Use Word Pictures

 

Use good word pictures or illustrations to make the main points in your presentation both easier to understand and more memorable. And the thing is that they are all around in your everyday life: in what you read; in what your hear other people talking about; on the Internet; in radio and television newscasts; and in what experiences and information that others share with you throughout the day.

Consider the one I read about in the Globe and Mail newspaper a few weeks back. It described how a university professor found himself stranded on the top of a New Zealand mountain wearing on a light sweater and shorts after his brother-in-law fell to his death.

It looked like curtains for him to as rescue by helicopter was some eight hours away if the weather held up and he had to first survive at least those 8 hours of freezing temperatures.

 

He did survive though by creating a vivid mental image of being alive to see the sun rising the next morning and breaking those eight hours down into 5 second intervals – which he actually counted out – between each icy breath. He broke the night down into these short intervals and did survive.

What you have here is not just a terrific example of courage and determination, and endurance, but also how to break what might seem like an insurmountable obstacle down in smaller pieces and succeed in overcoming the problem.

Needless to say this story went into my file of illustrations to use in future presentations – maybe a number of times as this type of story can be used to illustrate a number of points. I try to make a practice of continually adding to this file as I find interesting illustrations, examples, statistics, or other information that I might be able to use – even if I do not have an immediate use for it. You should too.

Say It Clearly

If you are a fan of American Idol, America's Got Talent or one of the other talent shows on television you don't have to be told that there is a tremendous resource of undiscovered vocal talent out there but did you also notice a common problem that many of the singers have that could interfered with their goal to become superstars?


That is poor enunciation. How many times have you heard a young woman or man go through their performance with a lovely, powerful voice, but you ended up asking yourself, " What did she say,?" What did he say?" Doesn't this bother you?

Often you can let it slip because of the performer's charismatic performance or rhythm of the song or beat of the music. And to be honest my favourite singers are people like Anne Murray, Kenny Rodgers, and other w hose words are crisp and clear even many veteran, and extremely popular singers are guilty of slurring their words.

They get away with this too because listeners are carried away by their personalities and the power of the song it self, but this type of thing will not work when you are trying to make powerful presentations in front of an audience of business people or other audiences.

You have to have good enunciation and finish up your words clearly or your audience will stop listening to you very quickly and you might as well just send everybody an e-mail and hope you can motivate them that way somehow.

It is essential that you become familiar with the words you plan to use in speech or presentation and then practice them so that they roll off your tongue crisp and clear.