Presentation skills
I guess that you — like me — spend lots of time selling ideas. Trying to get funding and resources for the projects and improvements that you want to do.
My standard approach is to bang a load of information into PowerPoint and hope for the best. I want to show the man from upstairs that I know what I am talking about. The tightly packed text and tables on my slides are a prop, just in case he starts to pick holes.
The professional
Nancy Duarte is a woman who has made a career out of slides. She advises big business on the best way to structure presentations and conversations. Her premise is that ideas are powerless if they aren’t shared — communication is everything.
Here are a handful of her pieces of advice on how to make sure your great ideas get invested in. Not someone else mediocre ones:
On content
- Your vision must be clear.
- Have a call to action. What do you want them to do?
- Think about resistance. How is your audience likely to derail the conversation? Can you anticipate your audience’s objections and respond credibly? If you can then you will draw them into the idea.
On structure
- Tell a story. We love stories. Most presentations don’t tell a story and so they just flat line.
- Stories have a beginning a middle and an end. At the risk of asking the bleeding obvious does your story have a beginning a middle and an end?
- The start of your story should show the gap between the current reality and where you want to be. Your idea is only a big idea if it is a big gap.
- Stories have highs and lows and oscillate between the two. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy loses girl. Boy and girl are reunited. You get the gist. Your presentation should oscillate between the good and the bad, keeping your audience interested.
On approach
- Don’t jump to PowerPoint. Start by sketching the idea out, visualise the story on a piece of paper.
- You are trying to create a bond with the person you are presenting to. Don’t force technology between you and your audience, you want them to look at you, not at a screen.
- If you can; sit down with paper and pencil and sketch out your idea sitting side by side. You could use your presentation as a notebook to scribble on. This approach is far more collaborative. It says look what we have created together, the pen gets passed back and forward and it is far more engaging.
On style
- You are not a hero, you are a mentor. Your job in a presentation is not to be a performer but to facilitate people’s thinking. To guide them towards your new idea. The audience should become the heroes by grabbing the idea.
- Engage. Did the audience laugh, did they clap? If your audience aren’t reacting to you then they aren’t engaging with the idea.
That is only a handful of ideas…
A jumble of thoughts on a page. If you like Nancy Duarte’s approach you can find more ideas and advice at duarte.com
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Image by Drew Leavy
Hi James,
I’ve heard a lot about Nancy Duarte and am familiar with only some of her stuff so I have some work to do.
I believe her best and your best point is that presentations or selling an idea is primarily about telling stories. However, too often do folks rely on their slides to tell the story and that their slides end up being the story teller. But, we also need to remember that we, the person giving the presentation, are not just selling an idea but we are also selling ourselves as deliverer of the idea.
Adrian
Thanks, James. I’ll check out Nancy and her work. I have to agree with Adrian. Telling stories is a great way to get the message across while keeping the audience engaged.
Annette :-)
Interesting point Adrian, I wonder if there is a “right” balance between selling the idea and selling yourself. Too much of one and not enough of the other is no doubt a bad thing