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What the f? Or what the Prime Minister’s nightmare speech can teach us about presentations

The Prime Minister would’ve been hoping the Heckler and Kochs were all safely in the arms of the police officers outside the Tory Party conference here in Manchester. Little did she suspect there would be a heckler and cock on the inside, armed with nothing more than a piece of paper. But in the right hands (or the wrong hands depending on your political perspective) a P45 can be every bit as lethal as an MP5 – particularly if the victim has already been wounded by blue-on-blue “friendly” fire from within the ranks. Step forward Lieutenant Johnson and Lance Corporal Rees-Mogg.

That the comedy Spetsnaz hiding in plain sight among the party faithful didn’t finish off the PM is testament to her presentorial (I made up that word) fortitude. After all, here was a speaker who also had to grapple with two additional enemies. The first biological: a sore throat. The second mechanical: an adhesive failure (or perhaps that should read ailure) when the f in the slogan behind her – building a country that works for everyone – came unstuck along with an e. Not great boss shtik. Or Bostik.

This scenery fail was, of course, a gift for the political commentators who were bound to see it as some kind of grand, unifying metaphor for the state of Theresa May’s rapidly disintegrating authority. But those seeking to bury her bits should remember the old adage “ne’r cast a clout til May is out.” And, by the end of her speech, May was down, yes, but by no means out.

At the risk of mixing metaphors, watching her performance put me in mind of those old nature programmes on the telly when I was a kid, except I don’t remember ever seeing the wildebeest get up and walk away after being dragged to the ground by a pack of hungry hyenas.

Now I don’t seek to make or score any political points here, but merely to suggest how those of us who have to present to audiences for a living might learn from May’s extraordinary recovery against the odds. It’s possible, of course, that she’s sustained mortal injuries and will succumb to them in due course. But as I write this in my hotel room overlooking the conference venue, where the security fences are being noisily dismantled, she’s still with us. The devil dogs have slunk into the shadows more usually occupied by the rough sleepers who, in turn, have been forced temporarily to seek out the even deeper shade in the streets and towpaths and underpasses the police consider a “safe” distance away.

So in this blog post I’ll suggest how you might deal with hecklers. And in subsequent posts I’ll write about sticky throats and less-than-sticky scenery.

HECKLERS

There are four main ways of dealing with those intent on interrupting our presentations. The first is what I call a pre-heckle preemptive manoeuvre – grandiloquent eh?! The other three are post-heckle tactics, or what I like to foreshorten to “hectics” because that’s what they can feel like.

  1. Stop them getting in.
  2. Ignore them.
  3. Tackle them (physically not intellectually).
  4. Tackle them (intellectually not physically).

Stopping them getting in in the first place is nigh on impossible. It’s hard to imagine a presentation with tighter security than for a sitting Prime Minister at a party conference. Yet even with a carefully vetted guest list Simon Brodkin aka Lee Nelson managed to get through. So by all means hope for the best and plan for the worst…

That plan should include whether you should ignore them and (a) hope they’ll give up/go away or (b) be escorted swiftly from the premises by your burly security detail. Now I don’t know about your presentations, but if you’re much further down the pecking order than, say, the PM or even the BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, you’re unlikely to have such a, I was going to say luxury but, sadly, I should probably say necessity.

Both options – ignoring and physically tackling hecklers – are potentially problematic for your presentation. Bitter experience has shown me that while initially an interruption may barely disrupt proceedings when ignored hecklers usually get louder and louder until they can be ignored no longer. Best intervene on your terms rather than theirs.

So what should that intervention be? The physical tackle is best left to the rugby field (unless, of course, there is an immediate physical threat to your health and safety and that of your audience). The audience may forgive the physical nature of the response if it’s perceived to be proportionate to the threat. But if the threat isn’t physical or the response is disproportionate then the audience might change allegiance and see you as the oppressor and the aggressor as the victim. Whether seen live by your delegates or later by a wider audience via TV and the Internet, images of hecklers being man-handled (and it usually is man-handled) out of the building are rarely pretty. We instinctively back the little fella in the David vs Goliath scene we’re inadvertently producing.

