Dr. Laura Sikola, a cognitive linguist and communications expert, visits the podcast to talk about how to be a better presenter and communicator. Laura’s work focuses on how to have better presence, telling stories, and connecting with your audiences. We talk about communication challenges like the “expert’s curse” and how developing your “executive presence” can command attention and build rapport.
Resources
Check out Laura’s website and watch her TED Talk, “Want to sound like a leader? Start by saying your name right”
Guest Bio
Dr. Laura Sicola is a leadership communication and influence expert, speaker, author of Speaking to Influence: Mastering Your Leadership Voice, and host of the podcast, Speaking to Influence: Communication Secrets of the C-Suite. Her mission is to transform executives into confident, inspiring leaders, both live and virtually, in order to get the results they want and turn their vision into their legacy. A cognitive linguist by background, she has trained and coached executives at Comcast, IBM, Amazon, Accenture, the US Department of Commerce and Women Against Abuse along with politicians, business owners and non-profit leaders from around the world.
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Transcript
00:12 – 00:18
Welcome back to the PolicyViz Podcast. I’m your host, Jon Schwabish. I hope you are well.
00:18 – 00:21
I hope things are going well for you and your families.
00:21 – 00:25
And thanks so much for tuning in to yet another episode of the podcast.
00:26 – 00:33
On this week’s episode of the show, I am excited to welcome doctor Laura Sikola, who is a cognitive linguist and communications expert.
00:33 – 00:37
She has a really entertaining TED talk about being a better presenter.
00:38 – 00:46
Haven’t done a lot of presentation work on this show in a while, so I am excited to switch gears and see how I can help you become a better presenter.
00:46 – 00:53
Now before I get to the show, just very quickly, I hope you’ve heard about the new Slack channel I launched called Friends of Flourish.
00:53 – 01:01
Friends of Flourish is a new Slack channel where you can meet other like minded folks working in the Flourish data visualization tool.
01:01 – 01:03
We’ve already started some fun conversations there.
01:03 – 01:11
It’s just a place where you can come in and see what others are doing, learn some hacks, learn some tips, and get in touch with the Flourish team.
01:11 – 01:12
So I hope you check it out.
01:12 – 01:20
I have a link on the show notes to this episode of the podcast, as well as a quick little blog post on the policyofbiz.com website.
01:21 – 01:25
So with that out of the way, let’s get to this week’s episode of the show.
01:25 – 01:32
Very excited to talk to doctor Laura Sikola about her work being a presentation coach and how she can help you and I can help
01:32 – 01:36
you be a better presenter in your data work.
01:36 – 01:39
So here’s that conversation with Laura, and I hope you enjoy it.
01:42 – 01:46
Hello, Laura. Very excited to see you. Thanks for coming on the show.
01:46 – 01:47
Thanks so much for inviting me, John.
01:48 – 01:49
I am excited to chat with you.
01:50 – 01:58
I had a lot of fun watching your TED talk, which we’re gonna talk about in a little bit, and maybe references that some people
01:58 – 02:03
are starting not to get anymore as we age, but I still loved it. Thank you.
02:03 – 02:09
I wanted to start maybe by asking you to just introduce yourself and and the work that you’re doing now to help folks be be better communicators.
02:10 – 02:14
Sure. Thank you. Well, I’m Doctor. Laura Sikola, and I’m a cognitive linguist by background.
02:14 – 02:16
I have a PhD in education linguistics.
02:16 – 02:25
It’s all about looking at that when you talk, what you say goes either in one ear and out the other for the listener, or goes in and sticks.
02:25 – 02:31
And what is it that we can do to make sure that it sticks?
02:31 – 02:36
How do we adjust what we say and how we say it so that people get it?
02:36 – 02:41
So that’s the, the practical application version, let’s call it that way, of all the studies.
02:41 – 02:48
So where I used to be, I was teaching at the University of Pennsylvania for the last 15 years, I’ve been doing executive coaching
02:48 – 02:56
and training, working with leaders who are typically not the communications people, people who are in IT and cybersecurity
02:56 – 03:04
or in finance or data analytics and all those kinds of biochemistry, etc, and helping them translate, generally people who
03:04 – 03:14
are in the C suite or in the other executive roles, but helping them to translate the genius, translate the expertise so that everybody else gets it.
03:14 – 03:22
You have to be able to translate for all different stakeholder groups so that everybody gets on board and is rowing in the same direction. So think of it this way.
03:22 – 03:26
You ever have one of those moments where you’re talking and you suddenly think to yourself, that sounded better in my head?
03:28 – 03:30
Yes. Like, every day. Every day. Yeah.
03:31 – 03:32
My job is to fix that.
03:32 – 03:32
Yeah.
03:32 – 03:33
So we’ll do that today.
