Art of Speaking Business

I received an email response Jeremy Jones, a former teacher, who had some great tips for overcoming nervousness. He says to: make it fun, tell stories, and highlight an audience member.

I included almost all of his email because he seemed so passionate about his work. The first part explain his background (and is very inspiring) and in the second part he explains his tips.

Background:

I recruit teachers for a charter school network in Houston, Texas and so I am constantly giving presentations and always persuading people to join our team or at least advocate for us. We are a special organization and our accomplishments often speak for themselves (100% of our students, of whom 86% are first generation college bound and 92% are low-income, go to college!).

Before moving into this role however, I taught 6th grade math and science for three years and there might not be any public speaking role more demanding than figuring out how to say and show things to a group of 11 and 12 year olds.

f you don’t engage your students, your audience, not only will they not learn anything, but your frustrations will mount and you will hate your job. Being a teacher, I had to give a presentation 180 school days out of the year and become pretty good and confident being in front of people.

My tips:

1) Make it fun.

Figuring out a way to make fractions fun was tough, but when I finally did, I had them hooked and I enjoyed the day much better also. Mood drives so much of your presentation and determines the interactions you have with the audience. By planning in such a way that made at least part of my lesson fun, I was more likely to be excited, instead of worried, about how my day would go.
2) Tell stories.

I would constantly tell stories about how math happened in my life everyday. I found that telling stories not only created a bond between my students and I, but they gave my students a real context for what I was saying. I also found that by beginning with a story, I naturally relaxed before dispensing the technical stuff.
3) Highlight an audience member.

I think it is great to make a deeper connection to an individual audience member. It not only makes that particular person feel special, but you feel less anxious because you have an ally now and the audience dynamic will shift as well because you’re seen as a more personable character instead of a lecturer. Presenting for strangers is a scary thing and if you can at least get to know one person in your audience right off the bat, you feel more at ease.

Jeremy R. Jones
YES Prep Public Schools
Houston, Texas

Thanks Jeremy for the work that you do! Also, I appreciate that you took the time to send the tips. I couldn’t agree with you more about your tips. If I had more time on the show I might have included these and others!

Are you wondering what Pecha Kucha is exactly?

You should check out this great video presentation that explains Pecha Kucha and demonstrates it done by Allison Lewis of Spiral Training & Associates Ltd. There’s also another somewhat “famous” example of Pecha Kucha by Daniel PInk (Wired Magazine). If you are really interested you might read this post about Pecha Kucha from Garr Reynold’s blog.

Of course, I’d prefer you listen to my podcast this week (Hoochy Coochy? No. It’s Pecha Kucha!) on The Public Speaker, I also talk what Pecha Kucha (and Ignite) are but more importantly I talk about the pros and cons of these presentation formats. If you haven’t listened to the show, go ahead, it’s only about 7 minutes. (I’ll wait…<wink>)

In a nutshell, the talks that use this format are quick (5-6 minutes), concise and if they are good, use great images. I highly recommend giving this technique a try; even if only to strengthen and build your presentation skills.

In this blog, I wanted to give you an opportunity to see it for yourself. Keep in mind each one is only six minutes and 40 seconds long. By the way in my other blog, Art of Speaking Science, I provide examples of Ignite presentations.

The first presentation come from a designer. Pecha Kucha was originally created with this group in mind so I thought it would be good see that first. Here it is. The sound isn’t that good, but it’s one of the better examples of Pecha Kucha that I have seen online.

This next one is from a artist. It doesn’t follow the time limit, but it still is a Pecha Kucha style presentation. I liked this one because the animations make the images more dynamic. It’s interesting content too for designers and artists.

This last one below from Rahul Nath, a guy who got creative about asking for work. He created his industrial design portfolio using Pecha Kucha. He shows off his work, then asks for work. I thought I’d help him out by posting it here too. Maybe one of you will need him for a project?

I hope you enjoyed watching these and I hope that you might have picked up an idea or two about making your presentations better or how you might be able to use Pecha Kucha for one of your projects that you are working on.

Maybe I’ve even motivated you to give it a try? I hope so.  Tell us about your Pecha Kucha experiences.