SPEAKERS
Carl Richards, Catherine Mattiske
Carl Richards 00:04
Welcome to The Genius Zone. This podcast is all about how to unlock your Inner Genius, from tapping into your inner knowledge and creativity to learning new skills and techniques. Please welcome your host of The Genius Zone and creator of the Inner Genius Profile. Catherine Mattiske. This podcast episode is taken from a previous live event.
All right, thank you, Mel and welcome, everyone. And yes, I think everyone's all set and ready to go and Catherine's there, that's perfect. Welcome, everyone to the show. Firstly, welcome you, Catherine. Now today, I'm excited to have Catherine Mattiske joining us to discuss her powerful presentation strategies and techniques, something that's near and dear to my heart. So I'm glad that she's joining us to give her expertise on this. She'll be talking about how to unlock your Inner Genius and become a more effective communicator. And you don't want to miss her insightful tips on creating an authentic voice when engaging with audiences and what it takes to stand out in the crowd. It's really, really important. So without further ado, let's get right into it. Welcome, Catherine. Are you ready to do the deep dive where you're ready to get right into it?
Catherine Mattiske 01:10
Absolutely.
Carl Richards 01:11
What inspired you to write your book on persuasive presentation skills?
Catherine Mattiske 01:16
Because Carl, I have been to so many presentations that are lousy, and we've all been to them. And public speaking is a skill and presenting is a skill. And yet people don't necessarily- you're certainly not born with the skill. So I just wanted to create a guidebook to say "no matter where you are in your presentation skills, whether you're a world famous presenter, or whether you're Nervous Nellie, who has to present at a meeting, what do you do to plan out your presentation and really make it land and be impactful?"
Carl Richards 01:49
I used to stutter when I was a kid, a lot of people have that fear of public speaking. Many people are terrified with public speaking, even speaking up in a meeting if they are skilled presenters. Why is this?
Catherine Mattiske 02:00
People are terrified of public speaking, it's really due to the fear of unknown or maybe embarrassment or the fear of failure. And this is caused by this hyper arousal of the autonomic nervous system and having really quite unrealistic expectations. And audiences also- when they're in front of an audience that also heightened fear as well. So to reduce that fear, as I just said, you know, public speaking is a skill presenting is a skill, and it's a skill that you can learn.
Carl Richards 02:32
It's not a skill that's widely taught, though, I think I know personally, I think maybe I would have excelled better if it was offered more in schools and, and such. But certainly the fear can be can be crippling, it can be terrifying. And in your experience, what does that fear look like?
Catherine Mattiske 02:47
Well, I've read lots of different studies around public speaking and fear. And there's actually not a good one that I found because they range from having 75% of people experiencing some degree of fear or anxiety when it comes to speaking or presenting in public down to 25%. I don't know what the number is, but here's what happens in your body. And it's the nerves come out with physical symptoms, like sweating, or trembling or dry mouth, racing, heart rate, all of those things is real like that is real physical symptoms, its physiology attached to that. But public speaking, we know is rated as the number one fear amongst adults and even higher than death. So presenting confidently, can have a really huge benefit in your career, and then your social life, because you never know when you're going to be asked to speak for work or in your private life. It's a skill to get under your belt, and really hone.
Carl Richards 03:45
It's funny when you sit down and think about it logically, which we're not doing when we're afraid of speaking in front of an audience. But we would rather be eaten by a shark then have to stand up and give that presentation in some situations, so-
Catherine Mattiske 03:58
It's real for a lot of people, Carl, and I know myself, you know what I've gone through in the last 30 years of speaking professionally, people pay me to speak. And yet those physical things are still there.
Carl Richards 04:09
And you're a skilled presenter, you've spoken on podcasts, you've spoken on physical stages, it's still a fear that creeps as I said, it's still creeps in for me, too. What do you believe, though? Just shifting away from fear a bit here, but what do you believe are the most essential factors then? For an effective presentation, especially if you're navigating through the fear as well?
