During the summer, I made contact with a potential new client on LinkedIn. Communications were smooth and friendly, and the other person (let’s call her “Amelia” – not her real name) was keen for a meeting along with her colleague. So we met after she came back from holidays. 

Amelia was in charge of a group of people who needed to present well to get funding, development, and customers for the new business ideas they were developing in technology. Amiable and enthusiastic, by the end of our discussion, we had agreed that I would introduce the idea of developing presentation skills in an interactive, paid demo lecture to her team as a whole, then they would organize a schedule for the autumn whereby I could continue the training with them in a practical way in small groups.

I gave Amelia a preview of my demo a few days before the real thing. She made some suggestions for small changes. In the actual demo, the audience was very attentive, and I got excellent feedback from both Amelia and the members of her team. She took me to lunch afterwards and we parted company with the understanding that we would start presentation skills training soon and that I should get in touch during the next week to talk details.

I didn’t hear from Amelia again for three weeks.

My first email was four days after the presentation. I thanked Amelia once again for the opportunity to present to her team, and offered some suggestions on what we could do next, including how to organize the groups for training and our contractual arrangements. 

One week after my first email, I sent another message as a reminder. This time, I showed understanding that she might be too busy to respond on email, so I offered time to speak on the phone.

After waiting a second week, I realized email was not working, so I tried to call. No answer. I also called Amelia’s colleague, who had been in the first meeting. No answer there, either. So I wrote a text message to Amelia and waited.

Two days later, I got a phone call from Amelia. Her excuse for not contacting me was that she’d been travelling (although she said the trip had taken only one week). She was very polite and apologised for not being in touch. We discussed the content of my email on how to proceed, including my bill for the demo and that I should draft a contract for our planned work together. Amelia said that she doesn’t always have time to write email, so phone calls would be the best way to contact her. She also informed me that she would be very busy and travelling for a while, so I should wait at least two weeks before contacting her. The three-week lack of contact was a bit strange, but she sounded perfectly reasonable, so I took her at her word.

I didn’t hear from Amelia again for nearly six weeks.

Six days after our phone call, I sent the invoice for the demo to Amelia. I noted that I didn’t expect an immediate reply. My understanding was that she or somebody else would get back to me with the necessary paperwork to ensure I got paid. The payment period was 14 days, so I thought this would be taken care of quickly.

Nine days later, I sent my draft contract with the understanding that Amelia would look over it, we would discuss changes, and come to some agreement. She had told me to wait “at least” two weeks, so I thought that if she’d just got back from travelling, this was a good time to send the contract draft – two weeks and one day after our phone call. 

Twelve days later, I thought that there had been plenty of time to read my draft and pay my bill. I’d received no response to the draft and I hadn’t been sent any paperwork or been paid. So I called Amelia. No answer. 

Two days later, I called her again. No answer.

Four days later, I called her again. No answer. So I wrote an email requesting contact. I said that the invoice was now two weeks late, please pay it. I mentioned the contract draft again. I listed the times I’d tried to call her. I received no reply.

In the meantime, I saw that Amelia had been quite active on LinkedIn. She wasn’t on holiday or sick leave or in some other way indisposed. She was around. She just chose not to respond to my attempts to get in touch.

One week later, I sent a final email in which I wrote plainly that I’d been sending emails for more than a month, and I’d been trying to call her for two weeks. If she did not pay me within the next five days, I would consult a debt collector to ensure I got paid. 

Thirteen minutes later, Amelia sent me a reply on email. 

Amelia offered her “sincere apologies” for not paying, but she implied it was my fault, she never mentioned the draft contract (even though she’d asked for it) and she never gave a reason why she had ignored my many attempts to contact her. She came across as very disingenuous.

Let’s be absolutely clear here. I’m not writing this blog post because I’m bitter about losing a contract. Sometimes contracts fall through – I get that. Maybe somebody doesn’t like the way I do things, the business situation changes, the budget dries up, time for the project is no longer available. It’s part of the risk of doing business. That’s life and I accept it.

