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Episode #119: Emma Bannister
167 Plays7 years ago
Emma Bannister is the founder and CEO of Presentation Studio, a presentation-design firm based in in Sydney, Australia. Emma has designed presentations for banks, technology firms, and others to help them communicate better. Emma and her staff of 20 are...
The post Episode #119: Emma Bannister appeared first on PolicyViz.
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Transcript
Introduction & Background
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome back to the Policy Viz Podcast. I'm your host, John Schwabisch. Welcome back to the show. On this week's episode, we are going to turn to effective ways to present information, stand in front of an audience, design great slides, and how to think visually. And to help me do so, I am excited to have Emma Bannister, who is the CEO and founder of Presentation Studio on the show, all the way from Australia. Emma, thanks for coming on the show. How are you? Yay, John. Thanks for having me.
00:00:37
Speaker
It's great to have you on the show. We've had a lot of Twitter conversations, but I don't think we've ever actually sat down and chatted before. So this is one of those great opportunities. It's a great opportunity. Thanks for making the time to chat with me.
00:00:48
Speaker
Yeah, so you have a new book out, Visual Thinking, which I do want to talk about. But for those who aren't familiar with your work, can you talk a little bit about your background and how you got started in this field of helping people give better presentations, create better design, and maybe a little bit about the studio? So I'm originally from the UK. I grew up there, went to school there, and only actually arrived in Australia in 2002.
Growth of Presentation Studio
00:01:10
Speaker
but it was when i was in london i studied to be a graphic designer and i loved visuals of always loved the kind of graphic design more business side of creating following rules and brands and i went off to work for a german bank and we had these corporate brand guidelines that were so intense it was like a three about six inches
00:01:33
Speaker
thick like huge and only six photos that i was allowed to use for the whole year and it was there that i learned the power of a very strong corporate brand guidelines but also how businesses were using powerpoint
00:01:49
Speaker
to present all these fund managers and important presentations that are being communicated but so badly. And I saw the opportunity of being able to help these people create more effective presentations.
Cultural Differences in Presentations
00:02:06
Speaker
And so I kind of learned a lot around corporate communications when I was there. And then when I was in Australia, I literally did the startup of, you know, kitchen bench, creating presentations,
00:02:18
Speaker
helping people, but it was really a visual thing. It was around taking those slides that looked terrible and making them look better and easier to read and remember. And as that grew, so 2006, it was like 11, 12 years ago. And now the team, we've grown, we're Asia Pacific's largest presentation agency. We've got 30 staff.
00:02:44
Speaker
full-time. And our role is evolved from more than just design. We combine, obviously, the message and the storytelling and helping speakers with their content, whether it's a sales pitch, a keynote presentation, roadshow, all of the usual kind of scenarios, through to the content message, through the design stage. And then we now have the training component, which is helping people to champion their own teams.
00:03:13
Speaker
so they can become experts themselves. So that's a pretty amazing story going all the way to 30 or so staff. I am curious about any differences you see in folks who communicate in Asian cultures rather than maybe English speaking cultures in the UK or in Australia. Do you see differences across the different cultures and the types of content that people put on a screen and the ways in which they present?
Book Discussion: 'Visual Thinking'
00:03:41
Speaker
Huge, huge differences. And it's mainly around the culture. So the culture is so different, even within Asia, the different pockets. So I was just recently in Singapore, and you get a real mix of cultures in Singapore because it's kind of that transient training hub. And so when you're speaking there, your dialect has to be super slow. There's a lot of English, second
00:04:07
Speaker
language speakers there. So you've really got to make sure that even the simplest things may be seen as culturally insensitive. So you really have to be aware of that. The jokes have to be paired back and the visuals that you use. I shared a story about Wizard of Oz and absolutely nobody in the audience had heard of Wizard of Oz.
00:04:30
Speaker
So just things like that, you really have to do your research. You have to be very careful. A lot of my visuals, I had changed them before my presentations, but if everyone in the audience is a certain skin tone, you've got to be mindful that in Asia, it's very, very varied. So I mean, we should always be varied anyway. So those things are very, we've got to be
Challenges in Presentation Design
00:04:53
Speaker
mindful of. And the stories that we're sharing as well.
