Mic'd up with Mark Stephenson

Mark is a product manager at Fujifilm, and he loves communicating with people and explaining technologies in a simple way. He started speaking in public because his dad was a preacher, but he faced challenges trying to be someone else. Mark believes that people remember how they feel when someone speaks, rather than the content of their words. He emphasizes the importance of creating connections and engagement with the audience. Mark's preparation process involves identifying key takeaways and feelings he wants to convey, and he uses PowerPoint slides with minimal text and visual aids to support his presentation. So hi Mark, and thank you very much for taking the time out today to talk to us about all things confidence and public speaking. Before we get into the questions, please can you just give us a bit of an introduction to yourself, what's your job, what's your involvement in public speaking, and we'll go from there. Okay, I work for Fujifilm. Not the bit that makes cameras, but the bit that makes things commercial printers to print books, magazines, newspapers, flyers, leaflets, business cards, anything with an image on it, and it's getting more and more. And I find myself in the role of being called a product manager, but only doing the fun bits, which is great. I get a lot of opportunity to speak to people either on video or face to face in meetings. Just last week, we had a series of meetings with 100 people in each session, and I love it. I just love communicating with people. I love words, and I love using them to, particularly in my role, explain technologies in a simple way, so that even someone like me can understand it. So I deliberately don't try and understand technical things too much, so that I can keep a layman's head on it. I think that's really important, that ability to be able to translate technical into language that everybody can understand. So how did you start your journey into being able to stand up and speak in front of people? You mentioned there about you do things on video, you also do things face to face in meetings and large groups. So how did you actually start about getting into that? It was all my dad's fault. My dad was a preacher. So he led a church, and every Sunday and sometimes on a Thursday, Bible study, he'd be up the front speaking. So I got used to that cadence that a preacher has. If you watch Martin Luther King or somebody like that, of building crescendos and speaking in triplets to enforce a point. So I started to have a go at preaching when I was younger. And yeah, with limited success. It was probably not my ideal place to be, but it certainly got me used to that, looking like a rabbit in the headlights in front of a crowd of people who are waiting. Even more pressure in business, they're waiting for you to tell them what God's thinking. That's a tough gig. You dared to solve all of their problems in one day. You talked about rabbit in the headlights and that gave you that opportunity to kind of move through that. But what was the biggest challenge you had when you first decided that, actually, I want to try this out, but where do I start? What held you back or the challenges that you had to overcome in doing that? I guess it is fear of being judged by others. In Christian circles, there's a lot of emphasis placed on a preacher's ability to build emotion and faith in people. And so there's a lot of pressure to be at the top of that league and try and perform in that way. And I guess I was just not being me. I was trying to be somebody else. I was trying to be someone 20 or 30 years older than me as a teenager. And I realized since then, I can only be me. The only person I've got just needs to be the good bits of me, not the stumbling and saying, um, type. My big challenge is still now, and I said this to you earlier. My challenge now is I just edited a video of myself speaking last week to go on YouTube and spent 10 minutes finding all the urns and taking them out. I hope no one noticed the edit. I think it's really important, though, that people understand those challenges still present themselves. And actually, it's all part of being human. And when you go and hear somebody speak, whether that or in you standing in front of the meeting, as you say, it's about being yourself, because what people are invested in is that connection. And there's those percentages isn't there about the factors. It's not. I think it's what people hear isn't based upon the content of what you say. A lot of it is around your body language, the pace, the tone, the intonation versus actual words. So when you stand up and talk in front of people, sometimes we're so focused on the content, making sure that we get it technically correct. We don't say, um, we don't say, oh, we don't make a mistake. We don't stumble. But there's a very, very small percentage of what people take in is the word. And we do sometimes, I think, forget that into when we do stand up and talk in front of people. We wonder we don't want to be judged from saying something that isn't right or isn't accurate. Actually, how much are people going to remember from a word? Exactly. When I'm preparing, I look at the amount of words on the slide. And I think, how many people are going to actually read this? And then moving on from that, how much of this are people going to remember? I mean, there have been surveys and the percentage is really low. I know what people what our job is when we're speaking to people is to make people feel confident in our cause or our company, to make them feel like they can relate to us. And they go away thinking, I enjoyed that. I want to deal with that person. I want to interact more with that person, whether it's their company, whether it's their charity, or whether it's their campaign, whatever that is. We're just there to build that, that confidence in the message that we've got. And the details, half of them will be forgotten. And you can follow up with details. I was talking to somebody about this, about actually what people remember how they felt when they hear somebody speak and give information. As