Five minutes into the session, the first cameras went dark. By the twenty-minute mark, people had started leaving. And when we finally opened the floor for questions, all we heard were crickets. The first slide that the presenter shared was one with a bunch of customer logos, across the board. The next slide was something that the audience had seen hundreds of times. I immediately knew how the presentation was going to end, a disaster.
Contrast that with another presenter. He started his presentation with a story, about a conversation he had with a customer, someone like the audience in attendance. He then shared what he learnt, that was relevant to the topic at hand and asked the audience if they agreed with what he had learnt. The audience were hooked. I immediately knew that this was a going to be a success.
My work gives me the unique opportunity to invite speakers to deliver a presentation on a topic that they are an expert in, and host a set of people, who are interested in, and want to listen to the topic being presented. I have sat through and learnt from more than 750+ such sessions that I’ve hosted over the last one and a half decades.
I’ve seen all kinds of reactions to these presentations, from stellar to complete bombing and everything in between. I can see when the audience is engrossed and completely engaged and when they are slowly leaving the room, physical or virtual.
And here is what I have learnt from all these sessions that will be useful to you, if you happen to deliver presentations (1-1 or 1-n) as part of your work, read along.
The most effective presenters meet their audience where they are, then, take them along on a journey, of some sort of discovery, with a clear end goal, one that the audience need to reach.
They are like the Gandalf to the Frodo, Dumbledore to Harry Potter or Hanuman to Ram. They are never the heroes of the story but the mentor to the Hero, the members of the audience.
Let’s explore this in a bit more detail.
Meet their Audience where they are:
As Andrew Stanton, who directed Finding Nemo and WALL-E, said that the first rule of storytelling – “Make me care.” This is what a great speaker does at the beginning of their presentation.They know their audience and their world. They know what they are struggling with, what they are aspiring for, the skills they have, the doubts that stop them from taking the actions that can move them towards their aspirations.
Great presenters make the beginning of their presentation about empathizing with the audience, acknowledging their aspirations and struggles and making an emotional AND an intellectual connection. They end by Making their Audience Care.
Good presenters know their audience well enough to understand the audience’s aspirations, challenges, and how they can help address all of them. They make an intellectual or a logical connection with the audience.
Average presenters are self-obsessed. They start their presentation with how great their companies are, how great their products are, how many customers they have. Then go on and talk about the product or service that they want to peddle and how it can help their customers solve a problem. They are at least aware of what their products and services solve.
Poor presenters are not only self-obsessed, and they are also not very clear on what their product or services solve for the audience. They ramble on, confused, overusing jargons, that not many understand and are clearly going through the motions. It is very clear that given a choice, they would much rather be doing something else.
And I haven’t even touched the mechanics of the delivery. I can make out how the session will go just by the way the speaker plans and opens the session.
Take them along on a journey
The second part of the statement is about taking the audience on a journey. This is where the ability to tell a compelling story comes very handy.
Great presenters tell compelling stories, good presenters share compelling information.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and writing about storytelling on my blog. I’ve written about why stories work the way they do and how they lower the brain’s cognitive guard by generating recognizable patterns, creating the space for real emotional access.
I’ve explored the five types of stories every leader needs to tell. I’ve written about how stories provide emotional transport for ideas in a way no other communication format can.
I’ve even borrowed lessons directly from films like the Tamil movie Raayan on timing, competitive intelligence, and the quality of the people you keep close or from documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock on what storytellers can teach entrepreneurs or about the Lessons that Leaders can learn from the Movie – “The Fundamentals of Caring”.
I’ve written before about how stories provide emotional transport for ideas — that the emotional experience isn’t decoration around the message, it is the mechanism of transfer. Stanton’s “make me care” is the craft version of that same insight: if you haven’t created the emotional entry point, the transport never happens.
Average or poor speakers open with background; great speakers open with consequence.
Some sort of discovery:
The best presentations are those that help their audience discover something new, something of consequence, something that they didn’t know before attending the session. This could be about the reason why they might be stuck, this could be about a new technology that they didn’t know about or about how someone else, who was also in their current situation achieved their goals and what they can learn from them.
If you have begun well, it is easy to move into this phase of the presentation. This is where the meat of the presentation lies, where you talk about the insights that you wanted to share. I have seen that insights led presentations work much better than information led presentations.
A big differentiator between Great, Good, Average and Poor presenters at this stage shows up in how much they share and how much restraint they practice. Great presenters don’t overwhelm their audience by sharing everything and don’t lay it all out. They make the audience work a bit, for the insight and make them feel intelligent for having figured it out.
Good presenters share the most relevant insights with the audience and lay it all out without holding anything back. Average presenters share everything that they can say, without understanding its relevance for the audience. And poor presenters don’t share any insight and instead only focus on sharing information about their products or services.
With a Clear End Goal
This is probably the most important aspect of any presentation. What is the end goal – for your audience and for you.
Great speakers have a very clear end goal that they want to prescribe or offer to the audience that is not only helpful to the audience in fulfilling their aspirations but also moves the speaker towards their own goal for delivering this presentation.
Good speakers have a clear goal that they want to achieve as a result of having delivered this presentation. They don’t necessarily care about if this is the right thing for their audience.
Average speakers don’t have a clear understanding of what is it that they want to achieve by delivering this presentation nor do they care about what is right for their audience.
Poor speakers confuse their audience and make matters worse for them after having listened through the presentation. They are also not sure what they want to achieve out of the presentation.
That the Audience need to reach:
Great speakers bring the audience to the stage where the members of the audience know exactly what they need to do (or not do). They don’t spell it out for them. They help their audience figure it out. This makes the audience invested in their decision.
Good speakers reach the conclusion for their audience and lay it out to for them. They rob their audience to feel intelligent and experience the sense of adventure and closure.
Average speakers leave it hanging. While they expect the audience to reach the right decisions, they haven’t laid the groundwork for them to reach there. They are more focused on their own personal goals that they want to achieve rather than the goal that the audience need to reach.
Poor speakers have delivered the presentation, and no one knows exactly what the next steps are or what decisions need to be made. These are the sessions, where everyone comes out confused and with the feeling of wasted time.
Your Journey to Becoming a Great Presenter
This leaves the obvious question – How can one move from being a poor presenter to a great presenter. I have tried to answer this very question through my experience and learning in this blog post.
Leaders worth following understand these principles and model them for their teams to learn from. They also diagnose where each person on their team are in the phase and get them the requisite help in the form of training, coaching, mentoring and the safe space to learn, practice and get better.
