alright now that you have a clear story line, the last step of the method is to also make it original and enjoyable, simple, clear original related and enjoyable. Why? Why do you also need to make it original and enjoyable? But because if you don't, especially when it comes to business presentations, the risk is that yes, you have a clear story line but then it remains a bit dry and factual, so you want to spice it up a little bit, you want to color it in a little bit and how can you do that now so far we followed a clear process which works very well. But now if you want to be able to make it original and enjoyable, you need to unleash your creativity. And the key question you want to ask yourself is how can I make my messages stick? How can I make my messages stick unforgettable and I want to give you a few ideas. Now the very first thing you want to try and do is to tell stories. I'm sure you've heard them for a good reason storytelling is very important when it comes to effective c...

ommunication. People remember stories much more than facts and figures. For example, I don't want to take me as an example but just to give an idea, we started this course by talking about the importance of understanding your audience and for me that was an important idea that I want to communicate. And so I asked myself okay what story can I tell to illustrate the point and I told you the story of my own client marine who was invited to give a talk by the association of blind people in Finland and what that meant in relation to my message. Or I also told you about steve jobs. His commencement speech to the students of stanford stay hungry, stay foolish. Now in that speech he shared three stories. Each story had a message behind. He could have communicated those three messages as they were. But what made that speech memorable, so memorable was the three stories. So go back to all of the key ideas that you want to communicate and what you want to do is ask yourself what story can I tell to illustrate that point. Another thing you want to do is you want to use analogies. Now analogies are very powerful in communication. An analogy is where you compare something, the audience is not yet familiar with with something that they already know when you make that connection. That's when learning happens. For example, the best communicator I know who uses analogies all the time is Neil Degrasse Tyson Neil Degrasse Tyson is a scientist is an astrophysicist and using analogies becomes even more important when you need to communicate complex information. For example, I was watching a conference panel on Youtube where he was taking some questions from the audience and one question was, what do you think about life in the universe? Life beyond planet earth and the undergrads, ties on things that the chances of life in the universe are very high. But instead of making it complicated for the audience. He used language that everybody understood. He used an analogy, he said, look, thinking that there is no life in the universe is like being on a small boat in the ocean and then you have a glass with you, you take some water from the ocean and then you look at the glass and you say okay, there are no whales in this glass, therefore there are no whales in the ocean. Thinking that there is no life in the universe is the same thing. So you see he could have used a language which would be much more complex for the audience to understand, but instead he simplified it, made it easier for the audience to understand and remember what he said. Another thing you can do is to put your numbers into perspective now of course, especially with business presentations, it's important to share numbers and data, But what you want to do is for them to be memorable, you need to put them into perspective. For example, when Apple launched the first IPod, they didn't just say, look, this new product has a capacity of 5GB. Why? Because five Giga maybe means something to you, I can tell you, it means nothing to me. They said 5GB is the equivalent of remember this sentence is the equivalent of 1000 songs in your pocket, 1000 songs in your pocket is universal. It means the same thing to everybody. So every time you want to show a number that's important that you want to communicate. Think about it, how can you put it into perspective? Your number is the equivalent of again, use a reference language that everybody can understand. And then another thing you can do is we always encourage our clients to think about a magic moment and we like to call it magic with a Q at the end. It's something that makes a great impression quickly. Magic. It makes a great impression quickly. So the question is ask yourself, what can you say? What can you show, what can you do in order to make your message is unforgettable. For example, again, when Apple launched the first Macbook air, the thin laptop, they could have followed a very standard approach showing perhaps a slide with some bullet points listing all the features of the new product. That's not what I did. And you can find your Youtube steve jobs was presenting. And then at a certain point somebody brings an envelope on stage, an envelope is something thin and he pulls the new product out of the envelope. That was that magic moment and you don't have to be steve jobs for you to come up with a magic moment. You don't have to presents a new exciting technology all the time. For example, with the same client I mentioned before, the business consultant with whom we prepared a technical presentation. It was a technical conference here in London, a conference about enterprise architecture, very technical. So nothing to do with exciting new technologies. And if you remember she had an audience made up of two types of professionals and she was saying that at that time they were not working with each other, they were not supporting each other, they were competing against each other and those two types of professionals, one professional, one discipline is called just to give you some context be a business architecture and then the other one was called Bpm business process management. And her message was that look if you just work on Bpm business process management, then what you're doing there is you're cutting corners, you're going for quick winds, you're getting short term results, which is okay. But if you just work on that, you run the risk of missing the long term strategy of your organization, which is something that you get by working also on business architecture. So that's why they needed to work together. And so we asked ourselves okay for you this is an important message. What can we say? What can we show, what can we do in order to make it memorable even in a technical conference. And what she did was she left a blank sheet of paper on each chair. So she had an audience of 200 people and everybody had a blank sheet of paper and it's at some point, she asked everybody to take the sheet of paper and then to cut a corner and she did it for them and you see if you cut a corner it's very hard to get a straight line. Um but then she also demonstrated it, she said instead if you take your paper and you perforate it first with a pen or a pencil and then you cut the corner then it's much easier to get a straight line. And her message was look, it's okay to car corners. I'm not saying don't go for quick wins, don't go for short term results, but you always need to remember the straight line, you always need to do it keeping in mind the straight line, the long term strategy of your organization and that was her magic moment. So here are some ideas for you to make your storyline original and enjoyable. Now exercise for you now, the exercise for you is to develop your storyline, your clear storyline, which is also original and enjoyable. What you can do is I have provided a template, it's called storylines, so you can choose one of the five storylines we've talked about in the previous lessons or a combination of them remember and develop your clear storyline. The outcome should be, what's your introduction? How do you develop your ideas, what's your conclusion and then go back to it, this will give you your clear storyline, then go back to at least to the introduction and the conclusion which are anyway the most important parts of your presentation. But in general go back to your storyline, to all of the very important ideas that you want to share and ask yourself how can you make it original and enjoyable? Remember you could tell a story, you can use analogies, you can put your numbers into perspective, what's your magic moment. So the outcome of this exercise is the development of your clear original and enjoyable storyline. And once this is done then you can jump to the next lesson which is part of the next chapter illustration and what we're going to do there is we are going to take your storyline and we need to start supporting it, reinforcing it, amplifying it using effective visuals. As always do the exercise have fun, be creative and then I'll see you in the next chapter.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Exercise #1: ABC - Understanding Your Audience

