Andrew Hennigan's Blog

In the business world most presentations are accompanied by Powerpoint or Keynote slides. This is so much taken for granted that the first instinct of many people when they are asked to speak is to put together a slide deck. Yet there are many cases where it can be more effective to present without slides. This approach has several advantages. First of all it reduces the amount of preparation overhead. Look around the offices of any large business and you will quite often see people spending way too much time on this activity. I have often wondered what would happen if presentation software could log and report hours of activity so that an organization could measure the overall cost of slide preparation. Better still, not only does it eliminate the time spent making slides, it also gives you more flexibility during the delivery, where you can pivot the presentation more easily in response to previous presentations or inputs from the audience. Perhaps a comment by someone else...

Creators of fiction take great care to avoid leaks, from extra security guards hired to watch over the printing of a much anticipated new book to shooting multiple alternative endings for a TV series so that even the talent doesn't know what happens. But for entrepreneurs, developers and marketers who are trying to pitch an innovative new product, technology, idea or whatever, this is the worst way to approach a presentation. Perhaps in movies you can spring a complete surprise on someone in a literal elevator pitch, and they decide to greenlight it on the spot. Reality is different. People normally distrust new ideas the first time that they see them, but over time they come to accept and then like the new idea simply by being exposed to it. There is an important lesson in this idea. If people need time to get used to a new idea before they accept it then the effective influencer takes care to make sure that this happens. Long before you ask someone to decide about your g...

There are many ways to make your everyday presentations more effective, though most of them involve some effort or at least practice. But there is one short cut that can make anyone a better presenter almost immediately: just buy a clicker and then use it. You might think that you only need one in big venues where you are too far away from the computer to use the keyboard, but this is not true. Even in your everyday office presentations you can boost your effectiveness by quietly using a clicker to change slides and to blank the screen. Why is using a clicker so important? First of all, by using a clicker you eliminate a major source of distraction both for you and the audience. If you are using the keys on your laptop then every time you want to change a slide you have to walk over to the laptop, find the key, press it and then go back to where you were. While you are doing this you have to pause momentarily what you are saying and you break eye contact with the audience. Ev...

No matter how carefully you proofread your own copy, some quite serious typos can slip through the net. But show the copy to someone else and they spot the errors immediately, even if they merely glance at the text. Usually this person who spots the obvious error with a mere glance is your boss, doubling the embarrassment. In workshops I often call this the Favras Effect after the French aristocrat Thomas de Mahy, marquis de Favras, who was hanged on 19 February 1790 for being on the wrong side in the French Revolution. Just before he was hanged he was shown his death sentence, glanced at it and observed "Je vois que vous avez fait trois fautes d'ortographe". -- "I see that you have made three spelling mistakes".  Because of this comment Mahy has since had a reputation for his coolness in difficult circumstances, though it is quite likely that other people in similar situations might also have seen obvious errors that everyone else missed, but eithe...

Analyzing past miscommunications I see that one of the most common causes of failure is when the original thread-starting question contains a well defined question but that question is not answered, or at least not answered in a satisfying way. Sometimes the respondent somehow misses the question, perhaps by reading the message too quickly on their phone.  There is one simple way to avoid this problem. When you receive an email that contains questions mark each distinct question then check that your answer provides an actual answer to each of them. Don't rely on memory; go back and check what they wrote. Quite often the respondent does attempt to reply but they don't actually answer the question, simply adding more information or commentary. You can catch this mistake by asking yourself if the reply is really a direct answer to the question. So, for example, someone asks what is the topic of your speech you should respond something like "My speech is about the impac...

One of the secrets of effective speaking is to be able to tell stories that make your point. Stories are much easier to follow, they have greater impact and they are more memorable to the audience. Ask someone in the audience later which parts of your talk they remember and it will always be the stories. But stories can be undermined by clumsy delivery, so they are weakened if you fumble for words or -- eqully bad -- recite from a memorized script. By far the best way to tell any story is to tell it from the heart, remembering just the story and not the exact words. It might look like this comes naturally to some speakers but it is always the result of years of practice and a deliberate effort to master the art. Anyone can learn to tell stories compellingly. Part of the problem is simply having enough speaking experience, and if you feel that you don't have enough the answer is to speak more often. There really is no alternative. You can't learn to speak by reading a boo...

