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Episode #81: Scott Schwertly
172 Plays8 years ago
This podcast episode wraps up my Month of Story (and the end of my lost voice!). Over the past month, I’ve done a number of presentations and blog writing about stories, and I’ve talked to some incredible journalists and data...
The post Episode #81: Scott Schwertly appeared first on PolicyViz.
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Transcript
Introduction & Sponsor
00:00:00
Speaker
This episode of the PolicyViz podcast is brought to you by JMP, Statistical Discovery Software from SAS. JMP, spelled J-M-P, is an easy to use tool that connects powerful analytics with interactive graphics. The drag and drop interface of JMP enables quick exploration of data to identify patterns, interactions, and outliers.
00:00:19
Speaker
JUMP has a scripting language for reproducibility and interfacing with R. Click on this episode's sponsored link to receive a free info kit that includes an interview with DataVis experts Kaiser Fung and Alberto Cairo. In the interview, they discuss information gathering, analysis, and communicating results.
Guest Introduction: Scott Swartley
00:00:49
Speaker
Welcome back to the Policy Viz Podcast. I'm your host, John Schwabisch. Still with the hoarse voice, I thank the Tapestry Conference organizers for making me have this. And hopefully you are enjoying this month of story on the Policy Viz Podcast. And this week we're going to close out my month of focusing on story and what it means to tell stories with data.
00:01:09
Speaker
But this week we're going to take a little bit of a turn in that because we're going to talk about presentations. And I'm really happy to have on the show the CEO of Ethos 3, Scott Swartley, who I have been following for a long time, books, podcasts, and a great blog over at Ethos 3. Scott, thanks so much for coming on the show.
00:01:28
Speaker
Yeah, thanks, John. I'm glad to be here. So you have a new book out. What's your presentation persona? And it really gets into who we are as people and how we get that to come out as a person.
Scott's Career Journey
00:01:41
Speaker
So before we dive into the book, you want to talk a little bit about your background and why and where you founded ethos three and what you guys are doing these days?
00:01:50
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. So I actually started my career in marketing for about four or five years coming out of grad school. And one thing I quickly realized is that a lot of people tend to struggle with presentations and public speaking. So not only the way they're designed and the way they look, but
00:02:05
Speaker
You know even their content and the way they delivered it definitely had their their their weak points and so That all together kind of inspired me to want to create ethos 3 I thought you know what maybe I could actually create a company that can empower people and Help presenters sort of improve in that arena and so that was sort of the inspiration behind ethos 3 is sort of one of those shower moments in a
00:02:27
Speaker
From there, I spent about the next year just sort of working on it on my nights and weekends, still taking a salary, still doing sort of the corporate thing. And then eventually I got some momentum behind it and quit the day job and went full time with it.
Introduction to 'What's Your Presentation Persona?'
00:02:40
Speaker
So I've never looked back. So I've been doing it now for about 11 years. Wow. And how big are you guys right now? Yeah. So we're a smaller boutique. So we're a team of 12 at the moment. Wow. But you guys put out a lot of content for a team of 12.
00:02:51
Speaker
Oh, yeah. So we we love sort of the science of presentations. We love data visualization. We love everything obviously related to presentation. So I've got two wonderful content strategists and they help me with putting content out there into the universe and in relation to presentations.
00:03:07
Speaker
Yeah. So let's talk about your book. This is your second book on presentations. Correct. And the first book I have somewhere at home. The new book that came out very like recently, right? Like within the last month, I think.
00:03:21
Speaker
Yeah, so February 24th was the official release date on that one. So what's your presentation persona and it has a great online companion to it where you can actually go in and sort of, I wouldn't call it a test, right? It's a little bit of a questionnaire to get you started in the book. So if you want to walk us through the lessons of the book.
