Better Presentations for Professionals
Last week I had the honor of giving a presentation on, of all things, giving presentations. How meta!
This was for an audience of over 1,000 attendees who work at a major financial institution. The team I worked with on their end was one of the best I've ever worked with, which made giving this presentation more of a delight.
At the end there was time for some questions, but not enough to to address every question. So, with their permission, I'll answer the questions here. I hope this makes sense, even if you didn't see the live webinar. I may rephrase some of the questions so they make sense for this article. Let's get started!
Alert! Alert! This is SUPER LONG! But there were lots of questions... enjoy!
How does presenting (or messages) to 'C' suite or more senior stakeholders differ to other presentations? What are some key things to remember?
At the core, presentations are simply a form of communication, and there are core principles of effective communication. Two key things you want to keep in mind are, (1) what is your objective? What do you want your audience to walk away with (or do, or think), and (2) Who is your audience?
Whether you speak on stage in front of hundreds of people or you are talking the an executive or board member at your organization, you need to know what your objective is and you need to, as best as possible, know who your audience is.
My first reaction to "how are senior stakeholders different" is that they are busier and want a more condensed presentation. This is a stereotype, though. It may be true much of the time but I've been in plenty of meetings or presentations with senior leaders who are fine to put time into really understanding issues so they can make wise decisions (and not just try to rush through everything to be able to move on to their next appointment).
Knowing your audience can help you know how important the message is for them, and how much time they might really dedicate to it, and coming to a good resolution. Again, I'll stereotype: executives don't want to make bad decisions. It makes them look stupid (or incompetent) and it usually means they'll have to revisit the issue, or the consequences of their bad decisions. Neither is fun.
My advice is to respect their role, their authority, their power, but also realize they are just people. Too often we get intimidated by titles and authority, but these are just humans who want to do a good job.
What are some key tips for overcoming anxiety, nervousness, or stage fright while presenting, especially to larger audiences?
I think the most important tip is to learn to be okay with these nervous feelings. What we normally see as a weakness is just natural. In my presentation I shared a story that had this as it's conclusion: When we are not nervous is when we start to make mistakes.
Having said that, the more prepared I am the less nervous I am. The more I know my topic, my content, my data, my stories, and the more I've practiced my presentation, the more confident I feel.
When I know why I'm presenting, what the objectives are, who my audience is, and what the outcome is, and the more my content and visuals are aligned with those things, the more confident I feel.
Do your best to avoid procrastinating. Put your ideas down on paper or wherever you are preparing and brainstorming. Write story ideas, visual aid ideas, etc. Go into this super prepared, or as prepared as you can with the time you have available.
If you are reading this thinking, "I don't have any free time," I'm probably not talking to you. I'm talking to the person who has a presentation, an opportunity, to change their career. If this is big ticket, big impact, big budget, a big ask, etc., you will find the time. You don't walk into the presentation of your life having no sleep and no prep. Treat this seriously... otherwise, maybe you shouldn't even be presenting (opt for an email, instead?).
My last line there was a little tongue-in-cheek, but the point makes sense: If this presentation doesn't merit your time and effort, maybe the presentation is a waste of everyone's time and should just be removed from the calendar.
Nervousness is very common problem for all presenters, how do you overcome nervousness before and during a presentation?
Two ideas that are a bit different than the last question:
Before a presentation I visualize. This is such a powerful tool... I'll visualize every aspect of a presentation. Not all at once but throughout the few days before my presentation. I visualize the introduction, the conversation at the beginning, my first lines, the last lines, etc.
I even visualize the Q&A.
During the presentation I find that once my first joke lands and I get a good reaction my nerves go way, way down. But I need to get my first good laugh :)
How do you deliver a presentation that is engaging for your audience?
It's critical to go back to (1) What is your objective and (2) Who is your audience? Misundstand either of those and you might give the wrong message with the wrong stories and data through the wrong medium and have the wrong call to action.
Understanding both of those well, and accurately, and you can have the most effective, most impactful, most meaningful, most memorable presentation.
You go from "I need to present for 7 minutes on ____" to "my goal is to inspire my audience to buy in to our project and give us some resources." The objective is completely different. The first is a checkbox task, the second is outcome-based.