Though I try to keep up with incoming LinkedIn connection requests there is still a backlog in my pending list. Some are probably spammers and some are just people who have no idea who I am, but there are probably some genuine requests in the list. Looking through the pending requests I realize that many of them would have been accepted immediately if the sender had made it clearer who they were or how our paths crossed. There are, in fact, five handy techniques anyone -- me included -- can use to make it more likely that connection requests are accepted immediately; Personalize the connection message . By far the best way to get a connection request accepted is to personalize the message, clarifying why you want to connect and how you thought of the person. LinkedIn changes the interface regularly but at present the only place you have this option is when you send a connection request from the person's profile, not from search results. You should in any case always look at so...

Watch behind the scenes at any event long enough and sooner or later you'll hear a speaker refuse the microphone, saying "That's ok, I can manage without it."  Perhaps they can 'manage', but they should still use the microphone for reasons that might not be so obvious. People can't hear you . Maybe you could manage to make yourself heard at the back of the room, but this is in fairly ideal circumstances where everyone is quiet, the acoustics are good and you are using full power all the time. Reality is different. Even people standing still in silence still make noise. There are other noise sources, too, like air conditioner fans and equipment cooling fans -- maybe also traffic noise from the street outside. You might also start with a bold clear voice, but most likely you will not sustain it for the entire speech. And don't try asking people if they can hear you. Nobody ever says that they can't hear you. They might even say that they can, bu...

In real life I am one of the speaker coaches at TEDxStockholm. People often ask how they can learn to speak TED style, but to do it just like a TED or TEDx talk they would need more time than they would normally budget for even an important presentation. TEDx speakers often work on their talks months before an event and then invest many hours in preparation and rehearsals. But there are some best practices that we can learn from the TED(x) format that will help in any presentation or talk, including the routine business pitches where you don't have the luxury of having plenty of time and the help of professional coaches. There are many of these practices but there are three which are especially important. Keep it Short . In the TED format all talks are limited to an inflexible maximum of 18 minutes, and many talks are actually much shorter -- some in single digits. This is one of the key elements of the TED success story. Almost all speaking -- and writing -- can be improved...

Most conflicts and tensions in the workplace start with a misunderstood or poorly conceived written message. At one time they were mostly emails but today they can also be text messages sent through sms or messaging apps. Written messages have the massive disadvantage that they convey only the words, without the tone of voice, body language, gestures and other signals that usually complete the message with context. Added to that there is also another layer of cultural uncertainty when the message is sent to someone who does not share the same context. People who receive a message tend to read it in their mind with the most hostile possible tone, seeing conflict, criticism and provocation where none was intended. Perhaps the person writing "What do you mean...?" is not actually annoyed but is simply asking for information. Maybe the person from another country who addresses you in what you believe to be a disrespectful way is not aware of the subtle distinctions in your...

Speaking in large venues isn't the same as speaking in a smaller space and you have to adapt your technique to achieve the best results. Most people are simply concerned about the size of the audience and worry that they will be intimidated. In my experience this is much less of a problem than you might expect because the audience is also further away. There are some other areas where you might find problems that you had not expected but there are some simple best practices to overcome them. Allow time to get into position .  In a larger venue you might need to walk across the stage to reach the place you will be speaking from. Sometimes nervous speakers start too early, while they are still walking. Before the event starts or during rehearsal practice this entrance, making sure that you wait until you are standing where you plan to start speaking before saying anything. Better still, turn to face the audience and count to three before starting. This helps focus attention and ...

You might have noticed that some people introduce you to their other friends while others seem to prefer keeping their friendships separate. Partly this is culturally determined -- in some cultures people are more inclined to try to bring different friends together -- and partly it depends on personality. It's exactly the same in networking. Some people try to connect you to their contacts, while others seem to avoid it, either through inactivity or perhaps deliberate intent. But should you introduce professional connections who don't know each other? Some people fear that by introducing connections to each other they are taking themselves out of the loop and losing power. If connections are separate, the logic seems to be, then both connections have to go through them. This is actually a very bad idea and in normal real-world scenarios you are always better off introducing connections, at least where it makes sense. There are several reasons for this: Being a connector ...