00:03:38
Speaker
Yeah, so this has basically been a passion project of mine and is kind of as you just mentioned there, the assessments called badge and I like to look at it as sort of the Myers Briggs for presenters. I know ethos three when we sort of go through or think about our onboarding process, typically from an HR perspective. I know I've been a huge fan and my team as well.
00:03:58
Speaker
of assessments, so everything from the Myers-Briggs to the Disc, to the Wonderlic. It's a big part of our culture and it's a big part of our onboarding process when bringing on new employees. Actually, not too long ago, about a year and a half or so, I was getting together with my team and we thought, wouldn't it be great if we could actually create an assessment like the Myers-Briggs or like the Predictive Index where we could actually use it for presenters and people in our space.
00:04:24
Speaker
That's where badge was essentially born and what's your presentation persona? The book is essentially that the vehicle or the guidebook to help people learn about their personas in more detail. So long story short, you get the book, you take the badge assessment within 10 to 12 minutes after answering the questions.
Embracing Your Presentation Persona
00:04:41
Speaker
You'll find out which one of 16 profiles fits you best. And then from there, you can basically read up on your profile. So what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What audiences will love you? What audiences will challenge you?
00:04:53
Speaker
So you can kind of get that extra dose of self-awareness before your next presentation.
00:04:57
Speaker
Now when people take the questionnaire and they find that they are, let me just read a few of these so people have a sense. So there's the activator, the advocator, the befriender, the captivator, the creator, the educator, the scientist, and the soldier. There's just a few. When people take the questionnaire and they maybe have a self-realization that they are the curator rather than the director, in your experience, do people feel like they want to change in some ways? Or do they feel like they answered the questions wrong?
00:05:24
Speaker
Or how do they feel when the questionnaire doesn't match what they sort of view themselves? Yeah, great question. So the bottom line here is, generally speaking, it's going to be accurate. And this is what we found through many, many focus groups before obviously launching this out into the public. But generally, what you're going to find as far as your profile is going to be accurate. My general recommendation on that front is,
00:05:45
Speaker
Is own it i'm just like if you take the myers briggs and you find out you're an introvert in your whole life you thought you're an extrovert. That's okay there are obviously strengths are plenty of resources and ted talks and everything else out there that talk about you know it's great to be an introvert just like it's great to be an extrovert each personality has its own unique you know pros and cons.
00:06:05
Speaker
And the same thing is true with badge. So just because you get a profile and you may not be happy with it, there's no shame in owning who you are and who you are as a presenter.
Presentation Styles Explained
00:06:15
Speaker
Now, if you want to migrate and shift from a director to a curator or a director to a liberator or something else, can that be done? Yes, I've seen people be able to move the needle maybe overnight or over a couple days.
00:06:29
Speaker
But ultimately, just like anything else, that needle eventually comes all the way back to the way you originally were. So, you know, when you think about things like strengths finder, where, you know, there's, you know, 37 or 40 different strengths that someone could have, and it helps you pinpoint your top five strengths, you're generally going to stay in those top five strengths. In fact, I've taken strengths finder twice and let about five years exist between the first time I took and the second time I took it. And generally, I think I had all the same five strengths, they may have changed their order.
00:06:56
Speaker
but all five strengths still existed. So bottom line here is you are who you are. So again, be proud of it. But if you want to see that long lasting change, I think with anything else, you know, where you want to see dramatic change in your life, or if you want to completely revolutionize your personality, you know, that's what experts say usually take about four to five years of diligent, intentional, you know, a reworking of yourself. But, you know, for the everyday Joe,
The Power of Storytelling in Presentations
00:07:23
Speaker
again, accept who you are and be proud of it.
