Dear {{FirstName}}

1. Travels and report back

The Australian leg of my March travels was very rewarding. Caught up with my step-family in Perth for 24 hours, then off to Melbourne for the 2008 NSAA Convention.

Melbourne is a scenic, cultural city - as temperamental in its weather patterns as my native Cape Town. Majestic architechture, towering hotels, and the spectacular Melbourne cricket ground, which I visited, and the Yarra river are just some of the attractions. Australia is quite costly when you're converting from rands just at the moment - especially as the Oz dollar is very strong. We hold out for more favourable exchange rates...

My Platform Skills breakaway session at the NSAA convention, attended by about 115 of the 321 delegates was well received, and for me another valuable experience presenting to my speaking peers, many of whom are more experienced than I am.

Returned home 2 April, and the following day off to Durban for the 3rd annual NSASA Convention in Durban. The Congruence "Inspiration, Wisdom and Courage" Leadership seminar on 4 April in Durban received outstanding evaluations. Alvin Law was marvellous, receiving rapturous acclaim. Ronnie Muhl's presentation was simply breathtaking. We repeated the seminar on 7 April in Sandton. This was truly one of the most inspiring seminars that I have had the pleasure to host.

The National Speakers Association of South Africa once again put on a world-class convention with participating visitors from The USA, Canada, England, Germany and Nigeria.

The 3rd Global Speakers Summit has just awarded to Cape Town 16-19 April 2009 and will be at the Cape Sun - so if you're an aspiring international speaker, this will be an event for you to diarise now.

Dates for my new Relationship Selling seminar will be appearing soon for Gauteng, Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London.

2. Using Humour in your Presentations

My first book, called "Even You Can Present With Confidence" is, to all intents and purposes, complete. It goes off for editing next week, and who, knows, should be available in a few months. Here is an exerpt, which I hope you will enjoy.

Use of humour in a presentation is a distinct advantage if used well and appropriately. By appropriately, I mean that a joke for the sake of getting a laugh is inappropriate. A joke that fits the content and helps to make a point is appropriate.

In contrast, humour that doesn't work puts you on the "back foot" with ground to recover. Only you will know how confident you are about using humour successfully. If you know that you are good at it socially, you should have no trouble pulling off a funny story, one liner or a joke during a presentation, and it really helps to round off and balance it for you. My most hallowed principle is to practice your quip on a safe audience first before you try it during a presentation. If it bombs, it doesn't mean that it will never work, it just means you may need to restructure it. If, after several trials it still doesn't work, try something else. It's no use getting attached to a dud!

But even rules are not cast in concrete. A while back I delivered a talk to the Irish Chapter of the PSA (Professional Speakers Association of the UK and Ireland) in Dublin on "Using Humour in your Presentations". I thought up a humourous story during my flight over and told it for the first time during my talk, not expecting much of a laugh, and hoping to use this to illustrate that one should in fact test one's jokes on a safe audience first. The story goes as follows:

Two chaps, one of them Irish (Paddy) were having a beer in a London pub. The other chap says:

"So, how was business in Ireland, Paddy?

To which Paddy replies: "Terrible, terrible!"

"But what's the matter, Paddy old chap? Everyone knows the Irish economy is booming..."

"I know, I know" replies Paddy "That was what was so frustrating."

"Well, what were you trying to sell them then?"

"Sunglasses!" he says.

My Irish audience roared with laughter. That surprised me, as I had never tested the joke, but it did give me quite a kick. Truth is, I was a little lucky on that occasion, as my story was untested, and could well have failed. Sometimes, in the right context, perhaps with appropriate regional references, your story or quip will hit the mark. If you don't get a huge laugh, it doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't appreciated. Some audiences are more effusive than others. If your story makes a good point and ties in with your theme - use it, especially if it is original.

Some people feel uncomfortable using humour. If this is you, then don't feel obliged to schedule it in to your talk. If you are relaxed during your presentation, humour may just arrive by chance!

As a rule, I will avoid certain categories of humour - namely, discriminatory stories, stale (old) jokes, swearing and dirty jokes. I will also avoid making jokes at an audience member's expense, but I may tell a self deprecating story - the audience usually enjoys that.

There are several categories of humour. If you are a comedian, you develop your own brand. If you like telling "set piece" jokes in a talk or presentation, the response of your audience will have a lot to do with your timing, so you may find the more times you tell a joke or funny story, the better you become at that joke or funny story. This can be likened to soccer set-piece specialist David Beckham who became famous for his ability to score from set-piece free kicks, often changing the course of a game. As he got older, he seemed to get even better at it.

