The Power of the First Second

Once again we have a contribution from the insightful and talented Mr. Ivo Feuerbach. This is important stuff. Enjoy!


The Power of the First Second

We’ve all experienced this: You are walking through town and someone comes along. Suddenly you feel uncomfortable or you have to smile intuitively. You don’t know the person, but something has provoked this reaction. The person is gone, but the feeling remains. How long it remains depends on the intensity of the feeling, but it will surely last for a while.

What happened in this second? Our subconscious mind connected something about this person with another person or a situation (a real one, or only something notional). Although the person we saw on the street is a stranger to us, it still triggered the reaction. The one second we saw this person was perfectly enough to manipulate our emotions for a longer time. And we can’t do anything about it. When I think about this, it seems a little bit spooky. But this behaviour of our brain happens all the time. We judge every situation without recognising it. Subliminally a permanent evaluation of the current situation takes place. We are searching in our experiences and trying to connect the current situation with something we already know.

Let’s follow a short example which Daniel Kahneman performs in his Book ‘’Thinking, Fast and Slow“ with the following words:

                          bananas              vomit

In the last 1 to 2 seconds we experienced some pictures and memories. Our face grimaced, maybe we pushed our head a little bit farer away from the screen, our heart beat faster and we felt disgust. Even if we normally like bananas, we wouldn’t want to eat one right now. At least not for a short time. What happened? Without purpose we automatically connected the words banana and vomit and are thinking that the bananas are the reason that we feel sick and throw up. In just a few moments we showed a mental and physical reaction to something we never connected with each other before. But in the future we will remember this. Don’t worry! The antipathy to bananas will not last for ever, no fear! Perhaps you will eat a banana the next time you already feel a little bit sick, because you have a hangover or an upset stomach. If you have to throw up afterwards you will automatically connect this with the banana, even if this is not the most likely reason, because now it is connected in your brain. Let’s eat some bananas tonight while watching our favourite film, to build a positive connection and destroy the other one. Maybe I should have used an example with something unhealthy. Sorry. But we are not on a site for diet consultancy here, even if this experience could also be used there, because there they set mostly wrong connections. (But Rob has a blog about presenting, so sorry Rob for this excurse).
The Question here is: What does this mean for our presentations?

What I explained shows how our subconscious mind works with the first impression. This also happens at the beginning of a presentation. But not when we start speaking. No, it already happens when we enter the room or the stage. In the situation of a presentation this reaction is even stronger, because our brain is prepared to receive information. It is searching for some information, even if this information is provided by our subconscious mind. It is searching for something to evaluate the person in front of us. From the very first moment, and without recognising it, everyone in the room, who does not know me, starts to evaluate me. And especially at the beginning of a presentation we are mostly occupied with other things. Remembering our presentation, the first sentence, what we want to say,  seeing where the boss is sitting and if he looks nice and relaxed, or is he maybe in the wrong mood? So our subconscious mind is doing the same, but our awareness doesn’t recognise it. We are occupied with our presentation. This could lead to heavy problems. If we look angry, because we are concentrating, the crowd will have a picture in mind of someone who is angry. The mad neighbour from their childhood who brought them to their parents, when they kicked the ball into their window, or our boss who is looking angrily at us, for something we are not responsible for. Getting these pictures out of their brain again can influence the development and the success of our presentation. Now we are connected with a negative picture and this connection will last for a while, like the connection of the banana and the vomit in our brain at the moment. If we are unlucky, then this feeling will get stronger and we will have to fight against it again in future meetings.

So we should think about how we enter the room and the stage. What should our presentation stand for? Do we want to convince the crowd that our idea will bring the company forwards? Is our Idea for the future? Then we should enter the room and the stage dynamically, with power. Even if this could seem a little bit out of place, it will have a mechanical positive effect. We also need to bring our actions into the context of the situation at hand. When I’m at a party and want to cheer for the birthday child, I can jump on a chair to do it. But if the presentation is in the office in front of the bosses, that would be out of place. In this case a strong step forward shows dynamism.

