Use Body Language to Rock Your Next Presentation

Speaker 0:00 [upbeat music]

Host 0:05 [laughs]

Paul Needham 0:06 Okay, Brad, you got this. You've been preparing, you've done your power poses, you got your blue bottle coffee. Just don't spill it on Marc Benioff and you're gonna be fine.

Host 0:13 [laughs]

Brad Hungerman 0:15 [sighs] Hi, everyone. I am Brad Hungerman. I am a new product manager here at, uh, Salesforce and, uh, I, I'm just really excited today to be talking to you about, uh, some of the different customer features that we've been studying for the last, uh, for the last few months. Uh, we came up with some really good ideas that I wanna share with you, and so let me just throw a couple of stats up on the board for you.

Host 0:38 What, what, what's going, what's going on here?

Paul Needham 0:39 That's kinda true.

Host 0:40 I don't, I don't have time for this.

Host 0:41 Should we go through the zip or something? How do you-

Host 0:42 No. What is... Why isn't the zip in here?

Paul Needham 0:44 [laughs] Why is he so nervous?

Host 0:46 I don't know. I think I have zip

Host 0:47 Guys, I have to go.

Brad Hungerman 0:48 Well, well, I can't remember the exact, uh, statistics, but the, the really important thing that I want you to-

Host 0:55 [laughs]

Brad Hungerman 0:56 Where'd everyone go?

Host 0:56 [laughs]

Host 1:00 So I wanna ask you, what did Brad do wrong here? Anyone? Stephanie? He wasn't looking, he had no eye contact, and he was, like, protecting himself with low power poses. You got it right. He was very nervous, and it really showed. His body language was all off. He was touching his neck and his hair, which signifies nervousness. He was holding a cup in front of him, which w- puts a physical barrier between him and his audience, and he was just not

Host 1:30 doing well. So today, we're gonna talk to you about how to rock your next presentation with body language. The agenda for today is ta- e- explaining to you why body language is crucial for your next presentation, giving you four tips of body language you can use, and then telling you a story about an entrepreneur who used body language to build his business. Now, we're all in this class, and we think, and we've got, we've become better presenters, but we, but we don't know... Sorry. So 93% of communication is nonverbal, and that's why it's so important, and 50% of it is actually body language alone. And all of you will present in your next job. Y- you might think you might be able to wiggle out of it, but that's not true. Stephanie, you're going into growth equity, so you're going to present investment opportunities to your partners. Reid, you're going into consulting. You'll need to present to clients as a way to move up in your organization. We'll all have to do it. Now, I want you to turn off your brains and turn two parts on, because we're gonna talk about statistics. [laughs]

Brad Hungerman 2:49 70% of Americans believe that presentation skills are crucial for career success. And senior exec- when senior executives have been surveyed in the past, they've said that executive presence accounts for 26% of what it takes to get promoted to the next level. That's a fourth of what it takes to get promoted. I'm not sure how much performance actually is, so maybe Jeff Pfeffer was right after all.

Host 3:11 [laughs]

Brad Hungerman 3:12 So now I'm gonna turn it over to Paul, who will give you some tips on body language.

Paul Needham 3:18 We've spent all week in the acronym factory. We've thought about lots of permutations of letters-

Host 3:24 [laughs]

Paul Needham 3:25 ... and we've come up with four that you need to remember-

Host 3:28 [laughs]

Paul Needham 3:29 ... for you to walk out of this room a better nonverbal communicator. My friends, I present today the AWESOME method.

Host 3:37 [laughs]

Paul Needham 3:40 It's gonna require a little bit of memory on your part-

Host 3:43 [laughs]

Paul Needham 3:44 ... because A stands for approach your audience with an eyebrow flash.