03:34 – 03:46
So in your experience with working with CEOs and c suite folks, like, what do you find is the number one or the biggest challenge that they have? Is it not speaking in jargon? Is it something else?
03:46 – 03:49
Like, what is their biggest their biggest frustration or biggest challenge?
03:49 – 03:58
Yeah. As one of the and it’s something that’s frankly very, consistent through all levels is the need to break what I like to call the expert’s curse.
03:59 – 04:06
Because the longer you spend in a field, the longer you spend in a particular vertical or role, things become intuitive.
04:06 – 04:15
They become second nature to you, and you forget what not intuitive or already known or obvious or interesting and useful for that matter for everybody else.
04:15 – 04:18
So it’s important to be able to set the scene.
04:18 – 04:20
It’s important to be able to tell stories.
04:20 – 04:27
It’s important to be able to do things like using analogies and metaphors and connecting with the audience.
04:27 – 04:35
People don’t you can’t just open mouth, turn on fire hose, and drown the listener in numbers. It won’t resonate.
04:36 – 04:42
And so helping people to be their authentic self, let their personality come through, let their passion and interest come
04:42 – 04:52
through, but also focus, streamline, translate, get to the point, and make those connections, that’s the bridge the gap that I bridge
04:53 – 04:59
with them. In a lot of your work, you you have this or you talk about this this, concept of executive presence. Mhmm.
04:59 – 05:07
And I’m sure a lot of listeners of your podcast, my podcast, are not executives. They don’t have the title CEO.
05:07 – 05:07
Yep.
05:07 – 05:10
But I think everybody wants to have that presence.
05:10 – 05:16
So you can you talk about how either you teach people how to do that or how they can they can implement that in their own work?
05:17 – 05:25
Absolutely. The I think the phrase of executive presence or the label is a little bit misleading because it really doesn’t
05:25 – 05:29
have anything to do with the role that you are in.
05:29 – 05:33
Although, if you want to get to a role with that title, you better have it. That’s non negotiable.
05:34 – 05:39
And the idea I like to translate it this way because there’s truckloads of research out there that tries to operationalize
05:39 – 05:41
it in all sorts of different ways.
05:41 – 05:48
I put it this way: it’s the 3 C’s: the ability to command the room, connect with the audience, and close the deal.
05:49 – 05:50
So let’s break those down real quick.
05:51 – 06:00
To command the room, when you start to talk, when you walk in, even if you’re sitting down, is there something about the way
06:00 – 06:09
you hold yourself, the way you take up certain amounts of space, the way you move, the way that you talk that captivates people’s
06:09 – 06:18
attention, that just compels them to pay attention? You’re not demanding respect. That’s different.
06:18 – 06:21
When you’re demanding it, you’re saying, I need it. Give it to me. Then you’re screwed.
06:21 – 06:27
But when you, not demand, but command respect, that means it’s inherent.
06:27 – 06:29
People can’t help but give it to you.
06:29 – 06:31
So, that’s the first C, command the room.
06:32 – 06:33
The second is connect with the audience.
06:33 – 06:40
That means that once you’ve got their attention, as you’re talking, you’re establishing this mutual understanding that Jon
06:40 – 06:43
some level you understand me, and I understand you.
06:44 – 06:46
You get me and I get you.
06:46 – 06:50
Maybe it’s only on this one element, and that’s okay because it’s the only element that matters right now.
06:50 – 06:54
But there’s that connection, and you wanna sustain that as much as you can.
06:54 – 06:57
And then the 3rd c is closing the deal. This is not sales.
06:57 – 07:00
I mean, if you’re in sales or business development of some sort, fine.
07:00 – 07:06
But it’s really the idea of getting to yes, establishing a mutual agreement, moving the needle forward.
07:06 – 07:11
But most of the projects that we work on are not, I need one conversation, and then you say yes, and then it’s done.
07:12 – 07:20
It’s processes and multiple meetings and lots of negotiation, and it could be 6, 12, 18 months worth of lead time on something.
07:21 – 07:29
So the idea is do we move the needle forward with each yes, big or small, getting to that agreement. That’s closing the deal.
07:29 – 07:40
So so it is it’s interesting the way you you talk about it because I think your work goes beyond just standing in front of an audience speaking. Right?
07:40 – 07:48
It goes into you are in a room in a meeting with your colleagues or a client, and and you need to have that presence, have
07:48 – 07:50
that have that command of the room. Yes.
07:50 – 08:01
And I wonder if you’ve seen folks kind of treat day to day meetings differently than presentations when maybe it’s all about visualization.
08:01 – 08:03
They should be treating them all in a similar kind of way.
08:04 – 08:09
So you you said 2 things there that are related, but need to disaggregate a little bit.
08:09 – 08:12
So, yes, they are all about communication.
08:13 – 08:19
So I call for me, I define public speaking as any time you’re talking to somebody besides yourself.