That's the foundation to engaging your audience.
Beyond that, think about the most compelling stories that will inspire and impact your audience. What data will really hit home and touch their hearts? What visuals might move them to open their checkbooks?
Practice presenting these. Do dry runs by yourself. Show these to your team or colleagues and get their reactions. And then refine. Tighten up. Take your 4 minute story and tell it in 2.5 minutes. Take your amazing data and remove whatever isn't necessary, or whatever is distracting.
Take your script and remove words and sentences. Take your visuals and remove stuff. Clean everything up so you can focus on your objectives, removing all other distractions.
Usually presentations (at least the content) has to be customized for your audience, right? but when you are unaware of your audience, what are the tips to create content and run it which appeals to everyone?
Ah, shoot. You just took away my (2) that I've been talking about!
You are going to have to make assumptions about your audience. Hopefully you can ask questions of the person who invited you to speak. Ask them why the audience is there and any demographic question you can think of. You want to know where they are in their career, or what their interests or hobbies are, or how familiar they are with this topic. You want to know how you are being sold to them so you get an idea of what they are expecting.
I know assumptions are not the best but if it's all you have make the best of it. Start with "they are humans" and then work backwards from there, trying to understand why in the world they'd listen to you and what you are talking about.
Match your assumptions with your objectives and go from there.
You should always be able to get some answers. "This is a group of high school seniors who are interested in our industry as a career option." That's not perfect but it's enough to start making assumptions. Try to get in their heads as you try to understand them.
If you really don't know who your audience is, go in with stories and pictures and stuff that is generally really engaging and interesting (think: what is emotional), then during the presentation try to figure out who your audience is. You can do this through questions and conversation, kind of how a comedian works his audience.
Over the past few years, presenting to teams / audiences has transitioned online, which allows easier preparation with notes etc. to prompt you. Do you believe transitioning back to office, meeting / presenting in person will require a re-learning process to present in person, with less reliance on notes on screen?
This is a great question. I remember when I had to transition from in-person presentations, where I got a lot of immediate audience feedback and engagement, and I fed off of that, to doing screen-only. It was for recordings for my soft skills courses on Pluralsight, so it wasn't real-time, but they were real presentations.
It was a hard learning curve and transition. I went from a free-flow and go-with-the-flow style that depended on audience feedback (or at least seeing eyeballs and smiles) to sitting alone in a room with me, a microphone, and a PowerPoint. No feedback. It felt very lonely.
I had to bring energy to each recording I did from a different place. I had to really hype up my voice and actually moved my body a lot to bring that energy. You'd laugh if you saw a video of me recording for a course... I talk a lot with my hands when I do my courses!
I could also read from notes or a script, and not worry about reading my audience. I went off of assumptions regarding my audience, and how they would receive what I was doing.
Going back to live was a bit of a learning curve, again. It was really because I was out of practice. I just needed to practice again. I needed to remember my stories and the very tight phrases I used to make them powerful. Doing it week after week made it easy... taking a break for a long time and moving to scripts made me forget how to do on-stage well.
Having said that, when I'm on stage, I have notes. My notes are my slides, first. I don't use the "note" feature in my slides... maybe I should. But usually an image or the words on my slides are enough to remember what I'm supposed to talk about. Sometimes I put little reminders that the audience wouldn't catch but I'd see, like a word in parenthesis or a certain picture to make me think of something in particular, and then I could launch into a story or whatever.
One of the funnest presentations I did without notes on a paper was in Maryland at an outplacement company. There were probably 50 or 60 people in the room. I got there early and took my brainstormed notes and put them on a whiteboard. Looking at the whiteboard you'd see a bunch of ideas or topics or thoughts (not sentences, just a few words per topic). They weren't organized into columns or rows, just randomly put up on the board.
I used my PowerPoint lightly because I wanted the audience to look at me and take in my body language. So, my ppt wasn't my source of notes or a reminder. I'd glance at the white board and pick the next appropriate topic and then talk about that. As I did that I'd erase it from the whiteboard. It was so fun, it flowed really well, and the audience caught on to the idea that that was something of a table of contents. They could see what I was going to talk about and have some anticipation, or ask about it, "You have personal branding on the board, what about _____?"