Exercise #2 - Define Your Objective

Exercise #3: ATR - Brainstorm To Find Your Key Messages

Exercise #3: Mind Map - Brainstorm To Find Your Key Messages

Exercise #3: Traffic Light - Brainstorm To Find Your Key Messages

Exercise #4: 70 Words

Exercise #5: Storylines - Develop Your Storyline

Exercise #6: Storyboard - Sketch and Design Your Visuals

Andrea Pacini

Certified public speaking and presentation coach with 10+ yrs experience helping hundreds of businesses including 300+ TEDx speakers

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topics covered in this class

Business Design Projects Public Speaking

Ratings and Reviews

julie haskett

I was just beginning to create a series of presentations when I noticed this course. Serendipity! I thought I knew what I was doing, but learned some great techniques. More importantly I learned what NOT to do. Now I have much more confidence in the process.

michal babula

A lot of useful information.

Sara

Exceptional course. Very well organized and taught. The course was engaging and practical, with clear actionable approaches, examples, and activities from beginning to end.

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Making it Original and Enjoyable

Making it Original and Enjoyable

Lesson Info

16. Making it Original and Enjoyable

Lessons

The Importance of Presentation Skills in Business

Understanding Your Audience

Setting Transformational Objectives

Brainstorming Technique #1 - Audience Transformation Roadmap

Brainstorming Technique #2 - Mind Map

Brainstorming Technique #3 - The Traffic-Light Technique

Quiz: Ideation

Selecting Key Messages

Creating a Clear Storyline

Storyline #1 - The Basic 3-Act Play

Storyline #2 - Changing the World

Storyline #3 - The Sales Pitch

Storyline #4 - The Board Presentation

Storyline #5 - Project Presentation

Putting All Together