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Mastering the Art of Executive Presence with Dr. Laura Sicola: Transforming Technical Expertise into Compelling Communication
706 Plays1 month ago
Dr. Laura Sikola, a cognitive linguist and communications expert, visits the podcast to talk about how to be a better presenter and communicator. Laura’s work focuses on how to have better presence, telling stories, and connecting with your audiences. We talk about communication challenges like the “expert’s curse” and how developing your “executive presence” can command attention and build rapport.
Keywords: data, data visualization, DrLauraSikola, CognitiveLinguist, CommunicationExpert, PresentationSkills, ITProfessionals, FinanceProfessionals, DataAnalytics, EffectiveCommunication, ExpertsCurse, Storytelling, AudienceConnection, ExecutivePresence, MutualUnderstanding, AudienceEngagement, ConfidenceInPresentations, SlideDesign, VocalQuality, PresentationDelivery, SelfAwareness, PublicSpeaking, ClearCommunication, ConcisePresentations, DataPresentation, EffectiveSlides, 200Rule, SlideDesignTips, PracticeAndPreparation, EngagingAudiences
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Check out Laura’s website and watch her TED Talk, “Want to sound like a leader? Start by saying your name right”
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Email: [email protected]
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome back to the Policy Vis Podcast. I'm your host, John Schwabish. I hope you are well. I hope things are going well for you and your families. And thanks so much for tuning into yet another episode of the podcast.
00:00:26
Speaker
On this week's episode of the show, I am excited to welcome Dr. Laura Sokola, who is a cognitive linguist and communications expert. She has a really entertaining Ted Talk about being a better presenter. Haven't done a lot of presentation work on this show in a while, so I am excited to switch gears and see how I can help you become a better
Flourish Slack Channel Announcement
00:00:46
Speaker
presenter. Now, before I get to the show, just very quickly, I hope you've heard about the new Slack channel I launched called Friends of Flourish. Friends of Flourish is a new Slack channel where you can meet other like-minded folks working in the Flourish data visualization tool. ah We've already started some fun conversations there. It's just a place where you can come in and see what others are doing, learn some hacks, learn some tips, and get in touch with the Flourish team. So I hope you check it out.
00:01:12
Speaker
I have a link on the show notes to this episode of the podcast, as well as a quick little blog post on the policyofviz.com website. So with that out of the way, let's get to this week's episode of the show.
Coaching for Better Presentations
00:01:25
Speaker
Very excited to talk to Dr. Laura Sokola about her work being a presentation coach and how she can help you and I can help you be a better presenter in your data work. So here's that conversation with Laura and I hope you enjoy it.
00:01:42
Speaker
Well, Laura, very excited to see you. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks so much for inviting me, John. I am excited to chat with you. Um, I had a lot of fun watching your Ted talk, which we're going to talk about in a little bit. Um, and maybe references that some people are starting not to get into more as we age, but but I still loved it. Um, I wanted to start maybe by asking you to just introduce yourself and in the work that you're doing now to help folks be be better communicators.
00:02:10
Speaker
Sure, thank you. Well, I'm Dr. Laura Sokola, and I'm a cognitive linguist by background. I have a PhD in education linguistics. It's all about looking at that when you talk, what you say goes either in one ear and out the other for the listener, or it goes in and sticks.
00:02:25
Speaker
And what is it ah that we can do to make sure that it sticks? How do we adjust what we say and how we say it so that people get it? So that's the ah the practical application version, let's call it that way, of all the studies. So where I used to be, I was teaching at the University of Pennsylvania for the last 15 years, I've been doing executive coaching.
00:02:48
Speaker
And training working with leaders who are typically not the communications people people who are in It cyber security you're in finance or data analytics and all those kinds of biochemistry etc and helping them translate generally people who are in the c-suite or in the other executive roles, but helping them to translate the genius, translate the expertise so that everybody else gets it. You have to be able to translate for all different stakeholder groups so that everybody gets on board and is rowing in the same direction. So ah think of it this way. You ever have one of those moments where you're talking and you suddenly think to yourself, that sounded better in my head. Yes. Like every day, and every day. Yeah. My job is to fix that. Yeah. So we'll do that today.
