Um, er, you know, if you’ve ever wondered whether it’s worth the effort to break a verbal tic habit, listen to Caroline Kennedy. She finally talked to the media about her quest to become a New York Senator. She should have worked with a media coach first.

I’m sure Kennedy is a smart, knowledgeable woman, but after hearing her interviews you’d never know it. As an example, here’s what she said when asked by the NY Times what sets her apart from other candidates:

“I think that there’s a range of views in the Democratic Party, and you know, I am a proud Democrat. Those are the values, you know — middle class tax relief, helping working families, fixing the health care system — those are the national priorities right now. So those are the issues that I would expect — I mean, I am a Democrat, that is, you know — I am trying to become a Democratic senator.”

The Times interview transcript showed that Kennedy said “you know” 130 times. In a 30 minute interview with the NY Daily News, the total was even worse. She said “you know” more than 200 times, with “um” almost as often.

We’re all guilty, myself included, of using verbal tics in our conversations. But when it becomes bad enough that people start counting, it’s time to take action. No matter how smart you are, when you use fillers, people perceive that you are unsure and lack credibility.

Granted, the habit is difficult to break. You must be vigilant every moment of every day for three or four weeks, monitoring each conversation and voice mail. Friends and family have to help with feedback. Ultimately, the key is learning to substitute silence for the non-words.

The best medicine I know of is prescribed by Toastmasters clubs. Every time speakers use fillers during meetings, they hear a bell or buzzer. For many, it’s a rude awakening.

As for Caroline — whether she wins the Senate seat or not, she needs to lose the “you knows.”

Depending on which party you prefer, speeches during the Democratic and Republican conventions are either dazzling or disgusting. But politics aside, I find many of them illuminating and worth study because they are often written by the best speech writers in the business.

Supposedly, Michelle Obama wrote her own speech delivered Monday night at the Democratic convention. Even so, I’m sure there was plenty of input from the professionals. Two things in that speech stood out for me, lessons that I try to emulate myself as well as convey to my clients: using concrete examples and telling anecdotes.

Rather than just claiming Barack helped people on the streets of Chicago, Michelle made it come alive with specifics, “setting up job training to get people back to work and after school programs to keep kids safe — working block by block to help people lift up their families.”

She didn’t just speak in generalities about the spirit of people in America, but instead talked about “People who work the day shift, kiss their kids goodnight, and head out for the night shift — without disappointment, without regret — that goodnight kiss a reminder of everything they’re working for. The military families who say grace each night with an empty seat at the table. The servicemen and women who love this country so much, they leave those they love most to defend it.”

Obama personalized the speech and told brief anecdotes about her father who had muscular dystrophy as well as remembering the first speech she heard Barack give.

On Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton gave what was probably one of the most difficult speeches of her career, trying to assuage those who voted for while satisfying everyone else that she showed enough support for Obama. Again, politics aside, I think it was a well-written speech with specifics, anecdotes, humor and interesting uses of language.

For me, the Harriet Tubman story about helping slaves on the underground railroad was very effective, especially because of its repeated phrase: keep going, keep going, keep going.

Another well constructed part of speech used the repetition of “more” and “less:”

“But we don’t need four more years … of the last eight years. More economic stagnation … and less affordable health care. More high gas prices … and less alternative energy. More jobs getting shipped overseas … and fewer jobs created here. More skyrocketing debt … home foreclosures … and mounting bills that are crushing our middle class families. More war … less diplomacy. More of a government where the privileged come first … and everyone else comes last.”

A couple of clever things I also liked: the sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits and the play on the Republicans’ convention site: “With an agenda like that, it makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities. Because these days they’re awfully hard to tell apart.”

And then the best line in the speech: “I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?”

Of course we all know that delivery is a critical piece of any speech. I thought both women did well, using gestures, inflection and pausing. Without actually witnessing it ourselves, we can’t imagine what it’s like to speak to an audience of 20,000. You could tell by the way Hillary carried herself on the stage that she was the most experienced at speaking to large audiences.