Catherine Mattiske 04:28
Yeah, number one, is preparation. And that's where people fall down. They're not necessarily prepared. Number two is having structure, having clarity in what you're saying. But the way I find to get the anxiety and especially my early days of speaking, was to get the audience engagement. When I got that audience engagement, I then could build that confidence. And I developed a little acronym called SCOPE, okay? It really helps me in every time I'm organizing a presentation, especially when I'm feeling out of my depth maybe out of my depth with an audience out of my depth with the topic. But here's what the letters stand for SCOPE.
S is for structure. So, organize your information in a really logical way.
C is for clarity, what people do is they don't speak in plain language, avoid jargon, and use your visual aids to really help to enhance that presentation and to keep you on track, that will help that clarity.
The O is for organization. Here, I'm talking about technology. Test, test, test your technology ahead of time, whether it's a lapel mic, whether it's a Zoom call, whether it's a microphone, whatever it is, test it out, make sure you've got all your ducks in a row with technology and use that to simplify really complex concepts. So by having great visual aids, that organization can really help.
The main thing, as I said, though, is preparation. That's what the P in SCOPE is for preparation. And today, if you download the presentation planner, that helps you as a great tool for presenting and preparing your presentation. So I'm giving that to you today. So you're welcome.
So preparation is the P and E is for engagement, actively involving the audience in that discussion. That's where your confidence will come from. Getting some good questions, especially if it's a work presentation, starting off with a question, throwing that ball back to the audience just gives you time to breathe. When you're using the tool, the Inner Genius wheel, that's terrific for ensuring your message engages everyone in the audience. So use the tools, use your technology. And just remember that scope, structure, clarity, organization, preparation, and engagement, that's going to be a winner.
Carl Richards 06:58
And five very key factors. Amazing how that will change the, no pun intended, but the scope of your presentation. When you're implementing all of those components, especially the preparation, that's what I find a lot of people don't come in prepared. And then of course, the engagement piece is also huge. If you want your audience to participate, you have to invite them to participate, you have to get them to participate by asking them questions. And if you get them engaged, and bring them through your presentation, they will love you. And it doesn't come naturally, it doesn't come easily. As Catherine pointed out, I do want to do a deep dive here now into finding your unique, authentic voice. Because we sort of started to allude to that a little bit. How can having an authentic and unique voice help one connect, impact and engage with their audience during presentations?
Catherine Mattiske 07:46
They're the three words, really Carl, that you just mentioned, Connect, Impact and Engage. If you can do that you're really presenting on a much deeper level, people are not just going through the motion. So it offers something to the audience that only you can bring. And that authenticity helps you create those meaningful connections. That's what the presentation is. It's not just up there, you know, sprouting up data or whatever. It's really connecting with the audience. And you know, the monotony of some presentation styles that people have had when I've been in an audience, like it's just horrid. So you've got to make your message really stand out. And ultimately, having an authentic voice, your voice can help make a really lasting impact on your audience. They'll remember what you said, they'll take action on what you said and you'll actually make your goal of your presentation by being you,
Carl Richards 08:44
I think you hit the nail right on the head with the authenticity because so many times it's- especially for giving a technical presentation or a scientific presentation, or scholastic or some type of presentation that is in that realm, it can sometimes be challenging to be yourself to be authentic, and engage the audience like that.
Catherine Mattiske 09:06
And you really need to think about what is my authentic voice? What is my unique voice? Why am I unique? Why am I up here doing this and not somebody else? Why was it chosen for that presentation? Why was I chosen for that Congress presentation wherever you're presenting. And if you think about just have a little reflection and say what makes you unique and practice that uniqueness. If you're you know, a top scientist, you're there because your uniqueness and practice that bring that uniqueness into your presentation. If you're a fantastic sports professional, bring that into your presentation. What I see people doing is kind of being devoid of that during their presenting.
Carl Richards 09:53
Do you think that sometimes when we're in presentation mode, we have to put on our public speaking hat and that means Maybe is part of the challenge as well?