00:07:25
Speaker
So can you give us a sense of the different approaches these different types of presenters might take? So if I'm say, well, we said director and curator, but what are some of the differences in presentation styles that one would learn about in the presentation persona book? Yeah. So just to maybe give the listeners here just some context, I'll just kind of briefly explain how
00:07:50
Speaker
the scoring takes place and that will definitely provide clarity here for what I see as sort of common personas or common profile. So I'll just kind of quickly go through this, not to overwhelm everybody, but essentially there are four quadrants that would dictate someone's persona. So quadrant one is exploration, quadrant two is sharing, quadrant three is response, and then quadrant four is durability. So I'll quickly give the headline for each one. So quadrant one, exploration, that essentially measures is someone prepared, do they do their homework,
00:08:18
Speaker
Do they care about the way their slides look? Do they do basic rehearsal? Quadrant two, sharing, is kind of everything you think about with delivery. It's what you look like on stage, non-verbally, what you're doing with your eyes, your feet, your hands, how you're opening your talk, how you're closing your talk.
00:08:32
Speaker
Third section is response. So this is how audiences respond to you. Do they love you? Do they challenge you? Do you open up opportunities for Q&A, workshops, interaction? Do you really have sort of a servant's heart? That's someone who would score well in response where it's more about their audience and not about them. And then the final quadrant is durability, which is
00:08:50
Speaker
Sort of the classic, does your presentation stand the test of time? So when you think about a Martin Luther King in I Have a Dream or Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address, those are obviously presenters and speeches that have stood the test of time. So they have a ton of durability. Now someone giving a pitch next week about their new widget probably doesn't have a lot of durability to it, depending on the nature of that widget. So someone may score lower in that durability quadrant.
00:09:18
Speaker
To answer your original question, what I see a lot of, particularly like if you think about TED speakers or thought leaders, people who sort of speak and give presentations for a living, I see a lot of liberators in that category and what that is essentially is when someone scores well in all four quadrants.
00:09:37
Speaker
In exploration, they plan and rehearse. Sharing, they look great on stage. Response, people tend to eat them up. And then durability, usually if it's a TED Talk, they've obviously have something important to say. And it's something that may even sort of change the world in its
Challenges of Incorporating Stories in Presentations
00:09:50
Speaker
own way. So see a lot of liberators. When you think about professional speakers in the business world, obviously there's a lot of sales folks out there doing their thing day in and day out. Those sales folks tend to score as activators.
00:10:03
Speaker
And what that looks like is low in exploration, high in sharing, high in response, and low in durability.
00:10:10
Speaker
low in exploration, they don't really plan and prepare. They're used to selling and doing their thing. Sharing, you think about a salesperson, it's kind of your classic extrovert, so they tend to be magnetic in front of a room. Response, people love that enthusiasm and energy, so people tend to like them. But then when you think about durability, it goes back to the widget example. There's probably not a whole lot there that's actually changing the world.
00:10:34
Speaker
I see a lot of activators in the sales world. And then from there, you get all the other personas, just again, depending on whether someone's a teacher, a scientist, a TED speaker, et cetera. Right. Well, it's a really fascinating book, and I'm not going to reveal my persona just yet. I'm going to hold on to that. But I've been making my way through it, and it's a really nice read. So I do recommend folks who are interested in improving their presentations. I think what's great about the book,
00:11:04
Speaker
piece of the market that it fits is it's not about making better slides, it's not necessarily about how to be a better presenter, but it's about sort of, as you sort of mentioned, self-realization, but who you are as a person and how you can tap into those traits to be a better presenter. So it's a really nice piece to the bookshelf for people who are into presentations.
00:11:23
Speaker
I want to switch gears a little bit because it is my month of story. I've been talking a lot with my guests about telling stories with data, but one of the things that you do a lot of and teach a lot, I'm sure, and write about on the blog is telling stories at presentations. I wanted to get your take on the importance of telling stories when you're standing in front of an audience.
00:11:47
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. It tends to be sort of a big buzzword these days. It's funny how a lot of people obviously talk about storytelling, but in my world where I interact with presentations and live and breathe it every single day, it's amazing how many presentations I see that cross our desks that lack those stories. Everybody talks about it, but I never see it actually get deployed in a presentation environment. But I'd love to see more of it. So yeah, looking forward to sort of unpacking this here. Yeah.
