Presentations: a collection of lessons

In the same way that I’ve been lucky to give a lot of speeches in my life, I’ve been asked (or required) to give a lot of presentations in my career. Almost everything I've learned about giving effective presentations has come from spending time studying other people: what they've said, what they've written, what I've seen.

This is a short collection of their wisdom with a sprinkling of my own principles. I make no claim to the original ideas, I merely say confidently that they have worked when applied to my own presentations. 

Just as with speeches, though, everything starts from the same golden rule:

If you don’t know the subject well enough to talk to someone about it confidently for 15 minutes, or to draft two pages of a Word document without research, you absolutely should not do it.

What’s the point?

Giving presentations is about one simple thing: starting from “why” and ending on “how” and taking the audience with you. If your presentation doesn’t contain both of those things, it’s a waste of your time and your audience’s. 

It’s not enough to think that the point of the presentation is to “explain the new strategy to your organisation” – you need to be certain that the audience will come away understanding what it is, why it's necessary and how it's going to happen.

The best presentations achieve this journey with a surprisingly simple “compare and contrast” model, which is beautifully presented and explained in Nancy Duarte’s book Resonate.

In brief, the model looks at each of the main points you want to get across and explaining to people “this is now, and this is what could be”. By creating this comparison, you’re showing people the impact you’re trying to create, which in turn helps them see their path.

Side note: Duarte also wrote another great book about presentation design called slide:ology.

Know your audience

Knowing your audience tells you all sorts on information about how you should be approaching your presentation. How well do they already know your subject? How much background information will they need? How eager will they be to hear the information? What mood will they be in when they settle down to listen?

An internal audience comprising just your team will have a very different dynamic, concentration level and focus than an audience who’ve chosen to attend your talk in a multi-stream conference they’ve paid hundreds of pounds/dollars/euro to attend.

It doesn’t take huge effort to research your audience. Ask the person who’s invited you to give the presentation, get them to help you understand why they’ve asked you and what they hope you’ll bring.

This even applies internally. I was once invited by a fundraising director to present our social media strategy to their department, so I spent time talking to the director first to understand what they thought the current level of understanding was, how social media was being used within the team, how receptive they may be to the ideas, and a range of other questions that made sure I could shape the most impactful version of my presentation that would deliver the most value for the team.

Almost all conferences and events will have an online presence of some kind. Find their website, look at their programme. Look at their social media: what kind of content do they share, can you find last year's hashtag and see what resonated with people? Look at who else is speaking, if anyone: do you know any of them? Can you find things that they've done before to get an idea of the kind of people who are being invited?

The more you can find out about the audience, the better your talk is likely to be. 

What do you love and hate?

We’ve all sat through interminable presentations with impenetrable slides and monotonous speakers (UK daily coronavirus briefings, anyone?). Why, then, are there so many of them around? Possibly because when we start preparing presentations we don't stop to ask ourselves the very simple question about what we like in presentations.

There is no rule that says your presentation has to be a certain way. As we've already said, the point is to get your point across. If you can do that by showing people videos of chimpanzees riding on Segways for half-an-hour, do it. (I suspect you can't, but wouldn't it be great...?)

“Remember that slides are free. You can have as many as you like. That means that instead of three bullet points (with two sentences each) on a slide, you can make 6 slides. Or more. The energy you create by advancing from slide to slide will seduce most of the people in your audience to read along to keep up.” – Seth Godin

At one conference I attended there was a presentation by Dave Coplin, who was then a senior figure at Microsoft in the UK. His presentation was deeply compelling because all of his slides were clean, bold, full-screen images with one simple quote on them. The quotes – usually from well-known authors or leaders – didn’t repeat what he was saying, they reinforced it.

After being so transfixed and inspired by Dave’s presentation – and retaining so much of the information he talked about – his style became a mainstay of the way I approach my own. 

Embrace the things you love in other people's presentations and do away with everything you hate.

Banish the bullets

A slide filled with bullet points does you a disservice. Not just bullets, either, but slides with any significant amount of text. People will automatically start reading the slide as soon as it appears on the screen, which means they won’t be listening to what you’re saying.

If everything you’re saying can be communicated in those bullets, why are you even giving the presentation? Why not just send everyone the slides in an email?

You’re giving the presentation because you’re trying to take them on the journey and convince them of something. Let them hear you talk about it, not listen to you read the slides while they spend their time reading the slides.

Leave things behind

Don’t be afraid to give people handouts. By email or download link, obviously – don't go destroying the environment with printouts. You can give them a ‘bulletised’ version of your presentation with as much extra information as you’d like.

PowerPoint gives you all that space for notes on each slide that you can fill with text, or you can add extra slides to the shared version that do contain all of the bullet points collected together if you'd like to.

If you do decide to go down the handout route, tell your audience right at the start of your presentation so they know that they don’t need to worry about frantically scribbling notes as you talk.

Do you even need PowerPoint?

Challenge yourself with this question.

You’ve put effort into knowing your audience, crafting the journey you want to take them on with the story of your presentation and making sure you’re able to keep their attention as you go. But before you finish off, ask yourself if you really need the powerpoint or if you can just speak to people and convey the same message? 

You can send them more detail, you can forward a presentation, you can email your notes, you can do all manner of things to reinforce what you want to tell the audience, so do you really need your slides to communicate what you’re saying?

Most of the time, the answer is probably yes. But every now and again you might well realise that just standing up and talking to people is by far the better option to keep them interested, engaged and – crucially – awake.

Never skimp on preparation

If you take nothing else from this piece, consider this quote and then get to work on making your presentation the best it can be.

“Audience interest is directly proportional to the presenter’s preparation.” – Nancy Duarte, Resonate

If you know me and you like and respect my work, I’d be really grateful if you'd be willing to write a recommendation on my page. If like the article, please consider sharing it with your network.