Wired Presentations

I am not going to cover all of Mehrabian’s Rule here. If you want to read about it Wikipedia has a great page on it. I will cover some misconceptions.

The rule only applies to communication regarding feelings and attitudes.

The research only covers words (7%), tone of voice (38%) and body language (55%). That’s right, body language is the only visual component studied.

You will hear people say, “words only count for 7% of the information delivered during a presentation.” Unfortunately, these folks don’t know what they are talking about. You see, the percentages only come into play when words, voice or body language don’t pass along the same message. They are incongruent.

For example:

If I scream “I love you” at the top of my lungs and hit my wife chances are she won’t believe what I say. She will, because she is smart, choose to believe the non-verbal message.

If I am slumped in a chair in front of an audience and mumble “I am so excited to be here…” then chances are they won’t believe me either. Like my wife, they aren’t stupid. They will believe what they see and the tone I use.

You get the idea. Dr. Mehrabian’s research is applied, incorrectly, to the use of slides as well. One day you will hear someone say, “it doesn’t matter what you say — it is the slides that are important.

When that happens just back away and please don’t believe them!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 1:56 am and is filed under PowerPoint, Presentation Skills, Presentation Tools, PresoTips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.