The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting: What Your Professors Don't Tell You. . . What You Absolutely Must Know - Softcover

Ridgley, Stanley K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0857285149 ISBN 13: 9780857285140

Publisher: Anthem Press, 2012

Synopsis

‘The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting: What your professors don't tell you... What you absolutely must know’ reveals the secret expectations harbored by business school professors when viewing presented material. Designed to offer a competitive advantage to anyone interested in a career in business, this award-winning guide offers a truly unique means of developing powerful presentation skills. It identifies seven verities of speaking that form the bedrock of superior presenting in the twenty-first century, and which imbue any speaker with power, energy and confidence: stance, voice, gesture, expression, movement, appearance and passion. These principles, when studied and applied, can form the foundation of a vast improvement, operating by correlating directly with the inherent values of corporate America.

About this title

About the Author

Stanley K. Ridgley is Assistant Clinical Professor of Management at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business in Philadelphia, PA.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting

What Your Professors Don't Tell You ... What You Absolutely Must Know

By Stanley K. Ridgley

Wimbledon Publishing Company

Copyright © 2012 Stanley K. Ridgley
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-85728-514-0

Contents

Preface, vii, 
Acknowledgments, xi, 
Introduction, xiii, 
Part I The World of Presenting, 1, 
Chapter 1 I Hate Presentations, 3, 
Chapter 2 Public Speaking: The Twenty-first Century Presenter, 15, 
Chapter 3 Basics of Your Talk, 29, 
Part II The Seven Secrets of Successful Speakers: From Stick-Puppet to 3D Presenting, 45, 
Chapter 4 Stance, 50, 
Chapter 5 Voice: "I Feel Especially Powerful Today!", 64, 
Chapter 6 Gesture, 86, 
Chapter 7 Expression, 97, 
Chapter 8 Movement: No More Stick-Puppet Presenting, 108, 
Chapter 9 Appearance, 118, 
Chapter 10 Passion: Evoking Emotion, Displaying Earnestness, 128, 
Part III The Story, 137, 
Chapter 11 Storytelling I: The Secret Weapon, 140, 
Chapter 12 Storytelling II: What Kinds of Stories?, 149, 
Chapter 13 Storytelling III: How Do We Tell a Story?, 162, 
Part IV Group Presentations, 177, 
Chapter 14 The Curse and Blessing of Group Presentations, 179, 
Chapter 15 Group Presentations I: Getting Ready, 187, 
Chapter 16 Group Presentations II: What to Do?, 198, 
Chapter 17 Tools of Analysis: Orient, Eliminate, Emphasize, Compare, 213, 
Chapter 18 The Case Competition, 233, 
Conclusion, 243, 
Glossary, 245, 
Index, 255, 

CHAPTER 1

I HATE PRESENTATIONS

Classes are changing now, and I step into the elevator with a gaggle of students. They're going to class, but they look as if they're trudging to the morgue to identify a relative. Business school can be like that at mid-semester. From derivatives to depreciation, from value chain to valuation of the firm, gloom hangs in the hallways and dissipates only with the coming of spring.

And on the elevator, snippets of conversation reach me. Two animated girls chatter in grinding cartoon voices, and I catch a conversation mid-sentence. I think it was a conversation.

"... terrible on the mid-term. He's, like, so unfair! He, like, wouldn't give me credit for–"

"So totally –"

"–next week with the group project, so I said whatever. I hate presentations! But it's, like, twenty-five percent of our grade and it's, like, due next week, and we have to rehearse. I totally don't have time for this, and besides, I hate giving presentations!"

"Like whatever! Dude needs to chill out."

"Yeah, like ... I know what you mean. Group work sucks. Like, it really sucks! I never get a good group. And I never get, like, a good topic!"

"I hate presentations!"

"Totally."

The elevator doors open, and the ladies exit, the fog of angst wafting out with them. I calculate to myself – six intensive weeks, and these college students could become superior speakers and presenters, at ease with an audience, articulate and sure of themselves, presenting with clarity and with a powerful style unique to each of them. Admired by their peers. Sought by employers across the industry spectrum. No more "hate" for "public speaking." No more slang barbarisms ...

No more "like." No more "totally."

No more "whatever."

But they had disappeared into the jaws of the business school. They faded into that mass of students bustling to wherever you bustle, perhaps to sorority rush, to the next party.

Those ladies carried away with them the same problem that most business school students carry in their psychic backpacks, weighing them down without them knowing it – a distaste for everything that involves business presenting.

I hate presentations!

I hate public speaking!

I hate group work! I never get a good group! I never get a good topic!

I hate my group!

I hate it all!

How many times have you said it yourself? You hate public speaking. You hate giving speeches. You hate presentations.

If you happen to be giving a group presentation, it's even worse. Your imagined failure is multiplied. In group work, others now depend on you. And you depend on them. And you "never get a good group." All of that, and more.

Now, breathe deep.

If you're nervous about business school presentations ...

