metaphor

The Position of Mentorship

By on November 6, 2010 in Quick Wisdom

I recently found an unexpected mentor, and she is awesome.

  • She gives me positive reinforcement when I’ve done something right.
  • She lets me know about things that are coming up so I can be ready for them.
  • She doesn’t tell me where I should go, but once I’ve decided, she helps me get there.
  • If I mess up, she doesn’t dwell on it or ridicule me for it, instead she helps me get back on track.
  • She helps guide me, but doesn’t do anything for me, making me responsible for my own success.
  • When I finally get to where I want to be, she congratulates me and says “you have arrived.”

“She” is my GPS.

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Selecting a Metaphor for Better Presentations

By on June 29, 2009 in How-To Humor
photo by scol22

photo by scol22

Last week I talked about the simple presentation tip of using metaphors to improve understanding and retention of your material.  But how do you find a good metaphor?

What Makes a Good Metaphor

Not all metaphors are created equal.  Some can help you explain every detail of your presentation topic, while others barely provide any benefit.

What makes for a good metaphor?  While there is no exact science, there are some guidelines:

  1. It Should Simplify – The metaphor should actually simplify your topic, not make it more cumbersome to understand.
  2. Your Audience Should Get It – An amazing metaphor relating a new reporting system to thermodynamics isn’t helpful if your audience doesn’t understand thermodynamics.  That’s not say your metaphor has to speak for itself–you can explain what it is you are relating to, but the audience should be able to get it with only a brief explanation.
  3. It Should Be Extendable - The best metaphors are those that you can extend throughout your presentation, simplifying each individual component and then bringing it together all at the end.

How to Select a Metaphor

The biggest barrier to using metaphors in a presentation is actually finding one that will work for your topic.  We don’t have all day to think of different metaphors and apply them to our work; we do have to actually get the work done.  But taking time now to ensure your audience understands what you’re saying will save you a lot of time, and trouble, in the future.

Generating ideas isn’t that difficult.  The first step to finding an appropriate metaphor is limiting your brainstorming–there are only so many references that can adequately describe a new reporting system.

Some helpful hints in brainstorming metaphors:

  1. Think of Things Everyone Knows - The best metaphors are those that require little explanation.  Relating to things people already know well makes your job easier.  Some common concepts most people already understand include cars (dashboard, engines, overall design), cities, computers, technology, pop-culture, and sports.
  2. Think About What You Are Presenting – Oversimplify what it is you are presenting or proposing and get down to it’s most basic level–is it a change in process, a revolutionary product, a way to simplify?  Then think of something that at it’s root level is the same.  Compare the change from one system to another to the transition of newspapers to online news sites.  Compare the new product to the iPod.  Compare the simplification to a car dashboard.
  3. Think About What You Know – A metaphor that requires hours of research to pull off correctly can be too time-consuming to actually use.  Think of the things you know well, or are passionate about.  I often use stand-up and improv comedy concepts as metaphors because I love comedy, it’s interesting for the audience, and I know it.

Once you have a narrowed list of possibilities, you can just apply the guidelines for a good metaphor and choose one.  You don’t have to find the perfect metaphor, just one that highlights your key points.

And not every aspect of the metaphor need apply–many people reference pyramids as an example of how a strong base is important to the overall structure, but few mention that the pyramids of Egypt were made by slaves. It doesn’t mean the pyramid isn’t analogous, just that it isn’t a perfect metaphor.

Applying Your Metaphor

After you’ve decided on the metaphor, applying it to your topic is the easiest part.  You can do this by examining each of the high-level items of your proposal (title slides, paragraph headings, etc) and mapping it to your metaphor.

From there, you’ll find you can express your metaphor in natural ways in your presentation or writing.  The end result?  A better presentation that is engaging and improves retention and understanding.

How do you pick the metaphors you use in your presentations? Share some ideas in the comments.

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Simple Presentation Tip: The Metaphor

By on June 22, 2009 in Learn with Humor

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” - Charles Mingus

One of the hardest things to do is to take a complicated idea and explain it in a simple way.  But that is in fact what many of us have to do, and those who do it well will find success.  Einstein was a genius not because he theorized about things like mass-energy equivalence (others had done it before him), but because he could distill it down to E = mc².

In the corporate world, we may not be theorizing on the conservation of mass and energy, but we do have to give recommendations, pitches, and reviews.  And often the subject is far from simple (ever have to give a detailed presentation on a computer model that simulates consumer trends?).  So how do you simplify a complex topic? Simple: Metaphor.

The Metaphor

A metaphor is to presenting as a dashboard is to driving a car.  A good metaphor simplifies a topic and improves understanding, just as a dashboard simplifies information about a car and improves the driver’s ability to drive the car effectively.  I know I’m a better driver because I can just look at my speedometer and not try to calculate my speed by dividing distance by time.

dashboard-calc

Why Use Metaphors

But why even use a metaphor in your presentation?  Why not just require everyone to learn the MPH (or KPH) calculation?  After all you had to learn it in order to create the dashboard.  But that’s often our job, to simplify, even if not expressed explicitly.  If my job is to recommend a new reporting system, I have to make that recommendation in a way that will best explain my proposal and clearly articulate it’s value to my managers.  If the buyers don’t understand it, why would they buy it?

Does it mean extra work on your part? Definitely.  But the reward for doing so is success; you’ll improve retention and understanding because not only are you explaining the topic in a way that people understand, but you are also doing it in a unique, memorable way.

