Welcome to the second part of the course on delivery, the one that has to do with voice, space, gestures, posture, stuff like that. So before we begin, I would like to remind you of a psychological research study that I've actually shared with you before in the very first lecture of this specialization. In the lecture that has to do with script writing, storytelling. And there was a piece of research done by Stephen Kosslyn about PowerPoint presentations' flaws and failures. Now, let me remind you quickly about the methodology. What they did, they gathered around 200 people. And they've distributed a huge list of all the possible flaws and failures of PowerPoint. And then they asked whether any of those flaws and failures are widespread and annoying. And this I think is the most interesting part of it, because what we would like to avoid would like to avoid the most annoying problems, not necessarily the most widespread. Some of them are actually quite benign. So behold, the list of top most annoying PowerPoint problems from Steven Kosslyn. Thing number five, fail to pay attention to the audience's feedback. And I think I don't know why they put feedback in rabbit ears, but I think this is huge. This is very important, and I am going to dedicate the whole next week to this particular subject. How do we interact with the audience? How do we pay attention to the feedback of the audience, raised hands, puzzled look, fidgeting, etc, etc? Thing number four, presented slides with a lot of text and then proceeded to talk while they walk. [LAUGH] This is precisely what I'm doing now. So ensure they know that this is a thing to avoid. Think number three, went over the allotted time or brush to finish in time. Thing to do with pace and not observing time limits, we're going to discuss it in this session. Thing number two, went through the presentation too slowly. Same thing has to do with pace, how fast should you go? Some people are sluggish, some people are just, turbocharged and they lose the audience. So what's the correct pace? And problem number one, is once again, read word by word from the notes or from slides themselves. And this thing we're going to discuss in this segment of the course. And there's another research study that I would like to share with you, which uses different methodology and that explains a different result. This is a study done by the actual medical doctors. I mean, how cool is that? They were collecting feedback forms over four years I think and they have analyzed feedback forms for 44 presentations. 44 means the amount of presentations analyzed not the amount of feedback forms received. And these are the top five, the most commented on things on medical conferences, which I think should reflect on any kind of technical conference. Medicine is a highly specialized field. They will comment on voice clarity, pace, eye contact, engagement and a few other things. There were lots and lots very long others which I'm not going to discuss here. Say voice, this is the most commented thing. Comments in gray means positive comments, and red means negative comments. Second was clarity, and people were typical complimenting speakers who were very clear with their presentations. Pace is important not to pause not so slow, just right. Eye contact, very important this week. And finally, engagement, speakers engagement, passion for his or her subject. So and this is what more or less we're going to discuss during this week. These are the most important things according to well, medical doctors. So before we begin, one more thing, we have to have some principles because without principles it's going to be chaos, right? So principle number one, I think this is a very important belief to have. You are the most important person in the room. Within that 15 minutes or, one hour or, I don't know, a week, probably, if you do week long seminars. You are the most important person in the room which means that you have to make yourself comfortable. You are responsible for the whole group, you are the leader of the group for this 15 minute slot. So if you're not comfortable, nobody else's comfortable, so make yourself comfortable. If there's anything bothering you, if there's I don't know, clicker malfunction or I don't know, you don't like the microphone, please at least try to fix that one. Somethings just cannot be fixed, but I mean, at least try it. Please do make yourself comfortable. If you need a glass of water, don't postpone, don't apologize, just go right there and take, I don't want a glass of water. But go and take that glass of water, my glass of water stands right there. Do not compromise on that, all right? At least, try to fix things before going on further. If you are uncomfortable, it's kind of visible, so fix it. Thing number two, presentations are about exerting influence and it's also about being influenced. Now let me explain this, presentations drive change. We change things, we change the audience. And it's a bit like pressing the button in an elevator or maybe on your computer. What you do is you start pressing the button, and then you, this is unconscious, you feel this feedback from the button. The button is giving interrupt, I think auto springs down there, which gives you a little push back. And this is how you know that the button is working, it'll just goes down. No, it sort of stays there. And you press and press and press until it cannot be, until it clicks actually. And then it gives you a an enormous amount of push back, it says my God, I cannot be pressed