Ep 42 Should I Us a Flipchart?

When should you use a flip chart when giving a presentation?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

Today's questions come from my colleagues over@the good website. Questions about publicspeaking.com and I'll link to that in the show notes. It's questions about publicspeaking.com first question is when should I use a flip chart? Now, flip charts, I think, can be quite effective in many situations for presentations. It's especially useful in small groups, typically more than one, because if it's just one person, you can draw on a piece of paper in front of them. But if you're standing and it's a small group, up to, say, 20, and everybody can clearly see the flip chart, it can be an excellent way of making a point. Here's partly why I like flip charts. Because I don't care how smart you are, how good a drawer you are, it's very hard to draw five lines at once. Think of a typical PowerPoint slide with a graph. It may have five different colors tracking sales movements every day for three quarters. You can't do that when you're using a flip chart. It forces you, if you have one marker in your hand, to really focus on one thing at a time. Well, guess who that's easier for? It's not just easier for you, the speaker. If you're drawing something or writing something on a flip chart, it is also much easier for the audience because they are focusing on just one thing at a time. So it typically ends up being a vastly less complex communication of an idea and a data when you're using a flip chart than a typical PowerPoint slide. Now, this doesn't mean you can't do exactly the same thing with PowerPoint. But the problem is most people just cannot resist the temptation to get overly complex and add in more and more variables and more color codes when they're putting together a PowerPoint slide. You don't feel that temptation to when you're using a chart. Now, there are some times when I wouldn't use a chart. If you're in front of a large audience and there's no camera on you and it's not being magnified to the whole group where they can see it easily, they're not going to be able to see it. Like any visual aid, if people can't see it, it's kind of a waste of time. I wouldn't do that. But there are exceptions. I've seen Anthony Robbins in front of 10,000 people use a flip chart. But he has a camera person zooming in on him and that camera is then showing what it is on his chart on a gigantic screen. So in that case it works. So by all means, use flip chart. I wouldn't use it as a crux. I wouldn't just write words up on it. But when you're describing visually what's happening, if you want to say, okay, here's where our sales were when we started a year ago and it's, you know, we sold 10 units and it's $10, here's where we are today and it's a million and you're showing it going way, way, way up. And it's really just one relationship and two variables. That huge swoosh up can be powerful in cementing that the idea in the mind of the audience. So flip charts I believe are for most people most of the time vastly superior to PowerPoint sites. And it's not because I'm anti PowerPoint, it's just that it automatically disciplines you to slow down, to focus on one thing at a time and to make it concrete and not overly complex. So all in favor of flip charts.

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More questions coming from PublicSpeaking questions.com excuse me, questions about publicspeaking.com this next question what is the role of the introducer? At some point, if you haven't already in your career been asked to introduce someone, you will be. And this does make people nervous because it is a type of public speaking, but it's not you giving a whole presentation. It's typically brief, but it's still something you need to plan for and you need to prepare for. Keep this in mind. Your job as an introducer is to make the audience more receptive to hearing the speaker, to make them understand why they're hearing the speaker, to make them want to hear from the speaker, to whet their appetite to hearing more from the speaker. That's the job. It is not to tell the audience every single thing this speaker has ever done. It's not to go through their whole bio. It's not to talk about what they majored in and their double major for their bachelor's degree. It is not to simply read the bio as it was sent to you or as it was downloaded from a website. So there is an art to this and I do recommend you still rehearse. I do recommend that you practice on video. And after you do that, ask yourself, does this truly whet my appetite to want to hear what this speaker has to say? If the answer is yes, then you have likely done an excellent job of introducing this speaker. There's also the issue of proportionality. If you're introducing a speaker who's going to be leading a workshop for the next eight hours, then spending three or four minutes introducing them is entirely appropriate. Going into a little more detail to your audience. But if someone is giving a 10 or 20 minute speech, you shouldn't be speaking for five minutes introducing them. That is overkill. Try to do it in 30, maybe 45 seconds. There needs to be some aspect of proportionality there in order for it really to make sense.