08:20 – 08:27
So now that talking to yourself may be the best conversation you have all day some days, but that notwithstanding, whether
08:27 – 08:36
you’re just having a check-in meeting with your boss or a direct report or you are pitching an idea to the leadership team,
08:36 – 08:41
to the board, to a client, or you are whatever it happens to be. Yeah.
08:41 – 08:59
It is communication, and it is how well you take the genius and the vision that’s here and deliver it to them in a way that they don’t just hear the words. They go, oh, yeah. Okay. Well, tell me more about this. It’s not the yeah.
08:59 – 09:06
But not all the I mean, they may say no in the end, but are you engaging the audience?
09:07 – 09:12
Do you have, and this is a scary word, charisma that is coming through? Everybody has it.
09:12 – 09:18
I’m not talking Tony Robbins, televangelist, larger than life, be an extrovert, be a Broadway actor. No.
09:18 – 09:27
Charisma, something we all have, is that natural energy that when you allow it to come through, it just makes people want to hear more.
09:27 – 09:30
It makes people want to spend time with you.
09:30 – 09:38
I’m gonna lay it all on the line and guess that for all of you out there who are listening, somebody on this planet, if they
09:38 – 09:44
were given the choice to spend a day with just one person, they’d pick you. Why?
09:44 – 09:51
What is it about who you are when you’re with them that says, You’re my favorite person in the world, and I want to spend a day with you?
09:51 – 10:00
How do you let part of that person, that personality out because they see your deepest charisma, and that’s something you probably hold from everybody else.
10:00 – 10:06
Now that on the flip side, with the other part that you said, as far as if it’s this kind of meeting or that kind of meeting,
10:07 – 10:12
you don’t treat them all the same insofar as you don’t show up exactly the same for all of them.
10:12 – 10:22
Because are you talking to somebody who is an even greater expert in your area or somebody if you’re in IT, are you talking to somebody in finance? Mhmm.
10:22 – 10:27
That’s gonna be a different way that you’re gonna explain the same concept, why you need the money for it versus why you just
10:27 – 10:31
need the approval for it versus, you know, the value it’ll provide.
10:31 – 10:35
You explain the number of features, the technical specifics and details.
10:35 – 10:38
The finance department does not care about all that kind of stuff.
10:38 – 10:44
So, you know, you have to show up differently, but you still need to allow that charisma to come through.
10:44 – 10:47
You still have to command the room, connect with the audience, and close the deal.
10:47 – 10:54
Mhmm. Can you give us give folks a glimpse into how you draw that out for folks?
10:54 – 10:59
I I can imagine a lot of your clients come in and they like a lot of my clients, right, they get up there, they kind of read
10:59 – 11:04
the slides or, you know, they kind of they’re the expert’s curse, I think is the the best phrase.
11:04 – 11:10
But, like, what are some of the strategies and maybe things that people can do on their own that they can do to sort of start
11:10 – 11:12
to pull on some of these threads?
11:12 – 11:16
Yeah. There’s lots of things. The first is and look.
11:16 – 11:18
I’m not a woo woo kind of chick.
11:18 – 11:26
So hold on for for a second and just work with me on this. But it does start with mindset.
11:27 – 11:31
And are you mentally present for what you’re teaching?
11:31 – 11:33
Because and that doesn’t mean stuck in your head.
11:33 – 11:35
Most people are stuck in their heads.
11:35 – 11:39
They get so focused Jon, I have to say all these numbers right. I don’t Jon to forget anything.
11:39 – 11:50
I don’t want to get asked a question that I can’t answer well or what if they shoot it’s it’s that is very frankly self focused. Yeah. Right? It’s all about me.
11:50 – 11:55
It’s what about this and what about that? And look, I get that. We all want to do well. We want recognition for our work. We want praise.
11:55 – 11:57
We don’t want to get shot down in public. Yes.
11:57 – 12:08
But the best presenters are the ones who shift and focus on approaching the presentation from a perspective of generosity.
12:09 – 12:20
So the audience who is listening I use the word audience to mean whoever you’re talking to they are also approaching from a self interested perspective. Why are they listening to you?
12:20 – 12:24
What do they want to get out of it? What are they concerned about? What are their pressing needs?
12:24 – 12:25
Who else is breathing down their neck?
12:25 – 12:30
Who else is trying to squeeze more blood out of a stone budget wise or time wise?
12:30 – 12:33
Or, you know, you’ve got a lot of competing interests.
12:33 – 12:38
What do they need, want, prioritize, fear, like, etcetera?
12:39 – 12:48
Now when you think about that and then why they’re listening to you, if you can approach what you are sharing in a way that
12:48 – 12:58
will answer their needs, their concerns, their interests, their egos, their, you know, goals and ambitions, etcetera. That’s a very different place.
12:59 – 13:02
And talk to them, not at them.
13:02 – 13:03
Mhmm.
