One of the activities my students engage in is to watch a series of speeches, ranging from student presentations to TED talks. Based on what they see in the videos and by consulting sample grading rubrics, students have to come up some criteria for what makes a good presentation.
We come up with a long list in short time. The only problem is, just as soon as we identify the list of agreed-upon qualities for effective presentations, we come across a presenter who breaks many of the rules, but is still fabulous. For example, we watched Jamie Oliver rushing all over the stage at TED, reading off his notes and turning his back toward his audience (all things we listed as ineffective) but because he made us care about what he was saying, the rules didn’t seem to matter much anymore. We liked him anyway.
We also watched a student presentation that was technically perfect- the speaker did every single thing we identified as being important—but which did not engage us at all. We didn’t connect with the presenter, but for reasons that were hard to articulate—we didn’t like her topic, she seemed artificial, almost too perfect, not real. We didn’t like her.
I can certainly embrace the idea that presenting is an art. Good presentations are dependent on audience perception, which is shaped and reshaped by many constantly shifting factors. But what is the role of an individual’s credibility in an audience’s response to her presentation? Jamie Oliver can get away with things a student presenter can’t get away with, simply because he IS Jamie Oliver and he has an enormous amount of automatic credibility by virtue of his accomplishments. Jamie Oliver, Steve Jobs, all the speakers we point to as models, all step on stage with credibility intact, it precedes them. Most of the rest of us, the average presenters, don’t have the luxury of automatic credibility. Instead, we have to earn credibility. And how do we do that? (to be continued . . . ).
For the speakers like Jamie Oliver and Steve Jobs, they‘ve already earned credibility. When they are delivering a speech, we look up to them and generally tend to trust them and their sources. But it is hard for us—nornal students— to be looked up to and trusted without any condition when we are presenting. Most of the time, our audience judges us, they think twice about our sources, once we showed some facts that aren’t credible, we lose our credibility to the audience.
One thing I find essential to establish our credibility is that we should select those facts, stories and statistics that can convince our own first. That is to say, we should try to be emotional and detailed when we tell our own stories; try to showing the statistics that are easy for our own to read and remember first ; try to show the facts that are supported by authorities that can make our own believe first……
In a word, switching the position with our audience, pretend ing that we are the audience, thinking about what will they feel and think about our presentation will be effective for us during the preparation process. If we are confident to say that:”if I were them (audience), I would feel impressed and be persuaded by his/her information”. Then it’s time for us to deliver our presentation, if not, we should prepare more.
Once we are prepared, we should remember that: try to be a charismatic speaker, because the more charisma, the more credibility. When we are presenting, the audience can see our sources, can listen to our stories, but they cannot see our educational background, how much knowledge we have, what kind of expertise we get, the last thing for them to judge us is our charisma, which can be felt by our audience.
Credibility is “earn”, credibility is knowledge, credibility is experience, and credibility is reliability. I get through all the informative presentations; I really reutilized a good presentation not only on how to present the PPT well, but also on how to earn credibility. We should change place reflect. We know we can earn credibility by use web or video where users connect to unknown servers at remote locations, but if we use exasperated claims the user’s trust will lose rapidly. In the other words, to earn credibility, the speaker has to build a speech with excellent sources that is tailored to meet the specific needs of the audience, and then deliver that speech with confidence and excellent presentation skills. The audiences think that web or video working for nothing. For example, in Jamie Oliver’s presentation, he used the video to show how many vegetable names the kids know, and how the mother is suffering from disturbance from her daughter’s adiposity. Those videos can exactly touch the feelings of the audience, and earn credibility for his presentation. On the contrary, some presenter loose audience’s attention by using some irrelevance or exasperated webs. I add this website to show how to earn or make a good credibility. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whTwjG4ZIJg&feature=related
Last evening Richard Miscovich presented with Dr. Sisco about how to make better PowerPoint presentations. He mentioned the art work of David Byrne which was created using PowerPoint. To me this seemed hard to imagine when we are inundated with bulleted, wordy, unimaginative slides. I reviewed David Byrne’s website and in particular the article ”Using PowerPoint Analyzed by Artist” found on http://www. davidbyrne.com/art/eeei/press/EEEI_Irvine.php.