So the question, I should ask myself during the preparation of the presentation is: What impression should come to the mind of the crowd at the first moment? How can I make sure that I will reach this goal? Also this first impression can be practiced. If you follow the suggestions I gave to you with my first blog Jazzy Presenting: The Fine Line Between Memorising and Flexibility, you might find some free time to practice the first second.

So remember that our subconscious mind has a huge impact on our impression and a big impact comes from the very first second of entering the room. The presentation does not begin when the official time starts. The presentation begins when you enter the room, or step out on the stage.

Thanks for your attention,

Ivo Feuerbach

 

 

Elevator Pitches: A Brief History

The elevator pitch has been around for a long time. It wasn't always called an elevator pitch, but it existed nonetheless.

For the historians out there, the actual term ''elevator pitch'' is sometimes credited (including by Wikipedia) to Ilene Rosenzweig and Michael Caruso. According to Ms. Rosenzweig:
''I suppose I coined the term ''elevator pitch'' back when I lived in New York... I guess that was in the '90's, and was a journalist, and was dating another journalist, Michael Caruso, who was a senior editor at Vanity Fair, at the time. It was a very exciting job because Tina Brown was Editor-In -Chief. She was an ambitious editor...  (and he) was always trying to pitch her stories, but she was always on the move and he would try to snag her to get a story pitch out and sometimes the only way he would be able to do it is to jump into the elevator with her, when she was on the way out to her town car, and literally in just four floors to be able to sum up an entire potential 15,000-word story idea. When he would come home, it eventually just became, ''So, how was your elevator pitch today?''
 (from slack.com, Variety Pack episode 5: lift pack)

However, there is considerable evidence that the almost identical term ''elevator speech'' originated even earlier than that, and was already in somewhat wide-circulation at the time Ms. Rosenzweig used it:
Dr. Graham Wilson, at www.the-confidant.info, tells the story. To summarise, a pioneer of the quality improvement industry, Phillip Crosby, was the originator of the term. In 1981 he published a book with the intriguing title ''The Art of Getting Your Own Sweet Way''. In the second edition of that same book ''...he suggests that all quality improvement people should have a pre-prepared speech selling the benefits of their new approach... that they could deliver in the elevator if they find themselves unexpectedly in the company of a senior executive for a few floors.''

Dr. Wilson goes on to quote Mr. Crosby directly:
''When teaching Quality Management, I always teach my students to learn an ''elevator speech''. This is an all-encompassing, action-producing set of ideas that you pronounce while on the elevator with the big boss for just 1 minute.''

To conclude the history section, I leave you with Dr. Wilson again:
''So...I'd have to say that the term ''Elevator Speech'' entered the published media in 1981, had become a popular term among managers in the US by 1987, and was already being promoted in the UK from 1983.''

Whatever you want to call it,  it has been with us for a long time. In the recent past, savvy salespeople would have several elevator type pitches at the ready, each one tailored to the specific situation they might find themselves in (roadside café, hotel bar, restaurant, parking lot... maybe even an actual elevator). 

These pitches were short, sweet, succinct and memorable. They would leave clients, potential clients and anyone else who heard them informed and interested. The short pitches would lead to conversations, and the conversations would lead to questions. The salesperson would discuss other things, but in the end the conversation would come back around to the pitch topic. And in the right hands, and in the right situation, it would lead to an order or a direct sale.

All the best, and happy trails,
Rob

How to Prepare an Elevator Pitch: 3 tips

So, now you know you need an elevator pitch. But how to get started?
It's not complicated at all. Here are some tips and tricks to consider:

First of all, we're talking about the real world here. There are many short pitching contests and competitions that use the term 'Elevator Pitch' to describe their format. But they are formal, staged events with microphones, large audiences, and bright lights. That's not what we're concerned with here. (I'm actually a big fan of such competitions).

