There are many types of communication in the modern organization. This of course would be in addition to the ubiquitous use of personal and social media such as texting, tweeting and facebooking. Some forms of organizational communication seem to be falling out of favor, such as actually phoning someone and talking to them, and some seem to be on the rise, such as Instant Messaging. However, for formal business communications there are basically two methods, the written memo as generated by some desktop based word processing program, and the presentation chart as generated by some desktop commercial presentation program. I am going to talk about the presentation method of communication. Not the creation of it. The presenting of it. I have written in the past about charts. I have written about the increasing complexity of charts. When commercial presentation programs first came out they contained little more than the ability to draw some rudimentary objects such as geometric figures and arrows, and the ability to “draw” some text on the chart. It was great. You could now put some images with some words. There are a few presentation rules to abide by in order to avoid being considered the presentation making equivalent to the much sought after cure for insomnia. They are: Don’t read your slides. Don’t read your slide notes. Don’t read anything. There is a really good chance that everyone in the business audience will know how to read. They will be able to read your slides without your help. Trust me on this. If you are just going to read your slides to people, they will very quickly realize that you are not much value add to the presentation. Be familiar enough with the topic and content that you don’t have to read it. Stop and answer the questions when they are asked. Don’t tell people to hold their questions till the end. If you make people hold their questions till the end, they will forget them, not be able to ask them, and they will feel strangely unfulfilled at the end of you presentation. Answer the questions succinctly. A question is not an invitation for another dissertation. If you don’t know the answer, tell them: “That is a good question. I don’t have the answer to it, but I will find the answer and get back to you with it” And move on. Don’t dwell on it and don’t try to bluff through it. People will be able to tell, and you want to maintain and retain your credibility. Presenting is easy. Presenting well is much more difficult. It takes effort, preparation and knowledge of both the topic and the audience. A friend once told me early in my career that when you present you need to be brilliant and to be brief. He then looked at me and smiled and said in my case he would settle for me just being brief. I think wiser words I have never heard.
I have written about the increasing number of charts in presentations. When commercial presentation programs first came out overhead foils were relatively expensive and had to be generated specifically for overhead presentations. This limited both the complexity and number of charts that were in any given presentation. Ah for the good old days when presentations were short, simple and sweet.
Regardless of how long current business presentations have grown; regardless of how complex current business presentation slides have become; someday, somewhere you are going to be asked to actually present your presentation to a live executive audience, in person. With the increased cost of business travel, the proliferation of networked presentation sharing programs, and with the quality of desktop screens, the in person presentation is becoming a rarer and rarer internal to the organizational event, but it still does occur. Presentations to customers are still a mainstay of the sales function. If you want to be able to deliver a successful presentation, either internally to the organization or to customers, you need to know a few rules about presenting.
Even though I’ll be addressing the in person presentation scenario, much of what I’ll talk about is equally applicable to the on-line presentation as well, only on-line will be easier, since almost everyone will be multi-tasking anyway and won’t be giving you their full attention as they would if you were there in person. Besides, everyone knows how to talk on the telephone. We have all been doing that since the first time we picked up a phone and said “Hi grandma!” when we were two years old.
Presenting in person is something of an art. There are those that can do it without much thought or effort, and seem to be able to hold an audience absolutely spellbound, regardless of the information they are presenting. There are those who despite studied preparation and flawless slide content succeed only in convincing everyone present, once they regain consciousness from being bored almost to the comatose level that some people should never again be allowed to present anything.
Be dynamic. Don’t stand in one place. Don’t hide behind the dais or the lectern. Move around the presentation area. You don’t need to run in circles or do jumping jacks, but you do need to have a little mobility in order to force the audience to periodically shift their attention point. This will help to keep them from staring at one spot and starting to “zone out”. As strange as it may seem I have found that even moving around my office if I am presenting on the phone helps as with this as well. Perhaps this method is good for both the presenter and the audience.
Make eye contact. Not just with the most senior member of the audience, or the person that the presentation is for, but with each individual in the room. You need to make a connection and acknowledge their presence if you want them to acknowledge yours. You are not giving an acceptance speech where you need to list everyone by name, but looking each them in the eye at various times in the presentation will help them feel that you are talking to them and not talking at them.
We are in the short attention span, multi-tasking world. You need to learn how to get your point across on each slide in forty seconds to one minute. If you can’t boil down the slide information into that kind of time frame you will rapidly start to lose audience attention. The pace that you move the presentation along will be a key to maintaining audience attention.
Ask yourself questions. What is the primary piece of information you are trying to convey with each slide? Why is it important? What do you want the audience to do with it, if anything? Meandering and unfocused presentations are a painful audience experience. Too many presenters try to demonstrate how smart they are by trying to provide too much and too detailed information. Trust me. You’re presenting to executives. There is no doubt who the smartest person in the room is. If they were the smart ones, they would be presenting to you. Your job is to communicate what they need to know, not everything that you know.