Many presenters find, however, that if you are in tune with your audience, the spontaneous humour comes naturally and enhances your delivery and the audience's appreciation of your style. I have often found during a light hearted moment that some of the best chirps come from the audience. I usually acknowledge these positively as it helps to enhance the overall mood, and thus my presentation.

During one presentation I related to the audience how that morning I was so focused on the content of what I was about to deliver, that I absent mindedly put on my jacket before I'd put on my shirt. On realizing my error I took off my jacket and put on the wrong shirt. An audience member then chirped "Your shirt looks fine!" Laughter followed. I retorted "Thanks. But this is not the shirt - I changed in to the right one!" More laughter, and I knew they were with me.

Starting with humour can be a great way to get your presentation off to a good start, but use a story that is practically guaranteed to get a laugh, and make sure you get it right.

Mind you, I thought that asking a South African to teach Irish speakers how to add humour to their presentations was quite ironic, don't you?

Paul du Toit

Soon to be published author, Mindsetshifter and Presentation Skills Coach. See more about the upcoming scheduling of our accliamed "Mind Blowing Presentations" programme below.

3. Congruence Soft Skills upcoming public schedule.

Please note that all our courses are offered in-house anywhere you want them to be delivered.

In addition to the Gauteng schedule below, these programmes are facilitated by expert facilitators literally anywhere:

Conflict Resolution 12-13 May 2008

Win-win Negotiations 19-20 May 2008

Time Management 10-11 June 2008

Stress Management 17-18 June 2008

Aserttiveness Skills 19 June 2008

Mind Blowing Presentations 23-24 June 2008

For details or bookings for the Congruence soft skills PUBLIC training schedule (Gauteng only) please visit www.congruence.co.za - look on the right and click on "public courses. To book by phone share call 0860 503 191.

4. What in the world are your school friends doing now?

And this, all as a result of getting my techno savvy teenager to get me started on Facebook just a few weeks ago...

Whether you've been out of school 10 or 50 years or somewhere in between, don't you wonder every now and then how your old school friends are doing? What they've become? Where they are now? So when I came across the SAReunited banner on Facebook, I was a tad curious.

So I signed up. To my surprise, I immediately found entries from 10 high school friends, 3 from boarding school and 1 from primary school. Wouldn't it just be the cheeky primary school friend that gets back to me first, the one who teased the life out of me when I was the new kid in class? I've had two more good friends contact me since!

Seems like people are using this network medium not only to get back in touch, but to make new business connections and even to arrange school reunions. Now if you're a networker, or just plain curious, imagine....?

There are already around 740,000 members, and their brand new website with improved funcionality is due up any day now. So this is what you do. Go to www.SAReunited.co.za. You can create a profile, enter all your schools and check out if any of your old friends are there...easy as anything. This costs you nothing. You pay a small fee to sign up for additional benefits, but create your profile first and surf around the site a bit to see if it works for you. It did for me. The way I see it, the more people that join, the more old friends we can be in touch with again.

Who knows, you may just find out something about yourself that you never knew...!

5. My Two Oceans marathon.

Achieving our goals is a wonderful feeling, however, we learn more from our failures than we sometimes wish to admit....

My Two Oceans marathon, sneaked in between my European trip the weekend before, and prior to Australia, went exactly as planned....for the first 40km, perfectly on track for a sub 05h30. Then, somehow, it felt as though I was running on low octane fuel. The 40km mark is when you're about 1km into Hout Bay, and you've got Constantia Nek looming, with 16km still to go. To cut a long story short, I completed the race in 05h53, my 2nd best time for the race, but well under what I was hoping for. It was, however, another great experience. The wind was a factor, but behind me most of the way - so no excuses. And many thanks for the support from my new running club, Morningside Road Runners - it was great to have a club gazebo to relax at afterwards with club mates.

What was best of all though, was having Trudi and my two girls waiting for me at the finish. Bring on 2009! Thanks for all your support, I could really feel the good vibes on Constantia Nek!

I challenge you, today, to tackle something you've previously been afraid of doing - like running 3km (slowly!), or getting up to speak in front of any audience, or....?.

Footnote: See Newsletter #89 next month for information on our new Relationship Selling seminar!