What we are concerned with is the real world:
-The time when you are at a party and someone asks you what you do.
-Or the time you meet an old colleague and they ask you what you're working on now.
-Or for when you find yourself in an elevator with Bill Gates and you really want to share your great new idea.
Regardless of where it is,  you need to be prepared. It's happened to all of us: somebody asks the question, and we really don't answer well. We don't answer well because we don't have an elevator pitch.

So let's get straight to the how part:
We'll start with the technical side. The next instalment of this topic will deal with the actual pitching side.

Preparing:

1. It's meant to be short. That doesn't mean that you should talk faster to fit all the information into a certain time limit. Instead you need to edit your information.
How short? It depends, but in general the shorter the better. Aim to get your main point across in a compelling and easy to understand way. If the listener is genuinely interested they will ask follow-up questions, and then the elevator part is over and you're having a conversation. If you can do the pitch in 30 seconds, you're well on your way. Most elevator rides are even shorter than that.
So edit, and then edit again. Keep it simple. Don't go into complicated detail.

2. What is it you are selling? Is it yourself? (ie., are you trying to get a job?) Is it an idea? Is it a product?
What's special and unique about what you are offering?
How will this benefit the listener? Why should they be interested?
Knowing the answer to these questions will help you organise what to say. And remember, this is the real world, so try to keep it sounding natural and unrehearsed. You should be able to summarise your main idea in one sentence.

3. Be sure to include what you need to happen. If your great idea needs 10 000 euro to get going, you need to include that in the pitch. It doesn't have to be so direct; you might say something like: ''Right now we're looking for start-up capital.'' Or if you're trying to get a job, you might say: ''And that's why I'm so eager to get started in the business.'' You're pitching, after all, so pitch!

In the next post we'll look at putting it into action.

All the best, and happy trails,
Rob

3 Reasons Why You Should Have an Elevator Pitch

Do you have an elevator pitch?
Do you need an elevator pitch?
The simple answer is yes.
If you are selling anything, from yourself to a product or an idea, being able to do it in a fast, easy, efficient and polished way will take you far.

First things first: don't take the name '' elevator pitch'' too seriously. Maybe one day you will actually make a pitch in an elevator, but that's not important. What IS important is being able to get your information across quickly and in an interesting way. So forget about the elevator part, and think of it as ''A Short Intro Pitch''.  It's called an elevator pitch because it's supposed to be about as long as an elevator ride. (Curiously enough, I actually have a friend who sold a business idea during an elevator ride, but that's another story).

Here are my three main reasons for having an elevator pitch:

1. It's a great way to organise your ideas and your thinking. It will get you to edit and categorise your thoughts in an easy to understand way. And once you've done that, it will give you more confidence in talking about what you do.

2. It's a powerful thing to have when someone asks what you do or you get an opportunity to present yourself to someone. Keeping it natural, knowing what to say and how to say it, and not overdoing it will make a very good impression.

3. It's an effective business and selling tool. It may end up getting you a job, more business, or help in winning an upcoming pitch. You never really know; but having an elevator pitch ready means you won't lose or fumble opportunities. It also may not result in an immediate sale, but done properly, it will plant your idea (or you) in the listeners mind.

If you have ever stumbled or not been sure what to say when asked about your job/ product/ idea then you need to work out an elevator pitch. It's easy, and it's good for you.

Check out How to Prepare an Elevator Pitch for tips and tricks to get you started.

All the best, and happy trails,
Rob

Jazzy Presenting: The Fine Line Between Memorising and Flexibility

I'm very happy to have a special guest contributor for this blog: Mr. Ivo Feuerbach. He is a multi-talented and philosophical gentleman. Here are some of his thoughts and reflections on practice, memorising, and improvisation. They are well worth considering. Thank you Ivo!

 

Jazzy Presenting:

The Fine Line Between Memorising and Flexibility

 

Listening to a great jazz band is both exciting and interesting. And if you see the same band a few times you will notice that while some of the songs may be the same, they are presented and played differently each night. That’s part of the spirit and secret of jazz: it reacts to the audience, the moods of the performers, the time, the location, and so on. It is free and alive, able to change and react, yet still stay musical and captivating.