In summary, I think it's critical that you really know your message, your intent, your why, your audience, and what you really need to present. If your message is internalized, and practiced, you can go out of order. You can go down a certain path with just a one-word or one-picture reminder. If you've practiced your stuff you can easily shift around and notes will be less important.
It's fascinating to watch a comedian do their act for over an hour without notes. There's no way they could do that without having practiced, practiced, and practiced more to internalize their stuff.
Practicing sounds like it takes a long time, and it can. But again, if this is a critical presentation with a big potential outcome, doesn't it make sense to invest the time?
How do you encourage engagement with your audience in a virtual presentation?
Great question. It's kind of hard. A traditional way is to do polls but I don't like polls. I've seen the poll technology fail. Worse, it seems that asking a poll and waiting for responses is awkward and interrupts the flow. As bad, a lot of poll questions are seemingly irrelevant, or the speaker doesn't know how to tie the poll results into their flow/presentation.
Take those issues with polls and extend them to whatever other virtual tools you get, like raising your hand or whatever. Dumb. Distracting.
I used to dislike the chatter that happens in the chat box in a virtual presentation. It seems like this completely different conversation... like people aren't really paying attention to the speaker but having their own back-of-the-room chitter chatter. But I've softened quite a bit on that. I figure if they are having that chatter I'm at least somehow a part of it. Maybe something I said started a chat thread, and they are spending more time on it.
I've learned, as a speaker, it's critical to not try to follow it. Stay on task, keep up your energy, stay with your flow, focus on your job of communicating, and stay out of the chatter. I've seen speakers try to get in and they pause too much, reading what people are saying, trying to understand why, and then their presentation hits the brakes. It's hard to get the energy back from that. So, ignore the chatter.
Same with questions. People ask if I want questions during or after and I say, "Ask questions whenever you want but I won't look at them until after. If a host wants to monitor questions, feel free to interrupt me if something makes sense, or is really timely, otherwise hold to the end." I'm fine to get interrupted but sometimes questions are just a big distraction. Again, I've seen speakers try to keep up on them real time and it just drains the momentum and energy.
Don't discourage chatter or questions, just manage how you, as a speaker, interact with that.
If I wonder if anyone is out there I might ask a question, like, "Has anyone had this particular thing happen at their job? How did it make you feel? Throw your thoughts into the chat box." This could backfire though, if no one answers... then everyone else thinks no one is paying attention.
Because of this I've had to focus more on the energy and excitement I bring to the presentation. By the way, I've gotten comments on my courses about this, where people say I talk about the topic with a lot of excitement and energy (not in an annoying way).
Don't underestimate the power of being excited about a topic at work when you are the presenter.
Would be great to get your thoughts on getting audience active participation and ways/means that work better than others??
This will depend on the medium (online or in person), the size (500 people or 2 people), the purpose and audience, etc. I shared some ideas on getting participation virtually in the last response.
In a live session I might pause my prepared, practiced stuff and dig down on one person. I might use our conversation in front of the audience, with their permission, to illustrate some points. For example, I might ask "who here has a personal brand? Raise your hand." Then, I call on some of those people and ask what their brand is.
THEN, with their permission, I break it down. I critique it real time. People love knowing they are getting custom, personalized expert.
So maybe be flexible from your plan. Read your audience. If they need energy, give them energy. If they need emotion, give them emotion (not by crying, rather by going into an emotional story).
One more point on this: If you ask questions, give them time to answer. Don't ask a question and then say, "Well, no one wants to share. Let's move on." Spend a few seconds, or minutes, in quiet, until they answer. Many of us are trained to not talk during a presentation, as the audience, but when you let them know you really want them to participate, and you give them permission to talk, they catch on and start talking.
Side note: managing those questions can be tricky. You have to learn when to cut people off tactfully, you have to learn how to respond to their ideas and roll that into the rest of your presentation, etc. There's a lot of skill that goes into doing that well. Do it wrong and you come across as a jerk, and you could lose your audience.