All of which leaves us with the intellectual tackle, in its own way as hard to properly execute as the physical version but done well more effective. Doing it well means first of all pausing your presentation and acknowledging the interruption – ideally with a smile and especially with a smile if the heckle’s funny (to the audience that is – you’ll be struggling too see the funny side at the time)!  It’s amazing how often even the acknowledgment and smile can calm or wrong foot the heckler who would otherwise feed off your discomfort.

If it’s needed, the next step is the critical one and if it was a dance move it’d impress Len Goodman. In a few words it’s to deal with the heckle not the heckler. In many words it’s to placate not to exacerbate, to reason not argue. It’s a routine best done calmly. Slow      down      your      natural      delivery     pace    and    markedly    so. Speak more quietly than usual. Resist the temptation to speed up, rush things or get louder. Humour can work, if it’s self deprecating. May held up a throat lozenge handed to her by Philip Hammond and declared “look, a free gift from the Chancellor!” And it’s to her credit that she was able to turn defence into attack and redirect the spoof P45 towards her usual arch nemesis, the Leader of the Opposition. But humour can fail if it’s at the expense of the heckler.  They may become more not less disruptive or the audience may feel your humour is too cutting and the heckler’s once again an Old Testament David and you’re the cudgel-swinging oaf.

Asking questions of the heckler may seem time-consuming but can help you and the audience understand what exactly are their concerns. Once revealed those concerns can then be addressed – the underlying causes if you like rather than just the symptoms. If you discover that the heckler has a point then maybe you could concede some ground. Theresa may have said (but didn’t) “for those of us in uncertain jobs the P45 isn’t a welcome sight but thanks for reminding me all the same I’ll keep it to hand” and then, with a magician’s flourish, folded it into her pocket and resumed her script. It’s certainly a refreshing approach and can again wrong-foot all but the most determined heckler. I’d concede it takes both quick wits and steel nerves but I find that many sources of interruption can be anticipated and rehearsed so that you appear super smart and super cool only because you’ve practised.  And as you know, practise makes perfect.

If you’d like to practise dealing with hecklers in highly realistic training sessions then Richard Uridge and ACM Training offers just that for a whole lot less than senior politicians pay their armies of choreographers, script writers, voice coaches and colour consultants. Click here to send us an email outlining your worst presentational nightmares and we’ll do our level best to show you how to turn them into sweet dreams.

Next time. Not to be sneezed at: how to deal with coughs, colds and sore throats.

In the meantime here’s a good comparison of Obama and Trump dealing heckles. Which do you think  is more presidential?

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Thank you

It’s the last of our Manchester workshops today so we’d just like to say a huge thank you to everyone who showed this week that it’s business-as-usual. Thank you to our clients, of course, who made it despite the inevitable disruption to public transport. Thank you to the staff at the Premier Inn who were and are always unfailingly helpful. Thank you to our trainer, Sandy, who’s always warm and caring towards her delegates and who took time to go to the vigil. And thank you to the big-hearted people of Manchester who are always welcoming to us “soft southern Jessies” but who this week have been even more stoical and funny and decent and human. Love.

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You’re a social media landlord – manage your property portfolio well

With a property portfolio at one stage of more than 1,000 homes, Britain’s biggest buy-to-let landlords must have found it difficult to keep tabs on every single property they (or the banks) owned. I find it hard enough to keep tabs on just one – the house I live in. So, almost inevitably, tucked away in an avenue here or a cul-de-sac there will have been buildings that dragged down the reputation of the neighbouring homes. Peeling paint. Broken windows. Leaking roofs.

And so it is with social media real estate. Long forgotten Facebook business pages which haven’t been updated since September. September 2014 that is.  Corporate Twitter accounts with fewer Tweets than an empty cuckoo’s nest. And LinkedIn profiles that are about effective a calling card as a phone number scribbled on a soggy beer mat. All “properties” that could be damaging your reputation.

So it’s time to do a social media audit to assess the extent of your digital estate. Demolish those Facebook accounts, pages and groups that are surplus to requirements. Bulldoze those Twitter accounts that were set up in a burst of enthusiasm for every single department. In short, rationalise.

And where your rationalisation reveals gaps in your digital portfolio get building. Construct a new Instagram account. Open that YouTube channel. Make WhatsApp ‘appen.