Host 3:49 [laughs]

Paul Needham 3:51 But this is actually really serious, and I was stunned when I did the research that the top half of your face is seen as being more authentic than the bottom half of your face. People perceive that the area around your mouth is easily manipulable, and that what you're doing with your mouth isn't necessarily trustworthy. When you emote with the top of your face, when you raise your eyebrows, when you show interest, when you light up your eyes, people feel a connection coming out of that. They feel closer to you, and they feel more of an engagement with your content. So when you walk into a room to give a presentation, some of the tips we've learned earlier in the class are important, too. Pause, scan the room, don't rush into whatever you're saying, but also raise your eyes. Engage with your audience, and use the top half of your face in this way. The next part of the AWESOME framework... It doesn't have to be, by the way-

Host 4:52 [laughs]

Paul Needham 4:52 ... a Jim Carrey eyebrow flash. The next part of the AWESOME framework is to win with the right smile, and this is really important, because smiling is contagious. When you smile, like Nisha is right now, it makes the rest of the room happier, it makes people more engaged, and it makes people feel more confident in what you're saying. Smiling, especially when you smile authentically and not a kind of forced teeth grin, smiling gives you more confidence in what you're saying. It releases endorphins in your body that makes you feel stronger, makes you feel more confident, makes you feel more powerful. Walk into a room, pause, scan the room, raise your eyes, smile. It's all gonna help you connect better with your audience, build more confidence in your presentation, and ultimately get the results that you're hoping for. Brad's got the next two parts of the AWESOME framework.

Brad Hungerman 5:55 Now, Paul has just shared with you a couple of important techniques to make sure that your facial expressions are really demonstrating the confidence and competence that you want to convey in your next big presentation. What I want to do is I want to switch gears and talk about the lower parts of your body and now how to use them effectively as well, starting with your hands. Now, the next part in our awesome framework is S, steepling with confidence. Just like Angela here. She does a pretty good job of it.

Speaker 6:20 [laughs]

Brad Hungerman 6:21 But you don't want to look like Angela is right now permanently with your hands steepled. I don't know if you all noticed it, but Leo, in the presentation just a few minutes ago, was steepling like a pro.

Speaker 6:31 [laughs]

Brad Hungerman 6:31 He did it, he did it just enough to look confident and to point emphasis on his points, and that's exactly what you want to use steepling for. You don't want to just do it for the sake of doing it. Do it with a purpose, and so just do it sparingly. Now, when you're not steepling, you have a few other techniques that you can draw from as well, and they all have to do with open ha- open palm gestures. Okay? You might not want to do exactly that because that looks a little defensive, and this looks like you're asking for something. But this is

Brad Hungerman 7:02 another way to demonstrate emphasis and confidence without the aggression of pointing at someone. One of my bad habits. Now, you can also double it up and use two hands to double your emphasis. Both good techniques. And lastly, the M in our awesome framework stands for m, uh, moving to keep your audience's attention. Or if you can't remember that, moving like JD does in his presentations.

Speaker 7:26 [laughs]

Brad Hungerman 7:27 So there's really two techniques that you're gonna want to remember. When to move forward and when to move back. When you're moving forward, that's when you're gonna want to emphasize a point. And GQ, I might even couple it up with some steepling to really emphasize my point.

Speaker 7:41 [laughs]

Brad Hungerman 7:42 But when I'm done talking with you, I'm gonna break and pause and move back, and that's gonna be a natural change to a different topic.

Host 7:57 How many of you have heard about this, The Humans of New York? So I don't have to explain. This is Brandon Stanton, the young guy in the cap. What he does is every day, morning, he takes his camera and he walks up to a stranger and then asks his permission, his or her permission to take their photograph, and then engages in a conversation with that person. Let's for a moment assume that you're all strangers here, and I'm Brandon Stanton. I walk like this. I look at the strangers and take out the camera and ask the permission. Do you mind if I take a photograph of yours for my blog?

Host 8:36 No. Please don't take it.

Speaker 8:37 [laughs]

Host 8:41 This is the challenge what Brandon faces every day.

Speaker 8:43 [laughs]

Host 8:46 In a split second, he has to build that trust and confidence with a stranger, first to get the consent to take that photograph, second, to engage in a conversation that actually builds a story for him. And he has done tens and thousands of these interviews, and he has experimented with multiple things. The script, for example. Using the word photograph versus using the word portrait. Hundred times he has done it. But the interesting conclusion that he has come to is that the script doesn't matter. All that matters is the body language. The trust and the relaxation and the confidence that you convey in the body language is it, is that matters at the end of it. So this is a great story, and we spoke about body language today. We heard about accent bias. We heard about, uh, talking in a second language. So if you think those biases exist, use the body language aids, and we gave you a great model today. The awesome model.

Speaker 9:51 [laughs]

Brad Hungerman 9:55 So with that, we're all gonna come out, and we'd love to take some questions and talk to you more about non-verbal communication and how we can all be pros at it. [outro music]