00:04:56
Speaker
That's a great, interesting point about connecting with the audience and even that somewhat simple way of thinking about what icons and images you use on your slides. So I want to transition to your new book, which is entitled Visual Thinking, about presenting information and giving presentations. So can you give us the hook, give us the sales pitch on the book?
00:05:20
Speaker
I sure can. Everyone needs a book. I was really passionate about creating a book that gave people some rules to follow. As a graphic designer, I come at it from a visual angle. But I know that for me, I didn't have the confidence for speaking for quite a while. So having the visual support behind me was a real boost for that confidence.
00:05:47
Speaker
So for me to give people some rules that they can follow, simple guidelines as to what works on screen, what doesn't, it was an opportunity to help people and help them to make their story more meaningful and memorable. So the book is a real kind of how-to guide. It's very visual, simple. You read it in like an hour and you can just really take away something from it. And
Women & Cultural Challenges in Presentations
00:06:13
Speaker
it's a sort of step-by-step guide. And it doesn't matter whether you're using
00:06:17
Speaker
PowerPoint, Prezi, Keynote, Google Docs, whatever. It's simply the principles of great visual communication skills. You know, it's interesting that you say you started creating better visuals to help support your confidence as a speaker. Do you find that most people when they're preparing a presentation that they're more nervous about the visuals they're going to show or the actual act of standing in front of an audience and speaking?
00:06:43
Speaker
You get a real combination. You get the overly nervous and the overly confident. So the overly confident are just as bad as the overly nervous in that they kind of just keep talking and don't shut up. And they don't even care what's on their slides, and they should. And then you get the ones that are really nervous. But they're actually ones you really want to hear from. They have so much to say. And it can quite often be women. And in Asia Pacific,
00:07:11
Speaker
The culture is really to not stand up and speak up. So these important messages don't get heard. So to your point, it is really important to have that support. But if the underlying message is not clear and that's wrong, then no amount of pretty design is going to help you. So it does come back to that. You've got to have your foundations of content and clear message. Then the visuals can help your audience remember and understand
00:07:38
Speaker
And yes, that then gives you confidence. But the confidence really comes from rehearsing, knowing your stuff, and knowing that the slides are gonna be making you look better, and helping your audience, not just vanity. Right, right, right. So when you work with women, your clients who are women, do you approach the training and the design phase? Do you approach that entire collaboration? Do you approach that differently?
00:08:07
Speaker
because of some of these cultural differences or maybe even just an individual who may be less confident than you would a male client who maybe perceived differently, especially in Asia Pacific.
00:08:18
Speaker
Definitely. And the more senior the clients where they are in the corporate ladder, we try and split them up. So they definitely benefit from one-to-one training or discovery workshops just on their presentations. The group sessions are great as a starter level, being able to give people the gesture and voice skills that they need as the foundations. But then you have to really start targeting the individual challenges.
00:08:47
Speaker
And culturally, say, for example, Japan, it is often common that you can go into a meeting in Japan and people will sit there with their eyes closed and they are listening intently to what you're saying. They're not all sleeping. So, you know, if you're presenting to an audience with their eyes closed, that's quite a different experience to a very animated, more Western audience.
00:09:11
Speaker
I know that when I go to America and speak, everyone thinks I'm very quiet and soft. I can be animated, but I come across quite calm, natured. Whereas here, that's what goes down in Asia. It's so different. So you've just got to work for your audience. That's it. You've got to understand them and know what works.
00:09:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's fascinating. Did you give tips to people about, especially if they're traveling? I mean, you already mentioned that Asia has a lot of variation in some of these cultures and norms. Are there tips that you give some of your speakers, if you're helping them prepare
Common Presentation Mistakes
00:09:48
Speaker
a presentation, but they're going to go to Hong Kong and then to Beijing and then to Tokyo? Do you try to maybe educate them on some of these different cultures and norms?
00:09:57
Speaker
A lot of it is the same sort of principles. We sort of say keep the text heavy slides obviously can't go on the screen. Whether you have your sort of presentation first and then you can have your workshop discussion to go through the more complex information, that's kind of generic worldwide. But if it's more of a case of local localisms, then
00:10:23
Speaker
you have to be careful not to use metaphors. So for example, if you were to come over and start talking about baseball or analogies around getting that home run, it would be very lost on this audience and probably wouldn't go down very well.
