by Cheryl Reimold, IEEE Professional Communications Society, reprinted from PCS Newsletter
Do you wish you were a powerful, persuasive presenter? Do you envy people who can address a large audience with casual ease and charm, as though conversing with a few good friends? In this series, I will show you how to turn wish into reality and become one of that select group of exceptional presenters. It's surprisingly simple, as you'll see - and you don't need any special "natural talent."
Of course, preparation is an enormous help and, in fact, this series builds on an earlier one ("Preparing outstanding presentations") that offered guidelines on strong preparation, including effective visuals (see part 2 on p. 2). When your material is tailored to your audience and organized to encourage a strong start and variety, you'll find it much easier to get and stay connected with your listeners.
The real secret to powerful delivery is a strong, positive, uninterrupted connection with the audience. This figure shows the three sides of this connection.
There is a great temptation to treat a presentation as something artificial; a "production," show, or lecture. When you fall into that trap, two unfortunate things happen. One, you feel strangely divorced from the presentation, because it isn't really you giving the audience something - it's an abstract event playing itself out with your "participation." You tend to lose sight almost immediately of your purpose and of your audience. Two, your listeners relate to your presentation in the same abstract noncommittal way. They sense your lack of honest involvement and respond in kind. As a result, you will have a hard time reaching them and getting results.
To sell your ideas and recommendations you need to step out of that abstract space and establish honesty, trust, and goodwill. Remind yourself of what you're there to achieve, dare to be yourself (at your best, of course), and enjoy make continuous contact with the real people in your audience. You don't need any special skills to do this - you just need the right focus. And once you learn how, you'll surpass many "polished" presenters who don't understand the prime importance of connection.
So, remember: For truly powerful delivery, connect the real you with the real audience, for a real purpose, and don't let anything break that connection.
To build your connection with the audience, you first of all need the right attitude. Then you need to express that attitude with your body, voice, and eyes. This figure sums up the four elements of connection.
Attitude is by far the most important factor. If you can manage to keep your mind focused on giving your listeners something that is valuable to them and on liking and respecting each member of the audience, you will naturally do the right things with your body, face, voice, and eyes. So again, no special skills are necessary; all you need is a willingness to like people and to do something for them. If you think you can develop that willingness, then you can become an outstanding presenter.
In future columns, we will look in more detail at each of these
four elements of connection, as well as at special issues, such
as handling notes, visuals, and questions.
As we saw last time, the master key that opens the door to powerful delivery is honest connection with your audience. Outstanding speakers know that they must at every moment be connected with the real people in the audience, for a real purpose that matters to those people, and without hiding behind any slick stage personality. This is what generates the trust essential for persuasion.
You may object that in most of your presentations, you're only selling technical information, with persuasion rooted entirely in objective criteria. But our experience with many organizations strongly suggests that this is the wrong view. You're always selling a package: people want the facts, but they also want to know that you are trustworthy and committed to helping them or to seeing a project through. And they get this essential information about trustworthiness and commitment not from the numbers and charts you present but from the way you connect with your listeners.
Getting properly connected begins with the right attitude. Do you really care about your listeners and about giving them something they need? Once you have that attitude, you'll find it easy to express it with your body, face, eyes, and voice. If you don't have it, even the best "performance" will seem fake and leave your listeners uncomfortable and suspicious.
Check you preparation. From the outset - while preparing your presentation - you should have developed a real appreciation of your audience. Just who are they, and what do they want? How does that fit in with what you want them to do or believe? As you get ready to deliver your presentation, once more review your material. Have you found the best angle, the one that connects you most strongly to this audience? If not, are there any quick adjustments you can make in your message?
In particular, keep your message positive, even (or especially) when you bear unwelcome news. Your listeners are never yearning for negative news or criticism. So, if you want them to change, give them positive, not negative reasons for doing so.
Learn to love any audience. Really appreciating your listeners and their needs presupposes that you like them. This is where some people have a big problem. Their thoughts are dominated by fear of the audience, and that leaves no room for liking. Or they may resent a particular audience. This is sure to transmit itself, no matter how polished your style, and the audience will turn against you. Many will not even hear what you have to say, let alone accept it.
I witnessed one corporate staffer (a smooth, experienced presenter) ruining a carefully prepared presentation because of this basic mistake. He was talking to a group of engineers about the importance of Total Quality Control. It soon became apparent, from subtle signals, that he neither liked nor respected his listeners but saw them as obstacles to his quality goals. They promptly became resentful and resistant to his suggestions.
