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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Manager Tools. This is Sarah and I'm Mark. Today's podcast, the hip pocket presentation. Part 1 of 1.
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B
This cast answers these questions. What is a Hip Pocket presentation? Why do I need to have a Hip Pocket presentation? And how do I present a Hip Pocket presentation?
- [00:22]
A
If you want answers to these questions and more, keep listening. Want to improve your team's management skills without sending everybody to a conference? Bring Manager Tools training directly to your organization on site or virtually, and give your people the tools they need to lead, communicate, and perform at their very best. To learn more, send an email to maggieustomerservicer-tools.com and she'll help you learn more about what we've got to offer. All right, so, Mark, the Hip Pocket presentation is a topic that you and I have been on and on about over the course of the last couple of weeks since our AM Conference ended.
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B
Yep.
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A
You put a video in our social media feeds.
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B
I've already gotten an email about it, a reacher from one of our licensees from Dan Brerman saying I want some guidance on possible topics.
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A
Oh, well, this is for you, Dan.
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B
Yeah, exactly. It's also for Susie Hill, one of my executive coaching clients. I just talked about this with her.
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A
We did the video because of your conversation with Susie, right? Yeah, that's what I thought. Also, Executive Tools, in the Executive Tools podcast feed this week, it was about the Hip Pocket presentation. So we've been talking about thinking about this topic quite a lot.
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B
I have been talking about this topic for 35 years and we're finally putting it out. I finally found it in my list of future cast and checked it off.
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A
Love it. I love it. And folks, most managers don't know it, but if they want to further their career, they need to have a presentation in their hip pocket ready to give no notice whatsoever. I mean, for example, a speaker doesn't show up an event and people are like, we need somebody to speak. If you have your Hip Pocket presentation, you can present that one hour. You can raise your hand. Yeah, I got a one hour speech in me. I'm ready to go. That is what we call Hip Pocket presentation.
- [02:29]
B
Yeah. And frankly, the topic has to be one that you're confident about presenting. You've got to present it to a group of colleagues either in your organization or externally. And the question now for everybody listening is, do you have one? Do you know what you would present? Do you have prepared slides? These are the standards for a Hip Pocket presentation. You can't just have a good idea in the back of your mind. And because also you have to have rehearsed it if you're going to present on short notice. And the fact is, the vast majority of managers we talk to, they do not. And that lack of readiness to present is hurting their career.
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A
Absolutely. If someone asks you to present, you want to be able to raise your hand. It increases your profile, it, it shows your expertise in your area of expertise. All of those things. All of those things, yeah.
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B
Okay, so here's our outline. We're going to define what a hip pocket presentation is in a little more detail than we already have. We're going to tell you in more detail about why a hip pocket presentation is necessary. We're going to give you some guidance about how to choose a topic. There's one cardinal rule, and then we'll give you a couple of bits of guidance about how to prepare a presentation. However, for those of you who have been in our community for 20 years now, we just celebrated our 20th anniversary. You should know that there are 20 to 25, maybe even 30 or 40 podcasts already out there about how to create, how to prepare, how to rehearse, how to deliver presentations.
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A
Absolutely. So let's start with what a hip pocket presentation is. Well, folks, a hip pocket presentation, in short, is a 45 minute to one hour presentation, usually one with slides on a topic about which you are knowledgeable and which you can present on virtually no notice. That has value for a broad audience of colleagues and, and professionals. It's really as simple as that.
- [04:32]
B
Yeah. And so again, the question is, do you have one meeting that criteria? And we would guess not. Now look, we don't mean to be disrespectful to you. We're not saying you couldn't do it. In fact, we know you can't. What we are saying is that you didn't know that every manager and certainly every executive is supposed to have a hip pocket presentation. And the vast majority of managers don't know it and therefore can't deliver it. Not having a hip pocket presentation is a missed opportunity to stand out. And it is things like this that separate one career from another.
- [05:09]
A
Yeah, that's absolutely it. And again, folks, we know if you don't have one, it's not necessarily your fault for not having it. I mean, we're, we're, we're here people giving guidance, and it took us 20 years to tell you about it. So we, we get it. We get it. Hip pocket presentations are a little bit like learning about things like race. Don't chase or assume positive Intent or pre wiring. One of our classic podcasts, if you don't know it or haven't heard of the idea, you're probably not going to just come up with it out of the blue. Like, you know what? I should have, I should have a pre canned presentation ready in my pocket just in case someone needs. Yeah, you're not going to think of it on your own. And at the same time or once you've heard about it, you'll think, of course that makes sense. It's one of those things that you would never think of, but it's also a no brainer simultaneously.