Can’t wait to hear Bill Clinton and then the Republicans.

Every day in boardrooms and conference centers across the country, thousands of people are acting out a charade they rarely talk about. Speakers deliver PowerPoint presentations, pretending that their audiences understand and enjoy them. Meanwhile, those watching the presentations play their own parts, pretending to pay attention, to comprehend, and to care.

Maybe it’s time to finally admit what almost everyone knows: the emperor has no clothes! The majority of PowerPoint presentations are boring and unintelligible. Very seldom do they promote any kind of understanding and ultimately, learning.

Then why do so many smart people continue to play the game, knowing that for both presenters and listeners, it’s a waste of time? They do it because everyone else does it that way, it’s always been done that way, because that’s the way their company or organization expects it to be done, and especially because to change will take more time and effort.

Ban Bullet Points

The main problem with boring PowerPoint presentations is bullet points; slide after slide filled with bullets, sub-bullet points, and sub-sub-bullet points. Unfortunately, PowerPoint (and Keynote) templates encourage that mind-numbing format by leaving placeholders for titles and bullets.

According to the findings of John Sweller at the University of New South Wales, Australia, people cannot read and listen well at the same time. He calls it the cognitive load theory.

“It is effective to speak to a diagram or chart, because it presents information in a different form,” Sweller told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2007. “But it is not effective to speak the same words that are written, because it is putting too much load on the mind and decreases your ability to understand what is being presented.”

Ditch the Data Dump

Richard Mayer, an educational psychology professor and researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, reports similar findings. Our working memory (or short-term memory), the part of the mind focused on a presentation, briefly holds information while working to integrate it into long-term memory. But working memory is limited and can only absorb information in small chunks.

Unfortunately, the average PowerPoint presentation dumps huge amounts of data in a short period of time, assuming that once that information is sent, the listener will receive and remember it intact. But delivering a presentation that way is like sending a fire hose full of water to an audience that has the capacity to drink only drops at a time.

Create Three Presentations in One

So how do we make our presentations more interesting, understandable and effective? First, think of your PowerPoint as an audiovisual aid, not an audiovisual crutch. The slides aren’t there for your benefit, to help you remember your presentation. Instead, they should help guide the audience by supporting visually what you are saying orally.

Ideally, a presentation will have three different parts. First are the slides that the audience sees, containing visuals and as few words as possible. These slides should never be able to stand alone. If they do, there’s no reason for you to be there. Instead, just mail it in.

The second part is the notes that only you will see. This is where you list the points you want to make and supporting information, the stuff that used to be in your bullet points. You can have the notes in front of you while you deliver the presentation.

Third is the written handout you give to the audience. This can include the main points as well as more in-depth information and back-up data that is too detailed and complicated to include in your presentation.

Stop Making “Slideuments”

The only way to improve PowerPoint presentations is to stop creating what Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen, calls a “slideument,” a combination slide and document. To save time, people want to plan their presentation so it can serve as both projected visuals and stand-alone handouts. That way they can kill two birds with one stone. But as Reynolds says, the only thing “killed” is effective communication. You end up with a bad slide and a bad document.

It’s difficult to fight this disfunctional culture of PowerPoint. It’s engrained in our workplaces, our churches, our schools. But I sense the movement for change picking up steam. You have a choice: continue to feed the problem with PowerPoints that don’t do anything but bore the audience; or work to change the way things have always been done by creating presentations that engage, enlighten and entertain.

If the upcoming Presidential election were about who is the best public speaker, Barack Obama would win by a landslide. But we aren’t that superficial; that isn’t how we determine who will run our country for the next four years. Or is it?

The way candidates come across during their presentations directly effects their likability and credibility, which in turn influences whether or not they appeal to the public.