So, as you get ready to give your presentation, take a look around and find something likable about everybody. One thing I find helpful is simply to notice how different everybody is. For some reason, this seems to make it easy to start with a smile. Something similar may work for you. (The commonly suggested trick of imagining your listeners in their underwear will not do - does it strike you as a nice or respectful way to treat an audience?)
Check the setup. Exceptional presenters do everything they can to make the audience feel comfortable. Be early and check that the roomis clean and inviting. Remove extra chairs and get rid of flip chart pages left over from a previous presentation. And, of course, check all equipment and lighting. The cumulative effect on the audience is a sense that you respect them enough to make this a "special occasion." Removing extra chairs and clutter will also make if infinitely easier for you to connect physically with the audience. (How connected can you be when you address a lot of empty chairs?)
Stage fright is simply the result of caring too much about yourself and not enough about the audience. That implies the best cure: redirect your focus where it belongs.
Most people don't realize how radical you have to be about this. Caring a bit will do nothing for you; you've got to go all out and love the audience without reservation. As long as you hold back in the least, you invite fear and self-consciousness to take over your mind at the first opportunity. I often observe this failure of half-caring in technical presentations, where many speakers seem to feel it inappropriate to relate strongly to the audience. At first, things may go well; but soon the audience returns the lukewarm feelings. The speaker picks this up and becomes increasingly unsettled, until stage fright has him firmly in its grip.
Don't let this happen to you. Make sure you're well prepared, with a message of value to your audience. Then keep firmly focused on getting that message across to a bunch of people whom you like and respect a lot. There won't be any room left in your mind for that presenter's dread, stage fright!
by Jeff Carrell, Electronic Communications Chair
For a number of years, we've built 10BaseT networks. We have been using hubs to connect the devices together, some are stand-alone and/or stackable designs, while others are the modular chassis design. Now, with the 100BaseTX price point being driven down so quickly, many network designers are implementing 100BaseTX networks. So, how do you connect all of those 10BaseT devices with 100BaseTX devices into a commonly accessible network?
Prevalent network design practices recommend connecting workgroup departments (around 20 to 50 devices) together on 10BaseT hubs, when their overall use is considered light to medium duty. Then connect these workgroup hubs either to 10BaseT switches or to 100BaseTX switches that have 10BaseT link ports. For those workgroups that need higher bandwidth, usually due to application demands, connect them together using 100BaseTX hubs, then connect those hubs to 100BaseTX switches (see fig.).
What is a hub? Hubs, also known as concentrators, are the center of a star-topology network. As defined by the IEEE 802.3 specification, they are multiport repeaters that regenerate the signal as they passes it on to the device, rather than merely splitting the signal. When connecting hubs together in a series, the network is considered to be on the same segment or collision domain - meaning all traffic is "heard" by all devices. Therefore, all data is available to all of the devices connected to this network segment, without any other device intercepting and/or directing traffic.
What is a switch? A switch is similar to a hub in that each port is a repeater port, but the switch isolates data traffic between its ports. The data packets are received by a switch port and stored temporarily until the switch knows which data port to send that data packet out to. This function is relying on the OSI Data Link Layer address information, known as a MAC address, the unique physical hardware address of the device's Network Interface Card (NIC). All devices communicate at various levels within the OSI Model, but this is the lowest common denominator. So when designing or connecting many network segments together, a switch can be used to break up the collision domain to reduce the overall traffic that all the devices "hear." A switch is always "listening" on all of its ports and building a table of known addresses. If data needs to be sent to another network segment in the switch, the data is "forwarded" to the appropriate port based on the table lookup.
There are many different vendors offering 10BaseT and 100BaseTX hub and switch products. Most of the time when you see stackable 10BaseT and 100BaseTX hubs, there is no connection between those network segments. Usually a stand-alone switch is used to physically connect those different network segments together (see fig.). Likewise there are many options when selecting switch products. Many switches are multi-port 10BaseT or 100BaseTX, with a 100BaseTX "uplink" port. There are however some products available that are configurable 10BaseT or 100BaseTX by port, but these are usually much more expensive than fixed configuration ports.