- [06:04]
B
Okay, so the value of having a Hip Pocket presentation. Look, as Sarah said earlier, there are going to be times when someone needs a speaker. Okay? If you've ever put on a conference, your big concern is really not the venue. Venues, hotels and stuff know how to put on stuff. And we'll help you with everything and make recommendations. The big thing will be having speakers. Speakers that work, that people leave the event and go, wow. And it could be, this could be an internal meeting, frankly, or it could be an industry, an external event, could be a professional development forum. And our mconference is a good example. In fact, we just had a speaker cancel at the last minute.
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A
And.
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B
And now in our case, you, you might assume that we're pretty good at Hip pocket presentations. I have a list of over a thousand podcasts that I have yet to write and put into show notes for our licensees, which I have presented before to many, many clients the world over. In many cases, I actually have slides for them. In fact, longtime listeners, Sarah will remember that early on, in the days of Manager Tools, in the first 15 years or so, we put out slides with every presentation, with every podcast, and we stopped doing it just because people weren't really downloading them all that often. They downloaded the show notes, right? If you're a licensee, you can get a written version, but the slides just weren't being downloaded, being used by the audience, so we stopped doing them. And it took me time to create a slide presentation after I had written the show and after I had recorded the show. And so it simplified my life a great deal.
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A
Yeah, and that's the thing, folks, I gotta tell you as somebody that with a great deal of help with our team of Manager Tools was responsible for that recent presentation. The amount of peace that exists in your heart when you know one of your speakers isn't gonna show up and you're only four days out because you have a Hip Pocket presentation will make you want to have one for the rest of your life 100% of the time. Because the. The amount of anxiety and just like, I. I can't even imagine the amount of stress that would occur if you're like, oh, my gosh, it's four days from our event. We lost a speaker. What do we do? Right? And the moment we knew we weren't going to have a speaker, we were just like, okay, well, let's do this instead then. And it was just. It was like that. It was like clockwork. It was easy. That's the value. And sometimes the need is emergent, like ours. And you can see where in that situation, if you don't have a presentation ready, then you couldn't offer to fill it on short notice, or you might have to pivot and do something else or move things around and end early. So being able to help a colleague on short notice means you have to have one ready to go.
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B
Yeah, now I can. I can hear the audience speaking to me even now through the ether. They would say, wait, wait, wait, wait. I could put something together in 24 hours if I had to. Yeah, really, guys? No, you couldn't. You really couldn't.
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A
Would it be good?
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B
Yeah, there you go. The question is, when we say, why do we say you couldn't? Because if you're going to be presenting, you're going to have to be very good. Most managers think they're good and they're not. Okay? And frankly, too many managers today draw their conclusions about who are good speakers from politicians or CEOs who are reading a speech behind a podium with teleprompters, which is just absolutely death. If you need a podium to speak at, you are not a good speaker. No offense. Now look, that's no disrespect to people in office or CEOs or whatever, because they're often asked to give speeches at other people's. Right? I know, I used to write them. But still, we're talking about you alone on stage, without a podium. And here, most managers think they're good, but they're not. And the only thing worse than not having a hip pocket presentation and therefore not being able to present like most managers, is not having one, and yet still agreeing to present. And because of your lack of preparation, your lack of total knowledge of the topic and your lack of rehearsal causing you to do a poor job, letting down whomever asked and making yourself look unprofessional and unprepared, that is the worst of all outcomes. It's not a Good. Look, it's better to stay in the shadows. So maybe you can think of not having had one up until now was the thrill of being shot at and missed. But now you can do the work. And it's more than just having an idea. You can do the work to get ready and then you'll shine.
- [11:06]
A
Yeah. And folks as well. Having hip pocket presentation makes you much more ready to seize the opportunity of speaking for yourself. You've heard us talk before about open to opportunities. Having a hip pocket presentation is like you having the ultimate ability to showcase that you're open to opportunities in your career. Most people think of their career as being in one of two states. Either you're happy where you're fully employed or you are looking for a job and you're basically in the market. But it's not. So there's a third state we call open to opportunities, which is one that allows you to be completely happy and full of joy in your current role and not looking. Exactly. While also willing to talk to someone about a new role or a different opportunity that might exist. And the real magic of open to opportunities happens when you change your mindset to think of not I'm happy or I'm looking to this. I'm always willing to talk to other people. It changes every conversation that you have with every senior person in your organization. You hear words different. You hear questions different that they might ask of you. You see that people may be asking you questions throughout your entire career in an effort to try and determine. Yeah, exactly. Whether or not you're ready for or looking for a new or different role.