13:03 – 13:04
How’s that for starters?
13:04 – 13:07
Yeah. I mean, yes. Great for starters.
13:08 – 13:15
It is interesting because it sounds like there’s a lot of psychology involved
13:15 – 13:16
Yes. Absolutely.
13:16 – 13:23
In in in sort of building up that confidence or building up that whatever that is, to get out of your own head in a lot of ways.
13:23 – 13:27
I mean, when I work with folks on their slide design, right, I I tell them the same thing.
13:27 – 13:35
Like, the reason someone has 5 bullet points on the slide is because they wanna make sure as the presenter that they cover these five things.
13:35 – 13:38
Well, that’s for them as the presenter, not for the audience. Right?
13:38 – 13:42
And so it’s flipping your your perspective around a little bit.
13:42 – 13:42
Yes.
13:43 – 13:48
I also wanted to ask about, voice quality because you talk about this in your TED Talk.
13:49 – 13:57
You have this great part where you ask the audience to imagine that Fran Drescher plays the voice of Darth Vader, which still
13:57 – 14:00
makes me giggle, just the idea of that.
14:00 – 14:10
And I wonder how you work with folks or how you ask folks to think about or assess their own voice quality and then whether
14:10 – 14:13
and how they should work to change their the quality of their voice.
14:14 – 14:19
I’m sure that many of your audience, they probably do know Darth Vader. They don’t know Fran Drescher.
14:19 – 14:20
Right. Right.
14:20 – 14:26
So just to put that little thing in context, and I appreciate you watching and and, giving a plug for the TED Talk.
14:26 – 14:33
I encourage everybody else, of course, to go and watch it, but Fran Drescher was an actress who I think was most famous in
14:33 – 14:36
the nineties, maybe late eighties, early nineties.
14:36 – 14:40
And her most famous character, on television was the nanny.
14:40 – 14:43
And she, she was born and raised in Flushing, Queens.
14:43 – 14:46
And she just had this really nasally kind of voice. And that was the whole thing.
14:46 – 14:52
And it was so either hated it or loved it, but she was she was very funny.
14:53 – 14:58
So needless to say that and Darth Vader, like orange juice and milk, they just should not be loved it ever.
14:58 – 15:06
Well, I do wonder it’d be an interesting question to ask whether people know her more from the nanny or from her role on Friends as
15:06 – 15:07
Was she on Friends?
15:07 – 15:10
Wasn’t she the girl wasn’t she the girlfriend for a little while?
15:10 – 15:13
I think she Janice? That was a different actress. Nope. That was
15:13 – 15:14
a different actress.
15:14 – 15:16
Similar hair, similar
15:16 – 15:16
Similar voice.
15:16 – 15:18
Whatever else. Yeah. Yeah. But, no, that was not her.
15:18 – 15:22
Okay. But but the voice quality is sort of similar.
15:22 – 15:24
The 2 of them had similar voice quality.
15:24 – 15:25
You have the line sort
15:25 – 15:27
of nasal. Yeah. Okay. Alright. Yeah.
15:27 – 15:38
So with that as context, there’s some everybody, when you listen to the sound of your voice, like 99% of the population goes, oh my gosh. I hate my voice. It’s too this. It’s too that.
15:38 – 15:42
I don’t like listening to the sound of my voice. And okay. So here’s the deal.
15:43 – 15:47
You cannot change the instrument that you were born with.
15:47 – 15:52
If you were born with a piccolo, it will never sound like a tuba and vice versa.
15:52 – 16:00
That being said, whether you were born with a piccolo or whether you were born with a tuba, you can learn to play it masterfully, And that’s the key.
16:00 – 16:05
So what are you doing with your voice? How are you using that instrument?
16:05 – 16:15
And it is an instrument that is allowing it to come across fully resonant, come in a way that sounds confident, in a way that
16:15 – 16:21
is reassuring, in a way that it whatever you want it to be: friendly, approachable, empathetic. There’s a million different adjectives.
16:22 – 16:30
So certain, what I would recommend to everybody and know that this is me coaching, that none of my clients, whether I’m doing
16:30 – 16:36
a team training or 1 on 1 coaching with somebody, no one escapes the video camera. Oh.
16:36 – 16:46
You have to listen to yourself because if you don’t, then we’re I can’t coach you because we’re not comparing the same thing.
16:47 – 16:56
I’m talking about what you said and how it sounded, and you are thinking about what you meant, what you tried to do, what you think you did.
16:56 – 17:04
If the movie in your mind is not the same movie that played on the screen for everybody else, so it’s not until you see and
17:04 – 17:10
hear what I saw and heard, then we can talk and discuss what to do about it.
17:10 – 17:18
So here’s the thing: you never need to learn to like it, meaning like watching yourself and listening to yourself.
17:18 – 17:25
I see myself on camera so much I’m sick of my own face by the end of most days. Yeah. You know? So Yeah.