How do you deliver an effective presentation without keep reading or refer to your notes, and things just come out of your mouth naturally? (I can see many effective presenters are able to do that, I am keen to know how they did it)
Probably my favorite stage presentation is Career Management 2.0. The first few times I did it I thought "This is my legacy. This is Jason Alba's message." I thought I did an excellent job with it.
I did a fine job, but it wasn't excellent. One speaking tour, when I was in Minneapolis, a lady came up and said, "Jason, your presentation is WAY, WAY better than three years ago! I saw you three years ago and it was the same topic, but you are WAY BETTER!"
I didn't realize I had room for way better. I thought I was excellent. But in those three years I had probably done that presentation about a hundred times. I had practiced and refined it over and over. My visuals improved, my stories got tighter, my style matured.
When you see excellent presentations you have to know they didn't just roll out of bed that way. I heard a one hour presentation takes about 40 hours to prepare for. That is amazing. I didn't believe it. But now, at this point in my career, I can say it does take a ton of time to be amazing (which I'm still aspiring towards).
My ability to speak with this "just come out of your mouth naturally" has come from hundreds and hundreds of presentations. I've spent thousands of hours preparing and tweaking and reworking.
I don't want to intimidate you with those numbers but I do want you to realize that if you want to be highly effective you need to put some time and preparation into it. Even if you have been told your whole life that you are a naturally gifted speaker, practice. Improve. Learn. Prepare. Hone your skills.
If you are not naturally gifted, and presenting terrifies you, that's okay too. This is a skill you can learn and improve. But it will take studying and time and dedication and practice. Choose to invest in yourself.
Even a well-prepared presentation is often times interrupted with questions that breaks the presenter's train of thoughts. What are your tips to get back on track in these situations?
The audience is usually smart enough to know you might need a few seconds. Looking at your notes, pausing to regroup, etc. is okay.
Let me say that another way: It is okay to not be an amazing, polished speaker all the time. It's okay to be human.
Your audience might be more forgiving that you think. Remember the kid who sings the Star Spangled Banner before a baseball game but messes it up? The audience picks it up, helps the kid, and still gives a standing ovation.
Your audience isn't there with pitch forks waiting for you to mess up. Sometimes, though, you get stuck with your issues and think you are horrible. Your audience will wait for you to get back on track. Just collect yourself and pick it up again.
I've seen big audiences be patient while a speaker recovers. I've seen one-on-one executives (or board meetings or executive committee meetings) be real and human and patient. Don't beat yourself up if you make a mistake.
If someone else throws you off realize you have a special opportunity. Think about how comedians handle hecklers. When a heckler starts interrupting a comedian's act the audience tends to side with the comedian. The heckler is a rude jerk. The comedian has an opportunity to remain the audience favorite. One wrongly-worded impromptu joke could turn the audience against the comedian (or, further against the heckler).
DO NOT MAKE YOUR AUDIENCE MEMBER LOOK BAD. The minute you call someone out for their bad behavior, you risk losing the entire audience. Be kind, be gracious, and let someone else handle the issue (like your hosts).
Here's the thing: Your audience will be on your side until you mess it up. Just be nice and focus on recovering.
Eventually, you might need to pull the plug, stop the presentation, ask for help from the hosts, etc. But don't make that your first reaction.
I would like to know your thoughts on overcoming 'imposter syndrome' during meetings despite being well prepared.
I think many of my responses above address this: practice, practice, practice. Know your audience, your intent, your message. And practice more.
More than that, maybe you shouldn't focus on "overcoming" imposter syndrome. Maybe you should figure out how to work through it.
There's a big difference between getting over something, finishing it, moving on, and simply working within constraints.
I used to think I had to get over things like imposter syndrome when I really needed to just become a master of not having the perfect circumstances or environment. It's kind of like, "How do you not be nervous?" Well, you are going to be nervous, but you'll do an excellent job presenting anyway.
You might just have imposter syndrome... just work within it. The better you do with the stuff in the first sentence of this response the better you can work within it. But don't let the fact that you still have imposter syndrome throw you off and further decrease your confidence.