00:12:14
Speaker
How important is it then when you're standing in front of an audience to tell a story and how important is it that that story be very personal versus being more abstract, being your own versus somebody else's? I mean, when that presentation comes across your desk and there's no mention of story or storytelling in there, what's the first thing you talk about with the client about how important it is to tell stories and why?
00:12:37
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm a big believer in telling stories for many different reasons because obviously if you go back to caveman times, there's plenty of evidence out there, plenty of science that backs up the idea that stories are really how we communicate and interact as humans. It's sort of what pulls at our heartstrings and so forth. So if I see that a presentation is missing a story, obviously I'm going to do my best or have my team do their best to
00:13:01
Speaker
uh, advocate, uh, you know, the advantages of, of telling stories. But I know there's, there's a great, uh, you know, if you want to get scientific about it, I know there's a, a great, uh, you know, kind of nugget out there where if you basically start your presentation or let's say your presentation is just littered with facts and stats, uh, those are great. I mean, it's great to have evidence, you know, to validate that you're an expert, but generally again, how we're wired as humans,
00:13:24
Speaker
usually only two parts of your brain, you know, typically ignite when you're just hearing facts and stats or it's the classic sort of chip and Dan heat stuff from from made to stick where they talk about
00:13:34
Speaker
how if you only share facts and stats, your audience is either going to agree with you or they're going to disagree with you. And, you know, it's kind of a fine line there. So if they agree, that's fantastic. They're going to be loving everything you're saying. But if they disagree with you, then you've got this huge wall that you've got to conquer. But all that to say, if you ditch the facts and stats or at least minimize the facts and stats and, you know, maybe start with a story or sprinkle in stories here and there, you don't get agreement or disagreement.
00:13:59
Speaker
you get participation, which is a beautiful thing. And again, facts and stats, kind of going back to that earlier statistic, facts and stats ignite two parts of the brain where stories, it's been scientifically proven that stories actually ignite seven parts of the brain. Again, just testament to, you know, as humans, we sort of eat this stuff up. So, the fact that seven parts of the brain ignite and number two, it creates participation, that reality within itself is plenty of reason to at least
Developing Presentation Narratives
00:14:27
Speaker
take a chance at actually adding a story to a presentation. Right. So before I ask you why people don't tell stories, I would not be true to my DNA as a social scientist if I didn't say that the idea that something is proven, that there are seven areas of the brain that are proven, that strikes me as
00:14:50
Speaker
too strong for me. For me, it's more of there's evidence that suggests, right? And I have a hard time with these. We see these sort of stats and stories and numbers that are like, oh, what's the new one? Oh, our attention span is less than a goldfish or something, right? And that one we know is garbage, even though people keep using it. But especially with the neuroscientist stuff, I'm always hedging a little bit because this idea that something is proven, especially when it comes to brain science and
00:15:19
Speaker
neuroscience and cognitive sciences is, I think, a little strong for me. But that's the parenthetical, I guess, too. My question is, why don't people tell stories? When that presentation comes across to your desk and everybody knows stories are important, why are they not incorporating that into their talk? Is it just forgetting? Yeah, I think it's a number of things. I think it's, you know, one, just a lack of awareness, education, and training. You know, when I think about
00:15:46
Speaker
even my educational background or even just my experiences in the corporate sector.
00:15:50
Speaker
You know, how often are you actually getting trained on how to tell stories? You're generally getting trained on how to analyze facts and stats and then how to share those facts and stats with your audience. And so I think a lot of it is just a general lack of awareness, a lack of training, a lack of education. For those that are aware of it and understand the power of it but just choose not to do it, part of it could be what you just sort of shared there. It could be forgetfulness, it could be laziness, it could be fear just because they don't know how it's gonna get received or
00:16:19
Speaker
sort of absorbed by their audience. So I think it's a number of facts, but if I had to make my best guess, I think a lot of it is just lack of education and not living and breathing that every single day. When I think about this traditional definition of story, which there's lots of definitions of story, but take a simple definition of story where you have a beginning and there's a protagonist and he faces some obstacle or he or she faces some obstacle and overcomes it and there's a climax to the story and things are resolved.