Catherine Mattiske 10:01
Exactly. And what people want to hear from is you, people want to hear you speak from the heart, people want you to connect with them. They want to hear your stories, they want to hear your examples they want to hear when things went wrong, they want to hear the journey of how you actually got to this, I don't know the new budget, the new sales forecast, whatever it is, they want to hear the background of that. And they want language that you're speaking to resonate with them. So they can really connect to that language that you're using. And also, they're really paying attention to the biggest visual aid of all, no matter what slides you've got, or what videos you're playing, or whatever you're doing, your visual aid is you. You are the number one visual aid in your presentation.
So if you present, and I remember, I was doing an interview with someone once, and it was on Zoom, before, Zoom was even really a thing. And I was interviewing her, and she was a trainer, and I said to her, "so, what makes you really unique?" And she just looked at the camera. And she was like this, like at the camera. And she was saying, well, people really describe me as enthusiastic and bubbly. And I have an ability to really capture people's attention when I'm training. And I thought, love, you're not doing any of those things. So she was completely different. So her words and her body language were just worlds apart. She was the most boring person on this interview that I can ever imagine. And then her language that she was using was saying she was enthusiastic, she could connect to the audience, all of that, I didn't believe a word of it. So, people are looking for that connection with who are you? What makes you tick? Why are you the person that I'm going to listen to?
Carl Richards 11:53
You have to not just look the part you have to play the part too, right? That's a great story. How could our participants today identify and develop their own unique voice then in a presentation?
Catherine Mattiske 12:04
I think there's a few things, I think the first thing is to get out of your own head and get into the audience head and see it from their perspective. See whatever the topic is, from the audience's perspective, where is your audience? If you're presenting at work? And perhaps you're presenting some heavy data? How much did they know already? You know, like, where are they at? So, have a point of view, but try and get to that point of view into your audience that it's come from the audience.
The second thing I would say is connect with them with stories and examples, tell them stories. And people shy away from this. They say I don't want to tell stories, because I want to keep to my facts. But people remember the stories. And the third thing is around using that right language that I mentioned before speak their language. If you're a scientist working with scientists in your audience, you can speak all the jargon and scientific language that you like they're going to love it. But if you're a scientist speaking to an investor, you want to think about that language and change that language to who you're speaking to.
As I said before, your body language is your biggest visual aid. So don't show up looking bad, show up looking great. And make sure that your body language is following your message and paying attention to those nonverbal cues.
The next one, I would say is be really flexible. I see it all the time. People have a script, and they go with their script. They have 50 slides to get to and they're just wedded to their slides. They don't know how to jump around in their slides. They don't know how to change it on their speaker view to slide view and be able to jump around if there's a question and don't back to a slide or whatever. Just be very flexible. Know that if you're running out of time to think about "if I'm running out of time, what am I going to drop?" Be very flexible in the way that you work. Otherwise, you look really robotic.
The most important thing though, is practice. Practice, practice, practice. Practice makes perfect. When presenting with your authenticity. The more you practice, the more of you will come out, practice in the bathroom, practice with your family, practice with a co worker, just practice, practice in the car. I talk to myself in the car when I'm driving, if I'm going to a presentation, if I'm by myself, I talk to myself. People probably think I'm on the phone or singing a song. I don't really care what the person in the car next to me thinks. I'm just practicing. When I can actually do a presentation without my notes. And without my visual aids. I know that I know it. And knowing that I know it means I could bring more of me into that presentation.
Carl Richards 14:54
Wow, six amazing points there. This just popped into my mind by the way, what about humour? If it's appropriate, can you add humour or use humour, even as a cue for yourself to shift your focus?