Now if you’ll allow me to push the metaphor a little further… don’t risk getting “locked out” of your own property by allowing your “tenants” to make their own keys. Open up social media accounts centrally and keep a register of the administrator usernames and passwords – yours and anybody else you grant administrator or similar rights to – so that if somebody leaves (even you) the organisation can still get in.

If your digital estate audit does reveal a Facebook business page that you’re locked out of, perhaps because it was set up by somebody who’s now left, getting it deleted without a username and/or password can be tricky. The best thing is to report it to Facebook. Here’s a useful post on Facebook’s own help pages.

There’s a chance that your search will reveal property that looks like yours but isn’t. For example, I’ve worked as a social media trainer with local authorities who’ve discovered several spoof pages or profiles set up by disgruntled council taxpayers purporting to be the council. In these cases there’s not much you can do. Most tend to have a short lifespan and fizzle out after the initial disgruntlement (is that even a word)!? dies down. If they persist you could try contacting the owner and resolve the issue by negotiation. If that doesn’t work, and in particular if the spoof content is offensive, you could again try report the issue to the relevant social network. But don’t hold your breath. Resolving problems through the official channels can be long-winded and may still fail. Which is why managing your digital property portfolio properly in the first place is vital.

Be a good landlord.

I have to thank my trainees at Melton Borough Council for proving the inspiration for this post. You can find them on Facebook. If they’ve done their audit properly there will only be one page!

*  I shot the feature image in Kampot, Cambodia while on holiday earlier this year. It’s a fine old building from the era before Pol Pot and his murderous regime. Unlike a disused Facebook page it’s former grandeur shines through the decay.

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Why First Person isn’t bad for science communication

Traditionally scientists have used the Third Person when communicating their work – particularly to fellow scientists. But in the cult-of-personality, social media age might the First Person be better? ACM Training’s lead media, communication and presentation coach, Richard Uridge, argues the case for scientists putting themselves centre stage.

Not so long ago science students were encouraged to write in the third person. “I did this” or “we observed that” first person communication was struck through with the bright red slash of a supervisor’s pen and replaced in spidery handwriting with “this was done” or “that observation was made.” Why? Because an aloof way of writing – and even of speaking – somehow reinforced a scientist’s sense of detachment from her or his research.  Get too close, put yourself at the heart of the experiment and you’ll compromise your independence or even corrupt your conclusions.  Or so the argument went.

Well after sitting through two days of presentations at a post graduate student event in Birnham, Perthshire, organised by the James Hutton Institute, I have to say it’s high time we overturned the archaic orthodoxy. The presentations that this, admittedly non-academic, member of the audience understood and enjoyed the most (and the two aren’t mutually exclusive) were those that unashamedly put the scientist centre stage. Being a part of your endeavours not apart from them isn’t bad science as anybody who’s been cured of a stomach ulcer (I speak from personal experience) ought to appreciate thanks to the pioneering work on Helicobacter pylori of Barry Marshall and Robin Warren. By drinking a bacterial brew to prove their theory (that it wasn’t spicy foods that caused gastritis) Marshall couldn’t have been more first person. And it certainly didn’t stop him and his colleague picking up a Nobel Prize.

The fact that the pair were plain speaking Australians helped. You can’t imagine Warren saying “a beaker of H. pylori was consumed and 48 hours later vomiting and fever were observed in the patient.” You can imagine him saying “Bazza chugged a tinny of the stuff and was crook as a dingo on dodgy dog food before you could say surf’s up. “

Okay so I’m exaggerating but you get my point: first person doesn’t equal bad science. And what’s more, first person does equal more effective communication. In short because it’s more engaging. Engaging an audience is a necessary precursor to communication. Think of engagement as opening up the pipeline between you, the scientist, and your audience. Once it’s open you can push information, data if you will,  through it from your brain to theirs. If the pipeline’s closed conveying that data is impossible.

Here’s the Who Goes First? podcast. It’s not about first person science communication per se but more about scientists who’ve experimented on themselves and are very much centre stage in the way I discuss above. It includes discussion of the ethical dimension of Marshall and Warren’s work.  [powerpress].

Please note that this programme was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4. As a result it contains copyright material so is strictly for personal use and must not be used for commercial gain withour our express permission in writing. Please contact me if you’d like to obtain a licence.

NEXT Rumours of its death may be greatly exaggerated but why PowerPoint is in intensive care and may not be the most appropriate tool for science communicators.