What I don’t accept is rudeness and dishonesty. Amelia treated me very poorly. I was not barraging her with messages and calls – I gave her plenty of time to respond. If she didn’t like the way I teach presentation skills, she shouldn’t have given me good feedback. If the business situation changed, or there was no budget or time anymore, she shouldn’t have asked for a contract.  A contract is a serious document. If you request it, it’s your responsibility to acknowledge that you received it, so the sender knows that it was delivered. After that, your task is to make comments to refine it and come to an agreement. If you don’t like terms, you should say so, and give reasons why. 

You can safely disregard unsolicited messages, but if you ask somebody to contact you, and then you ignore them, it looks bad. It looks even worse when you’ve agreed to do business. NEVER ignore the sender when you have specifically asked them to contact you – that’s both unreliable and rude.

This whole charade has made Amelia look dishonest, and by association, she has tarnished the good name of her otherwise very respectable employer. It caused me a lot of headaches as I tried to deal with the situation.

Honesty is essential in business communications. A lack of honest communication stops cooperation, planning, negotiation, discussion, and mutually beneficial business for all. If you are irresponsible, you can be sure that the story will get around. Dishonesty and a refusal to communicate destroy trust and credibility, along with your reputation. 

Reputation can make or break your business. Don’t sabotage yours by being unprofessional.

When I attended primary school in Australia, we had to take a spelling list home almost every night and learn the words for a spontaneous check the next day. I read voraciously from a very early age, so I got excellent marks in spelling, even without revising the words. As a result, I became a little arrogant, and it was quite a shock when I made a mistake. One of the words I got wrong was “woollen” – I’d been reading a lot of American books, so I thought that “woolen”, the American spelling, was correct. I remember that because it surprised me, but as a general teaching method, I’m not sure how effective spelling lists are. 

A quick browse of social media will show you how challenging English spelling is, even for native English speakers who went through school studying their spelling lists. English is not a phonetic language in which you pronounce things as you write them, so even native speakers have to learn to spell. It’s a melting pot of hundreds of languages, with particularly strong influences from Latin, French, German, and Greek. 

Spelling can seem difficult because many of the most common words also have odd spellings. However, there are some patterns and rules. You probably remember some of them from school. There are too many to list here, but the phrase “English spelling rules” comes up with some useful guides on Google.

I can’t stress enough how important good spelling is when writing in English. 

It will make you look professional, you will appear knowledgeable and trustworthy, and as a result, people will be more interested in doing business with you. If your text is riddled with mistakes, people will assume your style of doing business is the same as your writing and avoid you. Poor spelling robs your credibility, especially in marketing copy or on the slides in a sales presentation. I’ve seen expensive, printed brochures littered with so many errors that they could’ve been comical if it wasn’t so careless. Spelling matters.

One of the reasons people get confused about spelling is that it sometimes differs, depending on which variant of English you are using. The main two groups are American and British, and whenever I write or edit for my clients, they have to specify which one they prefer. In modern times, neither is “more correct”, but you should be consistent throughout your company, and if you are marketing to an American audience, the American version is advisable. 

The American lexicographer Noah Webster defined much of the American style in his first dictionary, published in 1828. In his nationalistic pride, he wanted American spelling to be distinct from and – according to him – superior to British spelling. Today, even Commonwealth writers, traditionally using British English, employ a lot of Americanisms because they are so common and America leads in a lot of the global written discourse. As I noted earlier, this difference caused me trouble at school. Even as an adult, I still have difficulty with a few cross-Atlantic variations – for example, I find it hard to spell the word “manoeuvre” the British way. The US variant “maneuver” comes to mind far more easily.

Interestingly, whenever I teach writing in Finland, I’ve noticed that native Finnish speakers rarely make spelling mistakes in English. I find this particularly fascinating because Finnish is a phonetic language, where if you can say it, you can spell it. You might not think that spelling would be a high priority – yet I’ve frequently found Finns to be better English spellers than native English speakers.

Even so, if you’re a Finn, or just generally skilled with English, don’t get overconfident – you might end up looking foolish, as I did! That’s OK when you’re eight years old, but you don’t want linguistic conceit to cause you professional embarrassment. 