17:25 – 17:34
But no matter how many decades I’ve done training, presenting, conference talks, videos, TED Talks, you name it, I still go
17:34 – 17:42
back and watch at least portions of almost everything because I need to see what was effective, what landed as intended, if
17:42 – 17:49
I need to tighten something up, if I talk too fast at some point, if I got too technically detailed in some way, or if I totally
17:50 – 17:56
forgot to include something that was the piece that put it all together, I I tangent it and then never came back, it helps
17:56 – 18:00
me stay sharp, helps me stay at the top of my game.
18:00 – 18:03
I never learned to love watching myself.
18:03 – 18:08
It’s not something I do for fun. I don’t pull out popcorn. I mean, you could, All fine.
18:08 – 18:17
But I absolutely value what I get from watching them, either the confirmation that, yep, that landed as I wanted.
18:17 – 18:22
I’m really pleased with how that went, or here’s a note for optimization next time around.
18:22 – 18:24
Make sure you do or don’t do x.
18:24 – 18:33
So I think that those watching and listening to yourself on camera is absolutely an essential first step, or at least do an
18:33 – 18:41
audio recording of yourself and listen because you’ll see and you’ll hear what others are seeing and hearing. And here’s my challenge.
18:42 – 18:44
Ask yourself for the thing that you just recorded.
18:45 – 18:50
What are 2 or 3 qualities that you want to project to the audience?
18:50 – 18:53
Personal characteristics you want them to see in you. Yes, smart.
18:53 – 18:56
Okay, we know you want them to see you as smart. That’s a given.
18:56 – 19:02
That’s like the e in wheel of fortune. You know, it’s just a given. We’re Jon give it to you. Yeah, and everybody wants that. What else?
19:02 – 19:13
Confident, approachable, personable, empathetic, you know, extremely passionate and convicted, whatever it is.
19:13 – 19:19
So then listen to that recording and say, does that person sound like this?
19:19 – 19:20
Mhmm.
19:20 – 19:27
And it because that’s a subjective interpretation, but of your objective voice and speech behaviors.
19:27 – 19:29
Then you’re gonna listen and go, okay.
19:29 – 19:39
Why did this person sound like they were completely disinterested in their own content? Well, that’s interesting. What were you doing? Too slow?
19:39 – 19:42
Are you kinda, like, just using vocal fry the entire time and
19:42 – 19:42
Yeah.
19:42 – 19:45
Ravelling, mumbling your way through it? Right.
19:45 – 19:48
Hoping that the data would speak for itself because it doesn’t.
19:48 – 19:49
Yeah. Yeah.
19:49 – 19:53
You know, is it is this your version of, like, super excited?
19:53 – 19:56
Because there’s a little bit of variation in your tonality.
19:56 – 20:00
And so you think you’re doing a really good job and that should be enough.
20:00 – 20:05
And you want people to get on board because, you know, it’s cool. No. It doesn’t work. You know?
20:05 – 20:08
And what seems like, oh, this feels very out of my comfort zone.
20:08 – 20:17
When you watch it afterward, even if you think you’re you’re really stepping outside that box and and trying to to really
20:17 – 20:20
put energy into it, you’re gonna watch it afterwards and go, wow.
20:20 – 20:24
That just went from, like, a 2 to a 2a half out of 10.
20:24 – 20:27
That did not sound nearly as crazy as I thought it did.
20:27 – 20:34
The movie in your mind when the adrenaline is pumping, by the way, is not the same as what everybody else sees and hears.
20:34 – 20:45
Yeah. So you’ve given us, I think, a a a glimpse into how you work with folks, but I’m but I’m curious. CEO Sarah Smith calls you up.
20:45 – 20:52
You meet up, and they want to be a better public speaker. Mhmm. What does your training look like?
20:52 – 21:04
What just, like, give folks a sense of because I think a lot of a lot of folks who who listen to the show have probably thought hard about creating really nice slides. They’ve thought about their the work.
21:05 – 21:11
I I would guess a lot of folks have not gone through, like, a presentation coaching session. And so I’m curious.
21:11 – 21:20
Give folks a sense of what does that process look like if they were say, I want doctor Zicola to help me, like, be a better presenter. What is the process gonna be?
21:20 – 21:28
Yep. So we start first and foremost by identifying who are you presenting what to and why.
21:29 – 21:36
So every interaction that you have, you’re going to have 3 levels of impact: cognitive, emotional, and behavioral.
21:36 – 21:40
So think of it as your GPS coordinate when you’re preparing.
21:41 – 21:48
If you get in the car for this preparation journey, your GPS isn’t going to do anything until you put in the destination. Right?
21:48 – 21:52
So think, how do you want people to feel about this when you’re done?
21:52 – 21:54
What do you want them to think?
