Episode 34: First Time Facilitator podcast transcript
This is the transcript of my conversation with Toon Verlinden.
Alternatively, you can listen to the First Time Facilitator episode with Toon.
Leanne: Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us and thanks for your time this morning.
Toon: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Leanne: I always like to start with our facilitators and asking them a bit about their background and what was it and how they got inspired to enter the world of facilitating and in your case helping people present and deliver better presentations.
Toon: Yeah. So what happened, I graduated as an engineer, Biochemical Engineer and as a journalist and later on I went into research on water purification and I was asked to talk at World Water Day. That's an annual day about water and water purification. I was there and I was talking and before me there were two or three other researchers and after me there were two or three other researchers and it was all quite dull and a quite boring that day.
But after my presentation, someone wrote me an email and he said, “Hey, that was an awesome presentation we should talk about that because presentation academics are quite bad most of the times and quite boring most of the times and we should stick our heads together and think of ways on how to make that better.” and that and we started doing that by putting up a blog with some tips and tricks and not long after that there the first questions came in. “Hey, do you do workshops as well because we are have researchers and you are, it's correct, the presentations are not always that good.” I had conferences or stuff and so we started to do workshops and that took off quite good and it was 2012 and now five, six years later we give workshops all over the place and that's how it all worked out and that's quite nice.
Leanne: It is really nice. I mean who would have thought that one presentation would have really changed the trajectory of your career.
Toon: That’s the thing.
Leanne: I do have to ask. What did you do in that presentation and how much time did you really dedicate to making it so good?
Toon: Well, it was a presentation of let's say five minutes more or less and it was about a water purification project I was running in Ghana by the time. The thing was they asked me, “Hey, can you give a presentation on World Water Day? I said, “Yeah, cool!” and then they said, “Yeah, you have five minutes.” and I go, “Ah, okay. Yeah. But I want to talk about 13 things and then I had a list of things I want to talk about.” and then I heard that there are also researchers coming in front of you and after you so I thought, “Yeah, I really need to cut down.” So I get out most of the things I wanted to say and really focus on one or two main key messages and they stuck, they really stuck.
And there's always this thing about people wanting to say everything, they are afraid that people will think that they don't know their subject or so. So I started my presentation by saying “Hey, I'm just going to give you just enough relevant information so you can get on board but not more than that. So there is more to this story but I'm only going to give you one or two key points.” And by doing that in my introduction, people knew, “Ah, okay. There's a lot of more to the story than he will be saying.” And that enable me to make it shorter and more focused and I think the focus was really important in making it stick with people. Yeah, I think that's the most important thing.
Leanne: Yeah.
Toon: The really the focus that you have to take. Yeah.
Leanne: You're absolutely right. I think what’s really great that you frame that upfront so you set the right expectation especially among sort of academics.
Toon: Yeah.
Leanne: I can imagine, information is power. But the other thing, I think it is a lot harder and I know that Mark Twain talked about it with writing in terms of, it's actually a lot harder to present something with impact that's a lot shorter.
Toon: True.
Leanne: It's easy to film a 30-minute presentation or to write a thousand words when you really have to get, convey and convince people in a short period of time, it's quite tricky.
Toon: It is. It is, especially in academics because people say “Yeah, if it isn't difficult, it isn't Science.” or “Hey, you're not showing us all the data, so you didn't do all the experiments.” And so people get afraid and they will want to cram in everything that they've done. But then they lose their audience of course because then they draw on and give information-information-information and then you lose your audience and that's really a problem in a lot of academic presentations.
Leanne: Yeah.
Toon: And they don't dare to focus and I had problems with that myself and therefore I did that framing in advance like, “Hey I'm going to give you like just enough relevant information and nothing more.” And I think that was a key concept that struck my now colleague, Hans, to contact me and say, “Hey, that was really interesting what you did there. Frame it in advance and saying you're only going to give just enough relevant information. I can't to do something with that framing thing, with that concept.” And from there on we started talking.
Leanne: Yeah, it's kind of like when you go to the movies and the trailers.