If you’re a non-native speaker, most people will tolerate a few mistakes in email. If you’re a native speaker, not so much. But whichever you are, errors are less tolerated on web pages, and very much frowned upon on paper, or in anything that will be professionally published (such as a scientific study). 

So, how do you become a good speller? 

Don’t panic! You don’t need to memorise the dictionary. You could use a spell check, but all those homonyms – words that sound the same but are spelled differently – are going to pass, since they appear to be correct. The Microsoft Word grammar function is good enough that it can spot clear errors such as “There coming to get they’re books over their.” But computer checks are not always reliable, as the differences between words are not always so obvious. Does the rain in Spain fall mainly on the “plane” or the “plain”?

Playing with words can help, but usually words are isolated in games like Scrabble. I believe that the best way to get good at English spelling is to read a lot of English. That’s how I did it. And that’s what the experts recommend. It gives you continual exposure to the language, seeing over and over how words are used in context, aiding your recall and boosting your vocabulary.

In the previous blog, we looked at how common it is to be nervous before a big presentation or performance. It happens to nearly everybody – even seasoned professionals. 

I presented a three-step process to reducing anxiety: 

1. Preparation

2. Just before

3. Delivery

Earlier, I discussed preparation, which happens long before you step onto the stage. The first part of preparation is to prepare your mind by thinking positive and truly believing that you will make a good presentation. The second part is to prepare your materials by writing an outline, notes, and slides, and practising a lot.

All this helps. But how to do you remain calm when you’re at the venue, waiting to take the stage…and when you’re actually on the stage?

In the hour just before your presentation, make sure you do these things:

  • Arrive early to show others that you are professional and organised. It also helps calm you because you’ll be able to test the equipment, get comfortable with being in an unfamiliar room, and feel the camaraderie with other presenters.
  • Use the lavatory so that you are relaxed and not distracted by physiological needs.
  • Drink a little water to keep your mouth and throat lubricated. Nervousness can cause a dry mouth, which makes it harder to speak.
  • Yawn to reduce any constriction in your throat that might tighten your vocal cords and make your voice rise in pitch.
  • Perform isometric exercises like pressing your hands together to loosen up tense muscles and because light exercise reduces anxiety.
  • Walk around to give you different things to look at so you are not constantly thinking about your presentation.
  • Breathe deeply to consciously slow your heart rate and give your brain the oxygen it needs to function well.

Now it’s your turn! You go up onto the stage, and you’re now standing in front of a room full of people. This is what you’ve been preparing for all this time. How do you keep control of yourself?

While you are speaking to the audience – the delivery of your presentation – do these:

  • Start with a smile to show the audience that you are calm and confident, but also friendly and approachable. Nervous people don’t smile.
  • Make eye contact to develop your connection with the audience. You look your friends in their eyes when you talk with them; do the same here.
  • Talk conversationally, as if you’re chatting with a friend, not a group. When you “forget” it’s a group, you will feel more comfortable.
  • Gesture, because most speakers move their hands in some way when they talk. It will make you look and feel more natural.
  • Walk around to disperse nervous energy and hide any involuntary trembling.
  • Maintain good posture to exude confidence. When you look confident, you start to feel confident as well.
  • Imagine the audience is silly (e.g. all wearing funny hats) because it will reduce any feeling of threat they may provoke. It will also help you to smile.

Presentations give you an opportunity to connect with investors, customers, and colleagues. Reduce your nervousness by preparing well, minimising your anxiety just before you present, and keeping yourself calm during delivery. If you do these things, I have no doubt that your presentation will be excellent, and as a result, you will develop confidence in presenting.

One of the things that really worries people about presenting is their anxiety. 

How do you know you’re anxious? If you have any of these: an elevated heart rate, clammy or trembling hands, upset stomach, pale face, sweaty underarms, unsteady voice, confusion, a feeling as if you might faint. Even many professional performers, motivational speakers, and company CEOs feel apprehensive before going on stage. Some talk openly about it in interviews and in their biographies. A few people never get nervous, but they’re very uncommon. Being anxious is the norm, not the exception.