We all know the impact of the first Nixon/Kennedy debate in 1960. Much has been written about how Richard Nixon, who refused makeup, looked pale and sickly. During cut-aways, he wiped sweat from his face. Meanwhile, a tanned, handsome John Kennedy appeared cool and calm. People who heard the confrontation on the radio believed Nixon had won. But those who watched it on TV overwhelmingly favored JFK.

In this election, the contrast seems almost as vivid when the candidates read their speeches from a TelePrompter. Obama retains his natural eloquence and charisma. John McCain comes across as wooden, phony and unfriendly.

Ironically, in person, and often in interviews and speeches where he’s expressing himself extemporaneously, McCain is as charming as Obama. He’s funny and self-effacing, authentic, friendly and engaged. But then give him a script he has to read word for word and watch that natural charisma disappear.

This is true of most people who try to read speeches, whether with or without a TelePrompter. They are so concerned about the words they are reading, they lose the timing, pausing, and conversational character of regular speech. Also gone are their natural gestures, eye contact and facial expressions.

One side note: Often, the speaker isn’t the only one at fault. Being able to come across conversationally is directly related to how a speech is written. If the writer drops contractions (saying “do not” instead of “don’t”), uses big words and long sentences, even the best speakers will have a difficult time being natural.

People can learn to read a speech effectively — Obama has — but it’s very difficult. Like any skill, one has to work at it seriously and consistently. I’m sure McCain has been coached on how to read better, but I doubt that in the last months of a grueling campaign he’s going to have the time or inclination to improve.

The best thing McCain’s staff could do to help their candidate win is give him an outline or bullet points and let him speak spontaneously. Of course that’s risky. The stakes are high. With no script to fall back on, he’s more likely to make a mistake and say something damaging. But with a script, he’s more likely to lose the the election.

After years of telling others how to do their best in media interviews, I had a chance recently to “put my money where my mouth is.” A local TV station wanted to interview me about my critique of Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s presentation skills. The experience pretty much reinforced many of the things I’ve been telling my clients.

As is typical, they called at the last minute, wanting me to come down to the station within the hour rather than them coming to me. I hurried up — and then cooled my heels in the lobby waiting for someone to get me. When the reporter finally came, he didn’t even introduce himself. I guess he figured because he was on TV, everyone knew him. I didn’t.

We went through the newsroom (not much changed from the newsroom I worked in 20 years ago), back to where the videographer was setting up the camera and lights. I chatted with the reporter for about five minutes and then, without any warning, we were taping. That didn’t throw me, but could easily have rattled someone less experienced.

I tell my clients that a TV interview is a sprint. It’s over before you know it, so you can’t wait to get “warmed up.” You have to be ready to go full force from the very beginning. My race lasted about three minutes.

I also advise my clients to go into the interview armed with a couple of clear, concise, colorful soundbites to use in their answers. I figured I should take my own advice, so I started my first answer with this: “If the election were about who is the best speaker, Obama would win hands down.” Sure enough, he used it in the finished story.

I spent 15 years as a reporter and anchor, asking the questions. But answering them with the lights and camera on you is an entirely different, and in some cases, much more daunting task. Like many challenges in life, it’s all about getting practice and experience.

PR pros have preached for years about the power of an apology. Example after example has proven that if you or your organization makes a mistake, saying “I’m sorry” goes a long way toward helping people forgive you, and causes the media to move on to the next story.

Now, the apology idea is getting new support from the health care industry. Lawyers have long advised doctors and hospitals to “deny and defend” when confronted with malpractice accusations, saying any hint of guilt or regret invites law suits. But now a few medical centers are going against common practices, and the results seem to show it’s working in their favor.

The New York Times says the University of Michigan Health System was one of the first to experiment with telling patients honestly about errors, sincerely apologizing, and offering fair compensation. Since starting the new policy, claims and lawsuits dropped to 83 in August 2007, down from 262 in August 2001.

Since the University of Illinois started the policy two years ago, the number of malpractice filings has dropped by half. In 37 cases where the hospital acknowledged a preventable error and apologized, only one patient filed a suit.