Weird answer, huh? I've been thinking of this a lot. How do we work within constraints when we haven't full conquered them? It's a fascinating idea and I think an important life skill.
How do you ensure that you communicate effectively?and don't get into too much detail but still give enough context and message at the right granularity to get the desired outcomes??
Let's think about this question through one lens of stories and another lens of data. You can really go too deep into either, a long-winded story or overwhelming data.
The question might become: What is the most compelling, interesting, moving information I can share that will help this audience get to my objective?
Once you figure that out you will probably eliminate 80% of your story or data.
You might be sad about reducing 80% of your story or data. But remember, those are just tools, or vehicles, to help you get to your objective. Reduce any distraction. Reduce what I call "mental friction," which is anything that causes your audience to move away from your message and objective and think too deeply down a wrong path. That friction could be very acute and obvious or it could be misusing a certain word (for example, "physical year" instead of "fiscal year.").
Once you have done this, present it to yourself and put yourself in the shoes of the audience. Does something feel missing? Or is the 20% that is left compelling and helpful, and a good message that complements the rest of what you are presenting?
If, as the audience, you feel nothing is missing, then move forward! If something feels missing then add it back, but don't get back up to 100%.
Your objective is to reduce and remove until you have the most important, most compelling stuff that will help you reach your objective.
Say you are preparing for a presentation and the topic you are?presenting on, you personally are not interested in but you still need to deliver a good presentation to get the information across to your audience. What tips do yoru recommend to "fake it to make it"??
Seriously... all of these are great questions!!!
I'm thinking about one of the most amazing professional speakers I've ever met. She would present on ANY topic to ANY audience. She'd get paid tens of thousands of dollars to present and she was amazing, every single time.
I think one of the reasons was that she loved to learn. She saw these opportunities to speak on something she knew nothing about to learn and dig deep while getting paid big bucks.
I think another reason, and to the heart of my answer, she really cared about the journey she was about to take her audience on. She cared about them learning, getting moved, becoming inspired, growing, etc.
Maybe the topic doesn't interest you but how could sharing it change lives? Instead of focusing on your interest level, focus on the WIIFM for your audience. I challenge you to make this a priority of your boring-topic presentations and I bet you won't need to fake anything. You'll be excited for them rather than trying to muster excitement for the topic.
At least one of my courses was on a topic that I thought, "No one is going to want to watch this. It is boring and everyone knows it." Those topics have been surprisingly popular, compared to my other courses. I have learned that where I'm at and what I know is different than where others are at and what others know.
I now think a lot more about them, through their eyes, and what they need, than whether the topic is interesting to me or not.
Having said all of that... I don't give talks on Facebook anymore. Since that first horrible one I did in Silicon Valley (to a very kind audience, I should add), I've realized that I'm not the right person for that topic. If someone asks me to talk about LinkedIn or careers or income streams or soft skills or education or ____, I'm there. But if someone asks me to talk about Facebook I pass it off to someone else. I'm just unqualified and uninterested.
Maybe, just maybe, it makes sense to see if there's someone better to do the presentation rather than muscle your way through miserable.
What is the worst presentation, you have done and why was it a failure?
The worst one I know of was that Facebook presentation. Having done a lot of presentations where I was the expert, and I was well-practiced, and I got great feedback (or, feedback about how great it/I was), I was cocky.
I went into the Facebook presentation not understanding that my audience could run circles around me. I didn't realize *any* of them should have written the book instead of me. I didn't understand my audience and as soon as I realized that I found that my message was 100% bad for them.
My "why" was to share ideas and educate but since I was so wrong about who my audience was I was so wrong about what my message was.
It's amazing made it through.
But even in your worst presentation you'll make it through. You'll live to tell about it. You'll learn from it. You'll tell about your worst presentation one day. And you'll only get better from there.
In some situations, we could come across audiences who are not very responsive, how to encourage shy audiences to comment, discuss together, or ask questions??
I've talked a bit about this above in various responses so I'll just add one more thought:
Maybe you shouldn't encourage shy audiences to do anything. Imagine you present to another team or organization and they just feel cold or off. You could try to force things, like "Everyone talk to the person on your left for one minute and then tell me what you learned about them!" By the way, as an introvert, I hate that.
