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On his blog, Presentation Zen author Garr Reynolds gives well-deserved credit to Bill Gates for improving his presentations over the years. Being the master of gorgeous visuals, Reynolds of course addresses the tremendous improvement of Bill Gates’ slides. Gates slides now include full screen pictures, minimal text and greatly simplified data. Having attractive slides has an overwhelmingly positive visual impact on a presentation. And since sight is the sense we as humans seem to trust the most, improving slides is very important.

Reynolds also points out from the 2009 presentation by Bill and Melinda Gates presentation and the 2010 Ted presentation by Bill Gates, that Bill’s delivery has gotten better. As Reynolds notes, in 2010 Gates is no longer able to read his presentation so he make much better eye contact with the audience. The truth I suspect is that Gates never needed a script in the first place with either presentation. Gates knows this material well – it’s very much internalized. The improved eye contact helps Gates make a better connection with the audience and he even appears more relaxed as a result.

There’s one other improvement between the 2009 and the 2010 speech that Reynolds doesn’t point out but which deserves attention: In the 2010 presentation, Bill Gates skips what I call the “blah, blah, blah opening.” In the 2009 presentation, Gates starts by saying, “Well, good evening. It’s great to see all of you here. If you came for the hockey game…” which is what I would classify as the blah, blah, blah start. Gates spent 15 seconds saying trite, disengaging blather that was totally unneeded, did nothing to connect him to the audience, and provided no value to the topic on which he spoke. Contrast that with how Gates started his TED talk where his first words were, “I’m going to talk today about energy and climate.” Boom. There it is. No blah, blah, blah. He got right to his talk. Such a start is a vast improvement over lame references that get a nervous, uncomfortable laugh from the audience. It makes the audience sit up and pay attention – and don’t we all appreciate it when we know a speaker isn’t wasting their time.

But to get an even bigger improvement, I’d like to challenge Gates to do something that few executives dare to do – but when done, is extremely powerful. To improve even more, I suggest Gates start with a personal story.

The 2009 presentation started with a film, pointing to individual people who were “Living Proof” that financial aid to Africa is having a positive impact on real people. The film had the words “Living Proof” tagging individuals featured in the film. The film was very powerful. Now, imagine the impact Gates could have had if he’d started with a personal story about his real life encounter with one of these individuals who is “Living Proof” that financial aid works. It would be easy for him to tell such a story because he lived the event. Being more at ease would help him and his audience. In the 2010 speech on energy and climate imagine Gates really grabbing the attention of the audience by telling the story of seeing school boys studying under the street lights because they had no electricity. Audience members would be naturally more drawn in to such as story. While Gates dropped the blah, blah, blah start, which was a big improvement, a story would have been even better in engaging the hearts and minds of the listeners.

Executives and technologist are often reticent to include personal stories in their presentations. After all, many of them are successful because of their wonderfully logical brains. But all humans, technical and nontechnical, are wired by emotions. Tapping into that emotion makes for better connections and engagement.

Bravo to Bill Gates for being open to improving his presentation graphics and his speech style. I’d love to see him take it up one more notch, so that next year, I’m writing about his further transformation of audience engagement by telling a personal story.

(To see Garr Reynold’s post go to http://ht.ly/2vUsK.)

So how about you? Are you willing to get out of your comfort zone? Can you change your slides so that instead of bullets, you have full screen picture, minimal text and simplified data? Can you trust yourself to know your material and not rely on reading your notes when you address your audience? Can you resist the temptation of starting with the blah, blah, blah opening? Are you willing to be different and connect with your audience by telling a personal story? If you are, send me links to your speeches so I can praise you in future articles! If you need help, come see me at Communications for Everyone and let’s talk!

Negotiating skills are crucial to dealing with every-day situations, both at work and at home. When I first became active in creative real estate, I realized my negotiating skill set was very weak and needed immediate improvement. As any seasoned, real estate professional will tell you, honing your negotiation skills is like giving yourself an immediate raise. And learning to listen effectively is one of the most important skills you can master.

Clearly the skills involved in negotiation and effective listening are close cousins. Both are vital for a successful career. Henry Kissinger, one of the United States most respected negotiators, commented that listening is the key to success at the bargaining table.