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More questions coming to you from the excellent website Questions about public speaking.com what's the difference between a speaker's bio and an introduction? Well, it's the difference between what someone can read when there's no one talking to them and they have plenty of time and no distractions versus what someone is hearing when they're thinking about other things and they're ready for a speaker. So in very rare situations, should your speaker bio be the very same thing you ask someone to use when introducing you? Now what I try to do is have several introductions. I try to tailor the introduction for every speaking audience so you can make it more relevant. So if you're talking to a convention of storage facility manufacturers, then talk about the fact that you perhaps have the number one course on storage, manufacturing or managers online and that you were the top rated speaker at their conference three years ago. Talk about things that are of interest to that audience, that boost your credibility for speaking to that audience on that topic. You also need to tailor it for length. If I am going on a talk radio show and it's a three minute hit, I certainly don't want to give the the news anchor or the talk show host a bio that would take 90 seconds to read. So I'm very careful to give them something that can be read in a conversational way in about 20 seconds. If I'm the big keynote speaker, 90 minutes with a half an hour Q and A and I'm going to be in front of an audience for two and a half hours. Then I may go a little longer with the bio. But again, it's not the full bio. They're not going to hear where I went to college and various universities where I've lectured because it's simply not going to be relevant to that audience. It's not going to be interesting to that audience. Here's what you need to think about when you are writing your introduction. And by the way, you should write your own introduction. It's not arrogant, it's not rude. It is you actually helping the person introduce you. And you're helping the program. You're helping your speech too. You need to be writing your own introduction. And after every sentence, put yourself in the shoes of an audience member and say so what? And if you don't have a good answer for that, chances are it's not interesting. So if you're there talking about marketing and you have a philosophy degree from some prestigious university, chances are these marketers don't care about that. They care about sales and how you're going to help them market more effectively. Don't ask the introducer to go through your impressive academic credentials if it's not really relevant to what you're doing or what you think the audience interested in. And here's the other key. When you are preparing your introduction, you need to read it out loud, print it out, or use a computer screen. Read it out loud and ask yourself, are there any words that are too hard to say? Is it too long of a sentence? Does it make sense? And while I read it silently and it only seemed to take 10 seconds, now that I'm reading it out loud, I realize it takes a minute and ten seconds. It's too long. So if you really want to be prepared, I would read it out loud. Now I do know some speakers who actually demand that the introducer read it word for word. I don't like to go that far because I feel that restricts the introducer and a good introducer will put a little flavor, a little personality into it. Perhaps go through just one brief anecdote of how that person met you and talked about something in a meaningful way. So I don't like to actually force the introducer to be that regimented and to read my introduction word for word. But I do know professional speaker, the late Dan Poynter. That was one of his requests anytime he spoke. He was the self publishing guru who has passed away recently. I do recommend that you give thought to the introduction, but certainly give some leeway to the person. Now, one other tip that I do is I will actually print the introduction in very large font and fill up a whole sheet of paper. And I'll give that, I'll give a copy of the introduction to the person introducing me. It makes their life a lot easier. Now, the final question we are taking today from questions about publicspeaking.com is should I thank the introducer? Now, you see this all the time. There's some glowing introduction. The speaker gets up, why, thank you, Jim, for that wonderful, thoughtful, generous introduction. And here's the problem. Even if you didn't write it, a lot of people think you did. So it comes across as hollow and insincere. Number one. Number two, everyone's expecting you to say that. Therefore number three, it's not interesting. And number four, when you're saying something that isn't interesting, that's a new idea. What you're really doing, inviting people to pull out their cell phone and do a little multitasking and check their email because they know you haven't said anything important to them yet. You're just sort of going through these throat clearing exercises. You're just going through the motions. So my recommendation, don't thank the introducer. If you do, thank them in the middle of your presentation in a way that is sincere and meaningful. I mean, what did you expect them to do, Trash you and say, here's some bum who's going to talk to us about something I don't know anything about? I mean, we didn't expect an introducer to say that. So just thanking someone for showing up doesn't seem particularly interesting or meaningful to most people. Everything you say as a speaker and as a presenter should be meaningful at some level. Otherwise, why are we going through the motion? So please, please keep that in mind. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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