If you don't even know the point of presentations ...

If you pretend to know what a good presentation is, but in your heart you have no clue, and you just mimic your way through with your fingers crossed ...

If you hope to God you never have to deliver another presentation after you graduate ...

Then this book is for you – just for you. I wrote this book for you and no one else. It's just for you, the student, because I understand every one of your fears, your doubts, your jittery nerves, and your ignorance of what is desired from you. I understand you perfectly.

Visualization Time: Picture Yourself

Let's talk about the presentation itself. You know a bad presentation when you see one, don't you? We see them all the time, so often in fact, that who can be faulted for believing that presentations are supposed to be dull contrivances? You also know the superb presentation as well, and you surely know the superior presenter when you see him or her. But it's hard to figure out why it's so good. You can't quite put your finger on any single factor that imbues a presentation with power, but the whole of it speaks to you. You feel it across a range of emotions.

The speaker moves well, his voice resonates, he doesn't stumble, he dances expertly with his visuals, you never doze off, you remember what he says, and he stops and leaves you wanting more. You understand that you've been in the presence of a master.

Perhaps you believe that the excellence you perceive is the product of a "natural born" speaker. As a result, perhaps you think you have witnessed something that you can never be, something beyond your abilities. Perhaps you believe it's a gift.

Yes, it is a gift. It's the gift of unlimited potential, and everyone has it. Now visualize yourself actualizing this gift. Visualize yourself stepping confidently to the lectern and smiling at your audience. You feel in command and surely feel none of the butterflies that used to make you tremble. You have no fear. You aren't nervous. You exude an aura, or what we call professional presence.

You step out from behind the lectern and into the command position. It is apparent to everyone that you control the agenda. That they're about to hear something special, a business case that will yield something that only you can tell them and in a way that motivates and moves them to action.

Visualize yourself moving easily to and fro, gesturing precisely as you lay out the situation statement. Your voice hits the right notes with the right emotion as you serve up your value chain analysis.

You pause in the right places as you dramatize compelling story that incorporates financial analysis and the results of your SWOT analysis. Each of your teammates steps up and follows your lead. They shine and interweave their portions of the show seamlessly. Your presentation comes off as a well- orchestrated ballet, flawlessly performed.

Finally, you step up to conclude with a rousing strategic recommendation that electrifies your audience. The audience applauds loudly. Your team fields questions with aplomb, and you articulate crisp answers that satisfy even the most hardened skeptic.

Such is the stuff of a powerful business presentation. If you can visualize it, then you can achieve it. You are more than capable of it.

Fully Within Your Grasp

The above scenario of an especially powerful business presentation is yours for the taking. It's not the exclusive province of so-called "natural born" presenters. If you decide you truly want to excel at business presenting, and you earnestly pursue the skills and techniques of this book – the distilled wisdom of 2,500 years of presenting – then you can reach the pinnacle of business presenting.

But before you receive the keys to the kingdom and begin your stewardship, I offer here several prerequisites. Here is the very first lesson in the book before you even turn another page.

Rid Yourself of Negative Talk

We just conjured a spectacular image of ourselves as an especially powerful business presenter. Contrast that image with the kind of negativity we normally associate with business presentations.

Many students who fear, disdain, hate presentations have a tendency toward negative self-talk. If you are one of these folks, stop it now.

Negative self-talk serves no useful purpose on the planet, especially when it concerns something as fundamentally important to your career as public speaking. A true champion in any sport never tells himself or herself "I'm no good at this" or "I hate my teammates" or "I want to play the sport, but I hate practice and training."

Whether you like it or not, presentations are a major part of business school, just as much as finance, accounting, or management. They are not an "add-on" or a "soft skill." Good presenting is not something you can "pick up" along the way, nor is it a distasteful task you can avoid or foist onto someone else.

In fact, the average business school undergraduate delivers 20–25 presentations and speeches in a college career, and many of them are elaborate semester-ending projects. Given that many students obsess over their grades, consider that these presentations constitute a significant portion of the grade point average (GPA).

Almost every business course incorporates group work and group presentations, so presentations aren't going away anytime soon. Then, once you graduate ... Well, I've encountered students who believe that once they graduate and get a "real job," their obligations to present in public end. This is 100 percent wrong.

Not My Job ...

Presenting is considered a skill, and it is a skill that corporate America covets. It is not as involved or as deep as entire subdisciplines such as accounting or risk management, but it is a skill unto itself that harbors principles, laws, rules and best practices.

Much of this you never hear in business school, because teaching "presenting" is always someone else's job. Your professor assumes you've been trained in this mysterious class that you're supposed to have taken, but you never see listed on the course schedule. If such a course actually exists, for some reason it is taught by someone outside the business school or by an administrator type who was assigned the task to "teach presentations" because, well, it's her turn. I know you're familiar with this.

But it wasn't always this way. Contrast your experience with the importance accorded to presentations prior to the dawn of multimedia.