Toon: True.
Leanne: Like you were giving a bit of a movie trailer and then people like, “Oh, this is interesting and this is the hooks.” and they want to see the movie.
Toon: Yeah, that's true.
Leanne: Yeah, that’s great. So that's, I didn't know that's how you met your co-author Hans, that's through the presentation.
Toon: Yeah.
Leanne: Fantastic. You started this company, The Floor Is Yours back in 2012 and I love the whole philosophy around it; Life is too short for boring presentations.
Toon: Yeah.
Leanne: I want to give you a virtual high-five. I love that!
Toon: Yeah.
Leanne: So why do you think there are so many boring presentations around the world? I mean you saw this in one conference. Why is it still happening?
Toon: I think there are a lot of reasons. But one of the main reasons as I said before, is that especially with the people I'm training like academics engineers, people who have to bring across complex information, they are afraid most of the times. There are a lot of the PhD students I'm training, they have seen quite a lot of that presentation that talks stuff like that and they know it can be done differently. But they don't really dare to because there's always like a promoter or a boss looking over their shoulder and saying, “No. You have to do it like I have done it. You can't do it differently.” and I think a lot of it is coming from that people are a little bit afraid of doing it differently. Also, people are a little bit afraid of putting up a show when they are presenting because it's science, it's academics. It doesn't have to be fun, it has to be correct and I think they are afraid of doing its difference.
Leanne: Yeah. I hate that too. I think it's possibly from the role models that you're given.
Toon: Yeah.
Leanne: At the same time because I've sat through university lecturers and you just think, “Oh gosh, if you only made it a bit more interesting.”
Toon: It’s true.
Leanne: You'd probably get more people interested and engage and really excited about this topic. It’s going back to high school and some of our favourite subjects but because of the teacher that taught it in a way related to us.
Toon: Yeah.
Leanne: So you talked about attention and you had five minutes at this conference. But I like on your website, you talk about 20 seconds that period of time.
Toon: Yeah.
Leanne: And you say that, “If you can't explain it in 20 seconds, you don't understand it well enough.” Can you share that what that message means for our listeners?
Toon: First off, the thing is, if people start to present a new topic, a new complex topic, they start off and they go all different directions and they want to cram everything into that little teaser. But the thing that happens then is you're talking to someone, for example, and after 10 minutes, the person in front of you gets like a glaze in front of his eyes and you noticed like then that person is not really interested. So the 20 seconds is really a good way to see if people are interested in what you are saying. Now, next to that if you are a facilitator, I need to do the 20 seconds, how do they apply is if you are talking in a workshop, try to get everything out as quick as possible in the beginning like a little teaser, like, “This is what you're going to do.” and I try to focus on like a problem-solution advantage structure.
So I say, “Hey, why don't you start with sketching. Look guys, this is a problem you are having. This is the solution I will be bringing to you and this is the advantage, this is the reason why this is useful to you.” and if you get that out quite quick in the beginning in let's say 20 seconds or so, you have framed quite good, what you're going to talk about, why it is important that people will listen and what they will get out of it and I think that's very useful because a lot of people start a presentation by saying, “Hey, I'm that person from that company and that faculty and that's my boss or my promoter.” I don't know but the sad fact is that in the beginning not everybody's or almost nobody's interested in who you are exactly. They're more on what can you do for me. So if you can get that in 20 seconds like problem-solution advantage structure wise, then that's a very good to have handy at the beginning of workshop.
Leanne: Is that's something that you came up with yourself? I've never heard of that. I like it.
Toon: I piece it together from- so if you notice that a lot of people start with the solution. If you look at movies for example or other stories that we like, they tend to go for a problem-solution advantage structure. Let's say, you take a movie like Lord of the Rings. Everything is good in middle-earth and then there's suddenly a big bad wizard Sauron coming up and that's a problem and then they need to come up with a solution, “Ah, we find a ring and we need to cast it in the mountain and a volcano where was it came.” That's solution and then the advantage is everything is better again.
Leanne: Yeah.