Although it is always advantageous to purchase networking products from a single vendor, it is not always possible. But, when making decisions on which hubs and/or switches to use, look for those vendors who can offer 10BaseT and 100BaseTX hubs suited for your network design now, and also have switch technology that will allow for possible changes and/or growth in the future.
Copyright (c) 1997 Jeffrey L. Carrell All Rights Reserved
Graduate students attending schools in the Metroplex are invited to submit papers for the DFW LEOS Chapter Student Paper Contest. Submissions by undergraduate students are acceptable, but papers will be judged at a graduate level. Papers should be 3-4 pages long, describing original research in the area of lasers and electro-optics.
Papers will be judged on clarity of presentation, technical content, originality, significance of work, and interest to the LEOS community. Recently published papers are acceptable. Authors are requested to submit eight copies of their manuscript not later than January 30 to Dr. Richard Baca, Secretary-DFW LEOS Chapter, Raytheon TI Systems, 13510 N. Central Expressway M/S 245, Dallas, Texas 75265 (972-995-6998, r-baca1@ ti.com). Be sure to include your phone number, email address, school affiliation, and name of your advisor in the cover letter.
Winners will be notified on or before February 6, 1998. Awards and winning papers will be presented at the February 19 meeting of the Dallas/Ft. Worth Chapter of the IEEE Lasers and Electro-optics Society. Prizes: 1st Place, $250; 2nd Place, $150; 3rd Place, $100.
SECTION STUDENT PAPER COMPETITION - Undergraduate and graduate students are invited to participate in the Section's Student Paper Contest (first step toward the Region 5 Student Paper Contest). Deadline Jan. 16. Contest guidelines at www.ieee.org/regional/r5 or contact Awards Chair Diane Collier, dcollie1@tuelectric.com.
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES CONFERENCE TO COME TO DFW - The 1999 PACE Conference will be held in Dallas at the Hyatt Reunion Square over Labor Day weekend.
SIGN UP FOR ELECTRONIC SIGNALS - Contact Jeff Carrell, j.carrell@ieee.org or Jean Eason, j.eason@ieee.org to receive an electronic version of the newsletter. Don't wait on "snail mail" - subscribe now!
NATIONAL ENGINEERS WEEK - Free planning kits for National Engineers Week are now available from the IEEE-USA office. National Engineers Week 1998, which will promote public appreciation of the engineering profession, is scheduled for Feb. 22-28. Contact Bernice Evans, 202-785-0017, b.s.evans@ ieee.org.
ENGINEERING GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP PROPOSED IN CONGRESS - US Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II (D-MA.) has introduced legislation (HR 2749) in the House of Representatives creating a national energy and environmental science and engineering graduate fellowship in honor of the late Massachusetts Senator Paul E. Tsongas. Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) introduced the bill (S. 1322) in the US Senate. The creation of the Tsongas Fellows is intended to increase the pool of scientists and engineers trained specifically to address the global energy and environmental challenges of the 21st century. For more information contact Susy Glucksman, glucksmans@asme.org.
ASSISTING OLDER WORKERS - IEEE-USA announced it will develop new and expanded programs to address the special career and employment needs of the older US electrotechnology workers coping with the challenges created by the accelerating pace of technological change and shifts in corporate culture that favor younger, often cheaper high-tech workers. The new initiatives include developing a career-planning standard for older workers, disseminating information necessary for long-term career planning, encouraging licensing and registration and lifelong learning, assisting members with the transition to entrepreneurial careers, and creating a best-practices list for employers. For more information on existing and future IEEE-USA career and employment resources, contact 202-785-0017, ieeeusa@ieee.org or www.ieee.org/usab.
MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION ON THE WEB - IEEE Regional Activities has introduced an on-line membership application available for use by new IEEE recruits. The membership application is posted at sandbox.ieee.org: 9200/apply/.
Recognizing our Section members for their long-time commitment to the profession on the anniversary of their joining IEEE.
35 yrs
30 yrs
25 yrs
20 yrs
Two trains, each moving at 50 km/hr, were approaching each other on the same track. When they were 100 km apart, a bee on the front of one train started flying toward the other train at a steady ground speed of 60 km/hr. When it reached the other train, it immediately started back toward the first train. It continued to fly back and forth until the trains collided. How far did it fly? (Incidentally, the bee escaped.)
Answer to last month's Brainbuster:
The missing number is 31. The numbers in the series are the decimal
base number 16 in all the number bases starting with base 16 and
ending with base 2.
Jean Eason, Editor