Chapter 3 - Celebrating Presenters

They snooze, you lose: Chapter 3 – Celebrating Presenters

In chapter three, Burmark (2011) focuses on successful presentation delivery. She discusses major styles like the lecturer, the entertainer and the motivational speaker. Taking the best concepts from all three styles and combining them, results in a fourth category called the educator. Steve Jobs has ten tips in relation to educational speaking which include fine tuning the physical nature of the presentation. The presentation can be customized to the audience’s learning style by utilizing Howard Gardner’s eight multiple intelligence measures.

Burmark (2011) successfully advances styles of presentation. She generally draws upon lucid examples from the film and entertainment industry, which helps to bring her points to light. Ferris Bueller’s teacher is an outstanding representation of a mind numbing lecturer. Billy Graham, on the other hand was able execute the lecturer style to great success by engaging his audience with short entertaining sermons.

The entertainer’s style is not so much to engage the audience as it is to disengage them from their normal awareness and put them in a dangling state of mind. From my standpoint, the most popular and profitable entertainers are very good at presentations in this style.

The companies I have worked in the past have all brought in paid motivational speakers to cover topics such as time management and innovation. Generally, I have been considerably mesmerized by the power of these presenters. The better ones quickly induce a state of deep reflection that prevails even after the presentation is over. As a learner, this style is highly successful with me.

Burmark (2011) brought Steve Job’s ten presentations tips to my mind and while they all make sense after hearing them, not all of them are widely used in everyday presentations. The one that caught my attention the most was – pause for effect. It’s a minute, but underused strategy. Jobs talent is referred to as the educator category, a style that is grounded in helping the audience retain information.

A good presenter, regardless of style, will continually be tapping into multiple intelligences in their presentations. Howard Gardner explains the multiple intelligences by acknowledging that students learn in many different ways. I fall into a mix of linguistic and spatial intelligences. I think and learn well from images, but don’t do very well with videos, preferring instead to read.

References

Burmark, L. (2011). Celebrating presenters. In They snooze, you lose: The educator’s guide to successful presentations (pp. 43-57). San Francisco, CA: Josey Bass.

Newell, L, (2012). Week 4 - Diiging and Flick-r-ing. Retrieved from: http://butleratutb.pbworks.com/w/page/50572376/Week%204%20-%20Diiging%20and%20Flick-r-ing%20%28Sp2012%29