The Broadband Connection. Alan Carroll
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twenty years ago. You see in your mind a picture of the place; you remember the thoughts and emotions, even though it was two decades in the past.
One would assume the goal of most IT professionals’ presentations is to be effective. This means you actually want your audience to remember what you are talking about. Research suggests that most audiences remember 10 percent of the data twenty-four hours after attending the presentation. This is not effective and suggests that the presenter was not delivering the message in a memorable fashion.
One way to become more memorable is to integrate video gestures into all your communication packets. Using your hands and arms provides most video images. However, you can also use your whole body to create the video impression for the audience. The more vivid and powerful the image is, the more lasting the impression it makes on the audience.
Unfortunately, powerful and vivid video images are rare in IT professionals’ presentations.
Why?
In order to create a powerful vivid video image, presenters must be trained in the delivery skill, committed to the data, and equally committed to helping the audience understand the data.
My observation has been that the average IT professional is brilliant in mastering the acquisition of data but still needs to improve his or her ability to communicate the data clearly so the audience understands it. Presenters need to shift from a self-absorbed attitude—“I’m just doing my job”—to an attitude focused on contribution and service to the audience.
Generating high-quality video images requires presenters to control the time and space in which they work. They need to be very grounded and anchored in present time in order to maintain a broadband connection to the audience. The anchored broadband connection will allow them to create more space packets. And, in that conscious environment, they can manifest their intention more fully, as well as develop and sustain the video image they want to transmit to the audience.
By giving yourself time, you create the space to think about what to do with your body to convey your thought to the audience in the form of a video image. The more you practice using your body to transmit video images, the more natural it becomes. Eventually, creating video images will be second nature and you will not have to think about it consciously anymore.
It is my experience that almost every sentence an IT professional delivers has the possibility of containing video components. Let’s say you were thinking of the word large. To create a video image for large, you would open and extend your arms. If you thought the word small, you would bring your arms and hands close together. If you thought the words over there, you would extend your arm toward another section of the room. If you said the packets move from one point of the network to another point on the network, you could move your whole body from one point in the room to another.
(For more information on creating video images, visit www.carrolltrain.com, where you can see me demonstrate a wide variety of video images using hands, arms, and body.)
Now, let’s look at the verbal or voice component of the packet, which makes up 38 percent of the delivery.
Many IT professionals speak in a single tone of voice: a monotone. A monotone delivery lacks life and vitality. It is not inspiring and may bore the listener.
Your voice is like a musical instrument. It can play a wide variety of notes. You can change the speed of your voice, that is, the baud rate; you can change the volume and the cadence, as well as the inflection or emphasis of your speaking. All these changes can make listening to you more interesting. You can also change the pitch of your voice, making it higher or lower. However, in my experience, changing pitch isn’t appropriate in professional IT presentations.
Coaching Tip
Your voice is closely connected to your body movements. If you use your body to create video images, your voice will automatically follow and flow with the rhythms of your physical expression.
Just as each sentence you deliver has its video possibility, it also has the possibility of making vocal changes, which will improve your delivery.
If your body is not being used consciously, your voice will lack full expression and be monotonous. However, when you consciously include your body in the communication, your voice will register vocal changes, which compels the audience to pay attention.
This idea is analogous to the performance of an Indian snake charmer. As the fakir plays the flute, the cobra rises from the basket and appears to be swaying back and forth, mesmerized by the music. As you add vocal variety to the delivery of your data, you charm the audience into paying attention. A flat monotonous delivery is dull and lacks the charismatic power of attraction.
(Visit my Web site to hear and watch me deliver data using my voice and body.)
Many IT professionals typically don’t include vocal skills in their communication packets for several reasons:
• The first reason is simply a lack of training. They have never received the coaching needed to acquire these skills.
• Second, they are not forming a present-time, conscious, broadband connection with the audience.
• Third, they are focused on the content rather than the space from which the content emerges. In order to execute effective voice changes and create high-impact video images, you need to increase your level of consciousness in the space. As your conscious awareness, comfort, and confidence increase, you become increasingly able to create space packets between your communication packets, which gives you the time to think about how best to project your next communication into the space of the room.
This ability to create space packets consciously moves the presenter into present time and establishes a broadband connection to the audience.
Most people have little consciousness awareness, which gives them only a connection comparable to a 56k dial-up connection to the audience. A 56k dial-up connection severely limits your ability to create clear video images and make vocal changes.
• Fourth, they do not intend the audience to duplicate or understand the data. If they did, they would find ways to express the data to maximize comprehension and retention.
• Fifth, they are not committed to the data. They do not invest the data with energy and passion, so they do not commit their voice and body to it. As a result, the audience asks, “Why should I be committed and buy this solution if the person delivering the data is not committed?”
Obviously, those who are committed to the data are more apt to engage their voice and body in conveying it. However, IT presenters rarely come out from behind their firewalls and expose themselves both vocally and physically to the audience. In contrast, by delivering your communication from in front of your firewall, you will have a greater presence and the power to manifest your message.
The firewall distinction is addressed in detail in chapter two.
So far, we have looked at the video and voice parts of the communication packet. Now, let’s explore another piece—the data. The data is the heart and soul of the presentation, although it represents only 7 percent of the total communication packet.
The data resides in three locations: first, in the internal database of the presenter; second, in the external database such as the PowerPoint slides; and third, for participation purposes, in the database of the audience.
The principal goal for the presenter is to transfer as much data as is appropriate to the audience effectively with the intention of helping them understand the information.
The major problem with some IT presentations is that they dump a huge quantity of data into the space with little or no intention that the audience will understand the concepts. An IT managing director I met in the Middle East referred to this as nuking