Presentation: Influence Others

https://www.meetup.com/InfluenceOthers/

Synopsis:
On Jan 28 at 1PM Nathan Schor will present a version of his popular meetup Influence Others, customized for software professionals, who appreciate the science-based no-nonsense approach he takes. (More below.)

If upgrading your presentation skills is on your professional development agenda, then seriously consider attending. You’ll learn, as did many others, how to improve both your content and delivery so they’re aligned with what science claims is optimal to earn audience engagement.

THREE EXPLICIT REASONS WHY YOU WILL WIN BY ATTENDING

(1) You’d be seriously challenged to find a competence more horizontally advantageous across a wide spectrum of engagements — personal, social, professional — than the capacity to communicate with confidence, conviction and credibility.

(2) This is a great time for you to come up to speed since more has been discovered about your brain in the last ten years than in ALL of history. Advances in neural science, evolutionary psychology and behavioral economics are illuminating how the brain’s decision making machinery actually works, thereby explaining why humans approach certain offers, while avoiding others.

(3) You’ll markedly improve your presentation performance by learning the science behind both creating and delivering messages that are more likely to be memorable, thereby elevating your impact.

BONUS REASON — Is there presentation upcoming on your calendar? If so, then seriously consider attending, since you can immediately apply what you’ll learn to improve both content and delivery of your talk.

SCIENCE BEHIND THE CLASS

That work centers around a popular meetup Influence Others (1,800 members with many positive reviews) which applies recent findings from Neural Science, Evolutionary Psychology and Behavioral Economics to help professionals improve two distinct skills vital to their success:

(1) Creating Compelling Content That Attracts Attention

(2) Delivering Those Messages with Confidence, Conviction and Credibility

Based on Richard Mayer’s definitive textbook Multimedia Learning and drawing from such seminal works as Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, and Influence: Science and Practice and Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade (both by Robert Cialdini), and Start with Why (Simon Sinek), the sessions explore what those pioneering investigators discovered about what factors influence an audience to pay attention and even more significant, what prompts them to distraction.

Presentation Quotes
* Communicating persuassively is the most horizontal skill…it is something that can be used everywhere.
* We’ve learned more about the brain in last ten years than in ALL human history.

Presentation PowerPoint
How to turn on the recording captions at the bottom — live subtitles?

Presentation Notes:
* We are now able to see a brain translucently instead of opaque after appling clarity.
* When we are able to remove lipids, we could see the connectome, what neurons are connecting to each other
* By looking at connectome signals, scientists can learn more about your life and where on the social scale you are with an 80% accuracy → (find article). This is correlation (not causation).
* If you took every capilary in your body and stretched it, it will go to the moon and back.
* Body language is 85% of how we interpret something. Brain works 1000x/second.

* The first thing people tend to notice historically is the body. It’s for survival information. Is he older or younger? Is he a male or female? Is he tall or shorter?
* The next thing you notice is your hands. Does he have anything in his hands? Is it food or a weapon?
* Third thing you know is the face. You need to keep track of three main things:
1) Eyes
2) Mouth
3) Eyebrows — shows emotions. There are 8 main emotions.

Humans are the only primate that have prominent eyebrows and forehead.

*When you walk up to the stage, before opening your mouth, TAKE CONTROL OF THE ROOM. Start before you begin. How to do this?
1) Make eye contact with two people in the room. Smile with them.
2) Ignore the people that are crossing their arms
3) If you have a big audience, put your friends in the room. Smile at them. Tell them their job is smiling back to you.

30% of the time, we are looking at people directly. 2/3 of the time, we are not looking. 1/3 of the time, we should be looking at someone when we talk to them. Most people are gazing and looking at the back of the room.

The gold standard of talks is TedTalk. You cannot get on TedTalk unless you pass the test with the TedTalk staff. Chris Anderson is the one who started Ted.

• There is a direct correlation between how you move your hands and how well you speak. Animate your hands — Chris Anderson TedTalks.

First brain began 250 million years ago. Before that, no brain. Sea urchins. Animals — animated. The idea of having a brain is dynamics, animation, and emotion.

Humans started speaking around 50 million years. That bone went higher and higher as we started standing up straight. This is why some primates are just grunting. We have been bipedal for 6 million years.

• Modulation in voice is important. Tone of voice.
• Be confident while speaking.

What makes the brain applicable to persuassion?
* Brain has 2% of body mass but uses 25% of the body’s energy. 12:1 ratio. Every 12th bite you take goes to your head.

1. “The brain is a cognitize mizer. It cannot afford to waste energy. Thinking is very expensive.” → Whatever the brain thinks, it has to come to a decision very quickly
2. We have two parts of the brain: sublimal part and thinking part. Majority of decisions are made by the sublimal part. The brain works in miliseconds.

How to Practice Presenting?
Take your mirror and put it upright. For the first 5–10 minutes of the presentation, convince yourself in the mirror. Eyebrows.

Get your hands moving in your eyes. To help you practice looking at people, you have the mirror.

For the hands, get a box. Hold the box. Pretend it is strapped to your chest. Around and inside the box, there should be consistent movement. The more you do that, the more they will pay attention. If they do not pay attention, they won’t take in the information you are saying.

Student Speaker (Part of Presentation):
Critique:
- Hands in pocket
- Often use of “uh”: 6 times
-Not that exciting sounding

Books to Read:

• “Thinking Fast and Slow”
  Amazon:
  https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555
  Online: http://sysengr.engr.arizona.edu/OLLI/lousyDecisionMaking/KahnemanThinkingFast&Slow.pdf
• TedTalks by Chris Anderson