Toon: So every story follows, every story that we like or that we read follow that problem-solution advantage structure. But what people tend to do is especially academics is they say, “Hey, I researched this.” But I'm not sure why you research that or what's the use of you researching it? So it's much better to get a problem in advance and that's also for facilitators quite good you say, “Hey, I feel your problem and I'm going to give you the solution and that's why you need to listen to me.”
Leanne: Yeah.
Toon: And that's quite handy if you put that as much in front as possible. I didn't piece it together all of myself, I need to give credit to- you had him on the podcast, Sean D’Souza?
Leanne: Do you listen to Sean D'Souza?
Toon: Yeah. I listen to his Brain Audit.
Leanne: Oh, my gosh. That is so funny.
Toon: Yeah. I listen it all the way through.
Leanne: That book is great but did you listen to it on or the audible version, there's a piano that plays all the way through?
Toon: I listen to all at the ad, the audible version. Yeah and I really liked it and there are some really good concepts in there as well. I think he also focuses on, “Hey, what's the problem of the person you are talking to and how are you going to solve that?” and you can use that perfectly in presentations as well. Then there was a book as well called Houston, We Have a Narrative and that was from an Astrophysics guy, I think, that started working in Hollywood later on and he uses that structure a little bit as well. He connects it to like, “Hey, we have Hollywood movies. How are they- how do they tackle that problem and how can we use that into in our presentations?” and I think if you smash those two together you get that structure a little bit and that really really works because if people need to think about, “Hey which problem am I going to solve for my audience? If you need to think about that in advance, that's already very good step to take and to start with.
Leanne: It is, it's great. I love that you've heard of Sean D’Souza. That’s fantastic.
Toon: Yeah. I did. Yeah.
Leanne: I think he’s coming to Brisbane next month for a conference I’m at, I'm emceeing. We have podcasts. So looking forward to talking out with him. I'll let him know that another podcast guest from Belgium. Hey, I think he was there recently running a workshop and they went to the Tintin Museum a lot.
Toon: Yeah. I heard.
Leanne: Yeah, small world.
Toon: So yeah, I like what you are saying and how it’s bringing it to the people and I think it's yeah, you can use his advice in a lot of different topics. It's like how do you craft a landing page but you can use that advice as the same in presentations a little bit you need to alter it of course but it's yeah, it's a useful advice.
Leanne: Yeah. So I heard the problem-solution framework before. There's a book I can't remember the exact title of it but it's about Steve Jobs in the way that he speaks and so if you watch his the release of the iPhone and what he was doing the whole time was just talking about a problem, really setting the problem aren't making it really real and then talking about how the Iphone just fixed everything and why that was important.
Toon: Yeah.
Leanne: So yeah, that's really great. It’s about getting that that mix of- so it hooks people in. So like that.
Toon: Yeah, true.
Leanne: So that's in terms of what you're actually saying as a facilitator. I also like that you also focus on slide design for dummies. What can we do with our slides to make them more I guess compelling with our audience?
Toon: Yeah. There are two problems that lead to full slides. The first problem is when people ask us to give a presentation; what do we do? Well, we open a PowerPoint and there's PowerPoint and PowerPoint asks, “click to add your title” and so you do and then the first bullet point is already there and it says, “click to add text” and so, “Okay, PowerPoint. I click to add text.” and that's what you start to do. So you fill up bullet point after bullet point and then after a while you need to cut stuff out, you need to rearrange stuff and you get a presentation as a little bit unstructured and most of the times it's full of text.
So one of the things I advise, try to start with like a blank slide not with like these pre-set bullet points or so just blank slide and start to draw your own square sensor. And then the second thing people need to know is that if you are presenting, you are important; not your PowerPoint. Because a lot of people want their PowerPoints to be let's say use as handouts as well so they can hand it out your PowerPoint. But if people can understand your PowerPoints perfectly by reading it and then they don't need you. If it is a perfect handout, your PowerPoint, they don't need you to tell it as well. So you need to try to avoid that, you need to see, “Hey, is there stuff on that PowerPoint that I'm just going to say as well? Like it is on the PowerPoint, “Do I read my PowerPoint from top to bottom?” That's what happens quite a lot. People start to read top to bottom while they are presenting.