Early in my own career, I was a terrible presenter. Once I got so scared, I froze up and forgot everything I wanted to say. Another time, I developed a nervous giggle and wasn’t able to speak at all, simply because I couldn’t stop laughing. Now I’ve been presenting for almost 30 years. Other than my (very simple) slides, I don’t use notes anymore. Sometimes, I don’t even use slides. I still get butterflies in my stomach just before I speak, but that’s my adrenaline, getting me active and ready to speak. I’m not nervous while I’m talking to the audience.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to present for three decades to become a confident presenter. If you apply a few simple principles, you’d be surprised how quickly you can improve – even as soon as in your next presentation.

Here’s my three-step process to reducing anxiety:

1. Preparation

2. Just before

3. Delivery

Preparation happens long before you step onto the stage. You must prepare both your mind and your material.

To prepare your mind, let’s consider why people get anxious before they speak in public. It’s what we call the “fight or flight” response. Your body is telling you to run away because your brain sees the audience as threatening. You know that all those people will be watching you and judging you and you worry about looking foolish if you fail.

But why do you assume that you’re likely to make a bad presentation? Perhaps your last presentation didn’t go so well. Who cares? Look back on it to see what you did wrong and learn so that this time, you’re going to impress everybody.

When professional athletes practise, they’re not thinking: “I can’t do this, I’m no good, I’m going to fail” – not even if their last game, or their last season, was awful. What they’re thinking is: “I’m going to make the shot, I’m going to win the race, I’m going to score the point!” It puts them in a success mindset, which makes them far more likely to succeed.

If you think you’ll do badly, you’re coaching yourself to fail. Why not take it the other way? What if your presentation was as successful as it could be? You don’t have to be perfect, but you could still amaze the audience. Instead of expecting failure, believe that you will give an excellent presentation. There’s every reason to expect that you’ll be great – especially if you put in the effort beforehand. 

That effort is to prepare your material well. Many nervous presenters are anxious because they know their slides are not good and they don’t really know what they want to say. Good preparation will reduce your anxiety by at least half. This means:

  • make an outline with a clear structure
  • write notes (not for speaking, but to organize your thoughts)
  • create quality slides well before the event (not the night before)
  • do lots of practice 

The more you present, the less you need to practise every single presentation. Your previous public speaking counts as practice and adds to your overall experience. For example, I still need to rehearse a little, to put everything in order in my mind. However, I don’t need to take nearly as long to get ready, because I have many years of accumulated preparation. 

Unfortunately, a novice presenter doesn’t have a lot of experience to draw on. I suppose that’s why you’re reading this – to get some tips from somebody who’s done it already, so you can improve faster, without taking years to do it.

Yet even when you prepare as much as you possibly can, if you’re new to presenting, you might still feel panic rising when you’re at your event and your turn is coming up. You see the crowd and realise it’s no longer a rehearsal: this is the real deal.

So, in the next blog, we’ll look at steps 2 and 3 to reducing your anxiety: what you can do to calm yourself just before going on stage, and how to keep cool during your presentation.

Consider the following two sentences:

“The cow ate the grass.”

“The grass was eaten by the cow.”

The first sentence is what we call active voice. From the very start, both the subject and the actor of the sentence (the cow) is clear. We see it take action (ate) on the recipient of its action (the grass). By contrast, the second sentence is what we call passive voice. The subject (the grass) is now the recipient of the action (eaten), and we don’t find out who or what did the eating (the cow) until the end.

In modern English usage, we tend to favour active voice where possible. The grammar is simpler, so it’s easier to express and understand. In this case, it uses a past simple verb (ate) to express direct action. The passive version employs a past simple auxiliary verb (was) and the past participle (eaten).

There are several reasons why people don’t like passive structures. Sometimes they think that the passive voice is overly formal or snobbish. The grammar is more complex, which can make it harder to follow, even for native speakers, and this problem is compounded for non-native learners. For example, less fluent speakers sometimes believe that the start of a sentence is always the actor, so they might think that the grass ate the cow, however unlikely that may sound. It’s also easy for learners to miss auxiliary verbs, since English is very particular about these and they don’t exist in many languages.