you say, what you're trying to create is that engagement. So they come to you to have a conversation. You can then give them more information, give them something to read, something to take away. Trying to get all of that over in the moment, as you say, slides or presentations that have way too much text on the screen is my biggest bug yet. One, you can't read them half the time, because the text is so small. But two, interestingly, I was talking to somebody about an interview prep the other day. And they sent me their, they got a question they needed to present on, they sent me their presentation. And because I knew what they were needing to do was effectively, they needed to sell themselves in that interview. They said, reduce the number of words on the slide, because then they're going to be listening to you, not reading what's on the slide. Their attention is fully on you and what you're saying. And again, that is sort of like that aspect of remembering about you're creating those connections and engagement with people. Yeah, I mean, case in point last week, one of the presenters was an Italian guy, young fella. And the first thing he said when he walked in the room was, I hate presenting. Number one, he was presenting in English, and he was Italian. So hats off to him, I couldn't do couldn't do the opposite. And after I heard him present the first time he had slides with six or seven points on each side, and he went through each one of them. And he'd been given that he had no choice, he had to show the slides. And I just said, when you do it next time we do it tomorrow, try just picking one or two points off that slide and talking about them, the important ones, pull out the really important points, mention them and move on. And he was brilliant. The next time he managed to focus attention, the slide meant something because he was saying, yes, there's a lot on the side, don't expect to read it all, but let me just point out point number three. And for him, he said, thank you, that worked for me. So it's, there's always a way around it. And then again, as you say, we walked in the room, I hate presenting, so many people that actually have to stand up and present, they go into this process of I hate doing this, which straight away means you're not going to be in the best mindset, which doesn't help you remember what you're going to say and doesn't help you think about flow and connection and talking because it's a conversation. But you mentioned about prep before, and in terms of thinking about how you prepare for what you're doing, you did mention about information on the side. Do you have a step process that you go through before you go and do any type of meeting or when you're doing a video? Almost like what's your preparation routine? It's slightly dangerous because it builds up ahead of steam, the closer the date gets. Yeah. So I start to think about what I'm going to say. And what I will think about is, is what are the key takeaways I want people to have? What, what feeling do I want them to have? And if they forget everything else, what, what two points do they need to need to remember? So it generally probably starts around a week. I don't recommend this as a method. So it's around a week before when I'll go straight to PowerPoint. I don't really write things down very much. I go straight to PowerPoint and I'll just put in key slides of those things. And there's different methods, different ways that I've, I've read. I mean, one is to have three points. You know, homiletics is another one where three points all start with the same letter helps you remember them and the audience remember them too. And get those three points down and then find something that proves those three points. So I'm going to tell you how valuable this is. This is what it is. And this is how I prove it. So each one has got stages. So I start my presentation with what value am I going to bring you from the next however many minutes. And then here are three key values and what the value is, what the, what the thing is, you know, the, the actual feature, you know, whether it was a widget or a whirly bar or whatever it's called. And then behind that you say, and this is what it will do for you, or this is what it did for my customer or the person I met the other day. And then I start to flesh it out and I try and use photographs and illustrations and not text. Yeah. All the text is there for is to remind me what to say next because people don't take in lots of information like that, but they might see a picture and they might see that picture again and they might see it again. So if it's in a, it's already one that's in a brochure, it's already one that's going to be shown in a video with another stage, capture that, put it on your slide. So it stays in people's head. I like that. I haven't thought about that before because it isn't in memories and music and images associate, you associate memories with, and that's the trigger to remember certain things. But that use of pictures is something that I've seen used really impactfully. And as you say, cause actually you see the image and then the person talks and you start to associate with that image, with what they're saying. And therefore in your own head, you've created a memory based upon what they said, not necessarily accurately can repeat what they said to you, but the general feel again, as you say, what, what you walk away with in that perspective. So if you were providing advice to anybody who wanted to start out or to enhance their confidence to be able to stand up and speak up or out, and that could be physical or metaphorical stage, which I talk about in the other interviews where not everybody wants to stand up in front of an audience, but quite a lot of people want to have the confidence to stand up and say their piece and get that view in a team, or even just be able to present in front of the team meeting with confidence. So what three things would you share with the audience where they could look at tapping into their own inner confidence? First one is to be you, don't try and imitate anybody else. There's plenty