But the thing is people, the audience can read faster than you can speak so they have read the entire slide before you are half way and they will zone out. So it's better to get less text on your slides. We may, most of the times we say, “Yeah. Try to aim for a maximum of 20 words per slide.” and that's already quite a lot. There's presentation advice, it says, “three words” or “no words” or “three lines and three words”.
But if you say to academics or engineers for that matter like, “Hey, you can only use three words on a slide.” They’ll say, “You're crazy.” So try to aim for maximum 20 words per slide and I think it's a good idea to brainstorm in advance and start with white slides like blank slides where you start sketching on and don't open up your PowerPoints the moment they ask you to give a presentation because then you will just start feeling bullet points and that doesn't work that well.
Leanne: Good advice. So if you've got a slide there and you're just talking over at the slide redundant or you've got to change what you're saying to beef it up and create up a story or something to illustrate the point better.
Toon: Yeah. It's also- the another reason why people fill their slides too much is because they want their slides to act as like a teleprompter. They need the text themselves but there's like a notes function in PowerPoint that you can use to get a lot of text out of your slides and put it in the notes, so you can use the notes and you don't have to put it on the slides. So my advice is create two presentations.
To the engineers in your company for example, let them take your presentation, let them make a copy of it, rename it to hand out and not presentation and then take their presentation and start cutting in it and then you have two versions like the slides that are have less text. They can use that as a presentation and then their original slides, they can use that as a handout probably. So that's something they can do.
Leanne: Genius. Something's so simple but that'll help the debate if they say, “Oh, well, people need this.” It's like, “Well, just create two versions. Just call this one down.” and then practice before you get in the room.
Toon: Yeah.
Leanne: So you don't need- it's like a crutch, I understand.
Toon: And handouts isn't the same as a presentation. A handout can also be like a Word document that you've written out with like the main important things and if people say, “Hey, can I see a presentation?” Just say, “Hey, here's the handout.” and it's not necessarily the slides.
Leanne: Nice. So you're all about doing things a bit differently in the way that you present on helping others do the same thing.
Toon: Yeah.
Leanne: What is the, I don’t know, the coolest, the craziest, the biggest X Factor thing you've done in a presentation. If you really sort of gone out there or do you keep it?
Toon: That's quite okay. Now, I try to attract the attention in the beginning of a workshop like a standard thing. I do quite a lot is if I need to give a pitch workshop, I also researched as academics need to pitch to management, to funding agencies to each other. I come up on stage with a bottle of wine and a glass and I just come up and I fill my glass with wine and people go like, “Hey, well, what he's doing? It's nine o'clock in the morning, he's drinking wine.” and then I say, “Hey, imagine you're at a networking event.” and then I go on from there networking event pitching stuff like that and that really attracts the attention.
Now, one of the things I did not, that long ago was, I opened with a real story, a true story of a guy that attached some helium balloons to his lawn chair and then left off. He flew like two kilometres up in the air. I used that story as a beginning in the workshop but that day I took myself my lawn chair with me with some helium balloons, I put it on a table and I sat in the lawn chair and it really attracts the attention and that worked. And it's not that if I tell that to people they say, “Yeah. But show- the content is important. It's not how it looks but the content needs to be important. It's more important.”
But then I say, “Yeah. But just by attracting attention in the beginning, people are hooked and then you can come with your content.” and it doesn't have to be you in a lawn chair with helium balloons. It can be as simple as like opening a bottle of wine for example. There once was someone, after our workshop, he went to a conference and he was doing research on what purification and more specifically on extracting this too from people out of the water to reuse it. The phosphates in the stool.
Leanne: Wow.
Toon: And he opened his presentation big with only slide and he opened with one word “Shit” and it was nine o'clock in the morning on a conference, everybody went like, “What's happening? Everybody awakes and that really worked and it didn't get like negative feedback off from that slide. You only got positive feedback from that slide. So it's a little bit daring to do things differently. So those are some examples of what I’ve did.
