Lessons for Presenters from Tiger’s Coach I recently had a chance to hear Hank Haney speak. Who is Hank Haney you ask? He is the swing coach for Tiger Woods, the greatest golf player on the planet right now (and possibly ever). It is always a treat to listen to those who help top performers get even better. Here are some of the lessons he shared and my interpretation of how these golf lessons can apply to the world of business presentations. Lesson #1: The goal is to get better Tiger’s only goal is to always get better. He figures that if he always gets better, everything else takes care of itself. He knows that it is not a destination he is trying to get to, it is a journey of improvement every day. Application for business presenters: Instead of worrying about using the latest trick or technology, focus on always making your presentations better. Never rest on your laurels. If you’ve been using the same slide for more than 12 months, it is time to rethink that slide and update it. It may not have to be totally redone, but look at it with fresh eyes and see how it can be made better. Never stop working on your presentation and reading to improve your skill level. Lesson #2: To get better, you need to know what the problem is Hank talked about how, to get better in golf, you first need to diagnose the problem. For Tiger, this means an honest appraisal of his game. Once the diagnosis has been made, they make a plan of how to solve the problems. Hank has a very structured way of analyzing problems that makes enormous sense. First he starts with where the ball tends to fly. If it is left or right of the target, by a little or a lot. Next, he looks at what is happening at impact to cause the ball to fly the way he observed. This includes looking at what the club face is doing at impact and what the swing plane is that causes the club face to be in that position. Now those terms may be a bit technical unless you are a golfer, but here’s what Hank’s ideas mean to you as a business presenter. Every time you present, you need to know what the objective is. After the presentation, evaluate whether the presentation reached its goal. If not, honestly assess what happened to cause it to reach the less than optimal result. Look at delivery first. Did you do something in delivery, like a poor attitude or fatigue, that caused a problem. Work backwards in the presentation creation and delivery process. Was the poor delivery caused by an issue in the visuals that were used. Next look at the content that was selected and see if there was an issue there, such as poor audience analysis. By stepping back through the presentation creation and delivery process, you can identify what caused the problem. Then create a plan to fix the root cause of the problem. Do this each time and your presentations will improve dramatically. Lesson #3: The difference between “feel” and “real” Tiger Woods says there is a difference between “feel” and “real”. What he means is that just because you “feel” that you did something a certain way doesn’t mean that you “really” did that. We can’t know what really happens unless we have someone else evaluate what we did to see what is really happening. This is why Tiger works with a coach even though he is the best golfer in the world. Even as talented as he is, he knows he can’t rely on his own feelings to tell him what he should do to improve. For business presenters, we need to take Tiger’s advice and seek feedback from experts and coaches. Last year I got coaching on my presentation skills from an expert in keynote presentations and an acting expert from New York. I always ask for feedback from my audiences and carefully consider it when looking for ways to improve. What feedback are you requesting and from whom? Lesson #4: It may be hard, but commit to the work Tiger understands that improving is a process and in order to see the results, he needs to commit to the work and focus on what he needs to do. He also realizes that it may get worse or harder before it gets better, but that is all part of the process. How can we take this understanding and apply it to our presentations? When you start using visuals instead of text, it may be hard at the start as you try to adjust to a new way of looking at the points you are trying to make. It may be a little uncomfortable to look for clues in words and create the appropriate visual the first few times you try. It may be hard to deliver your presentation without the crutch of full notes showing on each slide. Recognize that improving your presentation by using persuasive visuals is a process and commit to doing the work required so that you can reap the rewards. Lesson #5: Eliminate the mistakes and you can win In April, Tiger finished second at The Masters, one of golf’s major tournaments. Hank told us that if Tiger had eliminated the three-putt greens and two-chip situations, he would have won the tournament. His point was that success comes from eliminating the mistakes. In our presentations, we need to focus on the little mistakes that can cause our presentation to fail to reach its goal. Things like spelling mistakes, poor choice of font and colors, not leaving enough time for rehearsing our presentation and many other mistakes that all add up to a presentation that is not as good as it could have been. Lesson #6: Focus on one shot at a time Hank talked about how when Tiger is in “the zone”, he is extremely hard to beat. He explained that the key to being in “the zone” is to only focus on one shot at a time. Don’t think about the previous shot and don’t look ahead to what the next shot should be. Focus only on the task at hand. As presenters, we can take this approach and apply it to when we are presenting. When talking about a point, don’t be thinking about how the audience reacted to a point you made a few minutes ago. And don’t think about how you will be delivering the next point. Focus all of your attention on the point you are making and make it with passion and conviction. Your audience will be able to see and feel the commitment to your idea and your presentation will succeed. Lesson #7: Never give up Earl Woods, Tiger’s father, taught Tiger that nobody owes you anything, you owe it to yourself to give it your best effort every time. That’s why Tiger never gives up when he is playing. Golf fans have seen him have some dramatic comebacks because of this approach. When presenting, never give up. Commit to making every presentation your best. If something goes wrong in the presentation, don’t give up. Keep going with the passion and belief that it will get better – and it usually will. Lesson #8: Intelligence is not the key Hank says “Golf is an intelligent game, played by intelligent people, stupidly.” The point is that the cause of so many poor golf rounds is not how much the golfer knows, it is in the decisions that they make. They know better, but sometimes make poor decisions. In creating and delivering our presentations, often it is the same case. You know the topic, the audience and how to deliver it, but you make poor decisions such as not rehearsing, using text instead of visuals, or not researching the audience well enough. It’s not enough to know what is best, we have to actually use the knowledge and apply it to our presentations. Whether you are a golfer or not, these eight lessons from Hank Haney, swing coach for Tiger Woods, can help improve your presentations. Dave Paradi teaches professionals and executives from Fortune 500 corporations to non-profit agencies how to transform the overloaded text slides they currently use into persuasive visuals that sell ideas, products and services effectively to decision makers. He is the author of "The Visual Slide Revolution" and co-author of two "Guide to PowerPoint" books from Prentice Hall. His ideas have been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, BusinessWorld India and many other publications around the world. Learn more at www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com ©MMIIX Dave Paradi |