Presenting and pitching can have a lot in common with jazz if you think about it. There’s a fine line between memorising your pitch, and being flexible enough to improvise during it. But what is that line?

We’ve all been told: practice, practice, practice. Practice to the point where everything runs along almost automatically, and by itself. Get into the state of ‘flow’: like when you arrive home and as you park the car you realise you don’t remember the last few blocks (and not because you were drinking or taking drugs!). But it’s important to realise that the flow you want doesn’t mean that you are fixed and unable to react to unexpected situations.

For example, in presenting, if we are too slavishly devoted to the exact presentation that we have practiced, even an unexpected question could throw us off. If we must follow one specific path, and are not polished and practiced enough to be flexible, then a question from (for example) the most important person in the room could completely throw us off. If the question doesn’t fit in to what we have practiced, then we can stumble. We’re not sure what to do. Suddenly we don’t know how to proceed with our presentation… where were we? What comes next? The carefully prepared and practiced script has now been altered and we don’t know how to continue…

This is the great risk of learning things by heart… by memorising. The more we learn a presentation or pitch by heart, the less flexible we are. If something unexpected happens, we stumble.

Let’s compare a memorised speech to a normal conversation. Every typical conversation is in a sense unexpected. It is unscripted. There may be certain formalities that are customary, but what specifically will be said is unknown to either party. We can’t know what our counterpart will say next, but it’s not a problem for us. A human being is usually flexible enough to react to every twist and turn in a conversation.

In contrast to this, when we memorise something, we can turn to stone; we are lithified. We are not able to react in a flexible way because we are scheduled and stuck to a specific speech.

So… does this mean that it makes no sense to practice and practice to the point where we know everything by heart? Are all the people wrong who have told us to do it like this? Yes and no…

They aren’t wrong in the sense that to present something well, we have to be sure what we want to say. We have to feel confident with our topic in order to create the right impression. We have to pay attention to and practice the right emphasis, body language, eye contact and so on. If we don’t practice these things, we won’t achieve our goals. So yes, we need to practice and practice again.

But another question is: what exactly to practice? Sometimes we might try to learn every word by heart. We all had to do this in school, when we learned a poem or vocabulary. The goal was to learn each word. But this leads to the problem mentioned before: inflexibility and the danger of freezing if something unexpected happens or our memory fails us.

So, in order to prepare a presentation properly I would propose a different way: let’s call it ‘’jazz’’. We need to know the content perfectly, but we don’t need to memorise every word. We need to know the most important  or key words, and what to emphasise, but not the whole sentence. We need to practice being comfortable moving on stage, but not worry about exactly where we have to stand or be at each specific moment.

The end goal would be to feel confident and safe, but without losing that important flexibility. In other words, it is more jazz than orchestra. We know the music, but like a good jazz band, we will play it differently every time.

Unfortunately there is no rule as to what or how much should be memorised and what can be left open. It depends on many factors. What kind of presentation is it? More formal? More casual?

Is the presentation in my mother tongue? If so I am more confident and able to naturally be more flexible. If (as in my case) I have to present in English (which is not my mother tongue), I will probably need to be sure I have learned all the necessary vocabulary and I will probably feel less confident, and as a result less likely to be flexible.

And if it’s a 3 minute pitch, every single word becomes much more important, so once again the amount of flexibility will decline.

So in the end, we need to think about the amount of flexibility that is required for each situation. We also need to consider our own style and what makes us more comfortable: do I feel safer learning by heart? Or am I more of a jazzy freestyler?

Once we have the content of a presentation worked out, it’s time to answer the question about what we want to do about the fine line between memorisation and flexibility. In my opinion, keeping it jazzy is the way to go. Flexible, adaptable, yet still powerful and relevant.

Ivo Feuerbach

The 5 Classic Principles of Public Speaking

''There's nothing new under the sun.'' (Ecclesiastes 1:9)
Well, maybe there is; for example, the internet comes to mind. But when it comes to the art of rhetoric, most of the information and advice available is thousands of years old. Really.

