How to Knock it out of the Park Each Time you Present

Author and Presentations Coach Jerry Weismann started out mentioning, 16 minutes and 25 seconds changed this person’s life forever. It was Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention representing John Kerry in Boston during July 2004.

Weissman opened up talking about our experience with “death by PowerPoint” which sadly is prevalent today and how we as presenters, trainers and practitioners alike can engage our audience in using his "3 V’s" :

• Verbal - the story you want to convey
• Vocal - your voice and cadence
• Visual - your body language

What Mr. Weismann calls the “Moment of Truth”, from his latest book Power Presenter (Feb 2009) the critical first few seconds when you begin to speak, when appearance, body language and the way you sound account for 93% of the impression you make. What you actually say, accounts for only 7%.

The next portion of the meeting was actually seeing Mr. Weismann apply some of these techniques. The foundation of Power Presenter, is what he calls “Mental Method”, using a combination of content, visual and vocal delivery. We sometimes as presenters fixate on our content, but the audience is judging us by our delivery. Weismann points out that the most important attribute in any presentation is, you guessed it: YOU. He demonstrated this by connecting with the audience with his body language, extending his arm and addressing the person by their first name all while maintaining good eye-contact with that person before going on the next person. He calls this ERA, no, not the Equal Rights Amendment but something very intriguing to learn:

E stands for Eye Connect
R for Reach Out
A for Animation
simply known as ERA (Eye Connect + Reach Out) = Animation.

Throughout the evening event, Mr. Weissman had video clips, some notable examples were the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon Debate, Generals Neal and Schwarzkopf, and Libby Dole with a comparison and contrast of style, delivery, pose and proper cadence.

From my personal experience, I can say I learned some techniques that were different , unique and can be applied as I am sure you learned valuable techniques, that we all can improve our public speaking and delivery. Who would have predicted that just 4.5 years ago, our 44th President of the United States Barack Obama made that historic Boston speech that inspired all of us with his "Moment of Truth".