But what if there is junk within that team? They aren't reacting to you, or your message, rather they are reacting to their organizational dysfunction. Be careful to not read your audience wrong to the point where you internalize stuff that has nothing to do with you.
If you knew that a team member just died, would you change your presentation? Probably. You might remove a story or joke or certain language.
Many times you won't know what your audience is dealing with, individually or collectively. So don't overthink their reaction.
One more thing: When I think I have a mad face. I look mad. Or bored. Or distant.
Sorry, but that's just how my face faces.
I've presented to executives who appear to have checked out only to realize they were in a deep analytical/thinking mode. I thought I had lost them when really, they were thinking more about my stuff than anyone else had. Again, be careful how you read body language during your presentation.
How to encourage together discussions? Maybe you don't. Maybe there shouldn't be "discuss together," or else you might lose your momentum as the facilitator. I've seen that happen.
How do you encourage comments or questions? I've mentioned this above but it's worth repeating: First, ask a question (like, "Does anyone have any questions?") and then be quiet. Some people need a minute, or more, to get ready to ask a smart question. Second, address every question or comment in a way people feel heard and respected. If someone asks a question and you brush over it or discount it, others might think, "I was going to ask a question but the speaker clearly doesn't want to hear questions, so I'll be quiet."
Do you have any tips with removing filler words from presentations? E.g. um, like etc.?
For me, this came with time. As I practiced and presented and refined I found ways to tighten my message. My last few presentations I did on Career Management 2.0 were amazing, and much cleaner than the hundred before. But that was because I was intentionally working to clean them up.
I imagine you won't get hundreds of times to do the same presentation, so you won't be able to tighten your language like I did for that one. Then you need to practice removing filler words in ALL of your communication. All the time.
Pay more attention to how you talk, even with friends. Pay attention to how you write (my course on Effective Email Communication talks a lot about tightening up your written communication). Practice looking for and removing filler words.
The next step will be to practice reducing what you say or write. Think of these as "filler sentences." Remove stuff that just doesn't need to be said. Go for reducing mental friction. Go for focusing on your objectives and outcomes.
So, yeah, um, I guess that's what I'd say.
(In that line I'd remove the four filler words and then have only "that's what I'd say," and then remove that because it adds no value to my message)
How do we handle difficult audience who challenges the?presentation materials, we know they are against the changes.
CHANGE IS HARD. Change impacts lives. Change is scary. It is disruptive. (here are some Pluralsight change management courses)
Going into a presentation knowing your audience will have a hard time with what you are presenting, maybe your approach us much more empathetic (you need to absorb this course called Leading with Emotional Intelligence).
Instead of saying "this is a difficult audience who will challenge my stuff," change that to "I'm going to present some really hard stuff to people who will take it badly."
Take it, the changes and the message, badly, not necessarily take ME badly.
Shift how you go into this. Instead of a me-against-them, think of a me-and-them. As a deliverer of hard news (change) you need your audience to trust you. This can come with increased EQ as well as how you present the message.
Think about the bedside manner of a doctor delivering a cancer diagnosis. Someone close to me had the doctor come in and said something like, "You have cancer, you will die in 6 months." And then he left the room.
While the information could be accurate (in that case it was grossly wrong), the delivery could have been done completely different.
Another thing you could do is distance yourself, if possible, from the bad or hard news. Again, make this about facts and circumstances and try to remove unhelpful emotions and drama while still maintaining emotional intelligence.
Listening to your audience is easy when you are face to face. How can you do that when you are presenting online?
When I'm online I have to use my imagination. I choose that over following polls and questions and chat, if I can get away with ignoring those for a bit.
I had to learn to draw my strength, energy, inspiration, etc. from somewhere else, other than the audience. It was a hard transition but it has served me well.
Better to imagine an engaged, interested audience than imaging a bored, multi-tasking audience.
That's how I do it.
And... that's the last of the questions.
If you read this far you are a CHAMP! I hope these thoughts can help you make better presentations. The courses I recommended to the audience are below: