Form or Substance?

Has anyone heard of Albert Mehrabian's Communication Model? You probably haven't heard the name, but anyone who has taken a training course in communications or presentations has probably heard these findings being quoted by the trainer:

7% of meaning is in the words that are spoken.
38% of meaning is in the way that the words are said.
55% of meaning is in facial expression and body language.

But do these findings really apply to business presentations? I asked this question because it just didn't seem right to me. Only 7% of meaning is in WHAT you say to the audience?!

So, I looked around a bit and found Dr. Mehrabian’s website. He states very clearly that his model has been used for situations that really DON'T apply!

This Communication Model was meant to apply only to ‘face-to-face, one-to-one communications, containing an emotional or attitudinal element’. Dr. Mehrabian goes on to state that 'unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable.'

So, what does that mean to business presentations? Is it unimportant HOW you deliver a presentation - of course not! But, even if you have beautiful body language, meaningful gestures and wonderful facial expressions, if WHAT you are saying to your audience isn't focused on their needs or isn’t important to them, they won't listen to you!

So, start spending much more time on the core message of your presentation and choosing the words that will motivate your audiences to listen and less time deciding on the right gestures and facial expressions!

© 2009 Jeanne Trojan. All rights reserved

Observations from an audience member

Recently I attended a couple of conferences and had the chance to see a lot of presentations. There are an enormous amount of lessons to be learned when you look critically at what is going on. Here are just five lessons from the presentations I saw.

1. Use photos on your slides. And, I don't mean a little photo box next to some text. I mean a slide-sized photo with a few words on top of the photo. And, make sure it's high-quality (try http://www.flickr.com/ or http://www.istockphoto.com/). There was only one presenter at one conference that used these types of slides and the difference in impact was clear.

2. Don't read your slides - EVER! Please remember that the audience can read much faster than you can speak and we are waiting for you to catch up (and to say something that we can't read ourselves).

3. Don't start your presentation with the history, profile, strategy etc of your organization unless it's the point of your talk. This kind of information is not important to your audience and if you start with it, they will stop listening to you before you get to the objective of your presentation.

4. Please spell-check your slides! It's a real sign of laziness or an attitude that you don't care what your audience thinks when you don't take the time to make sure the words you put on a slide are spelled correctly.

5. Keep your audience involved (and awake!) by asking them questions. Audiences are really bold (or rude, depending on how you see it) now and have no problems sending messages on their phones or even getting out their laptops and getting some work done when a speaker doesn't interest them. First, make sure that you have prepared an audience-focused presentation and then keep them listening by making it as interactive as possible.

© 2009 Jeanne Trojan. All rights reserved