I've been polling audiences and clients for many years now about their views on presentations. Unsurprisingly, the majority of them can only point to a handful of great teachers / lecturers / presenters / speakers that they have encountered in a lifetime. In this arena, as in every other, the bell curve rules.
Okay then, I ask, what are the cardinal errors you see the other 90% of presenters making? Now on this question I get as many answers as there are stars in the sky, but certain themes do emerge and the most common causes for complaint are:
- Too much information - the presenter tries to tell you everything he knows rather than just the few things you need to know.
- Reading the slides - this really seems to irritate audiences, who feel that this makes the presenter irrelevant and the presentation a waste of time. [I feel somewhat more strongly about this. As George Carlin says, "I don't have pet peeves, I have major psychotic hatreds!"]
Too long - this is probably more a factor of other weak elements combining to have the audience shifting in their seats. Time really is relative here and a poor presenter can make 20 minutes feel like an aeon.
- No passion - a lacklustre, lifeless presenter can just suck the energy right out of a room. You attended because the topic is fascinating and the blurb on the website looked really interesting, and here you are with Eeyore droning on at the top of the room ...
- The sage on the stage - yes, we like to be informed, but we also want our chance to air our views. Too many presenters shy away from any degree of interaction with their audience, leaving just a few minutes for Q&A at the end of the session.
In the second of my series about presenting, I've dropped some of my thoughts on living according to the Boy Scout motto down onto Slideshare. See if this strikes a chord with you ...
[RSS readers may need to click through to see the file. It's a Slideshare thing - sorry]
As ever, comments, rotten fruit, ideas [please!], corrections and counter-arguments are all gratefully welcomed.
4 comments:
Whew! I'm out of breath. Nice presentation, Rowan.
One reason I think a lot of presenters don't prepare (if it's anything like the reason my client was rehearsing her presentation for the first time two hours before she was scheduled to give it), is that they don't think it's important.
They are not audience-focused, they are information-focused. They think that more is better, and they think that as long as all that information is on the PowerPoint, they've done their job.
Public speaking is a complex job, and people have to be willing to learn the principles behind not just what makes a good speaker (eye contact, vocal variation, yada yada yada), but what are the motivations and barriers to learning that your audience faces.
Why are they there? What do they need and want to learn? How best do they learn it? How best do they retain it? What is getting in the way of their learning?
I could go on and on. . . it's a huge pet peeve of mine that speakers disrespect their audiences so consistently.
Lisa makes a great point about information-focus versus audience-focus. Sometimes this is aggravated by meeting planners who insist on telling you what to cover (boss-driven), instead of telling you what the audience members want to get from the presentation (audience driven).
Lisa also points out that many presenters don't practice because they don't think it's important. I agree with that as well. And I'd add that one reason they don't think they need to prepare is that no one has ever pointed out that their presentations suck.
Presenters are often people in power (above you in the food chain) or perceived experts (the highly paid professional speaker). In the first case, who's gonna beard the lion? Not anyone with a hardy sense of self-preservation. In the second, who will say that the 25 grand we just plunked down for that celebrity wasn't worth it? Not many. They'll assume everybody else thought it was valuable and keep their mouth shut.
Great post... I love the part about telling a story... cause that sums it up... oh and one more thing, I just hate the sound that comes in with every new point... ugghhhhh...
Great advice and a really useful presentation. Its the classic Jobs v Gates issue! Clarity over content. One addition may be the careful use of images - you use these well in the presentation and for me imgaes and especially visual metaphor add something more than words ever could to a presentation. If used well and in conjuntion (of course) with a good presenter images can also help in making the key message/anchors within memorable.
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