May
12
Frequent PublicSpeakingsSkills.com readers know that the only way to assure your presentation audience will stay with you every step of the way is to maintain proper eye contact throughout your presentation. Proper eye contact involves delivering your presentation as a series of one-on-one conversations with each member of the audience, and holding eye-contact with members through to the end of a thought or complete sentence. Most presenters hold eye contact with any one person no more than one second - to effectively bond with your audience, you need to pump that up to a range more like three to eight.
The image to keep in mind here is that you are never delivering to a group of individuals, but rather to individuals in a group. (When people ask me what’s the largest number of people I’ve ever spoken to, I always answer, “one”.)
When delivering a PowerPoint presentation, maintaining proper eye contact becomes difficult if your slides are structured like most we see in the corporate world today - with way more information than the audience can digest before the speaker feels compels to start speaking. In order to maintain constant eye contact with members of the audience, you must restrict the volume of information that you toss up on the screen at any one time. Otherwise, you will do what most presenters do, which is to spend much of the presentation looking at the screen. In fact, you must restrict each new parcel of information to that which can be absorbed by both you and the audience in just a few seconds - ten at the very most.
That will set you up to then smoothly and coherently transfer the information from the screen to the audience. We call the procedure for doing this “Absorb, Align, and Address.”
Absorb
When new information appears on the screen, all eyes will follow it, and at this point it is OK, and desirable, for you, too, to look to the screen. By doing so, you “give permission” to the audience to get prepared for what’s coming next. That’s all the screen info should include, too: just enough information to set the stage for what you are going to discuss. At this point, because you are not looking at any individual in the group, you must be silent.
Rule Number 9: If your eyes aren’t locked, your jaw must be.
When you have absorbed the data bite, you can now think for a moment on how to phrase what you want to say to start off. This would not include expounding on the point, but merely filling out the talking points to make a grammatically correct statement.
Align
Once you and your audience have had the opportunity to take in this info, you then need to turn your attention away from the screen, and lock eyes (align) with a member of the audience. This is the most difficult part, physically, to perform, as the natural tendency is to begin speaking as soon as you have formulated your statement.
Address
Locked on, you finally can address your selected member of the audience with your version of the talking point.
Understand that if what you’re addressing is a bullet point, this address should not be the actual words. You may always say more than the line on the screen, but never, never any less. Keep in mind that the group will read everything that’s on the screen, so if you put words up there but don’t speak to them, you are actually insulting your audience: These words aren’t important enough for me to bother with but I wanted to take up your brain’s time and effort just the same.
How many times has this happened to you: You go to a presentation and see slide after slide with all kinds of footnotes and small type, or graphs with legends and data to which the presenter never refers? You’re looking at all the elements on the slide trying to figure out which stuff is most important, and then the presenter never even mentions half the stuff you’ve read. How does that make you feel? For most people, the first slide that contains more information than the presenter chooses not to discuss is the point at which they check out, deciding to figure it all out later from the handout, which, of course, they trash at the first can they see outside the presentation room.
Once learned, the Absorb, Align and Address system is a beautiful thing to behold. Slides designed with this system never suffer from TMI, and thus never have too much for the presenter to deal with. Presenter confidence is high, and the audience feels this big time. The audience is forced to turn their attention to you, because there’s not enough information to allow them to jump to their own conclusions. By the same token, you are now able to direct all of your speaking to the audience and not the screen.
But here’s the really fun part: When you follow this simple plan for both design and delivery, almost anyone can look and sound like an expert on their subject, regardless of how much prep time they’ve put into rehearsing the presentation! We prove this in our corporate training classes by having participants deliver other participant’s presentations that we have edited and revised to comply with the “rules” (next chapter). Preferably, off course, you would have a good background in the subject matter, so that you can deliver the “meat on the bones” part effectively. But if you know to what the talking points refer, and you also know that no more material than you can deliver in just a few seconds will appear, you can actually give a presentation for the very first time and sound like you know what you’re talking about!
J. Douglas Jefferys brings twenty-five years of corporate training experience to his role as a principal of PublicSpeakingSkills.com [http://www.publicspeakingskills.com]. His firm changes presenters lives forever with their unique apporach to training presentation design and delivery skills. Discover how to design and deliver presentations that audiences actually listen to by visiting their website now.
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May
11
10 Steps Towards Designing an Effective Questionnaire
1. What are you trying to find out?
A good questionnaire is designed so that your results will tell you what you want to find out. Start by writing down what you are trying to do in a few clear sentences, and design your questionnaire around this.
2. How are you going to use the information? There is no point conducting research if the results aren’t going to be used - make sure you know why you are asking the questions in the first place. Make sure you cover everything you will need when it come to analysing the answers. e.g. maybe you want to compare answers given by men and women. You can only do this if you’ve remembered to record the gender of each respondent on each questionnaire.