00:03:34
Speaker
So in your experience with working with CEOs and C-suite folks, like what do you find is the number one or the biggest challenge that they have? Is it not speaking in jargon? Is it something else? like What is their biggest their biggest frustration or biggest challenge?
The Expert's Curse Explained
00:03:49
Speaker
as one of the And it's something that's frankly very um consistent through all levels is the need to break what I like to call the experts curse.
00:03:59
Speaker
Because the longer you spend in a field, the longer you spend in a particular vertical or role, things become intuitive. They become second nature to you and you forget what not intuitive or already known or obvious or interesting and useful for that matter for everybody else.
00:04:15
Speaker
So it's important to be able to set the scene. It's important to be able to tell stories. It's important to be able to do things like using analogies and metaphors and connecting with the audience. People don't you can't just open mouth, turn on firehose and drown the listener in numbers. It won't resonate and so helping people to be their authentic self, let their personality come through, let their passion and interest come through, but also focus.
00:04:45
Speaker
streamline, translate, get to the point, and make those connections. That's the bridge, the gap that I bridge with them. And a lot of your work, you you have this, or you talk about this this concept of executive presence. And I'm sure a lot of listeners of your podcast, my podcast, are not executives. They don't have the title CEO. yeah But I think everybody wants to have that presence. So you can you talk about how but Either you teach people how to do that or how they can they can implement that in their own work. Absolutely. the I think the phrase of executive presence or the label is a little bit misleading because it really doesn't have anything to do with the role that you are in. Although if you want to get to a role with that title, you better have it. That's non-negotiable. Yeah. And the idea, I like to translate it this way because there's truckloads of research out there that tries to operationalize it in all sorts of different ways.
00:05:41
Speaker
I put it this way. It's the three C's.
The Three C's of Executive Presence
00:05:44
Speaker
The ability to command the room, connect with the audience, and close the deal. So let's break those down real quick. To command the room, when you start to talk, when you walk in, even if you're sitting down, is there something about the way you hold yourself, the way you take up certain amounts of space, the way you move, the way that you talk, that captivates people's attention that just compels them to pay attention. You're not demanding respect. That's different. When you're demanding it, you're saying, I need to give it to me, then you're screwed. But when you, not de demand, but command respect, that means it's inherent. People can't help but give it to you. So that's the first C, the command, the room.
00:06:32
Speaker
The second is connect with the audience. That means that once you've got their attention, as you're talking, you're establishing this mutual understanding that on some level, you understand me and I understand you. You get me and I get you. Maybe it's only on this one element and that's okay because it's the only element that matters right now. But there's that connection and you want to sustain that as much as you can.
00:06:54
Speaker
And then the third C is closing the deal. This is not sales. I mean, if you're in sales or business development of some sort fine, but it's really the idea of getting to yes. Establishing a mutual agreement, moving the needle forward, but most of the projects that we work on are not, I need one conversation and then you say yes, and then it's done.
00:07:12
Speaker
it's processes and multiple meetings and lots of negotiation. And it could be six, 12, 18 months worth of lead time on something. So the idea is, do we move the needle forward with each? Yes, big or small, getting to that agreement. That's closing the deal. So so it is it's interesting the way you you talk about it, because I think your work goes beyond just standing in front of an audience speaking, right? It goes into, you are in a room in a meeting with your colleagues or a client and and you need to have that presence, have that have that command of the room. yes And I wonder if you've seen folks kind of treat day-to-day meetings differently than presentations when maybe it's all about communication and they should be treating them all in a similar kind of way.
00:08:04
Speaker
So you you said two things there that are related but need to disaggregate a little bit. So
Effective Communication and Public Speaking
00:08:10
Speaker
yes, they are all about communication. ah So I call it for me, I define public speaking as anytime you're talking to somebody besides yourself.
00:08:20
Speaker
So now that talking to yourself may be the best conversation you have all day some days, but that notwithstanding, whether you're just having a check-in meeting with your boss or a direct report, or you are pitching an idea to the leadership team, to the board, to a client, or you are whatever it happens to be, yeah it is communication and it is how well you take the genius and the vision that's here and deliver it to them in a way that they don't just hear the words, they go, oh, yeah, okay, well, tell me more about this. It's not the yeah, but nah, I mean, they may say no in the end, but are you engaging the audience? Do you have, and this is a scary word, charisma that is coming through. Everybody has it. I'm not talking Tony Robbins, televangelist, larger than life, be an extrovert, be a Broadway actor,
00:09:18
Speaker
No, charisma, something we all have, is that natural energy that when you allow it to come through, it just makes people want to hear more. It makes people want to spend time with you. I'm going to lay it all on the line and guess that for all of you out there who are listening, somebody on this planet, if they were given the choice to spend a day with just one person, they'd pick you.