21:54 – 21:56
How do you want them to think differently about this?
21:56 – 21:59
And what do you want them to do as a result?
22:00 – 22:02
Then you start to build your talk, your presentation.
22:03 – 22:11
You’re absolutely right that you can’t have a whole script, on your screen because if you’re reading most of your screen out
22:11 – 22:14
loud, you have just rendered yourself obsolete.
22:15 – 22:15
Yeah.
22:16 – 22:21
You’re slowing it down because they can skim it a lot faster than you can say it out loud, so why are you gonna hold the process back?
22:21 – 22:25
Just send it to them as a PDF, let them read it, and get back to you by email if they got a question.
22:25 – 22:30
Don’t waste their time in a meeting boring them to death. Right? So, here’s a thought.
22:30 – 22:39
When you’re presenting spreadsheets and diagrams, if you have to preface any slide with, you probably can’t see this, but
22:41 – 22:43
Oh my god. I hate that.
22:43 – 22:46
Oh. Yes. That is a no no.
22:46 – 22:49
You should give yourself, like, a little taser shock for that one.
22:49 – 22:54
That’s not that is an ego slide, and you referenced this before. This is a CYA slide.
22:54 – 22:59
You know what I mean by CYA. Right? Cover your assets Mhmm. So to speak.
23:00 – 23:09
So again, that’s for you as presenter, that’s your your WOOBI, that’s your security blanket, and that’s not intended for the audience. They don’t need all that data.
23:09 – 23:17
Only show them what they need in the moment and then tell them what they don’t see by looking Jon maybe they’ve got the pieces,
23:17 – 23:20
but they haven’t put them together to see what the full picture is.
23:21 – 23:31
Help them with that, and make sure, if nothing else, that it’s clear for them why you’re showing them each of these slides
23:31 – 23:36
and what their big takeaway should be. Translate the what to the why.
23:36 – 23:46
Think an analogy I like to use is that your PowerPoint deck or whatever platform you’re using, you’re trying to build a house with this presentation.
23:46 – 23:48
And when you build a house, you need bricks and mortar.
23:48 – 23:52
Well, when you’re building a presentation, you need slides as your bricks.
23:52 – 23:58
Everybody builds those, but if you have no mortar, you don’t have a house. You have a pile of bricks. Mhmm. Doesn’t really help a lot.
23:58 – 24:06
So the mortar in the presentation is your transitions and your commentary. Mhmm. How are you transitioning verbally?
24:06 – 24:14
You don’t just finish talking about whatever you see there and then go, Okay, let’s go to slide 7. Click, slide 7 is this.
24:14 – 24:17
All you’re doing is identifying brick number 6 and brick number 7.
24:17 – 24:24
You’re not gluing them together, so you have to add value through your commentary and connect the dots for them.
24:24 – 24:31
People make the mistake, and this is part of the experts curse, in thinking, well, but the I’m presenting to the board. I’m presenting to the senior leadership. Like, they’re smart.
24:31 – 24:33
They know how to read all these spreadsheets.
24:33 – 24:35
They know how to understand all this. Yes.
24:35 – 24:38
But you’ve had weeks to think it all through to do the analysis.
24:39 – 24:44
They’re getting a fire hose right now of truckloads of information and no processing time.
24:44 – 24:49
Spoon feed them what you want them to get from what you share.
24:49 – 24:56
It’s not talking down to them if you tell them what your takeaways are and what you think their takeaways should be and what your recommendations data.
24:57 – 25:03
This is the linguistic glass ceiling that keeps people from moving up into higher leadership levels.
25:03 – 25:09
Because if all I’m doing is giving you my Data Monkey numbers, I’m great at crunching numbers, here are the numbers that I
25:09 – 25:13
crunched, That tells them, great, you’re good at that. You should stay there.
25:13 – 25:14
Right.
25:14 – 25:23
But if you want to prove to the higher ups that you belong at the table with them, they don’t think so tactically. They think strategically.
25:23 – 25:29
They want to know what to do with that information. So it’s not overstepping your bounds.
25:29 – 25:38
If you say it would be, you know, my recommendation with this or my concern would be or, you know, help them use the information
25:38 – 25:45
to make the decisions that they need to make, what their pressures are, what their needs are.
25:45 – 25:53
If you can show them that you have that foresight, that you can help them do their job better, that’s someone they want on the team.
25:53 – 26:05
Right. Yeah. It’s interesting to hear you you talk about it because I think there are lots of people who have this experience from the kind of analysts, whatever
26:05 – 26:05
Yeah.
26:05 – 26:07
Title you wanna have, the analyst level.
26:07 – 26:09
I’m just gonna walk you through these numbers. Yep.
26:10 – 26:15
But but kinda like the way you said before, you you kinda dress for the job you want, not for the job you want.
26:15 – 26:16
Correct. Great analogy.