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Normal service restored

Normal service has been restored. The ACM Training website is back up and running. Thank you to the “firefighters” who dealt with the hard drive meltdown at our IT provider. It wasn’t as bad as the picture makes out by the way!

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Meltdown

If you’ve found your way here because you couldn’t get to the main ACM Training website at www.acmtraining.co.uk we’re aware of a problem and dealing with it. The boffins are muttering something about a hard drive meltdown. The boss is having a meltdown. Things should be up and running again soon. Fingers and toes crossed. Sorry for any inconvenience. You can always ring Jack on 01584 890970. He’d love to have a chat. Especially if you want to place a booking!

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Hook ’em with a question

“Online it’s all about the narrative. We’re suckers for a good story so try to convey your research as such. Make it engaging for your target audience. Aim for a conversational tone. And remember to ask lots of questions. Think of it this way: a question mark is like an upside down hook so to hook people into your research ask them questions. As a researcher you’ll be amazed at the value of their responses. It could even be the answer you’re looking for!

I penned these few words of advice for researchers looking to build an audience for their work online. It was in response to a request from Hywel Curtis at http://www.growresa.com – a new website to help academics with blogging.

The quote took me a long time* – certainly longer than the few minutes I’d expected. But it’s amazing how blogging can help clarify the thought process. And that, in itself, is surely one of the benefits of blogging for researchers? There are, of course, other benefits. Here’s a short presentation I prepared as part of a training course for Queen Margaret University in Scotland. It’s a basic introduction that I hope might help you decide whether to start blogging yourself. Watch it carefully and you’ll spot the delicious irony when I say that blogs shouldn’t be a repository for all those presentations you’ve given!

 

French philosopher Blaise Pascal
French philosopher Blaise Pascal

*The French philosopher Blaise Pascal, he of the “I’m sorry I wrote you such a long letter I didn’t have time to write a short one” was right; it takes longer to ponder a few sentences than it does to compose a whole article.

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What’s the difference between categories and tags?

Whether it’s birds or blogs we’ve be organising stuff into groups since the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus invented his system of classification. In fact I’d argue that making sense of our complicated world is something we’ve felt compelled to do as Homo sapiens (Kingdom: Animalia; Order: Primates; Family: Hominidae) pretty much from the get go. Or to put it another way, we were anoraks well before the anorak was invented. But whilst the taxonomy of the natural world is, for want of a better word, taxing, the taxonomy of the digital world is, thankfully, less complicated.

Carl_von_Linné

Blogs can be organised into three, simple sections:

  1. Subject
  2. Categories
  3. Tags

Think of the subject as the label that covers everything you write about or are planning to write about in your blog. It might be a subject with a wide-ranging scope like nature or gardening or something much narrower like hill walking or vegetable growing or narrower still like Munro-bagging or potato propagation. Narrow or wide the choice is yours – especially if you’re blogging for pleasure. If you’re blogging for profit then I’d suggest you stick to a subject you know about and one where your target audience will value your expertise. It’s easier to sell yourself a master of one trade rather than a Jack-of-all.

Categories become important once you have more than a few blog entries and  help vistors find their way around. The wider-ranging your blog the more important categories become. I have a client who blogs about urban anthropology (the subject). She’s written extensively about the legacy of the London Olympics but also writes about the post industrial landscape and about the impact of technology on human behaviour. I suggested they should be thought of and classified as three separate categories. Of course, there will be times when you want to list a post under several categories and that’s fine. For example, if Pokémon GO ever becomes an Olympic sport it’d come under two of my anthropologist’s category headings.

Tags are similar to but more specific than categories. Again looking at the example above a post could be categorised under “Olympic legacy” but be tagged specifically “London” or “Rio” so that a visitor could more easily find all the posts that are tagged or reference, say, “Rio.” Tags on blogs aren’t that different to tags on #Twitter that help us find stuff there.

Most if not all blogging platforms allow you to display your chosen categories so visitors can see your blog’s organisational structure at a glance. I’d suggest you do just that. WordPress and others also enable you to display the tags you use so that if a visitor clicks on a particular tag it aggregates all the posts that use that tag.

If you want to have a look at how I utilise categories click on the dropdown menu  on the sidebar of this post or on my personal blog. The tags I use appear along the bottom of this and other posts. Try out the feature by clicking on one.