any further. This is how buttons work and this is more or less how human beings work. You push and then you feel this push back from the audience. And then at certain point, you feel a lot of push back and that means that you cannot go any further. That means that your session ends here, you just said let's just push the button. And you don't push the button like this, right? It's not a game, you're playing it. Well, I mean, if you feel giggly, you might do it, but it's not a show. You're not showing off, you're just changing things from this position to this position. And that resistance you receive from the audience is very helpful. Be open to that feedback, you have to be open to receive whatever the audience has to say as a result of your presentation. And they are communicating with you all the time non-verbally. So observe them, you give them your material and the material was like medium. And they sort of have push back through that material and you receive that feedback and as a result of this feedback, you actually change your material. If you present the same presentation over and over to different groups of people, little by little it changes because you observe the audience's reactions. And you amplify things that work and you remove things that don't work. So this is how presentations, business works. I know there are one time presentations, but even with them you sort of adjust your material for the audience. So it's a process of constant refinement, you are pressing the button and the button is actually pressing you at the same time. If you're not learning from them if you're not learning from that tactile feedback. That means that you will not be able to press the button, nobody is learning from you. So keep that in mind. And thing number three, which actually follows logically from the previous part. It means that you need to oscillate, you need to shift your attention all the time. You cannot stay within yourself, you cannot be self-absorbed. You can not spend too much time thinking about the audience, and you most certainly cannot spend too much time thinking about the material. You need to move back and forth. You move from monologue to what they call a semi-scripted dialogue. It means that the audience is participating in a conversation. So it's you, how am I feeling, what am I thinking? And then them, how are they feeling? What are they saying? And then my material, am I on track? What's next? And then you oscillate. And I think when you observe people, it's actually pretty evidenced by the pronounce they use. If the speaker is all I, me, mine, he's self-absorbed, it's so much of him or her. If he says you too much, well, if he asks the audience, for example, to do something, to imagine something, this is you. What about you guys? You're right. And if he or she says about it, they, he, she, that's material. I believe that it should be an equal split, that you should allocate about 30% of your time for yourself. Well, 30% of your time attention to the audience, and about 30% of your attention to your material. By the time you're presenting, it's late to think about the material. It should be prepared before that, you should rehearse. And another 10% for unpredictable things, which will happen sooner or later. Now, we've all been there, this is a typical boring lecture. The speaker is too focused on the material, he or she does not matter. She's not in the room, even in some sense you most certainly doesn't matter, it's all about the facts. We've all been here as well, a self-absorbed speaker, it's too much I'm, me, mine. And well, actually it's a bit funny, because the most self confident and the least self confident speakers are the same in this regard. They are both overly self absorbed, it's too much of them, I'm very nervous. Who cares about you think about the warriors. So switch your attention if you're too nervous. Think about them, what are they thinking? It will just help with your anxiety. And finally, this is not a presentation. Or this is a bad presentation where the speaker allows too much questions. It's distracting, there's too much going around. We're not moving anywhere, we're just answering the questions, this is Q&A session in a sense. Finally, this is chaos, I know some people think that they couldn't pull that off but I don't think they can't actually. Most of what you see as improvisation is actually rehearsed. This is true, if you don't believe me go study with improv theater guys. I did that at some stage in my career, it's actually a heavily rehearsed thing, they rehearse a lot. It's just they switch really quickly in between highly rehearsed scenes. They kind of know how to do it, not exactly, but almost it's a really hard gig. Let's put it this way, it's very hard to do, I wouldn't recommend you doing that. So oscillate, switch, you, audience material, you, audience material, etc etc. In conclusion, do make yourself comfortable, you are the most important person in the room. You're the leader of this crowd, if you're not comfortable they're not comfortable as well. Your job is to make them comfortable, be a servant leader but be a servant leader, not just a servant. Secondly, do influence but then also allow to be influenced yourself. Watch out for feedback, change your material. This is what it's all about the process of constant improvement. And thing number three, you need to oscillate, you need to shift your attention focus, I, you, things, me, you, material. Do oscillate, do change the focus, do change the perspective. Thank you.