3. Telephone, Postal, Web, Face-to-Face? There are many methods used to ask questions, and each has its good and bad points. For example, postal surveys can be cheap but responses can be low and can take a long time to receive, face-to-face can be expensive but will generate the fullest responses, web surveys can be cost-effective but hit and miss on response rates, and telephone can be costly, but will often generate high response rates, give fast turnaround and will allow for probing.4. Qualitative or Quantitative? Do you want to focus on the number e.g. 87% of respondents thought this, or are you more interested in interpreting feedback from respondents to bring out common themes? The method used will generally be determined by the subject matter you are researching and the types of respondents you will be contacting.
5. Keep it short. In fact, quite often the shorter the better. We are all busy, and as a general rule people are less likely to answer a long questionnaire than a short one.If you are going to be asking your customers to answer your questionnaire in-store, make sure the interview is no longer than 10 minutes maximum (this will be about 10 to 15 questions). If your questionnaire is too long, try to remove some questions. Read each question and ask, “How am I going to use this information?” If you don’t know, don’t include it!
6. Use simple and direct language. The questions must be clearly understood by the respondent. The wording of a question should be simple and to the point. Do not use uncommon words or long sentences.7. Start with something general. Respondents will be put-off and may even refuse to complete your questionnaire if you ask questions that are too personal at the start (e.g. questions about financial matters, age, even whether or not they are married).8. Place the most important questions in the first half of the questionnaire. Respondents sometimes only complete part of a questionnaire. By putting the most important items near the beginning, the partially completed questionnaires will still contain important information.9. Leave enough space to record the answers. If you are going to include questions which may require a long answer e.g. ask someone why they do a particular thing, then make sure you leave enough room to write in the possible answers. It sounds obvious, but it’s so often overlooked!10. Test your questionnaire on your colleagues. No matter how much time and effort you put into designing your questionnaire, there is no substitute for testing it. Complete some interviews with your colleagues BEFORE you ask the real respondents. This will allow you to time your questionnaire, make any final changes, and get feedback from your colleagues.
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May
10
As a saddle repairman, I have been asked to repair all kinds of saddle accessories as well, including saddlebags. I saw a lot of saddlebags in my shop. I also saw a lot of saddlebags on the trail. And I heard a lot of saddlebag complaints. Worse yet, I had to use these same saddlebags and experience the same frustrations as my customers because there weren’t any alternatives.
So What Makes a Good Saddlebag?
There are five points that I think are critical for good saddlebags:
- They have to fit the saddle. The saddlebag connector needs to be curved to fit snugly around the cantle. The saddlebags should not be so far apart that the bags no longer rest on the saddle skirts. The saddlebags cannot be too long or the weight will ride low on the animal and be uncomfortable. They can’t be too wide or the bags will irritate your horse or inhibit his movement.
- They have to stay put. So many times I would be riding down the trail and meet another rider with their saddlebags hanging off to one side. Or I would follow someone who was constantly reaching around to shift the bags back in place. And forget trotting or loping with these bags. They looked like a bird trying to take off. Worse than that, they would slap and bang against the horse’s flanks. At best, this is annoying, but with the wrong horse, it can be very dangerous. Good saddlebags will be able to be tied down with the saddle strings to keep the bags snugly behind the saddle. They should also have some way to secure the bottom of the bags so that you can trot or lope without the bags slapping.
- They have to be able to carry stuff. I have seen a lot of saddlebags with neat little pockets and features and what not, but when it came time to actually load up my gear to go for a ride, I couldn’t fit in what I needed to bring. Make sure the pockets are large enough for your gear.
- They have to be easy to handle and easy to access. How many times have you wanted something in your saddlebags while you are going down the trail? Nobody wants to stop and get off to get into their bags. Nor do you want a set of bags that is difficult to take off your saddle to carry into camp. Good saddlebags are designed to be easy on, easy off and easy to get into. Velcro closures allow easy access, but are not as secure as buckles and zippers and the Velcro can clog up and stop working. Buckles are classic, but time consuming to open and close. Zippers are the most secure closure.
- They can’t fail 10 miles from the trailhead. Classic leather saddlebags have always held up, but not everyone wants leather, especially if you are conscious about weight. But many of the saddlebags made from lightweight materials were not built well enough to last. Good saddlebags are built of material that can stand being scraped along rocks and trees. The zippers, buckles and straps should be durable. And the saddlebags should be reinforced at all stress points.
And they have to be good looking! But that’s just my personal opinion.
The importance of good gear
Nothing can ruin a perfectly good ride like gear that isn’t working properly. Customer complaints and input, as well as my own frustrations and experiences, are what led me to design and build the TrailMax System and what keeps me improving it all the time. So when shopping for saddlebags, remember to examine the features for access and gear storage, the fit on the horse and saddle and the construction for looks and durability.
Russ Barnett has ridden and packed extensively for over 20 years, primarily in the Bob Marshall Wilderness area. He is a Leave No Trace Master Instructor and has taught many packing courses at the local college. Russ is also the president of Outfitters Supply and more of his trail riding and horse packing tips can be found at http://www.OutfittersSupply.com
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