Entire departments of public speaking used to hold proud places in American universities. An entire university called the National School for Elocution and Oratory in Philadelphia thrived on into the late years of the nineteenth century. Books for business speakers used to crowd the shelves. Yes, presenting is a skill, and one that is severely neglected today.

So if you find yourself whining about presentations, stop right now. I know that you occasionally gripe. Every student does at some point. Let's reverse the dynamic right now and begin thinking positively of how superb business presenting can bestow on us a lasting personal competitive advantage and propel us up into the High-Demand Skill Zone where employers seek the finest candidates.

Let's lay some groundwork for that right now.

The One Superb Skill

If today you discovered that there was one thing – one skill – you could learn that would immeasurably increase your chances of getting a great job after graduation, wouldn't that be great? What would you think of that? That it's too good to be true?

What if you learned that this skill is something that you can develop to a reasonably high level in just a handful of weeks?

Think of it – a skill you can learn in four to five weeks that can provide you with a lasting competitive advantage throughout the rest of your working life. A skill that few people take seriously. A skill in incredibly high demand by America's corporations.

Capable business presenting is a highly demanded skill. Companies haven't nearly enough personnel who can communicate effectively, logically, comfortably, clearly, and cogently. And I include C-suite personnel in that number as well. The vast majority of employers seek the following knowledge, skills, and abilities in new MBA hires: communication skills (86 percent); professionalism (78 percent); initiative and integrity (77 percent); motivation (76 percent) and ability to deal effectively with pressure and unexpected obstacles (75 percent).

And this is why you, as a business student, gain personal competitive advantage vis-à-vis your peers when you take presenting seriously rather than as a distasteful task. You gain incredible advantage by embracing the notion that you should and can become a powerful business presenter.

In other words, if you actually devote yourself to the task of becoming a superb speaker, you can become one. The task is not as difficult as you imagine (although it isn't easy, either).

Transformation Time

This is about transformation of the way we think, of the way we view the world, of the lens through which we peer at others, of the lens through which we see ourselves. It is a liberating window on the world. And it begins with your uniqueness.

You are unique.

This is not esteem-building snake oil. I am not in the business of esteem building, nor in the feel-good industry. If you had to affix a name to it, you could say that I am in the business of esteem-discovery.

I don't teach you to be unique, and I don't teach you to be someone other than who you are. I help you to discover who you are, to inventory your gifts and talents and to take stock of your desires and dreams. I help you to respect and learn what the finest public speakers and presenters in history can teach you – and that handful of eternal verities that will transform you, if you accept them.

I encourage you to find within yourself the capacity for excellence that you hope and pray you have, but fear you don't have the guts to tap into. I teach you to stop riding the surface, and to plunge into the business life with gusto.

So your belief in this uniqueness is utterly essential to your development as a powerful business presenter.

But given the tendency of modernity to squelch your imagination, to curtail your enthusiasm, to limit your vision, and to homogenize your appearance and your speech, you may have abandoned the notion of uniqueness as the province of the eccentric. Perhaps you prefer to "fit in."

Some truths can be uncomfortable. Often, truths about ourselves are uncomfortable, because if we acknowledge them, we then obligate ourselves to change in some way. But in this case, the truth is liberating.

Your Shrinking World

Recognize that in four years of college, a crust of mediocrity may well have formed on you. It is, at least partially, this crust of mediocrity that holds you back from becoming a powerful presenter. Your world has shrunk incrementally, and if you don't push it out, it will close in about you and continue to limit you.

Recognize that you dwell in a college cocoon. Self-doubt, conformity, and low expectations can attach themselves to you, slowing you down as barnacles slow an ocean liner.

Your self-confidence gets leeched away by a thousand interactions with people who mean you no harm and, yet, pressure you to conform to a standard, a lowest common denominator. People who shape, cramp and restrict your ability to deliver presentations. They lacquer over your innate abilities and force you into a dull conformity.

Their expectations of you are low. They expect you to be like them. They resent your quest for knowledge and try to squelch it. Beware of people who doubt you, your desires and your success. At some point, you might question whether these people actually belong in your life.

Yes, you are unique, and in the subsequent pages you discover the power of your uniqueness. You strip away the layers of modern mummification. You chip away at those crusty barnacles that have formed over the years without your even realizing it.

It is time to express that uniqueness in ways that support whatever it is you want to do. I offer you the clear path to success, a way of interacting and engaging with the world that liberates you and empowers you to utilize your gifts to achieve your goals.

Until now, the path has probably not been clear, at least with respect to your presentation skills.

Here's Why ...

Let me describe your typical presentation experience in business school as you watch a so-called professional who visits to deliver a lecture.

You see a dull business presentation that some people praise as good. A fellow stands in front of you, crouching at a lectern, and he reads slide after slide with dozens of bullet points obviously taken from a written paper.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting by Stanley K. Ridgley. Copyright © 2012 Stanley K. Ridgley. Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0857285149
• ISBN 13: 9780857285140
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 276