Five Ways to Slam Business Presentations

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In my line of work, I have always believed that crossing lines between art and science, society and business; and between one discipline and another catalyzes personal and organizational development.

Over the years I have mixed and matched theater skills with presentation skills, improvisation and business negotiating, humor and leadership among others.

Yesterday, on a lazy Sunday afternoon in my hometown, I barged into a workshop on Spoken Word Poetry run at the center for literature, GYaN ADAB in Pune, India.  In the past, I had attended presentations, watched scores of videos of Sarah Kaye and Phil Kay and have loved this art form. The possibilities of tapping into the nuances of this genre and using them for business and leadership communications are enormous.

Spoken Word Poetry, or Slam as it is colloquially called, is a powerful blend of creative writing skills and highly engaging delivery skills. It is poetry and storytelling in one and it hits you right between your eyes and can steal your heart away.  It is raw, romantic and unleashes the authentic you to your audiences of one or many.

Don’t start reciting or speaking until your audiences’ attention has turned towards you. Get up on center stage or across the boardroom table, stand silently until it is time to speak. Doing this allows your anxieties to quell and for people to wind off whatever they might be involved with and give you their eyes and ears. This doesn’t take long and that is why it is called the Five Seconds to Start Rule.

Further quell your anxiety and ground yourself deeper into the performance by planting your feet flat on the ground and keeping them still while you smoothen and calm your breathing. You may slowly look around and relax your upper body. This is called Keep your Feet Still for a While.

When you do look around, depending on the number of faces in your audience, make eye contact with an optimum number of people in the room. Do not just glance over people make sure that you let care and warmth ooze from your eyes. Throughout your performance and delivery look at people and let your feeling show through. This works in two ways; they sense your feelings and recognize that you care and you can keep tab on how the transaction and transfer is occurring. The number of smiles, nods and wide-eyed interest are your measures. Call this the New Insights into the Old Fashioned Eye Contact cliché.

As you speak make sure that your voice comes from the depths of your diaphragm and that you roll your “Rs,” stress your “Ts” and “Ss.”  Since Slam is dependent not just on the quality of the content but on engaging delivery too, it helps to Enunciate Your Words and project them far into the back of the room with or without amplification.

Kudos to the workshop facilitator Shantanu Anand! I loved his analogy of how to add pauses to your presentations and end your slam on a high note.  “Have you seen an old-fashioned locomotive come to a halt on steel rails?” he asked. It doesn’t drop down with a thud like a sack of rice and it doesn’t screech to halt like careening motor car. It roars into the railway station and grows larger in sight while chugging to many slowdowns and stops before its huge, iron wheels grab onto the steel structures beneath it. It comes in “chug, chuggh, chuggghh, pause; chug, chuggh, chuggghh, pause; chug, chuggh, chuggghh, thumping halt!”

In this way when slamming down your Spoken Word Poetry or a Business Presentation take time to bring your spiel to a slow, pause and power-filled halt. Punch and Pound out your Last Few Sentences to increase impact. If the sentence is long shorten your pauses and if the sentences are short then lengthen your pauses. Like “ask  not  what  your  country  can  do  for  you  but ask   what   you   can   do  for   your   country!”

Here’s one of my tiny attempt in print and someday I will render it live because that’s the way to slam!

It is time that you let me out. Long have you been in the habit of keeping me in.

You do realize and recognize that chaining me down makes me wanna’ burst out all the more.

An enemy of yours I am not, my love.

When you will, eventually, unleash me you will learn that I am not anger but your true and trusted love, meant only for you, meant only for you, by you.

You, you nincompoop!

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There!

That’s a little bit about Spoken Word Poetry and how to Slam all your other Business Presentations.

Above all, have fun! 🙂

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Five Ideas to Improve Meeting Productivity

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The whole world is constantly participating in meetings. “Let’s have a meeting,” “I am in a meeting,” “Call you right back after the meeting,”

Five Ideas to Improve Meeting Productivity

They are statements you hear all the time. Sometimes, it makes me wonder if most everyone I know is so often in one meeting or another who then, in heaven’s name, is minding the, proverbial, store? Who is building the bridges and who is baking all the bread in the world?

The truth is that a lot of time, across the world, is being wasted in and during meetings. Should we be able to salvage all the wasted energy from the din and noise generated during meetings then we would have no energy crisis. We’d be cutting down lesser trees, digging up lesser oil and, leaving lesser carbon foot-prints on the face of this lovely planet. The air will be cleaner, the oceans will start cooling down and the birds won’t always have to fly south.

A typical meeting usually starts late and it involves catching up with others, waiting for the late-comer, listening to his excuses and a traffic-report of the city; bringing him up to speed, ordering coffee, re-reading the minutes of the last meeting, plugging the computers, logging onto the net and rushing through the true agenda so as to catch up with the next meeting at another venue…ad nauseam.

If this is even partially true for you then here are five quick ideas to bash up the beast of bad meetings. Five ideas is a good number because it represents the number of sensory inputs and outputs and research in the field of neurosciences has shown that the conscious mind can only juggle and manage seven plus minus two chunks of information at a given moment.

Idea One: Email everyone, a substantial time before the meeting, a five-point agenda that is more illustrative than narrative. Use sketches, diagram and flowcharts because pictures are easier to remember than words. Assign expectations and tasks for every individual. Keep it simple and to the point.

Idea Two: During the meeting issue a little more detailed version of the same illustration to everyone with their roles and tasks color segregated. Allow space for that individual to make and takes notes. Look up Edward De Bono’s ‘Six Thinking Hats’ and use the science behind Five of those hats. Throw out one of the hats or use it as a pan to collect penalties from the late-comers and hecklers in meetings.

Idea Three: Choose one big, hairy goal for the meeting and less than three minor goals to be achieved as outcomes of the meeting. Hang a large sign of the big, hairy goal where everyone can see it before and during the meeting. The large visual aids focus, and like bees to honey, such that everyone will keep directing their conversations to the big, hairy goal. The minor ones will easily fall in place just like dominoes do. You have heard this, “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.”

Idea Four: Allow a few minutes before the meeting ends to stamp “Done!”on the big, hairy goal sign and the small illustrative notices that you sent out. Capture the outcomes of the meeting in an illustrative format and sketch out the measures and the next, big hairy goal for the next meeting. Oops, scratch out the last sentence! Your every meeting should be good enough for you and your team never to meet again.

Idea Five: All research, option generation, plans, milestones, measures are elements of cerebral thinking but true choices are made from the depths of our hearts. Treat each other with respect, kindness and empathy so as to nurture their emotional sides and also allow deeper experience and wisdom to evolve. Sure, shoot down the late-comers and the hecklers too!

Practice these five ideas if you like or chuck them out the window. It is best to just roll up your sleeves and bake that bread, build those bridges or chill by the beach instead of participating in meaningless, chaotic meetings.

Here’s hoping your meetings are always lean, mean and the rest of the year be happy, healthy and and very productive for you and your teams!

Raju Mandhyan
www.mandhyan.com
Unleashing Comunication Excellence!

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