00:16:49
Speaker
When you think about telling stories in a presentation, is that how you're thinking of them or are you thinking them in a different way or more of a narrative way? I mean, when you're working with clients and saying, let's build in a good story here, how do you think about building that story out?
00:17:06
Speaker
Yeah, a number of different ways. I love the sort of the hero's journey that you sort of described there. Definitely an advocate of that, when appropriate, and if the data sort of presents the opportunity for that sort of formula, that sort of angle. So definitely in favor of sort of that traditional storytelling approach. But even beyond that, I mean, sometimes it doesn't even necessarily have to get as complicated as that. I mean, it can be something so simple as I'm a huge fan of tension and discovery, which is kind of a classic just storytelling technique. You think about the movie Jaws,
00:17:35
Speaker
You know you don't actually see the great white shark until the last fifteen minutes of the film so it's sort of the haunting sound of the cello the shark fin you know an hour and fifteen an hour and thirty minutes of suspense just tension tension tension tension and then you have your discovery sort of aha moment at the end.
00:17:50
Speaker
kind of similar to the hero's journey, but a little bit different, just a lot more simplistic. So, you know, simple techniques like that, where if you can apply tension and discovery, and maybe your discovery moment is simply your call to action and how you're building up to the sort of the main objective or purpose behind the talk. I'd love to see more of that in presentations, actually having people sort of experiment with visual metaphors to make data come to life, I think can go a long way. And again, simple sort of storytelling technique,
00:18:18
Speaker
But it does communicate volumes, and it does make a huge impact when trying to present your information in a more creative fashion.
Storytelling Techniques for Presentations
00:18:25
Speaker
So I had a presentation from years ago, which kind of put Ethos 3 on the map, which was called Meet Henry. And it had a whole sort of slides dedicated to Henry not understanding presentations, and then this character called Erika, who understood it.
00:18:37
Speaker
But even using user experience stories where you can create a fictional character, kind of like the hero journey, but just maybe slightly different, where one character is a problem, one character is a solution. Real life scenarios, it could be fictional stuff, but I think there are a number of different creative ways that people can approach it. They just, again, either forget about it or just, again, don't have the awareness of it.
00:18:57
Speaker
When you are working with someone and you're working developing their story, how do you develop their slides that go along with the story? Are you developing a slide for each part of the story to illustrate it? Or are you leaving them to talk alone with a blank screen behind them? Or do you have a particular process or approach you take to the visual elements when someone's telling a story in a presentation?
00:19:21
Speaker
Yeah, no, great question. Yeah, so we have actually a pretty exhaustive process at Ethos 3 as far as how we help people tell better stories and help them find those stories. And so part of it is sort of kicking off with a pretty exhaustive messaging questionnaire, which really goes into everything from
00:19:35
Speaker
you know what your speaking style is and now having something like badge also gives us some extra awareness about them. But you know everything from you know who's in the audience what's your objective you know are there some key themes here what do you like what do you dislike what's worked in the past what hasn't you know when thinking about your narrative again what do you like what do you not like and really just trying to extract everything from them as far as
00:19:55
Speaker
making sure we've got full context as far as what their true objective is and who's going to be actually listening to this presentation. From there, we get into a pretty exhaustive process as far as like actually creating mood boards, trying to figure out the look and feel for it, storyboarding it. And in that storyboarding process, that's where we really try to get pretty particular about what's going to be on the slide as far as words.
