people have little consciousness awareness, which gives them only a connection comparable to a 56k dial-up connection to the audience. A 56k dial-up connection severely limits your ability to create clear video images and make vocal changes.
• Fourth, they do not intend the audience to duplicate or understand the data. If they did, they would find ways to express the data to maximize comprehension and retention.
• Fifth, they are not committed to the data. They do not invest the data with energy and passion, so they do not commit their voice and body to it. As a result, the audience asks, “Why should I be committed and buy this solution if the person delivering the data is not committed?”
Obviously, those who are committed to the data are more apt to engage their voice and body in conveying it. However, IT presenters rarely come out from behind their firewalls and expose themselves both vocally and physically to the audience. In contrast, by delivering your communication from in front of your firewall, you will have a greater presence and the power to manifest your message.
The firewall distinction is addressed in detail in chapter two.
So far, we have looked at the video and voice parts of the communication packet. Now, let’s explore another piece—the data. The data is the heart and soul of the presentation, although it represents only 7 percent of the total communication packet.
The data resides in three locations: first, in the internal database of the presenter; second, in the external database such as the PowerPoint slides; and third, for participation purposes, in the database of the audience.
The principal goal for the presenter is to transfer as much data as is appropriate to the audience effectively with the intention of helping them understand the information.
The major problem with some IT presentations is that they dump a huge quantity of data into the space with little or no intention that the audience will understand the concepts. An IT managing director I met in the Middle East referred to this as nuking the audience. Another referred to it as dropping data bombs on them.
Sadly, it seems to be the norm that the presenter doesn’t think it’s his or her job to help the audience understand the data. The presenter’s only responsibility is to fly in, show up, throw the data out there, and leave. This sort of presenter believes it’s the audience’s job to make sense of the data that was dumped on them.
This is not effective. The definition of communication is transmitting information from a sender to a receiver with the intention that the receiver understands the data. When you actually connect with the intention that your audience will understand the data, you’ll make a major transformational shift in your skills as a professional presenter. You will move from being a data dumper to being a professional who is regarded as one of the best in the industry, a genuine star. You will feel the power that comes from a successful presentation and the audience will enjoy a genuine, informative show.
Now, let’s address the process of communicating a packet across the wireless space from the sender to the receiver with special emphasis on using space packets between the communication packets.
In the ideal situation, you start your presentation/conversation by diving into your database of knowledge and pulling up a thought. You encapsulate the thought with a word, then add a video image, vocal tones, and maybe some physical objects. You consciously project the encapsulated thought across the space to the receiver. Once that burst of communication is complete, you pause and allow the audience to digest, process, think about, and absorb the data. During this pause, you relax your body, take a breath, and think about your next communication packet.
Alice Bailey, the author of more than a dozen books on spiritual development, describes the speech process beautifully: “The purpose of speech is to clothe thought and thus make our thoughts available to others. When we speak we evoke a thought and make it present, and we bring that which is concealed within us into audible expression.”
As I emphasized, the ability to create space packets between the communication packets is a critical skill for the IT professional presenter. Just as there are communication packets, there are also space packets. Space packets are the silence or pauses between the communication packets. When you talk to the audience, you are delivering not only data but space as well. And yet, when you watch IT presenters, you’ll see that few have little if any intention of consciously creating space packets. The vast majority focus their consciousness on content rather than on the space from which the content flows.
In order to create space packets, you need to be in present time with the audience. You cannot have one foot in the future (that is, be inside your head thinking about what you are going to say next) while keeping the other foot in the past (thinking about what you just said). You need to have both feet in present time. In the moment of delivery, the past and future temporarily disappear. In this moment of now, or frame, you can create a communication that will make a difference, be of service, and contribute to the audience’s knowledge and understanding.
(Your understanding of the concept of time and maintaining a broadband connection to the audience is critical to your success as a presenter and will be fully discussed in chapter six, which focuses on consciousness.)
One critical mistake almost every presenter makes is to follow the first communication packets with another burst of packets without giving the audience a chance to digest what they have already heard. This failure to deliver space packets creates congestion, overloads the receivers’ buffers, and reduces throughput, thereby diminishing the effectiveness of the communication. The extraordinary communicators, like actors, have conscious control of their baud rate and can consciously create space packets between their communication packets.
Why is it so difficult for presenters to create these space packets? Mostly because they have never made the distinction between content consciousness and space consciousness. Their attention is on the content itself, rather than on creating space between the content. Eckhart Tolle states that there are two types of consciousness: content consciousness and space consciousness. They both work together to produce an effective presentation. However, IT presenters are almost always focused on content rather than space.
Presenters who are fixated on the data are not present in the room. They are barely connected to the audience. They have a 56k connection rather than a present-time, broadband connection to the audience. They have no presence. To put it another way, they suffer from data addiction and would rather make love to the data than be present to the audience. If they are not connected or consciously present in the room, where are they? They are in a place I call Data Land.
Data Land is in a space outside of present time. It is a world in which unconsciousness rules and the power to communicate is weak and ineffective. It is a world in which you are unaware of your physical body.
Fortunately, when you begin to shift your consciousness from the data to the space between packets, you return to being present in the room and can establish a broadband connection to the audience.
You will immediately notice a major improvement in your delivery because you are no longer focused on the object/data/content but rather on the space itself. This is the exact opposite of the way the vast majority of IT professionals make presentations.
When done properly, you are not delivering data; you are delivering space. When you begin to deliver space, the quality and effectiveness of your speaking increases because, in addition