Leanne: That's so cool.
Toon: And that really works.
Leanne: Well, it works because we're talking about it today. It's something that was very memorable, that guy's first slide.
Toon: Yeah.
Leanne: Where did you get your ideas on- how did you get your ideas with the helium balloon and the bottle of wine? Was it just you and your mate Hans are talking about it or writing things down and seeing where the connections are?
Toon: I think as a facilitator, it's always important to think like, “When does my audience need to do this?” So with a bottle of wine is, “When does my audience need to pitch?” Probably at the networking event. “What do you have in your hand?” Ah, a bottle of wine. I’ll add another bottle of wine, a glass of wine probably. So okay we’ll do that.
Leanne: In Australia, we’ll probably have a bottle of wine. The Australian version of that kind of beer outside.
Toon: Yeah. But that's very important. Just think, “Hey, my audience. How does it work? How does it go? Why are people distracted when they need to listen to speaker?” Ah, probably because he doesn't grab their attention. “How should he grab their attention?” Now, another thing like the guy with the helium balloons, it's always good to have like always- I write them down.
If I come across a story that's like quite interesting, I write it down like, “Hey, that's a good story. Maybe I can use it later.” and most of the times it's like, “Yeah. A funny story.” That I hear in a podcast for example or did I get on the internet and I write it down and I think it's good to have that backlog of interesting stories somewhere so you can grab one out if it suits you.
Leanne: One of my earlier guest on the podcast was a guy called Matthew Dicks and he's written a book called Storytelling.
Toon: Okay.
Leanne: He's one there's a something in the U.S. called the Moth where it's a big storytelling competition and he's won about 30 or so.
Toon: Wow.
Leanne: I’ve been reading his book and he says the same thing and he calls it “homework for life”.
Toon: Yeah.
Leanne: And he says that, “At the end of every day, just think of one thing that was memorable and just write it down, just a sentence to capture it.”
Toon: Yeah.
Leanne: And so, I've been starting to do that and then you think about those everyday moments and there's always some kind of lesson or link that you can, one day link it back to.
Toon: Yeah.
Leanne: I think it's handy that you don't have to create it from scratch. It's like looking through your database and going, “Oh, that one will work.”
Toon: That's very useful. Yeah. Because you don't have to start every presentation with a story but it's very useful to start a presentation with the story. Also, if you give a workshop, I do it as well. The uses that a lot of people are talking and talking and smart phones are up and computers laptops are open and then when you start with a story, the first sentence people stop talking. The second sentence, laptops closed. Third sentence, smartphones go away. Fourth sentence, everybody’s listening to you. And that's why a story is such a good way to start a workshop or presentation and that's why it's indeed useful to write them down if you come across them like, “Hey, this could be of interest to me later on.” and that's useful to write it down.
Leanne: It's great that you're using your journalism skills as well for telling stories.
Toon: Yeah, for telling stories and it's also like copywriting and what to focus on and what not to focus on. That’s also very useful to have like a little bit of feeling with that. I use the journalism skills indeed. Yeah.
Leanne: Good one. So we spoke about it's important to gain attention in terms of your slide design. Start with a blank template and telling stories is really key as well. So are there any other skills that you think are really important in terms of facilitating workshops? Something that you do differently between compared to speaking? What do you do differently when you actually facilitate and engage in a two-way learning process?
Toon: I think as a facilitator, you need to be very honest with yourself and with your audience and what I mean by that is, I really think that bad presentations are a problem in this world especially with academics. One, it's boring to sit and listen to a bad presentation. But two, it's also let's say, you are researching climate sciences, you're researching climate change for example then it's important that you can talk about that to the audience. So I really think bad presentations are a problem and I think as a facilitator that comes across. If you really care about your subject then that really really works. Other things I do- the question was what I do differently if I give a workshop instead of giving a presentation, is that the question?
Leanne: Yeah.
