Change your Story, Change Your Life

My presentation style is to stand in front of the audience without a podium and share lots of stories of actual growth companies, like those represented in my audience, applying and having success with our tools and techniques. Audiences tend to not remember facts, but they’ll remember the stories. More specifically, I’ll share a key point (highlighted in the PowerPoint), tell a story, then review how the story relates back to the key point. Then I’ll ask the audience to take a few minutes and apply the key point to their own company.
“Tell them what you’re going to tell them” Once I paint them a picture of the success they’ll achieve, using the opening story and slide, I next outline no more than 3 to 5 key “how to’s” for achieving this success, color-coded to each upcoming section of the presentation.
Going into detailEach key point is anchored with a question. I find posing a question to the audience relative to each key point engages them to proactively think and apply the ideas to their own situation vs. just listen to what I have to say. Slide Notes:Place the title of the first key point where it says “People” and also in the box in the upper right.This may seem redundant, but the repetition is important. The “subline” in the upper right hand box is for a one or two word anchor to the first key point.In my case, the subline for “People” is “Happiness” – it’s the people you surround yourself with in business who impact your happiness.I’ll then carry the “box” in the upper right hand corner, color-coded to that section, to additional content slides in that section.
Image slidesTry to emphasize your concepts with pictures. And I tend to use real pictures – pictures of the companies and executives that are the subjects of my stories.Or I’ll choose a picture that elicits an emotional response to a key point I’m making. It’s important to touch a listener’s heart and head. Slide Notes:Note the left bar color aligns with the section color – visual clue that I’m still in Section 1.To set a picture as a slide background, as on this slide, hold down CONTROL, click the slide and then click Format Background.
Again I put only the key concept on screen and then talk about it. Slide Note:This slide illustrates the alignment with a new topic using color. Note that it uses a color-coded Section Header layout.
Short MoviesIn addition to photos, I use several short movie clips in my presentations to demonstrate various skills (showing a team leading a daily huddle) or highlight mini-case studies of growth firms applying our tools and techniques.These videos add credibility to my presentation, letting the audience hear from executives like themselves and how they’ve applied andbenefited from using our tools and techniques. Slide Note:The image on this slide is a picture. Delete the picture for a media placeholder into which you can insert your own movie.
Actionable endingI always want to leave the audience with an assignment – some action they need to take.In this case, I’ll ask which of the four decisions do they feel their company needs to focus on the most?Then I’ll give them a few minutes to note their answer and to outline three actions they’ll take when they get back to the office.

Change your Story, Change Your Life

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