One situation that worries many speakers is being asked to make an impromptu speech without preparation. This is not really such a difficult situation because normally you will be asked to speak about some topic on which you have something interesting to say. If you founded a startup you will be asked to talk about your company and you should be able to talk about that topic without any extra preparation. What you can and should be doing is to anticipate likely topics and prepare the core messages for each of them. But what if you are asked to speak about a subject where you have no knowledge or expertise? In any normal situation you best bet would be to explain why you can't talk about that topic and either offer to speak on another topic or suggest another speaker. The only real-world case where you might reasonably be asked to speak about any random topic would be in a competition or to win some kind of bet. This sounds very challenging but it is not as hard as it might ...

When I speak about networking one common question is how to avoid spending too much time on this activity. Wouldn't you have no time left for your day job if you do all the things that networking lectures and books describe? In reality this problem is very easy to solve. Humans naturally tend to co-operate in social networks exactly because the benefits outweigh the costs. They have to because that is the whole point. Long before the costs exceed the benefits you have to take corrective action. One simple practical method is to set some boundaries. Often this takes the form of a time budget. You might decide that you will spend half an hour a week on networking activities and meet someone for an informal networking lunch two times a month. You might also decide to attend one event every second week. An interesting side effect of this is that it tends to help you focus on the activities that are useful. Most of us go to some mingling evenings mostly out of inertia, or an inab...

One simple, practical tip that will make almost any speech, presentation, talk or pitch more effective is to talk to the audience beforehand. You don't need to talk to everyone and you don't need to talk to them very long, but you do need to establish contact. Exactly how you do this depends on the situation. In some events there might be a mingle, a breakfast or a lunch before you speak, and this is a great opportunity to meet some of the people in the audience. All you need to do is to introduce yourself and mention that you are one of the speakers, perhaps explaining very briefly what you will talk about. You might be asked one or two questions at this point, which is a very good sign. Why you should do this is very interesting, because it works on at least three different levels. First of all, by meeting some people in the audience at least those people will be more open to listening to what you say. It is a natural human reaction to be wary of strangers, so when...

One of the challenges of making a speech, pitch or presentation is to make it memorable. To the speaker every talk seems memorable because they had to learn it. To the audience it is maybe just one of dozens of pitches that they will hear that day and soon forgotten. Most people turn to stories to make their talks memorable, and this is an excellent idea because if people are going to remember anything it will be the stories. But there is another technique that can also make your content more memorable: use props during the presentation. Used appropriately a simple prop can make a difference between a compelling presentation and a slide show. More than once when talking about notes I have used a small notebook as a prop. On other occasions I have used sections of rubber seal, an old X ray film, a Walkman, a piece of volcanic rock and many other simple props. Shown at the right time and in the right way these props add an extra dimension to the talk and at the same time they prov...

In networking you can't always get introduced to another person so contacting them directly is unavoidable. But there are good ways and bad ways to do this. Looking through some poorly-crafted cold messages recently I realize that there are some common expressions that ring alarm bells. One of my favorites is when people suggest connecting because "we have similar interests" . What's wrong with that? The problem is that, rightly or wrongly, it looks very spammy. A spammy message is one that could be sent to thousands of people without being changed and that sends the wrong message. It also suggests that you have no idea what I do. If we really do have similar interests why are you unable to name even one of them. What makes this worse is that the person sending this message often hasn't even read my profile. I suspect that they are just sending the same message to thousands of people and literally have no idea who they are talking to. There is a good lit...

Every day on social media I see pictures taken at events where the face of the speaker is hidden in the darkness. Every. Day. This is both frustrating for the speakers, who might otherwise have been proud of the photos. It's also a wasted opportunity for the organizers, who fail to capitalize on the natural inclination of the audience to promote the event through their own social accounts. But why is the speaker's face so often in darkness? To the immensely adaptable human eye the face is perfectly visible in the room, but to the average smartphone camera the dominant source of light in the room is the projection screen. Adjusting the exposure to adapt to the screen brightness inevitably means plunging the rest of the room into darkness. Speakers can't really do very much about this problem beyond complaining to the organizers and sending them a copy of this post. They could adopt slides that are less bright -- light text on a dark background is the best -- and by bl...

