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Do you plan how you’ll #act when you #negotiate? What #role do you decide you’ll play? Knowing the right role to display will allow you to negotiate better. Although you can’t predict every circumstance that you’ll encounter in a negotiation, the better prepared you are, the better your act will be.

Your act:

Everyone plays a role during a negotiation. And, your role should align with how you wish the other negotiator to perceive you; that’s your act. You should not view it as bad or inauthentic; it’s an act. If it’s misaligned, you run the risk of weakening your position. As an example, you shouldn’t become a bully if you’ve been playing the role of someone that’s helpful. That would be a misalignment.

Consider the following and keep in mind that you can morph from one act to another. Just be sure there’s an easily perceived reason for doing so.

• Nonchalant

You can adopt this act to project a ‘no-care’ attitude (i.e. if it happens, fine – if it doesn’t, fine). You might employ this demeanor when you wish to confuse the other negotiator about your real interest in what he’s offering. Make sure not to become unmasked by being too deep into the role. Because a fleeting offer may disappear before you can shift acts.

• Defiant

“I won’t accept that offer under any circumstances!” Be cautious when adopting this act. It can leave you in a position that’s difficult to retreat from. While this can be a good tactic, if it’s overused and you must concede, you’ll be weaker throughout the rest of the negotiation.

To combat the perception of being in a weaker position, consider feigning momentary hopelessness. It’ll lend credence to your act. But you must attempt to regain your defiant act, be it from a less entrenched position, to regain your position. You’ll only be able to use the hopelessness ploy once, twice if you’re overly convincing. So, be mindful of how and when you employ it. If you do so too early in the negotiation, you’ll lessen its effect later. If you do it too late, you’ll bring additional scrutiny upon your act.

• Helpful

Most people like helping people. It’s a characteristic that’s pleasing. It’s also a characteristic that some people despise. Thus, you must know when to be a helpful actor and when to drop the act.

Dominant negotiators, the bullying type, tend not to want help. They already know what’s good for the negotiation. From their perspective, your insights will only hinder the process.

Invoke the helpful act with collaborative negotiator types. They seek input to promote win-win negotiation outcomes. To better effect this act, consider when you’ll lead and when you’ll follow. To follow, ask the other negotiator for her opinion. Then, build on it. To lead, present a non-threatening offer and ask your collaborator what she thinks of it. Build on what she says.

• Dominant

Most people don’t like to be dominated; it places too many restrictions on them. Nevertheless, acting dominantly versus someone that’s savvy and in control can have its benefits. The difference lies in whether you’re perceived as being overbearing, strong-willed, or just knowledgeable. To effect this act, attune yourself to the other negotiator’s perception. There can be hidden value in this role. Knowing how and when to uncover that value makes it more valuable.

The stage you’re in, in the negotiation, should direct how you act. Like a good director, if you time your actions appropriately, your actions will be more believable. That will lead to more winning negotiation outcomes… and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

Temporarily switching to a black display or slide is an effective way in PowerPoint to change focus, add audience interaction or to handle discussions or content not related to the current slide in a presentation. Why bother? You don’t want to leave your audience distracted by the slide in front of them especially if the presentation or conversation has changed. Plus, a black display quickly signals a change in topic or material.

Explore the 5 ways to work with black slides in PowerPoint:

1. Presentation Remote
2. Projector Remote
3. Quick Slide Show Keyboard Shortcuts
4. Create a Black Slide
5. End with a Black Slide

Presentation Remote

The easiest way to switch to a black display is with a presentation remote. If you use one, practice using the button to go to a black screen so you are less likely to accidentally hit this button when you don’t want it.

Projector Remote

If a presentation remote is not available, you may have access to the projector remote control. This is more likely for smaller or internal presentations when the A/V equipment is not so tightly controlled as with conference sessions or large groups. Many projector remotes have an option for “Black Screen”. Also, practice turning this feature on and off. Do not choose “Standby” as it may take several minutes to “wake-up” the projector from this mode.

Quick Keyboard Shortcuts to a Black Display

While running your PowerPoint slide show, easily switch to black by pressing the letter B (for black) or press the [Period] key while running your slide show. Just press B again to restore the presentation.

You can also press the letter W (for white) to toggle/switch to a white display. A white display, however, is often too bright in many presentation environments.

Create a Black Slide

As with other parts of a presentation, you may also want to build in or choreograph your interaction and other transitions in addition to the slide show. Do this by adding a black slide at the point where you want to temporarily change focus.

One advantage of a black slide over just turning the screen black is that, when you continue with your presentation, the next slide or topic will display instead of the slide you were previously displaying. Plus, a black slide may “jog” your memory about planned transitions.

To create a black slide in PowerPoint:

1. Create a slide with a Blank Layout.
2. Pick on the Design tab > Format Background.
3. Click Hide Background graphics.
4. Choose Solid fill and pick a black from the Color options.

End with a Black Slide

Another way to work with a black slide in a PowerPoint presentation is to choose whether or not you want to end your presentation with a black slide. Although this is a default in PowerPoint, you can quickly verify or change this option.

To set the option to end a slide show with a black slide:

1. File > Options.
2. Select the Advanced category. Under the Slide Show section, check or uncheck End with black slide and OK to continue.

Bonus Tip:

To avoid moving too far at the end of a PowerPoint presentation and accidentally exiting out of a slide show, I like to add a few “buffer” slides I don’t plan to show. If I do, however, click too many times with my presentation remote, the extra slide will display. Good choices for these ending slides include a simple slide with your company logo or website or an appropriate photo.

Finally, as with any presentation, make sure to practice your presentation (along with planned interaction) so that you can effectively and successfully deliver your message.

Were these PowerPoint tips helpful? Discover more PowerPoint techniques and shortcuts here.

Presentation skills are very important in organizations and leaders make presentations all the time to board members, employees, community leaders, groups of customers, etc. It is possible to make or break an organization from a presentation and so top leadership should strive to have the best presentation skills.

List and prioritize goals

Listing and prioritizing the top goals that you want to accomplish with your audience is the most important of all presentation skills. You may think you know what you want to accomplish or what you want to say in your presentation, but if you’re not clear with yourself and others, it is very easy for your audience to completely miss the point of your presentation.

Be clear

Being clear about who your audience is and about why is it important for them to be in the meeting is important since members of your audience always want to know right away why they were the ones chosen to be in the presentation. You should therefore make sure that your presentation makes this clear to them from the start.

Design openings and closings

This is one of the most neglected of the important presentation skills. The presenter should design a brief opening, about 5% to 10% of the total time presentation time, to present goals for the presentation, clarify the benefits of the presentation and to explain the overall layout of the presentation. A closing should also be designed and it should also be about 5% to 10% of the total time presentation time, covering a summary of all key points from the presentation.

Keep time

This is one of the most important of the negotiation skills, but many people think that the longer their presentation takes the more its effect will be. Well, this is not so because people often get tired when a presentation goes on for longer than they had expected.

Effective delivery

Effective delivery means that you observe presentation skills such as maintaining eye contact with the audience so that they can feel like you are talking to them personally, varying the speech to prevent monotony and making sure that the audience doesn’t notice you looking at your notes for too long.

Other presentation skills include setting a clear tone such as hopefulness or teamwork among others from the onset and setting aside a Q&A session after the presentation.