This supports what many have said about lawsuits in business as well. When people are honest and take responsibility for their mistakes, they help defuse the anger in the offended parties. When they don’t admit error or try to blame others, people are more intent on getting their “pound of flesh.”

The Jack in the Box story of 1993 is a good example of the fall out from passing the buck. 300 people became ill after eating E. coli infected hamburger at the company’s restaurants. A ten-year-old boy died. Company management waited almost a week before admitting its responsibility for the poisonings and expressing empathy to the victims. Even then, the Jack in the Box president blamed the company’s meat supplier. Crisis and litigation experts say their lawsuits from victims, shareholders, and franchisees went on longer and settled for more money because Jack in the Box tried to shift blame.

Bob Sutton, in his blog, cites other supporting research from business psychologists. Their results suggest that managers and leaders who take responsibility when things go wrong and communicate how they’ll change their actions as a result have better reputations that those who try to point fingers. Even more interesting, there’s also evidence their companies do better over the long term.

None of this evidence will change the mind of those stubborn CEOs and executives who just can’t admit they did something wrong. But for anyone on the fence, it’s hard to deny the power of those two little words.

I suppose I should be happy that the CEO of Wal-mart, Lee Scott, was bluntly honest at the Wall Street Journal’s recent ECO:nomics conference when he admitted, “We are not green.” How refreshing, some might say. But from a PR/media relations standpoint, I think it was the wrong thing to do.

Inevitably, that juicy, loaded statement, “We are not green,” was featured in the WSJ headline, putting the focus on Scott’s outspokenness, and ignoring the rest of what he said that helped temper the statement.

He went on to explain that Wal-Mart is trying to reduce its carbon footprint, but that the company has to grow at the same time. He added that the company is working with its suppliers to reduce the amount of packaging in its products, not just to please environmentalists, but also to save money.

Then, another unfortunate, flippant statement. When asked when he expected the company to meet its goal of having zero waste, Scott said, “I haven’t a clue.”

Besides inviting sensational headlines, Scott’s statements undermine Wal-Mart’s heavily publicized efforts, both on its website and in newspaper articles, to push its going green strategies. He and his company come off as hypocritical.

Much smarter to be more tactful and less sensational. “We’re working hard to reduce our footprint, but it’s not an easy task. We have to continue to grow, yet at the same time find ways to cut waste. That’s why we’ve asked our suppliers to…….”

Lee Scott is CEO of the largest company in the world, with critics ready to pounce at any provocation. He needs to be more careful about what he says in public.

How refreshing! An entire PowerPoint presentation with no bullet points. Yep, it’s possible. I’ve done it, and I saw someone else do it last week at a PRSA meeting (Public Relations Society of America). Good job, Dan Wool.

What’s wrong with bullet points? Contrary to what most presenters believe, bullet points kill communication rather than facilitating it. They make information harder to understand, not easier.

The core purpose of communication is to bring things together; to take fragments of information and combine them into a single understanding. Bullet points do just the opposite. By breaking a topic into title, bullet points, and sub-bullet points, you’re fragmenting communication, not consolidating it.

Some important research also negates the value of bullet points. People process information through dual channels, verbal and visual. A screen full of bullet points overloads the visual channel. If you move most of the text off the screen and narrate it instead, you shift some of the processing to the auditory channel. Then you can use the screen to illustrate your points visually.

Research also shows that people learn better when information is presented in chunks, not in a giant bullet point data dump. They also learn better when you use graphical cues to illustrate how the presentation is organized.

I think presenters use bullet points for two reasons: Everyone else does it. And most importantly, it makes their job easier. They just have to read what’s on the slide rather than preparing a presentation that is audience focused. PowerPoint becomes a crutch instead of an aid.

My newest presentation mentor is Cliff Atkinson, author of Beyond Bullet Points. He’s one of those leading the charge to change the way we use PowerPoint. It’s not easy, but well worth the effort. Your audience will thank you.

As we know, good communication not only depends on what we say, but also on how we say it and how we look when we say it. You’re more likely to persuade an audience when you appear credible and believable, but also likable.