Eat your heart out Linnaeus!

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Facebook groups versus pages

Should I set up a Facebook page or group?

Good question and the short answer in most cases is both!

The longer and more helpful answer is that it depends largely on what you’re trying to do (your organisational aims and objectives) and who you’re trying to do it with (your target audience). By answering the following questions you’ll be able to arrive at the best answer…

Which description best fits you and your organisation?

A: We’ve got a well-established support base on the social web and would simply like to split this existing audience into more manageable and natural subsets.

B: We need to get more likes and build a bigger audience in order to “sell” our products, services or ideas.

Answer A Then a group or groups is probably the best option for you.

Answer B Then a page is more likely the better option.

Do you want to keep the conversation between you and your audience private?

YES! Then a group is probably the best option because with closed or secret groups you can more easily manage who sees what’s being shared on the group’s timeline.  For example, with a secret group nobody outside the group can see it and, as a result, know who’s in it or what they post.

NO! You need to answer a few more questions yet. A page might be the best option but equally an open group could be the perfect solution.

Do you want to vet who’s allowed to join?

YES! Then a group is probably best. Group settings allow you to decide who you invite and/or accept.

NO! Then either a group set to anyone can join will be the right option or a page where anyone can like a page to connect with it and get updates in their news feed.

Do you want to use Facebook Insights to measure the results?

YES! Then go for a page because Insights doesn’t currently work with groups.

NO! Then it doesn’t matter which.

Do you need to share with your audience documents or files on your computer?

YES! Then go for the group option as it’s easier to share, collaborate and ask questions.

NO! Then again it doesn’t matter.

CASE STUDY – local authority

Victoria Fawcett of Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council set up a Facebook group called Stockton 5K trail series to promote, as the name suggests, a series of 5k runs across the North East of England. The group was fine as a way of communicating with athletes who’d already heard of the series from other sources – both on and offline. But it wasn’t so effective at growing that community to get more taking part in the events. Two things informed Victoria’s decision to set up a page and invite group members to join her there: firstly visibility – pages, she was told, are easier to find on Facebook than groups; secondly, because only a page gives you access to valuable metrics via the Facebook Insights suite of feedback and analysis tools.  Whilst the latter is true the former is not – unless your group is secret. The community page has nearly 1,500 likes (July 2016). That’s significantly more than were members of the now defunct group so it was clearly a good decision to make the change to page.

TOP TIP

Make an informed decision before you establish a page or group as you can’t automatically convert a group into a page or vice versa at a later stage. The only workaround in the case study above was for the group owner to ask members via the group timeline to migrate to the page incentivising those who make the journey across the wide open trails of cyberstockton by offering modest prizes (a beanie)!  Nor is it possible to merge two groups into one short of asking members of the one you’re closing to join the one you’re keeping going.

Think of pages as physical places. If you’re a small organisation you might only need one page/room. If you’re a big organisation you’ll probably need several pages/rooms. Get as many people coming through the doors of these pages/rooms as you can and then, once they’re in, decide how you want to organise them into separate groups.

CASE STUDY – national charity

As a supporter of the NSPCC you might like the charity’s Facebook ’s page. Almost 300,000 people already have. But it would be inappropriate for discussions about some of the grittier areas of the society’s work to be held, in effect, with all these people listening. So there are five open or public groups and who knows how many secret groups where like-minded individuals can get together in much smaller groups to discuss things. Social workers use these groups, for example, to discuss child welfare issues away from the public gaze. And young people can discuss growing up in a secret group away from the inappropriate gaze of adults.

TOP TIP

Ask yourself is it more appropriate for conversations with a target audience to be happening in relative if not absolute privacy? If the answer is yes then a Facebook group with its built in privacy settings is probably the best  for you.

CASE STUDY – small business

At ACM Training we had too many groups and it was almost impossible to find both the content and the time to post stuff to the various groups’ timelines to stimulate debate among members. For example, we had one group for people who’d been on our social media training courses and another for those who’d attended our writing for the web courses. Now we have a larger – but more easily managed – social web group which works for us because resources aren’t spread so thinly and works for group members (unless they think otherwise!) because there is a natural crossover between the two subject areas – if you’re interested in the social web you’re almost certainly going to be interested in writing for the web. We encourage group members to like our page but don’t insist on it as a precursor to joining the group. We also allow group members to invite new members so we can grow organically.