00:09:43
Speaker
Why? What is it about who you are when you're with them that says you're my favorite person in the world and I want to spend a day with you. How do you let part of that person, that personality out because they see your deepest charisma and that's something you probably hold from everybody else. Now that on the flip side with the other part that you said as far as if it's this kind of meeting or that kind of meeting, you don't treat them all the same insofar as you don't show up exactly the same for all of them because are you talking to somebody who is an even greater expert in your area or somebody, if you're in
Charisma and Audience Engagement
00:10:19
Speaker
IT, are you talking to somebody in finance?
00:10:22
Speaker
That's gonna be a different way that you're gonna explain the same concept why you need the money for it versus why you just need the approval for it versus You know the value it'll provide you explain the number of features the technical specifics and details The finance department does not care about all that kind of stuff So, you know you have to show up differently But you still need to allow that charisma to come through you still have to command the room connect with the audience and close the deal Mm hmm. Can you give us give folks a ah glimpse into how you draw that out for folks? I can imagine a lot of your clients come in and they
00:10:57
Speaker
Like a lot of my clients, right? They get up there, they kind of read the slides or, you know, they kind of, the experts curse, I think is the the best phrase, but like, what are some of the strategies and maybe things that people can do on their own that they can do to sort of start to pull on some of these threads? Yeah, there's lots of things. so The first is, and look, I'm not a woo woo kind of chick. So hold on for for a second and just work with me on this, but it does start with mindset.
00:11:27
Speaker
And are you mentally present for what you're teaching? because And that doesn't mean stuck in your head. Most people are stuck in their heads. They get so focused on, I have to say all of these numbers, right? I don't want to forget anything. I don't want to get asked a question that I can't answer well, or what if they shoot? That is very, frankly, self-focused.
00:11:48
Speaker
yeah Yeah, right. It's all about me. It's what about this? And what about that? And look, I get that we all want to do well. We want recognition for our work. We want praise. We don't want to get shot down in public. like Yes. But the best presenters are the ones who shift and focus on approaching the presentation from a perspective of generosity. So the audience who is listening, I use the word audience to mean whoever you're talking to.
00:12:14
Speaker
They are also approaching from a self-interested perspective. Why are they listening to you? What do they want to get out of it? What are they concerned about? What are their pressing needs? Who else is breathing down their neck? Who else is trying to squeeze more blood out of a stone budget-wise or time-wise or, you know, you've got a lot of competing interests. What do they need, want, to prioritize, fear, like, et cetera. Now, when you think about that and then why they're listening to you,
00:12:45
Speaker
If you can approach what you are sharing in a way that will answer their needs, e their concerns, their interests, their egos, their you know goals and ambitions, et cetera, that's a very different place. And talk to them, not at them. How's that for starters? Yeah, I mean, yes, great for starters. um It is interesting because it sounds like there's a lot of psychology and involved yes absolutely and in in sort of building up that confidence or building up that whatever that is ah to get out of your own head in a lot of ways. I mean, when I work with folks on their slide design, right? I tell them the same thing. Like the reason someone has five bullet points on the slide is because they want to make sure as the presenter that they cover these five things. Well, that's for them as a presenter, not for the audience. right And so it's a flipping your your perspective around a little bit. Yes.
00:13:42
Speaker
um I also wanted to ask about ah voice quality because you talk about this in your TED talk.
Voice Quality and Presentation Humor
00:13:49
Speaker
You have this great part where you ask the audience to imagine that Fran Drescher plays the voice of Darth Vader, which still makes me giggle, um just the idea of that. And I wonder how you work with folks or how you ask folks to think about or assess their own voice quality and then whether and how they should work to change their the quality of their voice.
