Clarke of Kent

by Graham Davies

Isn't it fabulous to see an obviously decent bloke winning against the odds?

Darren Clarke is a golfer who is deemed worthy enough to be sent two Good Luck texts by Tiger Woods. He is such a nice guy that his two closest American rivals deliberately played a fistful of crappy shots to make sure that he won.

He also managed a Presentational Triumph that nicely topped off the golfing one.

Darren's acceptance speech could have been an uncomfortable experience for millions of people. Despite feeling enormous sympathy for him, we really did not want to see him cry. Again.

But he had clearly thought carefully about his words. And prepared some brief notes that he used as something to focus on under pressure. That is how he controlled his emotions, instead of allowing his emotions to control him.

This was Super Darren's day. Not even a kryptonite microphone would have stopped him.

FO Presentation

by Graham Davies

Last Night, William Hague continued the tradition style of Foreign Office Crisis Presentation. He was able to say, categorically, that:

1. It is unwise for British citizens to travel to Libya.

2. The Foreign Office is in posession of information that strongly indicates that Colonel Gadaffi is now in Venezuala OR is travelling to Venezuala OR is about to travel to Venezuala OR is staying in Libya and has no intention of travelling to Venezuala or anywhere else.

3. He is concerned about the level of violence in Libya and would like it to stop.

It is this level of presentational decisiveness that gives our country its current position of influence on the World Stage.

How to Accept an Award

By Graham Davies

It's Awards Season again, so bear the following in mind if you are receiving one on stage:

1. There is never any excuse for anyone saying "I don't know what to say", especially when you have known for weeks that you are on a short-list.

2. Start with something sharp and striking. Make the audience realise immediately that, at last, here is someone worth listening to.

3. Make your gratitude special and specific. Don't recite a featureless sequence of names: include a carefully-phrased half-sentence about each person's contribution so that they sound like talented human beings instead of items on a shopping list.

4. Do NOT say the words "Thank You" until right at the end, just before you leave the stage. Continuous repetition devalues the concept, whereas it sounds appropriately precious if you say it once with total conviction, as your punchline.

5. Learn and rehearse your words. And hire a really good coach to ensure that you have rehearsed your spontaneity professionally. You must be able to get your words out effectively, no matter how badly Ricky Gervais has upset you.

Cameron's Roots

by Graham Davies

A few silver hairs can make a politician or businessman look more mature and statesmanlike. They can automatically increase the gravitas of the person from whose head they spring.

David Cameron clearly does not agree with my first paragraph. Somehow, all of his head-hair has turned implausibly black. Not a hint of grey. Not anywhere. Nowhere that we are likely to see anyway.

It is not likely that the carbon emmission level in London has got so high that there has been an outbreak of Spontaneous Darkening. We have to examine the possibility that his lurch to the Extreme Right of the Colour Chart was self-inflicted.

The reasoning behind this possible new initiative is not clear. After all, he is not the sort of chap who walks into the House of Commons looking to pull.

Whatever he has done, his self-presentation looks just that little bit more ridiculous than it did before. I am sure he wishes he could buy a few new ideas in a bottle as well.

Why Ed?

by Graham Davies

Just as in the art of Stand-Up Comedy, the secret of success when you are running for the leadership of a political party is a combination of bravery and timing.

David Milliband is not the Labour Leader at this moment because he simply did not have the nerve to run at the right time. A crucial number of party voters remembered that he was the only potential challenger who could have saved Labour from Gordon Brown. But he just didn't have the balls.

And now Labour has a new leader who has massive presentational problems to overcome. The more he says that he is not beholden to the Unions, the more we all sneer. He may not like being called Red Ed, but it is a presentational label that he will have to work hard to scrub off.

No matter which Milliband we ended up with the Labour Leadership Election was the final link in a very disturbing trend. The leaders of all 3 major parties are all youngish guys who look good in suits but have never had a proper job outside Westminster.

They could all make the Micro-Statement, "I may not have any experience of the real world, but at least Daddy was rich enough to make sure that I never had to."

What a triumph of democracy.

Nick Sticks with Us????

by Graham Davies

"Stick with us. Please. Because we're not all that crap really. And I'm sure that I won't have to to dreadful Tory-type things forever. And I have got 'Deputy PM' on my CV which will be great for when it's time for me to cash in properly with my memoirs."