Catherine Mattiske 15:07
Yeah. And the thing is that humour is subjective. What you find, Carl is funny, I may not. And I remember I was coaching this guy once. And he said, I always start off with a joke. And I thought, that's a really crazy idea. Because people don't want you to start the presentation with a joke, they've signed up, or they've come to your presentation for a reason. So starting with a joke just makes you look like a bit of a fool. If you are naturally funny. If you can do humour, do it. If you're funny, be funny. If you're not funny, as a person, don't try and be funny in a presentation. You're not funny. So don't be funny. If you have that comedy, I don't know, gene inside you, it's not a gene, but if you feel that you can do that, if you're a funny person, then be funny. But just make sure that it lands and is funny because you don't want people go, "what was that? Who is this person?" Okay? Because that's what they were doing to that other guy. He would start with a joke. And usually it was quite, I'd say a bad joke, let me say that, and didn't go down well, with the professional audience, and he thought it was great. He wasn't funny, it was just, you know, horrible. So not a good thing to do. So make sure if you're going to use humour, make sure it's universal humour that lands with everybody and make sure that you can actually deliver it.
Carl Richards 16:29
Yeah. So there's definitely a skill set or a gene, I think as you put it that's attached to humour, it can be unlocked, but you don't want to just try it out just for fun in front of a professional audience by saying, "Hey, before I start, I'd like to tell a joke." It just, it just certainly does not land at all. So what advice then would you give someone struggling to find their voice in a presentation?
Catherine Mattiske 16:50
Well, I think if you are struggling to find your voice, I would just advise you to focus on being you. Being your authentic self. You know, you should aim to be genuine, you should aim to be honest, speak from the heart, rather than reciting rehearsed lines relying too heavily on slides and notes. If you look at your slides, and they're filled with text, and what I would suggest is if you're on your computer, if you're on your laptop, go to the other side of the room and ask can I read my slides, or if you print out your slides, one thing that we learned way back when I was a member of a professional speaking association, what somebody said- great tip, print out your slides, drop them on the ground and if you can't read them, then the text is too small. And you've got too much on your slides. On my slides is very little, there's maybe a couple of points, mainly pictures, whatever, just big points. And if you have a look at presentations now that really land, it's not about the slides. It's about the great visuals, but it's not necessarily the words. And it's about having you know the story of the presenter come through, not just rehearse lines. So just be genuine, be honest. And I would say just speak from the heart.
Carl Richards 18:10
Yeah, very great tips there on the slides. I've been in presentations, as I'm sure you've have as well, where you almost want to say, look, if you're just going to read from your slides, email me the deck and save us both the transportation and the meeting to share with me what you're just going to read off the slides anyways.
Catherine Mattiske 18:26
Yeah, absolutely. And people use slides as a script. And they still do like I would have thought that would have gone away now. But people use slides as a script, and we get them from clients all the time saying, "can you rework our slides?" That's what we do. And we say, "okay, we're just going to take all of this stuff on the slide and put it into the speaker's notes, because that's all your stuff. What is the main message that you're trying to convey here? Let's put that on the slide. What are the three key words that you're trying to get across here?" And if there's masses of data, how can we make that into a chart that tells a story, not a chart with a million data points that you have to start off with- people start off with, "I know you can't read this but-." If you ever find yourself saying, "I know you can't read this but-." Just get rid of that out of your life. Never say that again. Because you're saying that only you can read your slides? Well, what's the point of having them, okay? So make sure your slides are really conveying those key points, and that your slides are impactful and that they're a visual aid to you. You're the number one visual aid, not your slides, your slides are an extension of yourself.
Carl Richards 19:33
Yeah, I always say that slides were never meant to be the presentation. They were meant to support or contribute to the presentation but not be the presentation. Let's talk about the Inner Genius and The Genius Quotient. You're the creator of the Inner Genius, in a nutshell, what is someone's Inner Genius.
Catherine Mattiske 19:50
So we all have an Inner Genius inside of us. And that's our unique combination of our talents, our strengths, our passions, it makes us who we are, and it's all based on learning science; how people take in information and how they process that information in the brain. And it's really when you start to unlock that you can unlock your potential to achieve greatness. When you tap into it, you open up this world of possibilities that perhaps you didn't know before. And you can leverage your Inner Genius. Once you know it, you can leverage your Inner Genius by tapping into your deepest gifts and capabilities. And anyone can unlock new levels of their own performance and their own growth.