In negotiations, we often concentrate on positions rather than interests. The result is an outcome that does not extract the greatest possible value out of the process. Moreover, you may inadvertently damage an important relationship. Effective negotiation dramatically affects the perceived value of the goods or services we are buying or selling. When you’re selling, it raises the perceived value of your product or service. When buying, it can lower the perceived value. Whether buying or selling, the style of negotiation is of prime importance.

Every negotiation involves an element of conflict: Two sides must face-off before any negotiation can begin. When a high degree of concern is expressed for the substance of the negotiation and a low degree of concern is expressed for the relationship of the parties, a defeatist behaviour pattern is produced. This is characterized by pressure, intimidation, adversarial relationships and an attempt to get as much as possible as soon as possible.

Avoiding defeatist attitudes at the negotiating table is simply a matter of a little planning. Find something in the deal that is not important to you but is important for your counterpart. When things are getting sticky and about to spiral out of control, concede the unimportant element to your counterpart. Often times, this is enough to clinch the deal in your favor. It will, at least, allow you to proceed in a more constructive manner.

And while your planning, ensure you have an exit strategy. If everything goes against you, you will be saved by this little bit of contingency planning.

Improving your communication skills means not just becoming a better listener, but learning to listen to what is not being said. It is said that 90% of communication is non-verbal. If you’ve nothing to say, stay silent. Learn to emphasize or reinforce what you are saying through your body language and demeanor. Carefully watch your conterpart’s body language to gauge what they are really thinking.

As always, practice makes perfect so set some time aside with your colleagues to work through some negotiating games and training. Your negotiating skills will improve quickly if you practice when you’re not under the gun.

Last but not least, the better your negotiating skill set, the easier and more enjoyable your relationships will be. You will find that it’s easier to agree and, more importantly, to disagree with each other. Ultimately, you’ll be far better prepared to negotiate the curves that life throws your way.

Are you frightened of speaking in public? You’re not alone. Being nervous isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If you harness it, you can have access to a pool of energy to help you perform at your best. The problem arises when you are so nervous that it inhibits your ability to function and remember what you were going to say.

In this article we look at tips for overcoming your fear of public speaking being (1) smile (2) learn from your mistakes and (3) use a visual memory technique.

Tip 1: Smile

Pull your shoulders back, breathe deeply, hold your chin up and paste a huge smile on your face. Try it now. It is impossible to feel either down or nervous while you are doing this. Hold that pose when you walk up to the podium to begin your presentation and you will feel much better. You will find that the bigger and the sillier the grin that you paste on your face, the more difficult it is to feel any negative emotion.

One of the secrets presenters learn early on is that the audience ends up in exactly the same emotional state as the presenter. So if you look like you are happy and having a good time, that is how the audience will feel too.

Tip 2: There Is No Such Thing As Failure, Just Feedback

Every presenter has made mistakes. The key is to learn from them and not repeat them in future presentations. I have:

• Been told I speak too fast – so I slowed down the speed of my delivery.
• Told a joke that has fallen flat. It was a joke about lawyers to an audience of lawyers – so I no longer tell jokes about a profession to the profession I am talking to.
• Been disrespectful about someone and not realised they were in the audience – so I don’t do that anymore.
• Been flippant and had my comment taken seriously – so I don’t do that anymore.

From each of these mistakes, I have learned and changed the way I do things to ultimately become the presenter that I am today. Some of these mistakes are things that I look back on and I feel appalled that I made them, but in my inexperience I knew no better. The whole aim of gaining experience is to make mistakes and improve.

It is unrealistic to think you can start presenting and not make mistakes. Even today after 20 years of presenting I still sometimes make a mistake. The difference now is that I can recover from them more quickly than I used to.

Tip 3: Use A Visual Memory Technique

There are visual memory techniques you can use to remember presentations. I have used them myself for presentations running as long as 3 days. When you forget where you are up to, you quickly close your eyes (to the audience it looks like a long blink), look at your visual memory stack and remember where you are up to. There are people who will teach you how to do these.

In effect it is as simple as making up a story book picture in your head about your presentation and then remembering where in the story you are up to.

I have successfully used each of these tips to help me while giving presentations. I trust they will help you too.