of advice out there about things you should do while presenting or shouldn't do while presenting. And your version of that reflects you, you can't take everything. So I tend to, you know, just like we're talking now, we're saying things we're thinking, Oh yeah, that's a good idea, I might use that. So pick the things that resonate with you. So you and your personality is what's going to sell this. You won't get it by reading a script or just trying to emulate somebody. Second thing, touch something, whether it's podium, chair, whether it's just holding a pen in your hand, touching something makes you human. It just gives you that, that thing that you, you are a little bit mobile, you can reach out, even if it's, you know, if you're standing in the middle of a room with nothing else, then touch your trousers or your jacket or something. It just brings across something of a human into it. I do it without thinking now. I don't even think I'm doing it. I don't lean on a podium, but I'll put my hand on it, for example. And then the third thing is the thing I always do, find the smilers, look in the audience, find somebody who's doing just what you're doing now, nodding and smiling and talk to them. Fix them all the way through. If there's more than one, great, you can change your gaze from one side or the other and talk to them. If someone's on their phone or whatever else, then lead them to it. I do know a guy who's a brilliant presenter, he does it for a living. And he says, when I find somebody not paying attention, that's my, that's my challenge, is to get them to pay attention, is to do something to make them look at me and to get them away from whatever else they're doing, however important it is. But yeah, I guess if you're doing it every day, you do add these things to make, make your job more interesting, especially if it's presenting something for the 10th time, a trade show or something. But yeah, there's those three things, be you, touch something, find the smilers. Amazing. I love that. It's interesting you say touch something, I never thought about it. I am so much more comfortable if I have something in my hand. And it is bizarre, it's almost that aspect of not knowing what to do with your hands. And that's something that a lot of people do say, you know, you do see people standing around a lecture because they're like, I don't know what else to do. Whereas I prefer to move around the stage because I use my hands quite a lot, but I feel more grounded if I've got a clicker or a pen or just something in your hand. And then the smilers one is an interesting point as well, because when I co-hosted, again, I felt more comfortable because you've got somebody to play off. So you're able to get that constant reassurance. And I guess the comfort that the person who you're with is going to smile at you when you're presenting, hopefully, unless you said something completely off track and they're thinking, what are you doing? But yeah, I love that aspect of actually pick out a smiler because somebody else that I interviewed also said the same as the person you mentioned, where they pick out the person who's not paying attention because then that's a personal challenge. But it's what works for you. I think that's the other thing. Be you. Find what works for you, which is amazing. Talking about walking around, you can walk around too much and it can be distracting. And if you get nervous, you walk around even more. I tend to walk around because I'm walking up to the slide and wave my arms around, pointing at things, because it's a technical presentation, so I'm pointing to stuff. But one thing to think about when you're walking is walk when you change slides. So click, walk to the side of the screen, stop. Deliver your point. Don't move. Deliver your point. Next slide. Walk again. When it's on the screen, when you're making your point, stop. Deliver your line again, which I picked up from another speaker. And it makes people think, oh, he stopped. It must be important. It's like a pause. Like the pauses I can't do and say um instead. Well, that was what was going through my head in the conversation we've had before about the silences. It's that natural pause. Yeah. You build up the expectation. Walk whilst you're changing the slides. Let the information sink in. Then you say, the signal is, I'm going to say something because I've stopped moving. Yeah. So if you watch TV series, if there's a change of scene in the TV show, they will, the screen will go perhaps momentarily blank and then they'll show an establishing shot. It'll be maybe of the building. The next scene is going to take place in or cars going down the street because the next scene is on the side of the street. And it's like that. It's giving everyone a chance to take in what they've just heard. You know, is she really leaving him? Oh my God. And then the next scene is, oh, now she's telling somebody about, you know, she's not going to leave him at all. But in between there's that little gap that helps you take it in, think of the consequences and then take, then ready, you're ready for the next scene. Then it's not all coming out. You bang, bang, bang. Amazing. I love that. I mean, that's definitely, I'm going to, I'm going to leave it on that note because I feel as though that's quite a, it's an impactful point to make. Well, Mark, thank you so much for your time today and sharing your experiences and your top three things to enhance people's confidence. Oh, thank you. It's been, it's been fun. Enjoyed it. And I enjoyed the rest of the podcast that you do, the mic drop things. It's, you can always learn from people. Yeah. And no matter how many times you've done it, you can always get a little bit better or you can just be more useful to somebody else, you know, bring out more, bring out more from what you do to make you more effective. I mean, it's thought they talk about the 1%, don't they? The 1% increases. So it is every time you hear somebody talking about something, you'll always take something away from it. No matter how small. Thank you very much, Mark. Thank you. I will. There we go.