Dress the part
People begin to judge your credibility before you even open your mouth. If you look sloppy, they assume that your thinking and your work are also sloppy. You should dress at least a half step above your audience to maintain credibility, and check your grooming (hair, make-up, five o’clock shadow, spinach on your teeth, etc.) in front of the mirror before you speak.

Don’t read, talk
Most people struggle when trying to read a speech. They aren’t natural or conversational. They lose eye contact with the audience, speak in a monotone, and talk too fast without pausing. Unless you spend a lot of time learning how to read a speech effectively, you’re much more successful when you use bullet points and talk naturally.

Use the microphone correctly
If possible, use a lavaliere microphone that clips to your clothing. You’ll have more freedom to move your head and come out from behind the lectern. If you’re stuck with a stick mike attached to the lectern, adjust it for your height so you don’t have to lean down to talk into it.

Use good eye contact
Make regular eye contact with each audience member. Don’t dart from person to person, but spend three to five seconds with each one. Try to avoid speaking when you’re looking down at your notes.

Relax and stand tall
Plant both feet comfortably and evenly on the floor. Avoid swaying or leaning from side to side. Don’t clutch the lectern, but instead use your gestures naturally. That will make you feel more relaxed and look more relaxed. We aren’t as likely to trust people who are stiff and uncomfortable.

Have an open face
If it’s appropriate to smile when talking, do so. However, much of the time you’ll be delivering more serious information. Even so, avoid frowning, which comes across as mean, unfriendly and closed. You can still be serious with an open face, meaning your eyebrows are up instead of closed and knitted.

Pause
The pause is one of the most effective tools we have as speakers, and one of the most ignored. Stopping in between thoughts or sentences helps the information sink in, and lets the audience catch up with you.

Let your energy and passion come through
I once got a greeting card that said “We all become poets when we speak from the heart.” Show in your delivery that you really care about and believe in what your saying. Your attitude may be contagious.

Television producers and reporters know that the best way to make news “real” to their viewers is to personalize it, to add emotion. Abstractions alone bore audiences, while specifics and examples draw them in.

For example, to report on the devastating hurricane in New Orleans they did more than just explain how many died, how many were homeless, and the dollar amount of the damages. They made the horror hit home by telling stories of real people struggling to survive.

How are you personalizing your speeches and interviews? A story, anecdote or example doesn’t need to be long and complicated to be effective. Let’s say you want to tell a potential customer how much better you are than the competition. You say, “We have the best customer service in the business.” But anybody can say that. What’s your proof? What’s your example?

“We had a customer who called us on Christmas Day with a problem with his _______. We had a crew out there in an hour to take care of it and he was able to get back to turkey dinner with his family.” Now you have engaged the listeners’ hearts as well as their minds.

Do you remember show and tell when you were in grade school? As kids, we realized both parts were important: show and tell. You could brag to your classmates about your new ant farm, but it was a lot more interesting if you brought it in for everyone to see. You also wanted to tell the class what you fed the ants and how you watched them burrow in the dirt.

Then we grow up and we forget about the showing part. We become speakers who just tell, tell, tell and tell some more. We give our audiences information overload. No wonder they lose interest and forget half of what we said!

Metaphors are similar to stories in that they help your listeners visualize what you are talking about. Their colorful, interesting language keeps people’s attention and helps them understand your concepts.
A great example of a metaphor that hit home appeared in a story about Medicaid. Early in the article, Virginia Governor Mark Warner was quoted as saying, “The Medicaid program is not sustainable in the long haul.”

Later in the article, Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee said the same thing in a way that was much more interesting and memorable: “Medicaid is a 45 rpm program in an MP3 world. It’s time to take a fresh look — not so we can undo it, but so we can better do it.”

“Showing” what you mean is more challenging than just “telling” it. But in the long run, the extra work pays off. Your messages become more compelling. People understand them. Most importantly, they care about them.