However, passive voice has its uses, and a fluent English speaker should be able to use it properly in both speech and writing. It is used to:

  • describe processes, such as the sentence introducing this bullet list: “It is used to…”
  • explain what happened to the subject: “I was born in Sydney.”
  • say who or what did something: “The Call of the Wild was written by Jack London.”
  • tell how something was done: “The house was built quickly.”
  • write in academic and other more formal contexts: “Dickens is regarded by many as a great Victorian novelist.”
  • talk about something when the actor is unknown: “Ten thousand dollars were stolen.”

Passive structures used to be more common in English than they are today. It is interesting to read novels and newspaper reports from the 1800s and early 1900s, which use it fairly often.

Some languages feature passive structures more often than English. For example, Finnish uses passive voice quite a lot. Even if a Finn is very good with English, they need to look out for passive expressions in both speaking and writing. 

A lot of business today is done between two or more non-native speakers all communicating in English, and using the passive voice incorrectly runs a high risk of misunderstanding. I suggest that you prefer one voice over the other according to the culture you are interacting with. If it is a formal culture, use more passive voice. If it is a less formal culture, choose active voice. 

But whichever dominates, always use a mix of the two. Fluent English speakers move between active and passive voice as appropriate for the context. Become a master of both to impress your readers and your listeners!

In the spring of 2019, I had the pleasure of being involved in the Product Development Project (PDP) at the Aalto University campus in Espoo. The PDP course is a year-long hands-on training experience that brings groups of students together from multiple disciplines and universities all over the world – simulating a multinational company – to work on real product development assignments from real companies. The projects for the 2018-19 academic year covered everything from portable x-ray machines to detachable cargo ships and robot dog trainers. You can see all 12 of them here, under the heading “2019”: http://pdp.fi/project-gallery/

Dr Sanna Kotisaari, neurologist and CEO of health sector startup Future Memory Care (FMC), asked her student team “Mind Matter” to design a new kind of day care centre for patients with early-stage memory disorders, including a prototype treatment room. The team comprised young people studying business, design, IT and architecture, all of whom combined their talents to complete the project on schedule – as would be required in a professional setting.  

It started in September 2018, and had to be finished by 15 May 2019, when they had to make a 10-minute presentation about their project to the student body, university teaching staff and guests at a campus auditorium. Two days later, on 17 May, they then got the chance to show off their prototype (pictured) at the PDP Gala, a simulated trade fair at the Aalto Design Factory.

A few of them had done public speaking, but the students didn’t have much experience, especially in presenting to an audience this large. But even for very accomplished speakers, launching a new product can be daunting.

My role in this group was to help improve their presentation skills. Using a recording of their speaking performances at the half-way project event in January as a baseline, I first explained what they were doing right. For young, inexperienced presenters, they were surprisingly good – they already had stage presence, clear voices, and impressive slides. I only had to tweak these with a little advice on stance and gestures, adjusting the speed, and simplifying the content for clarity. I’ve seen so-called professionals, years into their careers, who have not presented nearly as well as these young talents.

As good as they were, they were still somewhat unsure of themselves. Confidence comes with experience, but they didn’t have the time to do the amount of practising that would produce a calm self-assurance on the stage. So my coaching then focused on psychology. I showed them how to reduce the nervousness they felt before presenting by changing the way they think. I also gave them a few small relaxation exercises to do beforehand, and a couple of things they can do mentally while on stage that automatically calm them down.

Several members of the team who were not presenting at the PDP event also wanted to practise speaking. This was for two reasons: 1. At first we didn’t know who the final presenters would be, so we wanted to prepare as many people as possible; 2. Presentation skills increase most people’s confidence, and without a doubt, will help them get a job, advance in their careers, build both professional and personal relationships, and generally improve their lives.

The Mind Matter speakers made an excellent presentation on 15 May, and the whole team impressed visitors to the Gala as they pitched the project and explained how the prototype worked. In fact, they won the “Most Popular Exhibitor” vote at the Gala and even moved a few people to tears.

I greatly enjoyed working with the PDP students across this course. Their enthusiasm, commitment and thirst for learning was refreshing and inspiring. I’m sure they’re going to do amazing things as they help to design the future. 