00:10:40
Speaker
I've done that before, actually. I've done a date of his workshop where I gave a group of people from Latin America baseball statistics, and they said, we don't know anything about baseball. Can you give us soccer data instead? To which I responded, I don't know anything about soccer. So it was a good pairing.
00:10:58
Speaker
You have to find that common ground and really you'll be far more respected by trying to do your best to understand them and how your help is helping them in their situation.
00:11:14
Speaker
That's interesting to me is the density of information that you put on the slide. A few weeks ago I had Jane Pong on the show who is a graphics editor at the Financial Times and she was talking about how in the Asian newspapers sometimes the data density, the graphs can be really dense and that's okay because that's part of the language, part of what's expected. Do you find that the amount of stuff you put on the screen also varies in these different locations?
00:11:41
Speaker
The culture is still dense. We're still fighting those early days of trying to remove the content from the screen. I think it's more habit than anything else. So we're still going through that curve of educating people what works, why it works, and setting that precedent from high above so that knowing the others can do it. So there's no reason for them not to change. And that's what we're trying to affect now.
00:12:09
Speaker
Right, right. Well, let's turn to some
Visual Story Training & Techniques
00:12:12
Speaker
of the things that you have seen and have tried to help people fix when it comes to presentation. So let's start with some of the biggest mistakes you've seen people make when it comes to designing slides.
00:12:24
Speaker
Perfect. Well, so for the design side, it's still very much those text heavy, really distracting, pointing over here when everyone's reading over there. And I think that that can be so confusing. If the audience is left to try and work out what you're saying, then there's a really big gap there. And that, that is really the common thread. I see people all the time saying, well, we just put everything there and you're literally leaving it to the audience to
00:12:52
Speaker
try and come to their own conclusions. So I think we do still have to simplify it back even more and really spell out that key insight of what you're saying and for every slide. So, you know, making it as simple for your audience to act and remember. And that's still very crucial because these messages just don't, they don't get worked out either.
00:13:14
Speaker
And then I think really it's just about trying to find your point of difference. So I was in India a couple of weeks ago and in Mumbai, which is the city where I was, there's 20 million people and they are all fighting to be heard and to have their message stand out.
00:13:34
Speaker
And when you've got so many people, you have to stand out, you have to be remembered. And so that's our opportunity. So we need to think through, plan and prepare our information more clearly, and do something different so that you will be the one that's remembered. And that's crucial. Yeah. Do you have a specific method that you try to work through either for yourself when you're giving a talk or with clients on the planning and preparation stage?
00:14:03
Speaker
So we are now providing the visual story training through Asia Pacific, which is from the Duarte training. And the fantastic thing about that is we actually give people a guideline in terms of how to go from those text-heavy slides to working out what's the important bit of this. So we put all this information up, what diagrams can we use to visualize the information so it is more memorable.
00:14:29
Speaker
And it's not just a case of 20 photos isn't going to be any more memorable than anything else. So it's got to be a balance of infographics, key text insights, and really being clear what it is you're trying to say, and then what's visual supports that.
Effective Meeting Strategies
00:14:47
Speaker
And that is often the bit. It's an afterthought, you know, it's so easy to just open up a presentation tool, start writing. So we give people the tools to map out what that overall objective is.
00:14:59
Speaker
and then how they gonna measure that success and then how they can take the audience on that very visual journey but it's mapped out with the content so makes it easy to follow the rules. Yeah to follow the rules and to set it up all the way from the beginning of what you want your audience to do when you're done.
