probably a good
place to end thank you very much
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