Sadly, Nick Clegg not to say all but the first 3 words of the preceding paragraph in his conference speech. It would have been a more compelling performance if he had put them in.

This was not a speech. It was an apology...from an elected Prefect who is rather embarassed at having unexpectedly joined the teaching staff. And he knew that the apology was just not going to be good enough.

I was wrong in my blog of yesterday about him moving about the stage. He stood behind a lectern, like an old-style politician, even though he wasn't using it for notes or a script. Essentially, he was using it as a barrier between himself and an audience that he was afraid would turn on him.

And he seemed surprised when they didn't applaud when he wanted them to. Surprised and also a little spoiled. I was cringing when he pressed the emotion button and only a rigidly faked tone came out.

But the most striking thing was his hesitant delivery. Long, uncomfortable pauses. Possibly because he wanted his prefect's lecture to sink in, but possibly because he was just couldn't remember his words quickly enough. He really needs to learn how to use an auto-cue.

If Nick Clegg sticks with this sort of speaking, he will carry neither the country nor his party.

What can Nick really say?

by Graham Davies

The three crucial ingredients of a speech are: who is speaking, what they say and how they say it. The speech to be delivered by the Leader of the Liberal Democrats tomorrow will be very different in each of these elements from its equivalent last year.

Nick Clegg's 2009 speech was a noteless political cabaret, a 55-minute exhibition of faulty policies delivered with a faultless memory. This was a Party Leader uninhibited by even the remotest thought that he would ever be able to put his ideas into practice. There was no hint of "Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government".

He will undoubtedly try the memory trick again, and wander around without a lectern, to show that Nick the Deputy PM, is still One of Them.

I look forward to hearing his Core Micro-Statement....the legacy at the heart of the speech that will be remembered above all else. The most accurate one I can suggest for him is: "Terribly sorry to have sold out on so many of our fundamental principles, but you should feel the leather in the back of our Ministerial cars!"

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Obama's Continuing Weakness

by Graham Davies

President Obama is one of the finest AutoCue Athletes that the world has ever seen. But the Q&A session about the economy that he did yesterday shows that he still has a long way to go before he is a great Presentational All-Rounder.

When he presents a carefully calculated and rehearsed text using AutoCue, he looks, sounds....and probably feels...utterly in control. But when he is answering a question in front of a live audience, you can see the certainty leave his eyes instantly, especially when there is a hint of aggression behind the question.

He then tends to speak.....with......pauses.....that are slightly.....too long........that come in.....strange places.........in his sentences. When a politician needs this much thinking time in the middle of a 60 second answer, he looks like a struggler, not a leader.

He needs more coaching. He certainly needs to read the Q&A chapter in The Presentation Coach (published by Capstone on 24 September). There he will see that Q&A can involve techniques which give you even more authority than rehearded delivery of a pre-prepared script.


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Blair's Brand

by Graham Davies

Tony Blair has spent the last few days devaluing his Personal Presentational Brand. I say this even though his autobiography may boost his professional speaking fees to beyond the merely stratospheric.

Of course, the thing that the punters in Waterstones want to see is one politician making bitter personal attacks on other politicians, preferably long-term friends and allies. Tony has been happy to oblige. This tells you more about him than the people he has targeted.

He has launched an assault on Brown et al, not because he wants to put the record straight for the good of the country, but because he wants to sell a few more books.

He may be the most expensive speaker on the planet, but he is looking cheaper by the day.


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Another Cop Thug

by Graham Davies

If there had abeen no CCTV footage available, how likely do you think it is that Sergeant Marc Andrews of the Wiltshire Police would have been prosecuted for assaulting a 57 year old woman?

I will tell you: there would have been no chance at all.

Never fall asleep in your car in Wiltshire.


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Out of Office?

by Graham Davies

Imagine sending an email like this to a colleagues, a supplier or a client:

"Thanks for your email, but I just don't care enough about you to read it or give you a 5-word response. I am on vacation, so I don't give a toss about you."

That is precisely the message you are presenting about yourself whenever a piece of software sends out an Out of Office Auto-Response that indicates you will not be accessing emails due to your on-holiday mode.