00:15:18
Speaker
Yeah. And I think one of the things that I try and bring up is do you even need this presentation? And that sounds a bit bizarre coming from a presentation expert, but you know, the cost of having all of these meetings and bringing everyone together to read from your slides, that's so expensive. So we need to really grasp that opportunity. If this is your face to face or online to online,
00:15:43
Speaker
human connection. And that's that's what I talk about a lot in the book of a presentation, the difference is that humans human connection and making it personal, unreal and memorable. And otherwise, it is just a spreadsheet or a document that can be read in their own time. You know, I was talking to a friend a couple weeks ago and
00:16:07
Speaker
she had a meeting with one of the managers of her organization and she was saying how it was her and another person and she was sort of the backup and the other person came in and sort of, you know, sort of stammered and wasn't quite organized and wasn't really sort of ready. And it was just like a meeting of three or four people. And she made this comment to me that really, I think rings true for me, which is that every meeting is a presentation. Do you sit down with people and say, look, yeah, you may not need
00:16:31
Speaker
to be on the big stage with the big screen. But even if it's just going to be five or six of you, you still need to plan and prepare and have your exhibits ready and your visuals ready. Oh, totally. And if you can't cancel the meeting or postpone, but your audience, you're going to be on the back foot if you are not prepared and ready. And it's that opportunity to be remembered for the right reasons. And your audience are going to instantly
00:16:56
Speaker
hold that against you if you're not prepared. So take that time. Guys, tell everyone how long you're going to talk for. So whether it's everyone I'm going to share my point of view for five or 10 minutes, then we can have a roundtable discussion or whatever you're planning to do. So everything is around earning the respect of your audience and showing that you've prepared and
00:17:19
Speaker
Why would they give you their time otherwise? Time is the most valuable thing we have on this planet.
Tips for Confident Speaking
00:17:25
Speaker
And so we need to expect that if our audience is giving our time, we have to have put that time in to meet with them. Right. Yeah. Let me ask one more. So we've talked a lot about slide design. Let's turn a little bit towards the actual act of speaking. So what are the most important things you think people can do when it comes to actually standing in front of an audience actually delivering a presentation?
00:17:49
Speaker
One of the things that I do my very best to do is to share my passion and authenticity for what I'm talking about, why I love talking about this. And I always share those personal experiences of how when I started, I was even too scared to start talking at a boardroom table, let alone an auditorium of 3000 people.
00:18:09
Speaker
And so, when people can connect with that common ground of, yeah, wow, they were just as nervous as me, which happens a lot in Asia, through to, yep, I may be a bit overconfident and could do with listening to this person, then that's great because you've got that relationship with everyone and you can show the differences.
00:18:29
Speaker
And the tips that I try and share are things like, don't start with an apology. I hear that a lot. Everyone is always saying, I'm sorry, I'm really nervous, or I'm sorry, I haven't prepared properly, which then goes back to the point we were talking about earlier. And you're putting yourself on the back foot. I can't look at you and tell you're nervous unless you're like really quivering. But we're not thinking that. But now that you've told us, we are. So that's a real
00:18:57
Speaker
cultural thing runs here and I really try and help overcome that.
00:19:02
Speaker
The other ones, you know, just those quick fixes. So if your throat starts choking, like that sort of feeling of drowning, like you'd need those constant glasses of water when you're on stage, it's nothing to do with being dehydrated. It's your vocal cords and a simple smile can force those vocal cords up and you won't have that same croaky drowning voice. So it's the tips that help people. They're the main things.
00:19:30
Speaker
Yeah. My favorite one is, I know you can't see this but, and then just proceed to launch in. Yeah.
Conclusion & Key Takeaways
00:19:41
Speaker
That's definitely not my favorite. No. And so for those ones, like, okay, so that's what you're saying. So we'll put this pack, this slide in the appendix, and then that bit that you just said, that's what's going on the slide.
00:19:55
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm looking forward to sitting down and reading the book. I sort of skimmed it by having gone through in full detail. So I need to do that. I will put the link to, of course, your studio and to the book on the show notes. And hopefully folks can get some to make some changes to their to their presentations. For me, at least it's it's super interesting thinking about these different cultures because in the US, you know, it's often the same sort of audience in terms of
00:20:21
Speaker
being visual and being animated. And that may be not something that extends to other cultures in other countries. So that is fascinating. Well, Emma, thanks so much for coming on the show. It's been great chatting with you. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, John. And thanks to everyone for tuning into this week's episode. Please let me know if you have comments or questions. So until next time, this has been the policy of his podcast. Thanks so much for listening.