00:14:14
Speaker
I'm sure that many of your audience, they probably do know Darth Vader. They don't know Fran Drescher. Right, right. So just to put that little thing in context that I appreciate you watching and and um giving a plug for the TED talk, I encourage everybody else up of course to go and watch it. But Fran Drescher was an actress who I think was most famous in the 90s, maybe late 80s, early 90s. And her most famous character um on television was the nanny. And she she was born and raised in Flushing, Queens. And she just had this really nasally kind of voice. And that was the whole thing. And it was, ah so either hated it or loved it, but she was, she was very funny. Um, so needless to say that and Darth Vader like orange juice and milk, they just should not. Yeah. it ever Well, I do wonder, it'd be an interesting question to ask whether people know her more from the nanny or from her role on friends. as Was she on friends? Wasn't she the girl? Wasn't she the girlfriend for a little while?
00:15:10
Speaker
Janice that was a different actress. Nope. That was was a different actress. Similar hair, similar, similar voice. else Yeah. yeah but nope That was not her. Okay. But so what the voice quality is sort of similar. The two of them had. similar probably with the wine are nasal Yeah. Okay. right all right yeah so With that as context, everybody, when you listen to the sound of your voice, like 99% of the population goes, oh my gosh, I hate my voice. It's too this, it's too that. I don't like listening to the sound of my voice. i but and Okay, so here's the deal.
00:15:43
Speaker
you cannot change the instrument that you were born with. If you were born with a piccolo, it will never sound like a tuba and vice versa. That being said, whether you were born with a piccolo or whether you were born with a tuba, you can learn to play it masterfully. e And that's the key. So what are you doing with your voice? How are you using that instrument? And it is an instrument that is allowing it to come across fully.
00:16:10
Speaker
resonant resonant in a way that sounds confident, in a way that is reassuring, in a way that is whatever you want it to be, friendly, approachable, empathetic, there's a million different adjectives. So certain what I would recommend to everybody and know that this is me coaching, that none of my clients, whether I'm doing a team training or one on one
Self-Assessment and Presentation Skills Improvement
00:16:32
Speaker
coaching with somebody, no one escapes the video camera.
00:16:35
Speaker
You have to listen to yourself Because if you don't then we're I can't coach you because we're not comparing the same thing i'm talking about what you said and how it sounded And you are thinking about what you meant What you tried to do what you think you did it the movie in your mind is not the same movie that played on the screen for everybody else. So it's not until you see and hear what I saw and heard, then we can talk and discuss what to do about it. So here's the thing.
00:17:12
Speaker
You never need to learn to like it, meaning like watching yourself and listening to yourself. I see myself on camera so much, I'm sick of my own face by the end of most days. But no matter how many decades I've done training, presenting conference talks, videos, TED talks, you name it.
00:17:33
Speaker
I still go back and watch at least portions of almost everything because I need to see what was effective, what landed as intended, if I need to tighten something up, if I talk too fast at some point, if I got too technically detailed in some way, or if I totally forgot to include something that was the piece that put it all together. I tangented and then never came back.
00:17:56
Speaker
It helps me stay sharp, helps me stay at the top of my game. I never learned to love watching myself. It's not something I do for fun. I don't pull out popcorn. I mean, you could, all fine, but I absolutely value what I get from watching them. Either the confirmation that, yep, that landed as I wanted. I'm really pleased with how that went. Or here's a note for optimization next time around. Make sure you do or don't do X. So I think that those watching and listening to yourself on camera is absolutely an essential first step, or at least do an audio recording of yourself and listen. Because you'll see and you'll hear what others are seeing and hearing. And here's my challenge.
00:18:42
Speaker
Ask yourself for the thing that you just recorded, what are two or three qualities that you want to project to the audience? Personal characteristics you want them to see in you. Yes, smart. Okay, we know. You want them to see you as smart. That's a given. That's like the E in Wheel of Fortune. you know It's just a given. We're going to give it to you. Yeah, and everybody wants that. What else?
00:19:01
Speaker
confident, approachable, personable, ah empathetic, um you know extremely passionate and convicted, and whatever it is. So yeah then listen to that recording and say, does that person sound like this he it because that's a subjective interpretation, but of your objective voice and speech behaviors. Then you're going to listen and go, okay, why did this person sound like they were completely disinterested in their own content? ha Well, that's interesting.