There really is no excuse for this presentational callousness. And yes, you are still presenting yourself and your business when you are on vacation, whether you like it or not. Of course, people do come up with alot of excuses for being incommunicado:

• I work a 70 hour week, so I am entitled to a complete rest
• There are other people who can deal with anything that is likely to come up
• My spouse forbids me from looking at work emails when we are on holiday

The third excuse is so beneath contempt that I won't even point out how risible it is. If there really is someone you totally trust to deal with everything as well as you could, then fair enough (but are you sure??). But surely you cannot really rest on your sunbed in the knowledge that you might have hundreds of unexploded bombs waiting in your in-box?

Everyone can afford a blackberry. But no-one can afford to present the image of someone who sticks their fingers in their ears and says LA LA LA rather than spending at least 30 minutes a day checking their email....no matter how exotic their location.

If you don't follow my advice, it is just possible that you won't be spending quite so much time on expensive vacations in the future.

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Pointless Politician

by Graham Davies

The speech by Tony Abbot on the night of the Australian General Election was a remarkable achievement. You see, Tony is the Leader of the Australian Liberal Party.....and he managed to lead his audience nowhere.

One of the fundamental requirements of a good speech is that the speaker should take the people he is speaking to on a journey (see Chapter 1 of The Presentation Coach, published next month by Capstone). Sadly, Tony had nowhere he wanted them to go.

The circumstances were difficult. He was surrounded on stage by 4 tall Amazonian women who may have been his bodyguards, but were probably his wife and daughters. They had no business being there and the looks on their faces made it clear that they knew it. They merely served the function of offering alternative targets for snipers.

And there was a hard core of Part Yobs at the front of the crowd who were determined to cheer every other sentence Tony uttered, no matter how indifferent.

What he said was a collection of bland statements that merely confirmed what the audience already knew:

It's too soon to celebrate
Everyone has worked hard
I am very grateful
This is an important night
We have more hard work to do
We are the best Party
We need to work hard
etc etc etc

The most telling verdict on the speech was given by Sky News, who switched to a commercial break half way through.

My message to Tony, and anyone else who imposes themselves on an audience, is this: Don't just have a speech, have a point as well.


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Speak with your Elbows

by Graham Davies

Yet again, David Cameron has shown his talent for creating memorable phrases under pressure. His spontaneous use of the words "sharp elbows" nicely captures the combative attitude needed by parents to secure the best for their children from the Public Sector.

It is also a phrase that should epitomise your attitude to Presentation. There are alot of things competing to get the attention of any audience you speak to. And even if you manage to grab their attention initially, it can still drift away if you and your words are not compelling enough.

That is why you have to be a practitioner of Sharp-Elbowed Presenting. This is a highly assertive form of speaking where you think of yourself as constantly jostling for the attention of the audience. You are prepared to push just a little to get to the head of the queue in their collective mind. But you are determined to retain that Dave-n-Sam charm even when you are at your most determined.

It is then that you will achieve the exquisite presentational balance encapsulated by the following impossibly mixed metaphor: the sharp tongue in the velvet glove.

Wasted Thank Yous

by Graham Davies

Never present when doing so is a waste of time for you and your audience. You might think that the previous sentence is crushingly obvious. However, yesterday I saw 2 people speaking to an audience 40,000 strong, when it was quite clear that the exercise was utterly pointless.

The people in question were the captains of the Australian and England Rugby Union teams. 5 minutes after an exhausting 85 minutes of enormous physical and mental effort, they were suddenly required to "say a few words". There was nothing that they could possibly say that would have been more eloquent than the effort that they had put into the game.

They both stumbled up to the microphone and said highly predictable Thank Yous to the fans who had turned out to support their respective teams. It was quite clear that they though they were wasting their time and their breath. Their presentations certainly added nothing to the occasion. In fact, it was an embarassment to see 2 people who are at the very top of their profession being forced to do something that detracted from their credibility as leaders.

Never allow yourself to be in a situation where you know that what comes out of your mouth will achieve nothing apart from a huge amount of personal discomfort and a devaluation of your personal presentational brand.

BA too Twittery

by Graham Davies

Satan likes to make work for idle hands. That's why he invented Twitter. And it is because of Twitter that I am travelling to Heathrow this morning not sure that my flight to China will take off.

Last Saturday, Derek Simpson of UNITE was not entirely focused on the way that Willie Walsh was presenting BA's case. He gave what can only be described a running commentary on the negotiations via the medium of his Blackberry. This stream included a description of Walsh as "vindictive".

Only twats twitter like this. There was nothing to gain and everything to lose. Negotiation content should be kept confidential while the negotiation is still going on. Blurting out his thoughts to the whole world was always likely to make the process more difficult.

And the very fact that Simpson had the urge to Twitter in the first place showed that his mind was not really in the room. He should have been zeroed in totally on assessing BA's presentation and calculating an appropriate response. The audience he should have been focusing was in front of him, not at lurking at the end of a Twitter-feed.

I urge you not to Twitter when you should be zeroed in on something else. Which is just about all the time.

Bland lead the Bland

by Graham Davies

I am currently working with several clients on their Maiden speeches in the House of Commons. This type of speech is often a very bland affair, with the meat of it consisting of merely a few nice pleasantries about the Mp's own constituency.

Of course, this will not be their very first speech as MPs: they made their first ones immediately after their victory was announced by the returning officer on election night. Every single victory speech that I saw on television consisted of a boring sequnce of predictable pleasantries and thank yous. The perpetrators had the chance to say something striking and memorable in the spotlight, but they decided to follow convention instead.

No presentation will ever be memorable if it it merely follows convention at the expense of saying something new. Never allow yourself to say something just because your audience expects it. It is only the unexpected that will get you what you want.

Robotic Cameron

by Graham Davies

Now that the political dust has settled a bit, I have decided who was the most unrealistic presentational role model during the build-up and aftermath of the Election.

Cameron has become frighteningly efficient under pressure. The speech he made just before he entered number 10 had an androidal effficiency: no notes, no stumbles, no vocal imperfections (well,maybe he flubbadubbed 2 words). He was so good that you should look at what he achieved and then follow my advice:

Don't try this at home.

There is rarely any need for the typical presenter to force themselves into the potential horrors of the no-notes vortex. The potential upside of looking-as-good-as-Dave is massively outweighed by the possible downside of looking-like-a-prat if you forget to say your best point.

Dignified Exit

by Graham Davies

Right at the end, Gordon Brown was almost someone that you could like. His farewell speech was a triumph of dignity.

He achieved the tricky balance of leaving Downing Street elegantly and eloquently, without letting any residual bitterness show through. His tribute to our armed forces at last sounded genuine, because he had no electoral advantage to gain from it. His acknowledgement that he was unable to form a government was a measured statement of political fact and not, as it easily could have been, the whine of a beaten man.

His cleverest and most touching presentational moment was completely unexpected. He described being PM as the second most important job behind being a husband and father.

It's a shame that he was unable to present this level of humanity when he was actually in office, rather than just when he was leaving it.

Clegg's Presentational Oxygen

by Graham Davies

There is widespread disbelief today that the Lib Dems could have done so badly after Nick Clegg's top class presentational performance in the election debates. The fact is that the electorate realised that crap policies presented well are still crap policies.

But presentation was still vitally important to Clegg's party. If he had not been so brilliant, their vote share would have dropped dramatically below what they managed to achieve in 2005. Without the boost that his debating skills gave them, they would now be able to have a meeting of their Parliamentary Party in a phone box.

For the Tories and Labour, good presentation is a vital tool in their fight for victory. For the Lib Dems it is what they will continue to need in their fight for survival.

Mike Paranoia Pays

by Graham Davies

Yesterday, Gordon Brown gave a Master Class in microphone-awareness. Or whatever the opposite of a Master Class is. Not realising that he was still wearing a live lapel mike, he described someone as a "bigoted woman"....when her views were merely different to his rather than bigoted.

It is always a disaster for a politician to be caught saying something in "private" that contradicts their public persona. It confirms the pre-conception that we all have of them being two-faced.

But all presenters can learn something from this: always assume that the mike is on.......and make sure that you get rid of the damn thing as soon as you have finished what you have finished doing what you put it on for.

There are a host of (probably apochryphal) stories about the sound of presenters' bodily functions being transmitted by mikes that were unexpectedly still switched on. This morning, I am certain that Gordon Brown wishes we had just heard him having a crap.