Carl Richards 20:35
How do you find your Inner Genius Profile?
Catherine Mattiske 20:38
Well it's easy. Now it's easy, because I developed the Inner Genius Profile and the Inner Genius Toolkit, so it's actually really easy. The first step is to do your profile, open up your toolkit, and you will be able to identify your Inner Genius archetype. So I created different archetypes for different people with different learning preferences and different processing of the way their brain prefers to process information. And that's your unique combination of those talents and strengths. And it helps you get into what I call your genius zone. And you find that out by doing a profile. So once you've done your profile, you then know your Inner Genius archetype. And that helps like open the door unlock, where you have your greatest potential for growth and your own development. And once you've identified your archetype, you can then go ahead and use the Inner Genius tools. And I mentioned one before, that Inner Genius wheel, to explore each of the components of your own genius zone in real detail. And you can develop strategies and leverage your strengths and passions to achieve a way higher degree of success because of it.
Carl Richards 21:47
So how does knowing your Inner Genius Profile then help you with a presentation for example?
Catherine Mattiske 21:52
Well, when you do your Inner Genius Profile, you go, "wow, that's me!" And most people, like I would say, 99.9% of the people that have done the profile, say, "wow, that is really amazing. It is me." And the first thing that happens then after that is you think what, "well okay, this is me, what about everyone else?" So when you're presenting you present in your own Inner Genius archetype language. Each of the Inner Genius archetypes have their own language, like French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, they're just different. Even if we're all speaking English, we all use words that are unique to our archetype. Now, if you and I have the same archetype, your language and my language, when we're talking together, who really resonate, now, let's think about in a presentation. You're speaking in your natural Inner Genius archetype language. Fact. Whether you've done the profile or not, that's a fact; you're speaking how you speak. And you happen to use words that are a direct mirror of how your brain processes information. Fact.
So, you may know that or not, but that's what's happening. So when you are presenting, you're using that language. Now, that's all very well, except your audience may not be really resonating with your language, because they're a different archetype. And chances are, everyone in that audience is different to you. So it means that you need to bridge that gap. And I call that a translation bridge, making a translation bridge between you as the presenter, and all those different archetypes who are sitting in your audience.
Carl Richards 23:35
So how many Inner Genius archetypes are there then?
Catherine Mattiske 23:38
So there's 12. But there's 72, unique profiles. So there's 12. And then we have this thing called Power-up. So there's actually six of those. So there's actually 72 different Inner Genius Profiles. So if you're presenting, you're naturally speaking in your archetype, and probably what will happen is that you will likely not connect as well with the other 11 archetypes, or worse, the other 71 profiles, because you're not speaking their language. So that's where you use the tools like the Inner Genius wheel to prepare your presentation so that you are speaking to all 12 archetypes at once, regardless of who's in that audience.
Carl Richards 24:23
Wow! Phenomenal. Great tool. Let's switch and talk about how you can adapt content to different audience types. Do you adapt your content depending on the different audience types that you're presenting to?
Catherine Mattiske 24:35
Yeah every time. I think it's an offense. I think it's a legal offense. It should be a legal offense; to use a presentation for one audience and think that it will fit another. Like, when developing content for different audiences, you've got to consider that target audience. And I have a saying of "meet them where they are and take them where they need to go." If you're using the same old presentation over and over again, you are not going to meet them where they are. So make sure that you're absolutely meeting them at their knowledge level, and then taking them to their goal as you go through your presentation.
Carl Richards 25:15
You know what I've seen, and you've probably seen presentations to where it's almost the complete transcript of the last presentation that the speaker gave and, and you know, it's almost verbatim, the only thing that's different is the audience and maybe some of the audience reactions. But I never thought of it as a capital offense though.
Catherine Mattiske 25:27
*laughs*
Carl Richards 25:30
But good to know that it really can impact your presentation though if you're not again, thinking of the audience.
Catherine Mattiske 25:35
Absolutely.