And while you could just show a single slide in your presentation or single paragraph in your proposal of your metaphor, the true simplification and power comes from extending that metaphor throughout the entire presentation, integrating it into each of the complex details.  Then, at the end, if the audience understands the concept of a dashboard, they also understand the value of metaphors in improving presentations.

The Metaphorical Payoff

The value of a great metaphor is that it can summarize your entire presentation in a single concept.  It can encapsulate everything you are trying to say in a single place, simplified and holistic, like a dashboard in a car that displays relevant information that makes driving easier.   The benefit is two-fold: it requires you to fully understand your idea enough to state it simply, and it allows people to walk away with an analogy in their head–”ah yes, metaphors in my presentations are like the dashboard in my car.”

It doesn’t have to be revolutionary; that’s not your goal.  Your goal is to simplify, relate to the audience, and increase their understanding.  After that, it’s up to the idea itself to gain approval, but you’ll have at least have presented in a way that people can understand.

Do you use metaphors in your work?  If so, what are some of your favorite ones you used?  If not, why? Let me know in the comments.

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The Secret to Effective Presentations

By on April 21, 2009 in Learn with Humor

effective_presentationsWe’ve all been there.  We’ve all sat down to see a presentation, and within the first 3 slides, we already know that this is going to be another boring meeting that will slowly sap us of any energy, creative ideas, and hope for humanity (ok that last one might be a bit extreme).  We’ve also all been on the other side of the presentation–the one giving it.

The secret to having a presentation that people are engaged in is starting off strong in the first 3 slides. With just a few tweaks, you can kick-off your presentation with energy, engagement, and have the audience’s attention.

Learn by Example

For the purpose of this post, I’ll be using a hypothetical example to show each of the suggestions in action.  For our mythical presentation, let’s say the subject matter is training on a complex tool that is used for tracking expenses, we’ll call it “Expense System”.

Why a technical presentation?  Because some people might be thinking that if it’s a technical training then there’s nothing you can do to “ease the pain”–but those people would be wrong.  By starting off with humor, you get the audience listening from the start, which can help you throughout the “eye-chart” slides that explain the tool.  If you don’t do technical trainings, don’t worry, these tips will work for your presentations as well.

Let’s start with…

Slide #1 – The Title Slide

Many people treat the very first slide as a “throw-away” slide.  It’s your title slide: Name of Presentation, Name of Presenter, Date.  But it’s much more important than that.  By having a compelling title, or subtitle, you can pique the curiosity of the audience and get them eager to learn more.  Which sounds more interesting: “Expense System Training” or “How to File Expenses in Less than 10 Minutes”?  The slides that follow could be exactly the same for the two titles above, but which one are you more interested in listening to?

Slide #2 – The Agenda Slide

The second slide of your presentation should be the agenda.  While an agenda isn’t particularly exciting, it tells the audience what to expect over the course of the next XX minutes you’ll be talking.  You don’t have to spend a lot of time on this slide, but you want to give an overview of each bullet point.  As is true for every slide in your deck, don’t read exactly what you have typed on the slide, and feel free to show some creativity in the individual discussion points.  For example, your agenda might look like:

  • Introduction – What’s this all about?
  • Launching the Application and Beginning Your Journey
  • 7 Clicks to Completed Expenses

You could then say the following, in reference to the agenda topics:

“Over the course of the presentation, we’re going to introduce what the Expense System is and what it’s supposed to do.  We’re then going to share how you can get started with the application, and then provide the details on how to quickly get everything you need into the system.”

Slide #3 – The Metaphor Slide

The third slide of your presentation is where you either hook the audience or lose them, because the third slide is your first “real” slide.  Many presentations get right into the meat of the topic, but this is where a quick detour can greatly improve your presentation.  Humans learn by metaphor, by connecting what they are now being taught with something that they already know.  This is why sharing a creative metaphor for your training (and referencing it throughout) can greatly increase the retention of the training that you give.

But don’t be intimated.  The metaphor you find doesn’t have to be something epic, such as the deep metaphor for life/death in the movie No Country for Old Men.  It’s as simple as connecting it to a single idea.  The easiest way to do this is to find an image, video, or quote, or think of a personal anecdote, that parallels your topic.

For our Expense System example, I might try to find two images that represent the old way to do expenses (a picture of a horse-drawn carriage) and the new way (a shiny new Mustang), drawing parallels between how the old way was slower, required more maintenance, and smelled funny, and how the new way is faster, has more features, and can get you a date on the weekends.  Then throughout the training, as I hit key topics, I can tie them back to the horse / car metaphor.  Now, when the user is trying to remember your training, they can think, “Oh yeah, I can find my summary on this tab because it’s like the dashboard on the Mustang.”

Slides 4, 5, 6…

The rest of your presentation can then become more technical.  But you’ve now captured the attention of the audience and already have them listening and ready to learn.  It helps to also have other examples of humor scattered throughout the presentation, either in the form of additional metaphors, interesting tidbits or asides, but focusing on your first three slides sets the stage for you to deliver a successful presentation.

For more tips on presenting, check out all of our posts on the topic of presentations.

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Obtain Clarity Through Equation

February 26, 2009

Part of what made Einstein so smart was his ability to explain the complex in a simple way. After all, it was Einstein who quipped “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” He was able to distill part of his Theory of Relativity into the simple equation E=MC2. Einstein’s Equation for [...]

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