It’s our fifteenth birthday! I would like to extend a big, warm THANK YOU to all of my customers, business partners, mentors and friends who have helped me build Koala Consulting and Training up from nothing into the recognizable brand it is today. 

It wasn’t always like this. Koala Consulting and Training was officially registered as a new business at the Finnish Patent and Registry Office, on 22 April, 2004. 

On that day, I didn’t yet have a logo – the cute koala head came later. There was only one client, who was yet to pay their first invoice. My contact list was short. It was a slow start, as it is for many fledgling businesses. 

It’s hard to believe that I’ve already been in operation for one and a half decades. Is it really so long? Those 15 years have flown by! 

There’s no party, but in recognition of this milestone, I’ve started “paying it forward” (as we say in English). This means giving pro bono guidance to others who need it to acknowledge the generosity I’ve been shown by my own teachers. Recently, I’ve been mentoring students attending the Design Factory at Aalto University in presentation skills. It doesn’t feel like work – it’s a lot of fun!

To wrap up, I once again would like to thank everyone who has worked with me throughout the last 15 years. Here’s to the next 15 years – may they be just as interesting, challenging and enjoyable, and hopefully, with you to join me along the way.

As I noted in this blog in December 2018, people learning English can sometimes get frustrated with prepositions. Please read that one again if you would like a short introduction to what prepositions are, and how they work grammatically. Let’s remind ourselves that despite their apparent lack of logic, prepositions are quite simple: they show the relationship of one thing to another, or the position an object is in.

The most common types of prepositions refer to time, place, and movement.

Consider this sentence: “I am at work.”

In the English sentence above, “at” explains the relationship between “I” (a noun) and “work” (another noun). In this example, it is a preposition of place.

Generally speaking, we use “at” like this when we want to say that something is located in a general area. When you are at work, you could be anywhere around that workplace – in your office, or in a meeting, or having lunch. All of these places are “at work”.

When you go home, and are now at home, you are not in one specific location. You could be in any of the rooms in your house, or in your back yard, or even on your roof. When you are at the door, you could be to the left of it, to the right of it, or right in front of it, on the inside of it, or on the outside of it. You could be eating your dinner at your table, and that means anywhere around the table.

However, if you decide to work remotely from home, you are not at work. Instead, you are working from home. You can only be at work when you are at home if you have a home office and your home really is your workplace.

If you arrange to meet your friends at the movies, then good luck finding them! The building housing a multiplex cinema can be quite big, and you haven’t specified where you will be – you could be outside the front doors, or in the foyer, about to buy popcorn, or next to one of the theatres. So, it’s better to pinpoint the exact location: “I’ll meet you at the Supermovie Multiplex by the box office.” With this kind of precision, everybody knows where you will be without further explanation.

“At” can be a preposition of movement. You could say: “She fired an arrow at the balloon.” More abstractly, you could say “We directed our marketing at young professionals.” Both of these suggest some kind of aim and movement in the direction of a target, although one refers to physical action and the other is more psychological.

“At” can also be a preposition of time. Many people go away at Christmas or at Easter. You might ask your friend: “What are you doing at New Year?” These are general periods, like the general location.

Note that the British say “at the weekend”, which fits the general period idea (some time across two days away from work). However, the Americans and Australians say “on the weekend.” It’s possible nobody knows why, but if you manage to find out, please tell me! This regional difference makes no sense.

Since English is a language of exceptions, here comes an exception: we also use “at” for an exact time. For example, “I’ll meet you at three o’clock”, or “It happened at midnight” or “The train leaves at 9:43”.

People employ “at” in other ways too, but these are the most common ones when it is working as a preposition. How else have you seen it used?

How can you make your team into excellent presenters?

You could send them to training. That’s good for both basic skills and refining high-level skills. It helps, but to get really good, they’ll need something more.

What’s the main thing participants get out of skills training? Of course, they learn techniques, but if it’s a good programme, they also get lots of personal feedback. Everybody wants to know what they’re doing right, what they’re doing wrong, and how to make their presentations better.