00:20:17
Speaker
And you know obviously trying to create a sort of a minimal approach that you know very typical ethos reapproaches You know trying to keep it simple trying to keep it minimal and only include things on slides that actually add value and if it starts becoming too cluttered or jumbled or it's not adding to the story or adding to the narrative then you know obviously those are things we try to remove but all that to say a pretty exhaustive process of really just doing these deep dives with with our clients and
00:20:41
Speaker
not only from a narrative standpoint, but also from a look and feel standpoint.
Presentation Tips & Conclusion
00:20:45
Speaker
Right. Interesting. Before we close up, can I ask you, do you have, let's say, your top three things that you recommend to presenters? Like here, if you do nothing else, do these three things.
00:20:59
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I've got a lot of them. I'm sorry, yeah, I want to try to get it down to three. Yeah, a couple of just three pet peeves of mine. Number one, going back to just the concept of call to actions, I feel like every presentation has got to have some sort of call to action. It blows my mind when I see a presenter ask their audience to invest 60, 90 minutes of their life to hear them speak, and yet they don't tell them what they're supposed to do with this new information. So am I supposed to download something, buy something, read something? What am I supposed to do?
00:21:28
Speaker
Try to have a call to action, respect your audience by doing that. Number two, a big pet peeve of mine is have a company called Ethos 3 for a reason. Most things done in presentations are done in threes. So try to have three points. The human brain works like this. It's sort of one, two, three, I forget. No one's gonna remember your fourth point, your fifth point, your 10th point. And you're fooling yourself if you think someone's gonna remember all 12 takeaways. And then probably the third thing is not rocket science here, but just pure, raw passion.
00:21:58
Speaker
If you're not passionate about your presentation and your message, then how in the world do you expect anybody else to be passionate about it with you? I could talk all day long about content tips and design tips and delivery tips, but if you're just not passionate and if you're not enthusiastic about what you're saying, then again, why are you asking your audience to invest time to hear you speak?
00:22:21
Speaker
I'm big big pet peeve on that one yeah those are great ones and i wanna come back to the first one call to action which i i know a lot of people say. What was great about about that pet peeve of course is you actually your call to action you included like the word download you wanna download something you wanna buy something because i feel like a lot of people say will my call to action isn't.
00:22:42
Speaker
you know, let's go change the world by raising a billion dollars, right? Like, I think a lot of presenters get nervous that their call to action is not some grand vision, but like you sort of said, it could be something simple like download this thing or read this paper or, you know, come talk to me later. I found that kind of refreshing to hear that the call to action doesn't have to be some grand thing that I think a lot of people get stymied on.
00:23:03
Speaker
Exactly. I mean, it can be something so simple, but at least provide some extra purpose behind it. Yeah. Yeah. Some action that someone can do. Yeah, exactly. Great. Well, Scott, thanks so much for coming on the show. Big fan of the Ethos 3 site, blog, and the podcast that people should check out. The presentation scientists, formerly the Ethos 3 podcast, but now the presentation scientists. And they should also check out the book, What's Your Presentation Persona? Scott, thanks so much for coming on the show. It's been a blast talking to you. Awesome. Well, thanks, John. I do really appreciate it.
00:23:32
Speaker
And thanks to everyone for tuning into this week's episode. This I think is going to conclude the month of story on the podcast, although I'm sure we'll come back again. So until next time, this has been the policy of this podcast. Thanks so much for listening.
00:23:57
Speaker
This episode of the PolicyViz podcast is brought to you by JMP, Statistical Discovery Software from SAS. JMP, spelled J-M-P, is an easy to use tool that connects powerful analytics with interactive graphics. The drag and drop interface of JMP enables quick exploration of data to identify patterns, interactions, and outliers.
00:24:17
Speaker
JUMP has a scripting language for reproducibility and interfacing with R. Click on this episode's sponsored link to receive a free info kit that includes an interview with DataVis experts Kaiser Fung and Alberto Cairo. In the interview, they discuss information gathering, analysis, and communicating results.