00:19:37
Speaker
What were you doing too slow? Are you kind of like just using vocal fry the entire time and you're gravely mumbling your way through it? um Hoping that the data would speak for itself because it doesn't. yeah yeah right you know Is it it it does this your version of like super excited because there's a little bit of variation in your tonality and so you think you're doing a really good job and that should be ah enough and you want people to get on board because you know it's cool.
00:20:04
Speaker
No, it doesn't work. you know And what seems like, oh, this feels very out of my comfort zone. When you watch it afterward, even if you think you're really stepping outside that box and and trying to to really put energy into it, you're going to watch it afterwards and go, wow, that just went from like a two to a two and a half out of 10. That did not sound nearly as crazy as I thought it did. The movie in your mind, when the adrenaline is pumping, by the way,
00:20:31
Speaker
is not the same as what everybody else sees and hears. Yeah. So you've given us, I think, a a glimpse into into how you work with folks, but i'm but I'm curious, CEO Sarah Smith calls you up, you...
00:20:46
Speaker
meet up and they want to be a better public speaker. What does your training look like? what Just to give folks a sense of, because I think a lot of ah lot of folks who who listen to the show have probably thought hard about creating really nice slides. They've thought about their the work.
00:21:05
Speaker
I would guess a lot of folks have not gone through like a presentation coaching session. And so I'm curious, give folks a sense of what does that process look like? If they were say, I want Dr. Zicola to help me like be a better presenter, what is the process going to be? Yep.
Preparing Impactful Presentations
00:21:21
Speaker
So we start first and foremost, by identifying who are you presenting what to and why. So every interaction that you have, you're going to have three levels of impact.
00:21:33
Speaker
cognitive, emotional, and behavioral. So think of it as your GPS coordinate but when you're preparing. If you get in the car for this preparation journey, your GPS isn't gonna do anything until you put in the destination, right? So think, how do you want people to feel about this when you're done? What do you want them to think? How do you want them to think differently about this? And what do you want them to do as a result?
00:22:00
Speaker
then you start to build your talk, your presentation. You're absolutely right that you can't have a whole script on your screen because if you're reading most of your screen out loud, you have just rendered yourself obsolete. Yeah.
00:22:16
Speaker
You're slowing it down because they can skim it a lot faster than you can say it out loud. So why are you going to hold the process back? Just send it to them as a PDF. Let them read it and get back to you by email if they got a question. Don't waste their time in a meeting boring them to death. So um here's a thought. When you're presenting spreadsheets and diagrams, if you have to preface any slide with, ah you probably can't see this, but ah Oh my God, I hate that. Yes. That is a no-no. You should give yourself like a little taser shock for that one. That's not, that is an ego slide. And you referenced this before. This is like c y a slide. You know what I mean by CYA, right? Cover your assets.
00:22:58
Speaker
so to speak. um So again, that's for you as presenter, that's your will be, that's your security blanket. And that's not intended for the audience. They don't need all that data. Only show them what they need in the moment and then tell them what they don't see by looking. or Maybe they've got the pieces, but they haven't put them together to see what the full picture is. Help them with that. And make sure if nothing else, that it's clear for them, why you're showing them each of these slides and what their big takeaway should be. Translate the what to the why. Think an analogy I like to use is that your PowerPoint deck or whatever platform you're using, you're trying to build a house with this presentation. And when you build a house, you need bricks and mortar. Well, when you're building a presentation, you need slides as your bricks. Everybody builds those. But if you have no mortar, you don't have a house. You have a pile of bricks.
00:23:56
Speaker
It doesn't really help a lot. So the mortar in the presentation is your transitions and your commentary. How are you transitioning verbally? You don't just finish talking about whatever you see there and then go, okay, let's go to slide seven. Click by ah slide seven is this. All you're doing is identifying brick number six and brick number seven. You're not doing them together. yeah So you have to add value through your commentary.
00:24:22
Speaker
and connect the dots for them. People make the mistake, and this is part of the expert's curse, in thinking, well, but the I'm presenting to the board. I'm presenting to the senior leadership. like They're smart. They know how to read all these spreadsheets. They know how to understand all this. Yes, but you've had weeks to think it all through to do the analysis. They're getting a fire hose right now of truckloads of information and no processing time. spoon feed them what you want them to get from what you share. It's not talking down to them if you tell them what your takeaways are and what you think their takeaways should be and what your recommendations are. This is the linguistic glass ceiling.
