For many people, the hardest part of a presentation is the very beginning. 
We’re nervous. We step up to the mic or look into the camera and suddenly it’s time to be “on.” There’s strange pressure suddenly to do or be something more than we usually are.

On top of this potential stress, we often sabotage ourselves with opening lines that don’t serve us. Introductions that bore us or don’t really reflect our personalities are an impediment to getting to the content we’re excited about.

So what should we do?

Break your own ice. Throw away the typical opening thank-yous and the long ramp-up to your main point. What do you really care about it in your talk? What does your audience really want to hear?

Say that first!

I haven’t interviewed for a job in a long time, so I was surprised to learn recently that many larger companies use interview software to conduct initial screenings for job candidates.

The candidate sits in front of their computer and activates the link. The program generates the first question, gives the candidate 30 seconds to think about their answer, then turns on the webcam to record the response. Apparently you can pause as long as you like between questions. 

The people I talked to who had experienced this felt strongly that it did not show them at their best. The 30 second wait (which wouldn’t have existed if they were talking to a person) made them more nervous. The ability to pause between questions simply disrupted the flow. And most of all, the lack of nonverbal feedback was unnerving. Talking to a camera instead of a person is hard!

This made me wonder immediately who had designed this software, and what problem they were trying to solve. If I had to guess, they are trying to make sure they can see as many qualified candidates as possible in early rounds of interviewing, and not have to have personnel conduct those interviews. 

But someone has to watch them, right? Does that take a lot less time than just, you know, holding the interview? What is the cost of losing good candidates who don’t show up well in this completely artificial process? And what is the impact when this interview style turns candidates off of the company? As one of the people I spoke to said, “This process was obviously for them, not for me.”

Some tasks can easily be automated. But I’m not sure this is one of them.

Keep it simple. 

Virtual platforms are loading on more and more features, and that can be a great thing.

But don’t be fooled—your 1) compelling content and 2) attention to how you engage the audience are going to count for way more than the virtual bells and whistles.

Helping our clients think about intention, or the outcome you hope to achieve with what you say, is key to our coaching work. 

There are two perfect times to use intention. One: before you begin a high-stakes communication. This could be a speech, a negotiation, or a difficult conversation, anything where you might be nervous about the outcome.

I spoke recently with a woman who was going to be interviewed by a reporter on an issue she’s passionate about. We talked about her intention, “to calmly state my case.”  She didn’t want to get too fired up, or to fall into a trap of badmouthing people on the other side of the issue. She simply wanted to get her ideas across in a calm and compelling way.

The other perfect time to get your intention in gear is when you don’t have time to prepare. You’re rolling along in your day, all is well, and suddenly you’re blindsided by something someone says or does.

Your first reaction doesn’t have to determine what you say. You can take it in and ask yourself, “What do I want the outcome of this interaction to be? What can I say next to get closer to that outcome?”

This pause, this moment of self-awareness, gives us time to correct our course. It’s a gift we can give ourselves and the people around us.

If you’re the leader, a big part of your job is to prioritize. You’ve got to get that broad view of the situation, assess what’s going on, and triage.

When you fail to do this, when you act like everything is the most important thing, you are abdicating your role and leaving your team in the lurch. They’ll start determining what’s really an emergency and what can wait, and their decisions may be at odds with each other.

It can be scary to be the decision-maker, but you’re there to set the course.  

Creating and producing a virtual event in 2021 is not like creating and producing the in-person event you did in 2019. Please, trust me on this.

Everything you are planning will take more time than you think it will.

Everything you are planning will take more practice than you think it will.

Everything you are planning will require, like, three times more communication than you think it will.

And finally, everything you are planning needs at least one back-up plan.

Ignite CSP has been working with a client for the past few weeks on designing and producing virtual events. There are a couple of big take-aways I want to share.

A great thing about virtual events is they are easy to attend. We don’t have to pack, travel, get a hotel, or even leave our couch. 

That is also the bad thing about virtual events. The barrier to participation is so low that the producer needs to promise the moon just to get people to sign up (and this is no guarantee that they’ll actually attend). In a world when we can stream anything, any time, why do we care about showing up for your event?

If you’re the producer, it’s worth spending a good amount of time pondering this question. What’s the purpose of the event? What will pull people to it? What value can you offer them that is irreplaceable?

Is the value in connecting with the other people attending? Is the value in what you will create together while you’re there? Is the value that this event will never happen again? Is the value in the extremely timely information or education they will receive?

If you can’t answer the question “What is the value of this event for my intended audience,” you’re not ready. Go back to the drawing board.

“I judge them all the time, yet I don’t understand them.”

Someone I was talking to recently said this, and the sentence really leapt out at me. There’s a lot here, and it’s so intensely human. At last I hope it is — I’m definitely guilty of it myself.

I wonder if a more revealing way to look at the same sentiment is this:
“I don’t understand them, so I judge them all the time.”

Being judgmental is a failure of empathy and of curiosity. What can we ask or imagine that will bring us closer to compassion than to condemnation?

Ignite CSP’s workshop model is highly interactive. In virtual meetings, we ask people to have their cameras on, to come off mute to participate, and to engage in the chat. We use breakout rooms for small group work and coaching. 

In a recent workshop, one participant never turned their camera on, never spoke, never engaged in the chat, and most tellingly, when we went to breakout rooms, they never left the main room.

What this tells me is that this person accepted the invitation from their boss to attend, but had no intention of taking part. They were clearly occupied doing something else from start to finish.

Many trainings simply don’t ask anything of the participant. The presenter is depositing information that is also captured in text-heavy slides that will be distributed later, so why should you pay attention? The blank-rectangle person in our workshop didn’t realize our approach was different. Clearly they had learned from experience that signing into a training but not needing to hear a word of it was standard operating procedure. 

What they didn’t know was that in our training, the value was in their engagement with the expertise we shared. We use slides sparingly, and they are mostly visual, not text. We don’t record our workshops to be viewed later. It’s now or never.

Here is my plea. Let’s make meetings that matter. Let’s ask more of the people who RSVP—if you say you’re coming, you will contribute, whether it’s a workshop or a staff meeting. And let’s stop expecting people to fill their days with meetings they don’t need to be in. Be discerning about who is asked to come to what, and what they should do while they’re there.

And finally, a pro tip. If you come to one of our workshops, expect to participate. It’s a small group on purpose, and we want to hear from you!

“If you do it in practice, you’ll do it in a game.”

I don’t know who said this originally, but it’s a piece of sports wisdom that jumps right off the page at me. When I came across it recently, the person saying it meant that if you do it right in practice, you’ll do it right in the game.

But the opposite is true, too. (And of course, I’m now not thinking about football but about communication.)

If you phone it in when you practice, you won’t be dynamic when it’s time to do it for real.

If you don’t ground your speech in intention when you practice, you won’t know how when you step up to the microphone.

If you don’t do your whole presentation or speech out loud at least once in practice, something is going to pop up that you didn’t consider and throw you off.

In short, if it’s important enough to stand up in front of people and say it, it’s important enough to spend some time working out the kinks.