atkinson advisor

Next time you have an important presentation, try using ethos, pathos, and logos to order your material.

Ethos asks you to establish your credibility at the outset and win the trust with your audience. Pathos means empathy and seeks to create a personal connection with your listeners as you demonstrate an understanding of their needs. Last, logos means logic and allows you to be powerful and persuasive in your presentation. The order is supremely important as both ethos and pathos set the stage and make listeners receptive to your logos.

Next time you have a long presentation, try adding a 7th inning stretch where you have everybody stand up and take a 30-second break. The best time is a natural stopping point about three quarters of the way through your presentation. Your audience will be pleasantly surprised, and the break will give you an opportunity to get their attention and set up a strong closing.

P.S. You do not have to imitate Harry Caray singing “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” — unless you want to.

PowerPoint is a wonderful business tool for conveying ideas. It is light years ahead of flip charts and overhead projectors with grease pencils.

At the same time, we are consumed by how much information we can cram on to a single slide. You ask, “What about the adage a picture is worth a thousand words?” It’s true, but that doesn’t mean the picture has to contain a thousand words.

The greatest PowerPoint graphic in the world does little to impress an audience. Conversely, a poorly created PowerPoint graphic will immediately turn off an audience.

Here are some warning signs that the PowerPoint could attack. If you encounter them, leave the room quickly.

• Small text you have to squint to read. This is a dead giveaway the presenter cannot condense information into salient thoughts that the audience will value. Which leads us to…
• Full sentences as bullets. By definition, they are not bullets…they’re sentences.
• PowerPoint Axiom #1: If a PowerPoint slide contains a full sentence, the presenter will read that sentence word for word.
• PowerPoint Corollary #1: The audience will be both bored and insulted if the presenter reads a sentence word for word.
• Charts and graphs designed to impress the presenter more than the audience. “Hey, look what I can do with graphics and this cool animation.” Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
• Too many acronyms. “The ROI from our CRM will have a direct impact on 4Q03 EBIDTA.” Ouch. When you use too many acronyms, you must “accept clear responsibility for negating your message.”
   

http://www.leadershipnow.com

We like quite a bit about this site, but two things caught our eye. First, the website features an extensive library of leadership quotes divided into more than 30 categories, such as courage, integrity, and risk-taking. It is a great resource when you need the right quotes for speeches, presentations, letters, etc. Second, the “LeaderShop” section contains a reading room where you can read excerpts and first chapters from many well-known leadership books.