If you were receiving an education in Roman times, or for many hundreds of years after that, the so-called '5 canons' (principles) of rhetoric would have been an important part of that education. Public speaking and presenting were just as important back then - if not more so - as they are now.

Yet strangely enough, many of us now go from grade school to university and beyond without ever being made familiar with these five important principles.

Starting with the writings of Aristotle, and then developed and formalised by Cicero, the five principles of presenting are:

1. Invention (inventio)
2. Arrangement (dispositio)
3. Style (elocutio)
4. Memory (memoria)
5. Delivery (actio)

In essence, the five points above provide a checklist for preparing, giving, and even evaluating a presentation or pitch.

Let's look at the points briefly:
1. Invention.
These days this would probably be called brainstorming, or research. It involves thinking, examining, and trying to discover as much relevant information as you can before you start to write your presentation. Notes, ideas, articles, quotes, illustrations - whatever it might be - this is the collection stage, and the thinking stage. You're not writing or making slides yet.

2. Arrangement.
Now you're writing and structuring your presentation. In its simplest form, that means you will be preparing an interesting introduction, a persuasive body (main section of the pitch), and a convincing conclusion.

3. Style.
Now you go over your text and do the interesting things: are the sentences short and to the point? Am I using repetition? Have I checked the grammar and spelling basics? Alliteration? Anaphora? And so on. It means taking the rough version that you wrote in the arrangement stage and turning it into (we hope) a rhetorically artistic gem.

4. Memory
This is the often painful part of presenting: how do you remember what you want to say? These days PowerPoint, teleprompters and other such tools make it a lot easier, but you still need to have a way to organise your presentation in your memory. There are many effective techniques for this, and it's often a case of figuring out what works best for you.

And finally...
5. Delivery
Definitely one of my favourite parts of presenting, and also one of the things that many people have the most difficulty with. From eye contact to gestures, and voice technique to movement, the delivery can often make or break a pitch. These are things that need to be studied and practiced, but which are easy to quickly improve on.

So there you have it. Ancient wisdom that is as up-to-date today as when it was written. If you're wondering where to start with your next presentation, just go over these five steps.

They really should still be teaching this in school!

All the best, and happy trails,
Rob

A Pleasant and Pleasing Presentation Style: Using Alliteration (Repetition 3)

Here's another type of repetition that attracts attention: alliteration.
It's very simple to do, is pleasing to the ear, and is both effective and memorable.

Alliteration is the repetition of a consonant or sound at the beginning of words. For example: A big bouncing ball. In this case, it is the 'b' sound that provides the alliteration (and which makes it fun to say and hear).
 You may have first come across alliteration in literature class. It is everywhere in poetry, prose and song lyrics. I like Joni Mitchells use of it in the song 'Big Yellow Taxi':
''They paved paradise and put up a parking lot... ''
It's also used in advertising jingles, and even company names: think of PayPal, or Coca-Cola. Even people's names can be alliterative: Marilyn Monroe (or Manson), Donald Duck, Ronald Reagan...

In rhetoric, alliteration is usually more subtle, yet it is also very commonly used. In addition, rhetoric even goes as far as describing the impact that different sounds have on an audience:
P or B are strong sounds that can startle or heighten the sense of drama: a bursting balloon popped powerfully.
S can be scary: Snakes slithered silently.

Here are some real world examples of alliteration in use:
''All for which America stands is safe today because brave men and women have been ready to face the fire at freedom's front.''
Ronald Reagan

''They are part of the finest fighting force that the world has ever known. They have served tour after tour of duty in distant, different and difficult places... ...In today's wars, there's not always a simple ceremony that signals our troops success; no surrender papers to be signed, or capital to be claimed.''
Barack Obama (how's that for a lot of alliteration!)

In the preparation process for your next presentation, try some alliteration.

All the best, and happy trails,
Rob