Help with Presentation Please!!

Hi

I find myself having to give a presentation next week to 120 dental nurses around the topic of body language. It is something i agreed to ages ago and didn't have any idea how many people there would be there or that I would be the only speaker filling 1.5HRS!

I wondered if you lovely people had any suggestions of what might be particularly useful for this group and also any ideas for exercises I could run with that many people. I want it to be interactive but I will be on my own or perhaps with one other person to assist me.

I wait in anticipation to be inspired!

Sam xxx

I'd set up multiple emotional states & anchors... including these two extremes:

anxiety/nervousness/fear

and

comfort/recognition/trust


And I would elicit BOTH in your entire audience at the beginning. Point out that a core competency of their job is to be able to move people from one negative extreme, to the other more positive one.

And that their body language will be one of the primary tools they use... to help people make that transition.

Then use your presentation and whatever exercises you run as a set of educational methods... not only to help them bridge the gap for their patients from one to the other... but also for you to help them bridge the gap from NOT knowing how to handle this, to being comfortable and trusting themselves in knowing how to handle this.

I would make the entire presentation a multi-layered reflection of the very emotional transition you want them to lead their patients through, when they're actually working with dental patients. And to be congruent, you'd want your own body language to help tell that story.

Regards,

- Jonathan Altfeld

I find myself having to give a presentation next week to 120 dental nurses around the topic of body language. It is something i agreed to ages ago and didn't have any idea how many people there would be there or that I would be the only speaker filling 1.5HRS!

I don't think it'd take an hour and a half to talk about that topic, and I also think it'd be a mistake to do so. Get them out of their seats and actually doing stuff. Calibration exercises will open their senses.

120 people is a lot of people to watch during exercises, too. If you know any Master Practitioners in the area who'd be willing to help you by acting as resource trainers for you, that would be good.

I've found nurses to be oriented to pain and procedures, so you'll probably want to talk about how you can avoid miscommunication more than how you can improve communication, and give them "rules of thumb" while helping them to trust their instincts.

I'd love to know more about the content you want to provide.

I get nervous giving presentations etc, but I don't mind

You need a bit of a shake otherwise you tend to look and sound boring

Stammering is useful. It makes your communication more natural. It shows others that you can overcome tricky situations. It makes it ok for others to trip, stammer and recover with a smile. The best speakers still stammer and trip up, and recover.

The worst thing is the 3-5 hours beforehand.

Get talking and the hourandahalf will just zip by though. Just keep it structured reasonably.

Start with your overview, no need to be flash or fancy. Just you coming on stage will be enough of a hook. If people chat during your talk, let them. Pause only if it gets too noisy.

Pause both naturally and deliberately. Pause for longer than 10 seconds sometimes, just to see the reaction. Play with your audience.

Start with good examples of bad body language (should be pretty easy, right?). Get them to notice. Show them how you correct yourself.

Get them to notice their own body language. You might even get them to dissociate. 3rd or 4th person!

Activities are good, but make sure you underline the conclusions clearly.

Prioritize your talk using subjects/experiences you really know well. Anything you don't know well, if its important just include it as a small part of something you know well.

Do lots of future pace, mostly conversationally/naturally though. But also give them a formal instruction to future pace.

Instead of thinking of body language in terms of rules, think in terms of flexible physical communication. Break the myths, its body language, but integrated with voice tone, thinking, human connection, physical expression of life, and so on. Emphasize adaptability and self-correction/adjustment.

End positively, laugh off the fact that you have gone overtime because you talk too much, and get them to imagine forward


Rich

I may be teaching you to suck eggs but I have sent you a technique via PM its more Neuro Hypnotic Repatterning than NLP but a useful one to have.

Hi, here's an activity which might be useful, which Wendy Sullivan and I use extensively with middle-sized groups. The only place we wouldn't do it is in a room with fixed, raked seating.

It aims to demonstrate the uniqueness of people's preferences in terms of space and their spatial relationship to people who are aiming to help them. This seems to me as if it might go well with 'body language' rules which can easily be understood as applying equally to everybody. It will also be of very obvious and immediate relevance to nurses - if they can find ways to allow their clients to choose where to place themselves, their results will certainly improve.

The exercise

Get them into pairs. The 'client' is to pretend that the partner is there to help them by having a conversation. The client then has a few minutes to experiment and discover where would be the best and worst place to put them, in relation to themselves. Then swap roles. Five minutes each way is usually enough.

It can be fun going to extremes, with people lying on the floor, standing on furniture etc, but the key learnings tend to be around the fact that while some people love being face-to-face in full eye contact, others can't think at all in this position!

If you have more time, you can also have them exploring different spaces with their partner, such as outdoors, on the stairs, in a lift etc, and discovering where would be the best place to be, and where would be the worst.

Again, the big learning is in the debrief, when people discover how surprising other people's preferences can be.

Here's the version of a combined exercise that appears in our book

our book

d [Amazon UK | Amazon US]

"Where, in your home or office, is the best place for you to be a client
in a Clean Language session?

Start by deciding on a desired outcome for yourself to work with and
writing it on a piece of paper. Take it with you as you try different
spaces in different rooms. If location seems to make no difference to
you, try going to extremes: the very corner of the attic, under the
table, the bathroom etc. You could even try sitting in ‘someone else’s
chair’. Notice what happens.

Ideally, do this with a friend, imagining them as your facilitator as you
place them in relation to you in the various places you try. Spend a
minute or two in each place and notice how you react to being there.
What in the environment is having the most effect on you?"

Hope this is useful.

Judy

Thanks for the suggestions, I am starting to piece something together now. Thanks Judy for that last exercise - think that will really useful.

So far I am thinking about including muscle relaxation i.e. noticing where a client is holding tension and getting them to tense even more and then relax. I am also going to stray slightly from body lang into verbal responses to it! i.e. not using negative commands ' I don't want you to feel nervous!' but phrasing things more positively.

Still in the evolution stage so any further ideas greatly recieved!

xx