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B
Yeah. When a senior person says, I'm struggling, actually, we've got this area over here that really doesn't seem to be doing what it needs to be. Needs to be done. That is them essentially putting out to the side of you, hey, there's an opportunity over here. And the vast majority of people, well, good luck with that. Yeah. Like, no, that's not what you're supposed to say.
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A
Yeah, exactly. You're not supposed to just also throw me to the wolves. Exactly. You might realize that people at other firms, when they're talking about how their firm is going through a lot of change right now, that might actually indicate there's an opportunity over here. Or maybe someone who. They don't say that. And in some cases, folks, they don't do it because maybe your competitors or maybe they're your customer and they. They can't outwardly say, hey, I'd like to poach you, but really, what they're, they're trying to give you these indicators to suggest, hey, if you're interested, let me know. And if you're in this happy not looking state, the idea that change means job opportunities would never occur to you, right? The same is true when a friend says that they're interviewing like crazy or growing like crazy and about or acquiring a new firm even. All of these are potential opportunities for you, not just interesting business news. But if you're not listening with that different ear, you don't hear them as opportunities, you hear them as information.
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B
Yes, exactly. Somebody sharing what they're going through and not seeing yourself as a potential helper to them. And so that idea of open to opportunities and changing your mindset so that you hear conversations differently is totally true. For having a presentation in your hip pocket ready and rehearsed, someone now mentions an industry event and you've got your hip pocket presentation and now you don't have to wait for the question. You can be the one making the offer to speak. Yeah, having done the preparation of the hip pocket presentation completely changes how you hear about speaking opportunities and how you can make your own opportunities. It changes these conversations in your case from passive to active. And active is always better.
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A
And folks, we hope it's obvious that speaking at an industry conference is a career enhancing behavior. It can be an accomplishment bullet on your resume and it doesn't even have to be at your industry's conference.
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B
Agreed.
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A
Like you could speak at a vendor's industry event or a customer's industry event. Stop thinking small or even worse, not at all about these opportunities and assume it's possible and then work backwards from there.
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B
Yep, exactly.
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A
Struggling to get your team on the same page. Our Virtual Effective Communicator conference can help learn how to communicate better, reduce friction, and make work a little easier for from anywhere. Find out more on our website at manager-tools.com forward/training.
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B
Okay, let's talk about maybe the most important guidance here and and maybe the biggest pitfall again, other than thinking you can prepare one on short notice and then looking like a fool. In terms of how to choose a topic, the guiding principle about your topic is simple and powerful. You must choose a topic. You must not should must choose a topic that you know and you like and you can master and have experience with. And again, never try to present on a topic that you think or the conference organizer thinks would be good for the audience to hear. Now it would be great if your topic is something that they'll want to hear and if it Isn't. If the Hip Pocket presentation you have isn't, then the conference organizer or your friend or whomever's asking you will say, no, that's not aligned with what we're doing, and that's fine. Okay? The whole point of a Hip Pocket presentation is you've already created it and you've mastered it in terms of delivery, and you will not need to create a new presentation. It won't matter how much the audience needs to hear about something if they don't perceive you to have mastered it.
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A
What we often say when we're asking folks to speak at events, it could be our executive speaker series. It could be the M conference, is we say, pick something that you're passionate about. If you're passionate about it, if you know it well, if it's. If it's so true to you that it's the water you swim in, that energy and that knowledge will come across to your audience.
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B
Yeah, that reminds me of one of my very favorite quotes, which is, when you love doing something, it reveals all of its secrets to you, right? You become more knowledgeable because you like it. You look for learning. You embrace the learning. You employ the learning. You get better faster than other people when something you're passionate about.
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A
Yeah, yeah. Better to be excellent than to have one. Period. Yeah.
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B
Very good. That's a good way to think of it.
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A
So what we want you to do then, is, is pick a topic that you're familiar with, that you have experience with. Don't assume that because it's something you do that would be considered pedestrian or uninteresting to others you ought not speak about that you absolutely could. We need to start from our strength, not from the audience's weakness. And to help with your brainstorming, think of the title of your presentation as Starting with How to. Because you're gonna speak from experience, from your strengths. Make a list of the things that you could speak about rather than worrying about how others in the room might view or hear them. Make your own how to list. And then the presentation will fall from it, and it'll either work or it won't.
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B
Yeah. And look, folks, if you have some ideas and you want some help, do what Dan Brerman did. Send us a mail with your ideas and some background, and we'll make some recommendations about which to choose.
