Presentations are dead

Usually a title like this is negated in the first sentence. But it is true. According to Wikipedia, ‘a presentation is the process of presenting a topic to an audience. It is typically…meant to inform, persuade or build good will.’ The most important part of this definition is what a presentation is meant to do; inform, persuade or build good will. The way we receive information has changed. In the past, generations would sit silently absorbing information, learning it by wrote if need be. Now, with the introduction of visual, interactive media, not only have attention spans greatly reduced, but also the expectation of the audience. Participants expect to participate. They expect to be consulted, engaged and in return, will engage with you. The audience is just as important in how the information is shared as the information itself.

 As an actor, we learnt very quickly that the other person was just as involved in how your lines were said. The worst actors would learn their lines and say them the same way every time. A mobile phone could ring, they could trip or the set could fall down and they would still say their next line as if nothing happened. I used to usher at the Sydney Theatre Company. The first show I ushered for, Cate Blanchet was acting opposite Hugo Weaving in Hedda Gabler. During a heated and passionate scene, a woman’s mobile phone went off in the front row. It continued to ring until embarrassingly, the woman found the phone and it leapfrogged from her hand onto the stage. Cate and Hugo impressively picked up the phone, joked about how technology flies and handed the phone back to the woman. The play was not over when a man in the row where I was standing started to have a fit. I ran and got the other usher who was also a nurse. We had to stop the show, bring the house lights up and clear the half of the row where the man was. Again Cate and Hugo waited patiently on stage. When the play resumed, both actors ad-libbed about how they hoped Mr X was safe and heathy and would make a speedy recovery.

It was an unforgettable night at the theatre. The flexibility and interactivity of the performers was impressive. Ironically, the real life intruding on the world of the play, made the play more real. Let us make our presentations real by acknowledging that we have a real audience with real thoughts, fears and desires in front of us and consult them.

How can we shift from delivering a presentation to having a conversation? Because if we really want to inform, persuade or build good will, we need to make sure the audience feels engaged, included and consulted.

Would you like to find out how influential you are? Visit me here.

Influencing

People make emotional decisions. Ask the aviation industry who has spent millions researching how people make decisions, especially under pressure. If a pilot makes a wrong decision, hundreds of people could and do die. Or ask the advertising industry. They also have spent millions researching how people make decisions. Their goal however is to influence consumers to purchase the products and services of their clients. Both agree that even the most logical of us make emotional decisions. Therefore, in order to influence others, we need to connect with them emotionally. Here is how…

Questions

Ask your audience questions. To connect with them emotionally through questions there are three main questions to ask. Questions that address:

1. Commonality: Do you find that… Have you ever experienced… Do you know when…
2. Pain: Do you feel frustrated, afraid and nervous when…
3. Desire: Wouldn’t it be great if… Can you imagine… Ideally, wouldn’t you like…

Even if it’s a rhetorical question, the audience now knows that they are expected to participate. They also feel involved, consulted and important in how the conversation continues.

Stories

Stories are the most successful way of connecting emotionally with your audience. A few important processes start to happen. The audience subconsciously becomes the hero or heroine in the story. We all do this when watching a movie or even a TV series. The audience then starts to care about what happens…a lot.

When telling stories, use verbs and active words, emotive and feeling words and descriptive, visual words. Then the audience experiences the story as you relive it. A phenomenal process starts to happen within the brain called neural coupling. The audience fires the same neurons as the speaker. Oxytocin, the feel good feeling, is released increasing generosity, compassion and trustworthiness.

Stories also increase memory retention and quite simply the overall attention of the audience, keeping them engaged when they would have normally wandered off. See: https://www.arielgroup.com/blog/storytelling-works-science/.

Would you like to learn how to tell a story as engagingly as possible? Resonate Seminar

Visuals

As you can imagine, I am not a great fan of PowerPoint. Mostly because it is misused. A PowerPoint should only have pictures or graphs (clear ones) and a few words at most. PowerPoint must be for the audience, to help them engage, retain and later explain what they need to. PowerPoint is not for the speaker to read. If you choose your images well, they can be very impactful. Again, the pictures need to be emotive to have most impact, create commonality and show an understanding of the audience’s perspective.

To summarise, to influence during a presentation, we need to connect emotionally. We can do this most successfully through questions, stories and visuals.

It was once said to me, you deliver a pizza, you don’t deliver a presentation. Have a conversation instead. Your audience will be engaged, remember what you say and are more likely to do what you want them to afterwards.

Arabella Macpherson, Resonate Communications Coaching, www.resonatecomms.com, Contact us.