When I am coaching people who are going to speak at a major event I always recommend that they practice their talks in a setting as close as possible to the real thing. This doesn't mean that you need to find a spare opera house or stadium to practice in, but that you arrange your own office or practice room so that critical things are in the right place. Just what exactly are these "critical things"? When you speak at any reasonably-sized event there will usually be two video monitors on the floor of the stage in front of you. The screen on the left usually shows what is on the big screen behind you so that you never need to turn round. The screen on the right is the countdown clock showing how much time is left. If you are not used to using monitors the problem is that you will not include them in your usual 'scan' of the room and you might miss that the slide didn't change or don't notice the numbers turning read on the timer. To simulate this ...

Sometimes serious problems are caused or at least aggravated by small errors that could have easily been avoided. Recently presenters at the Oscars ceremony briefly misidentified La La Land as the Best Picture because of a mixup with the envelopes. As so often happens, the mistake was the result of a chain of errors. The representative of PriceWaterhouseCoopers should have handed the right envelope to Warren Beatty, who in turn could have noticed that the card did not say "Best Picture". But any system should be designed so that one error is not enough to cause a serious problem. There should have been additional checks in place to ensure that if the wrong envelope was given to the presenter they would simply ask for the right one. Looking at photos of the ceremony it is very clear that poor design contributed to this mishap. On both the envelope and on the card inside the critical line "Best Picture" is printed in a very small font that is barely legible un...

 In a 2013 post How to Deliver Impromptu Speeches Without Anxiety I advocated preparing in advance for predictable requests to speak. If you are a startup founder, an explorer or a novelist you can easily imagine what people want you to talk about and prepare in advance. Preparing in advance is immensely useful, but to improve your speaking skills to another level you need to master the ability to improvise on a broader range of topics. Clearly they have to be topics you know something about, so reading and listening to a variety of content will be useful. But that preparation alone is not enough; you will also need to improve your technique and there are three fairly simple rules that will help you do just that. Start With an Idea . A speech will be much stronger when it is constructed around a well-formed idea -- you might recognize this as being at the heart of the success of the TED/TEDx format. Just talking about a subject in general might be simpler but if you start w...

When Adobe demonstrated their Project VoCo at the MAX event in November the media focused mostly on the downside risks, though the tool potentially has many legitimate uses. All you have to do is feed this experimental audio workstation tool a sample recording of someone speaking then you can rewrite the text and the audio will be automatically corrected, even creating new words with the correct voice. For media production companies this kind of tool will be immensely useful, making it possible to correct voiceovers and dialog without having to bring the talent back into the studio. Actors might be less enthusiastic and will have to consider this possibility in their contracts. But much of the media coverage focused on dark applications of this technology. With this tool you can literally put words in someone's mouth, editing a speech so that someone appears to say something they didn't. Sooner of later someone will actually do this in the wild, but I suspect that the ...

At TED and TEDx talks, major product launches and other big-budget events you will notice that the presentation designers often opt for white writing on a black background. There are actually good reasons for this. To many people it simply looks cool and professional, but there are also practical choices that make this style appealing. One of the most compelling is that a white background adds a significant amount of light to the room. In a major conference where there are plenty of spotlights on the speaker and the room is professionally lit this does not make much impact, but in small and medium size events or in company meeting rooms you might notice that the brightness of modern projectors can be an issue. One way to deal with this problem is to have a fairly constant intensity presentation where there are no slides that are significantly darker, but this can be monotonous. If you blank to black the screen when the images are not needed the impact is even worse. Back in the ...

When the first edition of my book about professional networking, Payforward Networking , was first published in 2015  it was based on the workshops I did for business school students and focused mainly on the core concepts that could be taught in one day. So it explained why networking is so important, how it works and ways of doing it in real life and online, but it didn't focus so much on details like practical mingling tips or the needs of specific groups. But at the end of the book there was an extra chapter where I invited readers to ask about any other aspects of networking they were interested in. If the reader's question wasn't answered by the book I would, I promised, answer it either directly or through the writing of a new chapter. Many people took up this offer and asked questions that inspired new chapters. I sent a draft of each new chapter to the person who first suggested it. Now all of these additional chapters have been gathered together in the revi...