00:25:00
Speaker
that keeps people from moving up into higher leadership levels. Because if all I'm doing is giving you my data monkey numbers, I'm great at crunching numbers, here are the numbers that I crunched, that tells them, great, you're good at that, you should stay there. But if you want to prove to the higher ups that you belong at the table with them, they don't think so tactically, they think strategically.
00:25:23
Speaker
They want to know what to do with that information. So it's not overstepping your bounds. If you say, it it would be you know my recommendation with this or my concern would be, or ah you know help them use the information to make the decisions that they need to make what their pressures are, what their needs are. If you can show them that you have that foresight, that you can help them do their job better, that's someone they want on the team.
00:25:53
Speaker
right Yeah, it's interesting to hear you you talk about it because I think there are lots of people who have this experience from the kind of analysts, whatever yeah title you want to have, the analyst level. I'm just going to walk you through these numbers. yeahp ah but But kind of like the way you said before, you you kind of dress for the job you want, not for the job you have. Correct. Great analogy. Yeah.
00:26:17
Speaker
um So um another thing that comes up a lot is folks who are preparing slides or talks for other people for their boss. And I guess this is kind of a two-part question. One is whether you work with those sorts of folks and how you help them become the person who has other folks making slides for them. um And I guess, and then the other part is how do you, or or may and this may not be folks that you work with, but how do you help folks who are preparing material for other people to speak, especially if you don't, aren't as familiar with their speaking style, with the way they want to go through the material, like how do you have this like this dual level sort of relationship set up?
00:27:03
Speaker
That could be complicated you know of course it depends on how familiar you are with their information how familiar they are with yours how much time you have to prep stuff. um You know in my book speaking to influence, there is a good amount of information that that people can check out as far as the presentation skill aspect of influence. But there's a rule I have.
The $200 Rule for Clarity
00:27:25
Speaker
as far as how much and what should go on a slide. And I call it, it's totally counterintuitive for most people. ah But it's what I call my $200 is $200 rule.
00:27:41
Speaker
And so if you imagine your teenager comes home and says, Hey, dad, ah can I have 200 bucks? i I need to buy a new pair of sneakers. And you're going 200 bucks. My shoes don't even cost 200 bucks. That's a lot of money. You know, what do you need all that for? And they he goes, no, but see, you don't get it. You don't really, it's not really that much money because you only have to give me two bills.
00:28:02
Speaker
but um i'm ching but um Thank you very much. it I'll be here all day. But point being, you're going, I don't care if it's two bills or 200 bills or thousands of pennies. It's the same amount of currency. You're just smashing it all into two pieces of paper. It's the same with slides. Most people put way too much stuff on a slide. And it's all that CYA.
00:28:26
Speaker
cover your assets, um, mentality, but the counterintuitive thing is that more slides is better. If you have to talk for, let's say 10 minutes.
00:28:39
Speaker
you don't need to have two slides with five minutes worth of content on each. You're better off having 10 slides with just one minute worth of content and keep it moving because for each one it helps you streamline your points, it helps you organize your thoughts, it helps you so do what in education we call it scaffolding, where you lay a foundation and then you layer and you build and you build and you build on the stuff that you've already shared. So you're educating the group as you go. You're also keeping the blinders on the horse. So when there's too many things on a screen at once, people are looking around. The the presenter is trying to say, oh, and by the way, and there's this and that, there's no focus. There's no clear track as far as the order of things people should look at and the likelihood of the audience looking at whatever you happen to be talking about.
00:29:32
Speaker
are slim to none. So they're not hearing what you're saying. Their brains, because they cannot process auditorily something that's different from what they're processing visually. So there's a diagram on one side and there's a bullet list on the other side of the screen. They're going to be looking at one or the other, but it's probably not whatever you're talking about. So they're going to tune you out. You become Charlie Brown's teacher, right?
00:30:01
Speaker
and that's not helping you. um So if you've got those, that split screen, great, make it two slides. Here's the diagram, then here's the bullets. If you've got 10 bullets, how about you make it three slides or do you really need all of those bullets? Are they full sentences? Is it a script? Could you put up really just three bullets? Are half of those just comments and talking points? ehi Should those really be more in the notes?