Toon: Yeah. The key techniques remain the same. What I tend to do in a workshop as well is I try to divide the entire workshop in three blocks. We divided our workshop, our presentation workshop for example, in story, show and slides. So first, we say, “Hey, you have a complex idea.” How can we make a good story from that that people understand, then we go show. How can we make it appealing to look at and appealing to listen to and then we go slides. How can we make good slides and that three-part structure is very powerful. But I use it in presentations as well as in workshops because people tend to be able to structure three things quite well in their head. If you will add like, “Hey, I'm going to talk in this workshop, I'm going to talk about these ten different blocks.” Then people are lost by number four and if you go, “Hey, these are the three things that's what we are going to talk about.” that really works.
Leanne: Yeah and I know that Sean D’Souza uses three parts in his podcast too.
Toon: Yeah, true.
Leanne: And the whole rule of threes and speeches, so I like that too.
Toon: That works.
Leanne: The listeners on our show are technical experts could be engineers, accountants, people working in HR. What would your advice be to people that are starting their careers in facilitation or transitioning from being the subject matter expert or the academic into creating engagement presentations. What would you say to them starting out?
Toon: The most important thing someone told us in the beginning when we started was try to find your niche. Because we were starting out and we thought, “Hey, we don't like bad presentations.” But yeah, a lot of people don't like bad presentations and then we thought, “Hey, we should focus on scientists maybe.” and then that's when it really took off when we said, “Hey, we are specially focusing on scientists and engineers.” and that was really important. Because if you run out on the street and yell, “Hey, I need someone for presentation techniques.” and a lot of people will come. But if you say, “Hey, I need someone to be able to tell that to scientists and engineers and people who need to deliver complex information.” then that's a different story. So I think for people who want to start with this like don't go too broad with your audience. It may also makes it more easier to focus your workshops towards your audience and people will know or companies will know that you are an expert especially to their audience and that will really work for you as it’s working your advantage.
Leanne: That's amazing advice and I really liked how you've both carved out your niche in that area.
Toon: Yeah.
Leanne: The title of your book certainly attracted my attention when I did see it on Amazon and that's how I heard about you both.
Toon: Ah, wonderful.
Leanne: Yeah. So times up. Where can people find you guys online or if they want to get in touch with you and asking more questions. Where should we send them?
Toon: Well, the place to go to is thefloorisyours.eu, E U from European Union and that's a blog where people can find free advice on how to talk to companies, how to talk to media, how to give presentations. So that's the go-to place and from there on there's an About page with our Twitter handles. There's the link to our book as well if you want to buy it and we are working on eBook by the way, that will be out in a couple of weeks.
Leanne: Oh, amazing.
Toon: Maybe interesting for people in Australia because then you don't have to have all the delivery constraints and stuff like that. But thefloorisyours.eu is the place to go to and then you will find all the information.
Leanne: Fantastic. Can you share what your eBook is about or is it a top secret?
Toon: Well, so yeah. No, it’s the eBook version of the Life is too Short for Bad Presentations book. Now, it's only available like hardcopy but then we can send it all over the world and we want to have it as much as impact as possible. So it's about presentation techniques and it's divided as I said in three blocks, that's the best way to do it. First, we are going to look at story then that show and that slides, the same as in the workshop. But the useful thing about the book is that you can put a lot of more info in there than you can put in your workshop. You can't flood people in your workshop with too much information and then the book is like good for us to put everything in. That’s what it is.
Leanne: It’s like in the Encyclopaedia.
Toon: Yeah.
Leanne: That's amazing. Gosh, you must be both be so busy. Congratulations on everything that you've built in the last sort of six years.
Toon: Thank you.
Leanne: It's really exciting and I do recommend our listeners, check out the show notes for this episode where we'll have all the links to your website as well as the e-book by the time this episode's launched. It may be out or even a day or two away. So Toon, thank you so much for your time and really interesting story. I'd love to hear more in future about the process writing a book in and doing everything you both have done. You’ve accomplished a lot.
Toon: Yeah.
Leanne: So thanks for sharing your tips with our audience.
Toon: My pleasure. Yeah, no problem.
[END OF AUDIO] 29:06