Outcome Thinking^® Blog

Presentation Skills

I have a friend that had one of his speeches recorded.  When he got it back he was impressed with how smoothly it all went, see he really thought he had conquered the problem and that he spoke that day without any awkward sounds or pauses…. until he got the “out takes”.   The sound company had cut all of his “ahs,” “umms,” and awkward throat clearings and then put them on one CD for him.  It ran for almost 9 minutes straight of those awkward sounds!! He just about died.

What you want to recognize is that those awkward pauses and sounds are YOUR BRAINS way of transitioning what you are saying.  Literally it is the gate in your brain from one channel to the next opening up as it moves along.  It is something you can get rid of but it requires practice.

At our Presentation Skills Training, we have had people go from 42 of these awkward pauses in 5 minutes of speaking down to only 2 in just a few hours. There is a way to get rid of them. It will require you to have a friend work with you on raising your brain’s awareness of when you use them and how you use them.  Literally you are going to bring it from your unconscious mind to your conscious mind where you can make the change.

Here is the easy way to get rid of them:

1. Pick a silent signal someone will use to let you know that you just used an awkward transition word.  Using a raised pencil or a finger on your cheek are good ones to use because you can do them in a meeting where the speaker can see them but no one else can.
2. When you see the signal just look down to the right and re-frame what you were saying.

You will find that if you do this about 8 times by the eighth time you will have virtually eliminated the awkward sounds from your speaking.

Test it out today and see how you do!

The power in evaluating your thinking is not in just looking at a situation and understand what happened.  The power is in distilling WHY it happened and what you can do next to time to ensure different results.

I can’t tell you how many teams I see go through what they call a “debrief” process and it is really only a “here is what happened” dialogue that doesn’t result in a change of thinking or a change of doing.

So if you are going to Debrief using Outcome Thinking® Training you need to make sure you have a solid system that causes people to do the following:

1. Analyze what happened and why
2. Really look at pinpointing the ROOT of the problem not the symptom
3. Think about what caused you or the other party to act the way you did
4. What can you do differently next time in order to get different results and why do you think that will work

Once you get your entire team used to Debriefing they stop being defensive about mistakes.  I have found if you operate under a “no mistakes” culture you end up with a lot of tactical people.  If you operate under a “no surprises” culture you end up with more Critical Thinkers who challenge the status quo.

TAKE ACTION: Find out more about Outcome Thinking® Corporate Training at: www.impressionmanagement.com