26:16 – 26:28
Yeah. So, another thing that comes up a lot is folks who are preparing slides or talks for other people for their boss.
26:28 – 26:28
Mhmm.
26:28 – 26:31
And I guess this is kind of a 2 part question.
26:32 – 26:41
One is whether you work with those sorts of folks and how you help them become the person who has other folks making slides for them. Mhmm.
26:42 – 26:48
And I guess and then the other part is how do you or or may and this may not be folks that you work with, but how do you help
26:48 – 26:54
folks who are preparing material for other people to speak, especially if you don’t aren’t as familiar with their speaking
26:54 – 26:57
style, with the way they wanna go through the material?
26:57 – 27:02
Like, how do you have this, like, this dual level sort of relationship setup?
27:03 – 27:09
That could be complicated. You know, of course, it depends on how familiar you are with their information, how familiar they
27:09 – 27:12
are with yours, how much time you have to prep stuff.
27:12 – 27:18
You know, in my book speaking to influence, there is a good amount of information that that people can check out as far as
27:18 – 27:29
the presentation skill aspect of influence, but there’s a rule I have as far as how much and what should go on a slide.
27:30 – 27:40
And I call it it’s totally counterintuitive for most people, but it’s my what I call my $200 is $200 rule.
27:41 – 27:46
And so if you imagine your teenager comes home and says, hey, dad. Can I have $200?
27:47 – 27:52
I I need to buy a new pair of sneakers, and you’re going $200. My shoes don’t even cost $200. That’s a lot of money. You know?
27:52 – 27:56
What do you need all that for? And they he goes, no. But see, you don’t get it.
27:56 – 28:03
You don’t really it’s not really that much money because you only have to give me 2 bills. You know, I’m punching.
28:03 – 28:03
Thank you.
28:03 – 28:05
Thank you very much. And I’ll be here all day.
28:05 – 28:13
But point being, you’re going, I don’t care if it’s 2 bills or 200 bills or 1,000 of pennies. It’s the same amount of currency.
28:13 – 28:18
You’re just smashing it all into 2 pieces of paper. It’s the same with slides.
28:18 – 28:32
Most people put way too much stuff on a slide, and it’s all that CYA, cover your assets, mentality, but the counterintuitive
28:32 – 28:35
thing is that more slides is better.
28:35 – 28:45
If you have to talk for, let’s say, 10 minutes, you don’t need to have 2 slides with 5 minutes worth of content on each.
28:45 – 28:58
You’re better off having 10 slides with just one minute worth of content, and keep it moving because for each one, it helps you streamline your points. It helps you organize your thoughts.
28:58 – 29:05
It helps you do what visualization we call it scaffolding, where you lay a foundation and then you layer and you build and
29:05 – 29:08
you build and you build on the stuff that you’ve already shared.
29:08 – 29:10
So you’re educating the group as you go.
29:11 – 29:13
You’re also keeping the blinders on the horse.
29:13 – 29:17
So when there’s too many things on a screen at once, people are looking around.
29:17 – 29:21
The the presenter is trying to say, oh, and by the way, and there’s this and that. There’s no focus.
29:21 – 29:29
There’s no clear track as far as the order of things people should look at, and the likelihood of the audience looking at
29:29 – 29:33
whatever you happen to be talking about are slim to none.
29:34 – 29:37
So they’re not hearing what you’re saying.
29:37 – 29:45
Their brains because they cannot process auditorily something that’s different from what they’re processing visually.
29:46 – 29:52
So there’s a diagram on one side, and there’s a bullet list on the other side of the screen.
29:53 – 29:59
They’re gonna be looking at 1 or the other, but it’s probably not whatever you’re talking about, so they’re Jon tune you out. You become Charlie Brown’s teacher. Right?
29:59 – 30:03
Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah. And that’s not helping you.
30:03 – 30:08
So if you’ve got those, that split screen, great. Make it 2 slides.
30:08 – 30:10
Here’s the diagram, then here’s the bullets.
30:10 – 30:20
If you’ve got 10 bullets, how about you make it 3 slides, or do you really need all of those bullets? Are they full sentences? Is it a script?
30:20 – 30:23
Could you put up really just 3 bullets?
30:23 – 30:26
Are half of those just comments and talking points? Mhmm.
30:26 – 30:31
Should those really be more in the notes section than in the actual slide itself?
30:32 – 30:32
Yeah.
30:32 – 30:41
What does the audience need to read, and what is your responsibility to deliver as supplement and visualization.
30:41 – 30:44
Don’t put your speaker commentary on the slide.
30:45 – 30:54
Yeah. One thing that people ask me, when it comes to presentation is how I feel about notes using the notes in the PowerPoint.
30:54 – 31:00
The PowerPoint has no they all all the tools have the note thing or using your phone or using your index cards.
31:00 – 31:03
Like, how do you what is your answer to that question?
