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Ellen Cahill came to the BLSCI last Thursday morning, Oct 26 to lead a workshop on oral presentations. She has a very impressive resume: for the past 21 years she worked with thousands of professionals in many kinds of businesses, made guest appearances on NBC Today and CNN-FN, where she talked about communications issues, published in several professional magazines. She graduated from Harvard Business School.

About 15 fellows attended her workshop. Even though she mainly works with corporate clients, she was able to gear her entire presentation towards our needs. Throughout the workshop, she addressed our work with Baruch students as well as some universal issues of making presentations in any fields, for any audience, in any discipline. It was a great, pointed, precise and useful presentation. I would certainly like to hear her speak again and possibly for a longer workshop.

She initially asked us in the audience to post questions and issues we would like to hear about and then she was able to build her presentation to fit our needs. Pretty impressive endeavor and all of this done right on the spot!

Obviously watching her do her job was an experience in itself. Now, that is how you do oral presentations! She was confident, knowledgeable, and certainly did not have any doubts about what to do with her hands…

There were a lot of tips that I personally took out of this workshop.

For example, did you know, that often the audience is only able to remember things in groups of three (3)? And so, if you can, build your data into sets of threes.

Power Point presentation needs to illustrate and explain what you cannot otherwise convey, and it should not serve as your cue card or a reading prompt.

Remember that your body language is important- for example, arm lock (arms close and tight to the body, as if protecting chest) says: “I am stressed and nervous”.

When you prepare a presentation, do not spend so much time on the middle part of it- the “meat “of it. Obviously that is the part you know best. So concentrate instead on presenting a pointed opening statement – Ellen called it a “headline.” And start with a strong opening point/thought/idea which addresses the most important issue in any presentation: WIIFM!

This stand for: What’s In It For Me. Apparently, the most serious indictment in the business world is people thinking that they are wasting their time. So make sure they know why they are here and what they can take out of it. This certainly goes for our students and any audience I can think of.

Ellen left us with a business card which contained a list of “Cahill’s Commandments”. Here they are:

• Know what you want your audience to do, think or feel.
• Decide what your listener NEEDS TO KNOW. Less is more!
• DO NOT SPEAK unless you are looking at a pair of eyes.
• The secret is energy. Use your voice and body to tell your story.
• Use mind jogger notes. NOT TEXT.
• Use “pictures” to help the listener remember the message.
• Tell me what your visuals MEAN, not what they say.
• Don’t touch the furniture!
• Listen to the question. Then built a better one. Answer the better one.
• Be yourself—have a conversation with the audience.
• PRACTICE! PRACTICE! PRACTICE!

Can’t obey the Commandments? Call us!

(Copyright by Cahill Associates, Inc.)

Here is the front of the card:

“Personal Success Is No Accident!”

Cahill Associates, Inc.

The Business of Speaking

Email cahill@cahillassoc.com

I think many of us found her presentation very useful. Comments anyone?