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A
Absolutely. Okay, so now. Now that we've got our topic or we have the idea of how we can build our topic, now it's time to talk about how to prepare. And we're not going to Go into enormous detail. As Mark said, we've got tons of pockets, podcasts on how to prepare and how to practice and how to present. Just go to our website manager-tools.com you can find our map of the universe page and search for present. And you'll be overwhelmed with the amount of information about how to actually present your presentation.
- [19:49]
B
Yeah, but let's share two basic rules. First, assume your talk is going to be one hour. That means, and here's a key, folks, only six, maybe seven if you want a cover slide, which you probably have, and eight at the absolute max if you're counting your cover slide, only six slides of content, okay? And you can't cheat and put 12 slides worth of content onto six slides by putting it in 12 point type and then also making it so small with sub bullets and so on, no one can read it, okay? The rule is one slide per 10 minutes of delivery. That's where we came up with six for an hour and too many engineers. Sorry, folks, I'm an engineer too. Your habit is 10 slides every one minute rather than one slide every 10 minutes. It's annoying, it's ineffective. It means you're going to not be able to keep it all in your head and you're going to start reading your own slides from the confidence monitor. And you've got to remember that you yourself are the presentation and not the slides. The slides exist to, at first in your mind, structure the presentation, but more importantly, to help those who also like to read and think while they're listening, to help them in consuming your presentation. But it is not. The slides are not your presentation.
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A
Mm. Absolutely. And folks, beyond the presentation itself, the preparation of the slides, et cetera, you must. You must rehearse. And that's what's gonna make you great. Yes. What we're suggesting is that you go stand in a room and present your talk all one hour of it, record yourself on your phone and critique yourself, but only the following day.
- [21:42]
B
Yeah, critique afterwards. If you critique right afterwards, dudes, you're going to think, that was good, that was good. That was good. Because you're in the same mindset. You have to wait 24, you know, eight or 12 hours and then you'll discover, oh, I'm horrible. I'm quite. I'm quite horrible.
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A
And folks, you can. I mean, I know, Mark, I was presenting. Not presenting, I was practicing. My, my comments, my remarks for the M Conference.
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B
Sure.
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A
Over the. The week or so before the M conference itself. And folks, I wasn't sitting down while I was doing it. I didn't have slides in that case, but I was standing, I was walking because I knew that that's how my body would be when I was delivering the remarks. You need to know where your arms are going to be in space. You need to know where your eyes are going to look like. It's very different to be practicing in a way that's more true to reality than just rehearsing the words over and over and over and over.
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B
Or sitting at your desk reading your slides in your head and saying, I know that, I know that. That is not rehears.
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A
Exactly. And at some point, folks have a friend sit and watch you and critique you, one of your colleagues, if you are a manager, one of your directs, even your group of directs you can present at your staff meeting, for goodness sake, there's tons of opportunities for you. And when you're rehearsing, be willing to make changes to your slides as you discover what works and what doesn't work. Sometimes I even find, like, my wording is weird. Like the way I write a slide and every time I present it, it's just, it's kludgy. Tweak it and change it and make it better based on your experience with it and the comments that you're receiving from the people who are watching you speak. All of those things.
- [23:26]
B
I will tell you. Writing speeches for other people, you have to write speeches that they can say. And some people have, you know, I have very sibilant S's when I talk. I have to be careful about, you know, what I say, some so that it's clear to people. And you can't write a sentence that to you is perfect. That makes it hard for the person who's reading it. Even with prompts like words in all caps or underlined, which is what we call it. Speechwriter calls it stepping on a word, making sure that word really is the crux or the key of a sentence. There's an enormous difference between and and, but partially because and opens the mind, but actually closes the mind and said everything that was said before isn't important. And if you don't put a notation on a speech about and or but about stepping on it and putting in bold or all caps or whatever, both parts of that compound sentence are going to be lost because people can't hold two ideas in their head at the same time. So when you're saying something and it doesn't seem to work, change the way you say it so that it does work and then go back and change the slide and make it more close to where you want to be. So, look, let me summarize. You need to have a hip pocket presentation. It'll make it possible for you to seize targets of opportunity that'll enhance your career, grow your network, and lead to more chances to be considered for different and better jobs. Choose something you know, create it and rehearse it. And then rehearse it again, and then you'll be able to strike when you get the chance. And your career will thank you.
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A
Exactly. Well, thank you, Mark. That was great.
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B
That was fun. Thanks, Sarah.
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A
And thank you, folks. We hope this helped you. Now help us help others and tell your friends. And of course, follow rate and review our podcast. And remember, five stars only, please. Sam.