31:03 – 31:05
It depends on what you do with it.
31:05 – 31:11
I’m not a fan of the phone because I think it’s too small, and it forces you nobody wants a speaker who’s sitting there holding
31:11 – 31:17
their phone and staring at it the entire time while they’re talking. You break the connection. Remember the second c? Connect with the audience.
31:17 – 31:24
If you’re staring at your phone while on stage, it just looks like you’re multitasking, and it makes you look like you definitely
31:24 – 31:27
don’t know what you’re doing, that you have a crutch that you need that.
31:28 – 31:34
If there is a way to do, like I like what I’m presenting even if it’s something I’m familiar with.
31:34 – 31:42
I like to have my screen, the what’s called a confidence monitor, our presenters in the presenter view where okay maybe on
31:42 – 31:50
the big screen behind me, it’s just the slide that I want everybody to look at, but on my slide, on my laptop or whatever
31:50 – 31:56
monitor I’m using, I see the current slide and the next slide, and there’s a little section for talking points there.
31:56 – 31:59
I like to see that just because it reminds me what’s coming up next.
31:59 – 32:04
I don’t have to try to remember so I can be completely present, and I’m not trying to mentally multitask.
32:06 – 32:13
So that helps me to transition and make those connections I was talking about before, and then the question is what’s in the speaker notes?
32:14 – 32:21
And I don’t put a lot, but to the extent that as you’re building the slide, it helps you to put notes to yourself like reminders
32:21 – 32:23
you want to talk about these kinds of things.
32:23 – 32:32
Before you get to doing the presentation, delivering the presentation, we need to really condense those speaker notes. You cannot have paragraphs.
32:33 – 32:34
Yeah.
32:34 – 32:39
You have paragraphs while you’re thinking through it in the building process, not in the delivery.
32:39 – 32:45
You need a couple of keywords, a few stats you wanna remember, an analogy, a store reminder of a story you wanna tell.
32:45 – 32:50
Don’t write out the whole story, but tell the story about x. Okay. Tell that story.
32:50 – 32:53
But it should just be prompts Mhmm.
32:53 – 32:56
Reminders that you can then speak about extemporaneously.
32:57 – 33:02
Well, and to back to what you were talking about earlier, if you’ve recorded yourself and you’ve practiced and you prepared
33:02 – 33:02
Mhmm.
33:02 – 33:09
You really should only need a little prompt rather than the whole paragraph story just written out for you.
33:09 – 33:16
And sometimes I’ll put in the notes section, do not tell this story now because sometimes there’s a story I might want to
33:16 – 33:24
tell that could fit in 2 or 3 places and my brain will make the association and naturally start to tell that story, and I’m
33:24 – 33:29
like no you cannot tell this now hold off You’ll do it in 10 minutes, or this is a short version of the presentation.
33:29 – 33:32
Maybe I don’t have the luxury of time to tell that story.
33:32 – 33:38
It’s a really great, nice to have, but it’s not an essential need to have for today.
33:38 – 33:42
So just resist the urge to tell the story, shut up, and move on.
33:44 – 33:49
Well, on that note, thank you so much for coming on the show.
33:50 – 33:58
Where can folks find you to hear more about your work, maybe even to reach out to get some get some help from you, and your team?
33:58 – 34:11
Happy to. And I do of course, there is the coaching that’s 1 on 1, but also team trainings, half day, full day workshops, etcetera. Go to laurasicola.com. Not very cryptic. Nice and simple. Laurasicola.com. Connect with me on LinkedIn.
34:11 – 34:15
Of course, let me know that if you do that, that you heard me here talking with John on the show.
34:16 – 34:23
And otherwise, I do have a podcast as well, which is speaking to influence communication secrets of the c suite, which is
34:23 – 34:26
similar to the book, and I would encourage everyone to take a look at that as well.
34:26 – 34:32
Lovely. Everybody should subscribe and check out your site and the book and everything else, and watch the TED talk. You’ll enjoy that.
34:32 – 34:39
There’s another little Easter egg in there that we’ll let people just just go watch and let them let them get the Easter egg themselves.
34:39 – 34:42
Laura, thanks so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.
34:42 – 34:43
Thank you, John. It was a pleasure.
34:44 – 34:46
Thanks for tuning in to this week’s episode of the show.
34:46 – 34:49
I hope you enjoyed that conversation with doctor Laura Sikola.
34:50 – 34:54
I hope you’ll check out her TED talk and all the things I’ve linked to on the PolicyViz website.
34:54 – 35:01
If you have a moment, like always, please take a second and rate or review the show on your favorite podcast provider.
35:01 – 35:05
And if you have ideas for other guests, please do let me know.
35:05 – 35:15
You can get in touch with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or through my Substack newsletter on policyviz.com. So thanks again for listening. Until next time. This has been the PolicyViz Podcast.