Some of you may not be familiar with David Byrne. He is the co-founder of the music group Talking Heads. Since his time with the band he has explored various forms of art including a ballet score, spoken word albums, and books. Mr. Byrne also explored PowerPoint as an art medium and went on a speaking tour to promote this. During this tour he delivered a presentation entitled “I PowerPoint” in which he discussed how to use the program in a professional setting.
Credibility is extremely hard to attain when you are a student however each of us has no choice but to overcome this. Without credibility the audience has no reason to listen to us and will lose interest in what we say. In review of David Byrne’s bio there is no indication he has taken courses in PowerPoint or delivered business presentations or even sat through as many boring presentations as we have. None of this mattered since he was speaking on a topic he was passionate about and was discussing the topic in an innovative fashion. It appears that even when building credibility the rules are meant to be broken.
First of all, thanks to Yang for a good video link. I have watched it twice with a great pleasure. However, back to the question: “How do students, like us, earn credibility?”
Honestly saying, when watching presentations I distinguish two types of talented presenters:
1) Credible;
2) Charismatic.
Let me explain my point. Some people have enough of knowledge and experience to talk about a subject. Plus, they are good at presenting. As a result, the audience loves everything (the presentation, the speaker, the point of view). These people have credibility to present. However, other people don’t have to be very experienced or knowledgeable. Still their audience adores them, even when they are reading off the slides or make other “mistakes” during presentations. These people have charisma.
So, what do we have here? Those who have charisma are lucky people. They don’t have to worry about being liked, because their audience will love them anyway.
Unfortunately, very few people are born with this beautiful quality of being charismatic. It means that the rest have to work very hard to be “approved” by the audience. It seems so scary! But is it hard? Is it hard to know your topic and be REALLY interested in it? It’s so important to not just present because this is your class assignment or because your boss wants you speak at the meeting. All you have to do is to really care about the issue and be prepared, that’s it.
Who doesn’t agree with me?
Credibility leads to trust, which is one of the pillars of persuasion.Some people just have the credibility tag right there where you can see it.The fact that they are who they are is enough for them to be taken seriously.
I agree with Veronica and the two types of speakers.Charisma is something you are born with.You either have it or you dont.Credibility on the other hand, is something you can acquire or work upon.When someone is very knowlegable or deeply related to what they are speaking about, credibilty is automatically established.Because of that,how they may be delivering the content is overlooked because what they saying is more important.
Which is why I feel,one should talk about what they know best.But in the professional environment,we may be asked to talk about topics we do not know much about.Is is then that we must make an effort to research our topic and know it well so that we may be taken seriously.
What makes people believe? Family, personal experience and faith. These are things that we have no control over how they affect people. Generally speaking, there are two kinds of authorities who have credibility: experts and celebrities. As normal people like most of us, we are not lucky enough to have that credibility, but we can definitely build up our own by:
For External credibility:
using anti-authorities, the honesty and trustworthiness allows anti-authorities act as authorities.
For Internal credibility:
1, adding details, vivid details boost credibility.
2, using statistics, conveyed statistics make numbers meaningful.
3, giving examples, particular type of example helps to establish credibility.
And the most important way for us to build up our credibility is “testable credentials”, it allows audience to try, to test the theory by themselves so they can be more focused and engaged.
How do we earn our credibility? I think we should show our experiences, and knowledge to our audiences and we also need to use powerful and professional data to build our credibility. Nevertheless, I did an informative presentation and I realized I was not only showing my professional experiences, but I also wanted to make this presentation more interesting to let my audiences care about this presentation. This is a really difficult mission to build our credibility especially for inexperienced presenters. Credibility includes experience, knowledge, reliable data, interesting slides, correct grammar, good examples or stories and how to hook your topic during a presentation. The other important thing is presenters cannot provide inaccurate data or information because this will affect your credibility a lot.