Carl Richards 25:35
Yeah. One of the skills of presenting is to craft engaging stories for any situation. We've talked about storytelling already. But do you have a method for crafting stories to be memorable and have a point?
Catherine Mattiske 25:48
Yeah, absolutely. And if you want to take notes on this, I call it The Eight Step Storytelling Method. It's not exactly the greatest name, but it is eight steps, and it's a storytelling method.
The first step is to have a beginning, middle and end to your story. So make sure that there's a logical flow, because people tell stories, and they wander all over the place. So make sure it's got a beginning, middle and end. When you're writing your story, when you're scripting it out, and what I would suggest is when you're telling a story, scripted out to begin with, learn it, and then don't use your script.
But use very vivid descriptive language, that's number two vivid descriptive language. You really want to paint a picture in the audience's mind of where you are in the story.
You also need to give your story, number three, is a relatable protagonist with whom the audience can identify. So, if it's someone that you've worked with, make sure that you have somebody either as you as the protagonist, or as the character in your story, they need to be relatable.
Number four is introduce obstacles or challenges that the protagonist needs to overcome to reach their goal.
Okay, so what's the obstacle or challenge and then number five is use some sort of surprise, suspense or unexpected plot twist in your story.
Okay, then number six is make sure, it's same as what we've been talking about today, make sure it's relevant to your audience.
Number seven is end with a really powerful conclusion.
And number eight, is don't be afraid to have some fun with your stories, like experiment with your stories, because there's your unique voice and it stories will make it really engaging for your audience.
So that's The Eight Steps; so have a beginning, middle and end, use vivid descriptive language, have a relatable protagonist, introduce obstacles or challenges, use surprise suspense or some unexpected plot twist, make it relevant, have a powerful conclusion, like have a point to the story and experiment and don't be afraid to have some fun with it. So that's The Eight Steps. So that's what I use when I craft a story. And I'll look at those eight steps and go, "okay, I need to have a bit more of a plot twist in here. What can I actually put in?" So just go back to those eight points and that will always help you through.
When I was learning to speak professionally, I don't even know where this came from it's not mine, but somebody said to me, there's the 80-10-10 Rule of Telling Stories. I don't know who said it. And I don't know why I remember it, but it's really great. So it's the 80-10-10 Rule. 80% of your time in the story is telling the story. 10% is the time on the powerful conclusion. In other words, it's just a sentence, but the other 10% of the time is then relating it to your audience. So you tell the story using those eight steps, and then get that powerful conclusion in just as a sentence or two, and then finish the conclusion and say, "so what that means to you today", or "a way to use that in your life might be." A sentence starting off with that, all of a sudden, people have listened to the story, they're hooked in, and now they go, "wow, Catherine's talking to me. Oh, yeah. I could use that that way." That makes your story absolutely land.
Carl Richards 29:17
Catherine. Oh, my goodness, another great session. What's the best way for people to connect with you after today?
Catherine Mattiske 29:23
Well certainly by LinkedIn is probably the easiest, just send me a message there. We also have a LinkedIn group called The Genius Zone. Make sure that you join that because we post a lot into The Genius Zone really helpful tips in there. And also I publish to LinkedIn on the GQ Playbook, a weekly newsletter, so subscribe to that as well. You can get all the information on everything that we're doing on thegeniusquotient.com and also right now we've opened up the GQ Academy, which is Academy.thegeniusquotient.com. It's free to join and there's so many free resources in there. So you know, just by all means get in touch with me. If the wheels fall off, just ask me in LinkedIn to come to a coffee chat with you and I'll have a Zoom call with you.
Carl Richards 30:11
Catherine, Thank you so much for being a fantastic presenter today, as always, and sharing your insights with public speaking presentations, a lot of insights there. And thank you for being a great audience. Thanks so much.
Thanks for listening to The Genius Zone. If you liked what you heard today, leave us a comment or review. Make sure to subscribe to our channel and don't forget to follow Catherine on social media. Be sure to join us again soon in The Genius Zone.