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.