00:30:28
Speaker
section than in the actual slide itself. Yeah. What does the audience need to read? And what is your responsibility to deliver as supplement and explanation? Don't put your speaker commentary on the slide. Yeah. One thing that people asked me um when it comes to presentation is how I feel about notes using the notes in the PowerPoint. The PowerPoint has note, they all, all the tools have the note thing or using your phone or using your index cards. Like how do you, what is your answer to that question? It depends on what you do with it. I'm not a fan of the phone because I think it's too small and it forced you. Nobody wants a speaker who's sitting there holding their phone and staring at it the entire time while they're talking, you break the connection. Remember the second C connect with the audience. If you're staring at your phone while on stage,
00:31:21
Speaker
It just looks like you're multitasking, and it makes you look like you definitely don't know what you're doing, that you have a crutch, that you need that. um If there is a way to do, um like I like what I'm presenting, even if it's something I'm familiar with, I like to have my screen, the what's called a confidence monitor, are presenters in the presenter view, where, okay, maybe on the big screen behind me, it's just the slide,
00:31:45
Speaker
that I want everybody to look at but on my slide on my laptop or whatever monitor I'm using I see the current slide and the next slide and there's a little section for talking points there I like to see that just because it reminds me what's coming up next I don't have to try to remember so I can be um completely present and I'm not trying to mentally multitask um So that helps me to transition and make those connections I was talking up before. And then the question is, what's in the speaker notes? And I don't put a lot, but to the extent that as you're building the slide, it helps you to put notes to yourself like reminders. You want to talk about these kinds of things. Before you get to doing the presentation, delivering the presentation, we need to really condense those speaker notes. You cannot have paragraphs.
00:32:33
Speaker
You have paragraphs while you're thinking through it in the building process, not in the delivery. You need a couple of keywords, a few stats you want to remember, an analogy, a story reminder of a story you want to tell. Don't write out the whole story, but tell the story about X. Okay, tell that story. But it should just be prompts, reminders, and that you can then speak about extemporaneously.
00:32:57
Speaker
Well, and to back to what you were talking about earlier, if you've recorded yourself and you've practiced and you've prepared, you really should only need a little prompt rather than the whole paragraph story just written out for you.
Strategic Storytelling in Presentations
00:33:09
Speaker
And sometimes I'll put in the notes section, do not tell this story now. Because sometimes there's a story I might want to tell that ah could fit in two or three places and my brain will but make the association and naturally start to tell that story. And I'm like, no, you cannot tell this now. Hold off. You'll do it in 10 minutes. Or this is a short version of the presentation. Maybe I don't have the luxury of time to tell that story. It's a really great, nice to have, but it's not an essential need to have for today. So just resist the urge to tell the story, shut up and move on.
00:33:44
Speaker
Well, on that note, but thank you so much for
Connecting with Dr. Sokola
00:33:48
Speaker
coming on the show. um Where can folks find you to hear more about your work, maybe even to reach out to get some get some help from you and your team?
00:33:58
Speaker
Happy to, and I do, of course, there is the coaching that's one-on-one, but also team trainings, half-day, full-day workshops, et cetera. um Go to laurisacola.com. Not very cryptic. Nice and simple, laurisacola.com. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Of course, let me know that ah if you do that, that you heard me here talking with John on the show. And otherwise, I do have a podcast as well, which is speaking to influence communication secrets of the C-suite, which is similar to the book. And I would encourage everyone everyone to take a look at that as well.
00:34:26
Speaker
lovely Everybody should subscribe and check out your site and the book and everything else. And watch the TED Talk. You'll enjoy that. There's another little Easter egg in there that will let and let them get the Easter egg. Laura, thanks so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. Thank you, John. It was a pleasure.
00:34:44
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of the show. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Dr. Laura Sokola. I hope you'll check out her TED Talk and all the things I've linked to on the PolicyViz website. If you have a moment, like always, please take a second and rate or review the show on your favorite podcast provider. And if you have ideas for other guests, please do let me know. You can get in touch with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or through my sub-stack newsletter on policyviz.com.
00:35:12
Speaker
So thanks again for listening. Until next time, this has been the Policy Viz Podcast.