Here is a link to Facebook’s own thoughts on groups vs pages.

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Brexit – a victory for style over substance?

I promised myself I wouldn’t write about the EU referendum here. But then so many people (for which, read politicians) seem to be going back on their words left, right and centre that one more little broken promise won’t matter surely?

Actually I don’t want to comment on the politics at all. Or reflect on the outcome. More than enough has already been said on those fronts. But as a student of public speaking and as a presentation skills trainer I believe that the contrasting styles of Remain and Leave did influence the result. To what extent I guess we’ll never know although it’s worth adding that in a close contest the side with the better lines and the better delivery can and often does end up winning as a consequence.

It doesn’t really matter whether you’re selling England down the river, dodgy DVDs down the market, or a proposition to colleagues down the corridor, your “patter” must conform to what I call the Four Cs. It must be: clear; concise; catchy; and strike a chord with the audience.

So with that in mind let’s explore the political patter.

“Let’s make tomorrow our Independence Day.”

Nigel Farage’s call to action is undoubtedly clear, concise and catchy. The fourth measure, of course, depends on your point of view. But on the first three alone it trumps the Remain refrain.

“We are stronger, better off and safer in Europe than we would be out on our own.”

Again, whether it strikes a chord depends on your point of view.  But putting that aside, what the two quotes boil down to is Independence (leave) versus Interdependence (stay). Now we’re more familiar with the word independence. And its face value is probably higher too. We seek financial independence.  As teenagers we can’t wait to leave home and become independent (even if not immediately financially so). At the other end of life we fight to keep that independence for as long as possible. By comparison the word interdependence is weaker and, therefore, harder to promote. The irony here is that our treasured independence is illusory. Take the notion of financial independence. Unless I keep my fortune under the mattress my security depends largely on external factors, as anyone who’s lost money on the financial markets in the turmoil that’s followed Brexit will tell you. Indeed, even under the mattress, my financial independence exists only in so far as it doesn’t get stolen. I’m depending on burglars not reading this, the alarm company, that nosey lady at number 23 who’s in Neighbourhood Watch, the police, the law…oh and the bloody great Rotweiller that has a free run of the house when we’re out.

A better presentational strategy for Remain might have been to subvert the familiar phrase and quote it back at their opponents and, by extension, the wider audience – you and me.

“They say ‘let’s make tomorrow our Independence Day.’ I say there’s no such thing. We all depend on others. Children on their parents. Grandparents on their children. All the way up to nations on their neighbours. For our safety. For our security. For our jobs. For our families. Let’s make tomorrow our Interdependence Day.”

Okay, I accept it might need a bit of a polish (although less if you read it in a stirring Churchillian voice) but it’s certainly better than some of what I heard which, paraphrased, amounted to: “The EU is a bit shit to tell you the truth. But we can make it a little bit less shit. And it’ll be a lot shittier if we leave.Trust me, I’m a politician.” Actually I made that last bit up but you get my drift.

It seems like VoteLeave had all the good lines. Here’s another one:

“Let’s put the Great back in Great Britain.”

So powerfully did this key message tug at the heartstrings of a certain demographic that I heard it being repeated in conversations. Something that strikes a chord (the fourth of the four Cs) resonates. And if that chord is still resonating when people enter the polling booth then there’s a chance that their pen (not the pencil provided) will dance to its tune.

“Stronger together” was as close as Remain were able to get. But I’d argue, semantically, that given a choice most people would prefer to be great than strong. In other words, being strong is only good if it makes you great.

So what does all this mean for those of us who present not on a national or international political stage, but in more modest meeting rooms and conference halls? It means being clear about what you need to say. It means saying it as concisely as possible. Make your key messages and calls to action catchy by choosing your words carefully and putting those words in the right order. And, although it’s not always possible (especially if your audience doesn’t like you or what you’re saying) try to strike a chord.

Over the next few months I’ll be exploring the impact that personality has on presentation through the lens of the referendum. Was it, for example, the undeniably colourful (yes I think that’s the right word) characters like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage wot won it for Brexit?

My next presentation skills course in London on July 5th is sold out but there are still places available in London on September 6th and December 8th and in Manchester on September 14th. You can book here.