Professor Sisco showed us Jamie Oliver’s presentation. did a very presentation. He showed his credibility before this presentation by mentioning that he is a professional doctor and chef. Jamie Oliver broke some formal presentation rules by reading off his note and rushing all over the stage, but he did a successful presentation because we did care and remember his presentation. For example, he let his audiences to know how much sugar a student gets in a bottle of milk a day during five years in elementary school. His presentation was honest and passionate when delivered to his audiences.
Advanced communication class provides us a good opportunity to build our credibility. This class is useful because we also can prepare different styles of presentation to build our experience.
Let’s look from the audience’s angle and think about what credibility means to them. For them, they probably do not realize how important the credibility will be for the presenter. They will only estimate the speaker by the whole presentation to see if it is a trustful story, just like the way they judge the stories of their friends as usual.
In the book Presenting to Win, the author indicated a viewpoint which I like very much: “being ‘live and in person’ is the ultimate form of Audience Advocacy.” We like Jamie Oliver because we like his story, or we can say, his story wakes up our consciousness that we should stop gulping junk food and pursue healthier eating habits right here, right now. I believe he personally does not care about “credibility to his audience” too much, because he puts all his attention on caring how people eat healthy. Therefore, he is successful making his story “live and in person”, and earns great esteem from people around the world.
As a MBA student, the best way to develop my credibility is: FORGET IT! Treat my audience like my friends. Just focus on the issue I really want to share with them, and bring personal live story into my presentation. If the audience is willing to believe my story, and even want to share it with their friends, then I think some kind of credibility will slip into my pocket.
Here is a good video about establish credibility through several simple techniques. A very interesting and clear site to get some ideas is: http://vimeo.com/10760716
If I have learned anything at all it is that with out credibility a presentation is just words. Let’s say you have a presentation…why should people listen to you? Why should others trust what you have to say? What makes you credible?
Throughout this class I have learned that establishing credibility is one of the most important qualifications for ensuring your success as a speaker. If you are planning to give a presentation on a subject about which you have limited knowledge, you must research your topic. You need to know more than those in your audience; otherwise, there is no reason for them to listen to you. You would be better served listening to them!
Everything in which we have learned as student about what it means to be a presenter has now been tossed out the window. The idea that good eye contact, memorization and professional stage presence has now been challenged. What we have come to realize is that these things don’t matter. What it means to be a presenter is the ability to engage your audience so that they may feel apart of your presentation and the only way of doing this is to have your audiences’ trust. If you want your audience to trust in you and in what you have to say, build your credibility!
In the eyes of the beholder. That is what credibility means to me. We perceive people to have credibility because we want to perceive it. Just look back at the Presidential races for the last 20 years or just the 2001 election. From both sides of the aisle, President Bush was either perceived credible or he wasn’t. He didn’t make 2 separate speeches one or the Republicans and one for the Democrats, he spoke the same way not matter who was listening. However, he was perceived credible by those that supported his views and un-credible and even mocked, by those that opposed his view.
Can credibility be faked? In my opinion: yes. If the presenter is passionate about the material that he or she is presenting than the audience will feel that passion and will perceive the presenter as credible. Don’t agree? Just look at the TV for evidence. There are many commercials out there with celebrity personalities pushing products on us. Why does a celebrity status make us more likely to purchase a product? Katherine Zeta Jones was the spokesperson for T-Mobile. Do any of us actually believe that she is an expert on cell phone providers? What makes her credible to advertise a cell phone provider?
We all believe and perceive what we want to believe. Confidence plays a big role in credibility. Passion can be read by even those that don’t agree. That is why our history has been filled with chaos that was started by strong speakers. Just look to the 1930’s for proof of that.
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