Tag: connect with audience

We Have a Winner!

From the desk of Peter Margaritis

WSCPA pic“…and there I was, sitting at the controls of the new Boeing 777 while the captain took a nap!”

At least that’s what Hayden Williams, VP of Education with the Washington Society of CPAs, thinks I’m saying. Hayden, a $25 Starbuck’s gift card is on it’s way to you.

Thanks for all the entries and the laughs! Who says accounting can’t be fun?

Public Speaking Skills: Step 5 – The Assessment

From the desk of Peter Margaritis

applauseYou did it – you presented to a group and they loved you! Take a few minutes to feel good about your accomplishment…you deserve it.

Now it’s time to review your performance, make notes for improvement and do re-design as needed. If your presentation was recorded, play it back a few times to look for what you did very well and what you can improve.

Most meeting organizer receive feedback or evaluations from the participants, so be sure to ask for that. If you know anyone from the audience, let them know that their constructive criticism would be very helpful. Ask for details: what were the take-aways they valued, what specifically did they not like, was the material too advanced or not advanced enough, was there something they expected to learn that wasn’t offered, what were the best moments. Use all the feedback and evaluations to improve the content and your abilities as a speaker.

If you would like to continue growing as a speaker, consider some other training opportunities. For instance, you could join Toastmasters International, an organization with many local chapters. Or ask to be considered for other speaking and presentation opportunities at work.

I hope that these 5 Steps help you. Remember, it’s not about just this one presentation; it’s about the journey you take as a communicator, a subject expert and an Edutainer!

Want to Connect With Our Audience: Make Them Laugh

From the desk of Peter Margaritis

Earlier this year I spent three days in Las Vegas participating in the National Speakers Association Laugh Lab conference entitled “How to be funnier…even if you’re not that funny now.”

Now I consider myself a pretty funny guy, but I’m always thinking of ways to incorporate more humor in my presentations. Why? Think about the presentations you’ve attended where you actually enjoyed yourself. Where you laughed a little – or a lot. You remember them, don’t you? More importantly, you probably remember at least one important thing the speaker was trying to communicate with you.

Humor does that. It connects you with your audience and your audience with you. That connection helps your audience absorb – and more often retain – the information you’re trying to communicate. There was an Ohio University journalism professor named Mel Helitzer who said if we can open students’ mouths with laughter this will allow us to spoon in knowledge. I’ve embraced that philosophy as an instructor and speaker, and I can tell you – Mel was right.

At the Laugh Lab, I met people from all around the United States including an Emmy award-winning comedy writer, stand-up comedians, motivational speakers, dentists, life coaches, authors, a PhD in psychology, engineers, and even accountants like me. We all had different backgrounds and experiences and different reasons for attending the conference, but at the core, we were all there for one reason – to learn more about humor and how it can make us better at what we do.

As I was traveling back to Columbus, I thought of four things that I could do to enhance my upcoming accounting and auditing update presentation based on what I learned at the Laugh Lab.

  1. Redefining frustrations. Like most of us, we tend to rely on PowerPoint to get our message across. You may not know this, but PowerPoint is actually a Greek term meaning “you are getting very sleepy.” This is a method called redefining frustrations where you take a topic like PowerPoint and talk about what frustrates you about this topic. You can strategically place these “redefining frustrations” throughout your presentation at points where you think your audience may be glazing over quicker than a Krispy Kreme doughnut.
  2. Use anagrams. An anagram, according to dictionary.com, is a word, phrase or sentence formed from another by rearranging its letters. For example, if we took the word DOG and rearranged it, we could come up with the word GOD. There’s a website,http://www.anagramgenius.com, where you can plug in any word phrase or sentence and instantly create an anagram. I plugged and lease accounting and the anagram that I got was “Clean-cut, agonies.”
  3. Comparison humor. This is where you take a topic and either compare the topic before and after OR take two topics and compare them to each other. For example, this economy is really scary; it has really changed my goals. Before, I used to save money, now I print money.  Or, men and women have different ideas of what they want in a relationship.  Women want a commitment and men want the remote control.
  4. Rule of three’s.  This is where you take a topic and list three things about your topic BUT the third on is the funny one.  For example, it’s scary how being broke can just happened. There are three signs that you’re broke. One is you can’t get money out of an ATM, two is your banker won’t return your phone calls, and the third is twitter is too expensive.

Try one or two – or all four – of these techniques in your next presentation and get your audience laughing! There’s no better way to help them stay focused, alert and engaged. And better yet – they’ll remember what you’re trying to communicate with them. So go ahead. Make them laugh and spoon in that knowledge.