In real life, presenters hardly ever receive clear feedback. Most audiences applaud at the end, no matter how good or bad the presentation was, because it’s expected and considered polite. This is why courses that give feedback are usually more popular – it provides the raw material for personal development.

But feedback should be continuous. If you want your team to excel, you’re going to have to ensure that they continue to get plenty of feedback on their presenting after they return from a training course.

In a course, the trainer and the participants both have the opportunity to give and receive feedback directly. The problem is, this is neither practical nor appropriate in most business settings – for example, when you present to the board of directors, or speak to a customer, you can hardly ask for verbal feedback or give out a form at the end. Feedback forms are standard practice in training settings, but many people don’t fill them out, and if they do, they don’t say anything meaningful.

So how can your people get the feedback they need to develop their presentation skills and their long-term confidence as presenters?

My suggestion is to give feedback yourself and through that, create a culture of feedback within your team. Take the time after presentations to give the presenter comments on their public speaking skills. Don’t wait for a formal development discussion. Do it as soon as possible after the presentation, when it’s still fresh in your minds. It only takes a couple of minutes, but it can have a big effect if you do it well.

Remember that feedback is intended to improve the next presentation, not bring down the presenter. Many presenters are perfectionists and think their presentation was terrible, no matter how good it was. This is especially important to remember if you have team members new to presenting, but it also applies to some experienced presenters as well. Clear feedback from a trusted source helps them see themselves differently.

You should follow some ground rules when giving feedback:

  • Make it private, not public – unless they would like it to be open to others.
  • Give positive feedback first. This shows nervous presenters that they were not the disaster they assume they were and are actually doing something well.
  • Make positive feedback about specific behavior. Don’t generalise and say, “That was awesome!” Do say, “I really liked how you…”
  • Do the same with negative feedback. Don’t say, “That sucked!” Do say, “It could be a bit better if you…”
  • Always be honest. It can be tempting to say only nice things to avoid hurting the presenter’s feelings. Speak the truth, but be optimistic and diplomatic.
  • Give only two or three items of the most important feedback at one time. A long list makes it impossible to focus on anything in the next presentation and tends to overwhelm the recipient.

Presentations can make or break a business. Ensure your people get better at speaking in front of an audience by giving them good quality feedback. They will gain confidence and your business will thrive.

When I first arrived in Finland in 1995, I got quite a shock when I came from the sub-tropical weather of the eastern Australian summer in Brisbane to study in the icy environment of eastern Finland in Joensuu. But I loved it!

This January, I got the chance to go back on a short business trip, once again in the heart of winter. Of course, there were a few changes, yet Joensuu didn’t really look hugely different to how it was 24 years ago. I could easily find my way around the downtown area, and it was fun to reminisce.

After that, I travelled by bus to Kuopio, almost 140 kilometres away in a roughly north-westerly direction. It was my first time in the northern Savo area, but I didn’t remain in the urban centre. I went on a short hike for a couple of hours.

Just a short walk away from the flat where I was staying, there was a thick forest covered in deep snow. The temperature was a cool -15oC. To an Australian like me, that sounds very cold, but with the right clothes on, you don’t really notice the chill at all. Only the uncovered parts of your face feel the pinch of the frosty air. It seemed a long way from civilization, but as you can see in the photo, I was actually close to the famous Puijo ski jump – but not quite so close that any jumpers could reach me!

Although I’m no botanist, I believe the trees in this area are mostly spruce and pine. They were all covered in a blanket of white snow. The only humans present were me and my two friends. Besides our dog, there were no animals: no deer, bears, rabbits, birds, or even insects. The air was still, and it wasn’t snowing. It was very calm and very quiet.

Research tells us that there are plenty of health benefits to walking in a forest, including lowered blood pressure, reduced stress, a better immune system, improved concentration – the list is long. I really noticed how good I felt! Our visit to the forest was spontaneous, and I’m glad I went. At the time, I said to my friends that it was almost a spiritual experience.

The blog on this site is mostly about work. But my point in this post is to encourage you to take a break when you can and enjoy local nature spots, even when you travel on business. It’s good for you, and you’ll work more efficiently afterwards.

Happy New Year! I look forward to seeing you in 2019.