The tiny tool that gets you perfectly positioned to deliver a business presentation

Not many people carry what is undoubtedly one of my favourite items of business presentation equipment. They should, because it’s very small and costs just a couple of pounds. Most of all, it can be key to getting you properly positioned for a business presentation and feeling comfortable enough to ‘own the space’.

Let me introduce you to the gender changer. All it really does is join one projector/TV monitor cable to another. Most of the time you will have no need of this, but on the first occasion you are faced with a too-short projector cable you will wish you had one. You want to position your laptop so that you can see it from your preferred speaker position – not have it tethered according to what the available cable allows.

This is most likely to happen in a room without a fixed projector. Someone arrives with one in a bag; typically, the accompanying cable will be about a metre long. By the time you have positioned the projector far enough from the screen to create a decent-sized image, you have little or no flexibility as the where to put your laptop.

Even in rooms with fixed projectors, having a gender changer and extension lead in your

bag can be an advantage. The ideal way to set up is generally on the left of a screen from the audience’s point of view. As Rule 5 of the Rules of Magic states, ‘Attention tracks from left to right, then settles at the left’. The reason for this is that, in Western cultures, we read from left-to-right. With this set up your audience will therefore look at you (assuming you have established strong eye contact), then look at the screen; then their gaze will return naturally to you. 

With a right–to-left set up, on the other hand, your audience’s gaze will be veering towards ‘nothing’ on the left. You will find such a set up in many venues - regular haunts of my own such as the British Library Business Unit and The Royal College of Art are set up like this, often for good reasons such as there being a door on the left. With a gender changer, however, you have the flexibility to adapt the lay out to one of your own choosing. You can own the space! 

James Blunt's ROFL tweets have a serious side - and a lesson for business presenters

Singer James Blunt has rightly been lauded for the brilliant way he communicates via Twitter. Far from shying away from so-called ‘trolls’ he actively embraces them, with replies such as this particular favourite of mine:

@hettjones: James Blunt just has an annoying face and a highly irritating voice

@JamesBlunt: And no mortgage.

Much has been made of Blunt’s wit and clever self-deprecation, but there is actually a valuable lesson for business communicators here. Most people prepare for a presentation by putting high focus on the message they want to get across and the means (mostly technological) by which they are going to do that. These people have already made a fundamental mistake, because the first thing you need to think about is your audience: Who are they are? What do they already know? What do they think? What are their beliefs and prejudices? etc, etc. Only when you have addressed questions such as these can you really start to craft your message in a way that will engage your audience. 

The classic example of failing to think first about the audience was when Tony Blair addressed the Women’s Institute. One of the most successful communicators of the modern age, who happened also to be the Prime Minister, ended up being slow handclapped. The reason was very simple – he delivered his usual political message without any proper regard for the make up of his audience. And yet, had he sought a briefing from an appropriate adviser, he could probably have delivered fundamentally the same speech; it just needed to be tilted in the direction of his specific audience on that day.

James Blunt focuses on his audience in two ways. First, he engages directly the person attacking him. Second, he uses his ripostes – knowing them to be witty and highly shareable – to address an image problem he has been experiencing with the wider public. And of course, it just so happened that he had a new album ready for release. How much better is it going to be received when thousands of people are discussing James Blunt in a new, much more positive light?

So, engaging directly with your detractors is a risky strategy that is not necessarily to be recommended. But you are never going to truly engage an audience unless you have first worked out - however painful the process may be - what is already going on in their heads about you and the topic of your talk.

 Retweeted by James Blunt

Phil Jerrod @PhilJerrod · Jul 5

James Blunt just came onstage at Hop Farm. Had to step on a few toes, but we've managed to fight our way to the back.