The story of Dave (Lets stop doing rubbish presentations)

In November 2018 I was invited to speak at the North East Expo - a trade faire and event for local businesss in the noth east of England. I took along my purple monkey, Dave, and told a story. It resonated with many folk there so I thought i'd type it up for anyone who wasn't. Enjoy the story of Dave.

This is Dave.

He works for a medium sized company about 100 people, and he’s on the product development team and he is petrified. He’s about to start giving a talk to 100 peers and professionals about the new product his team has been working on. He is frozen in terror, can’t remember what he is going to say – this is the worst day of Dave’s life.

And he’s not alone…many people have a fear of public speaking, when it’s really bad it’s called Glossaphobia. It’s pretty common with some people expressing that they would rather literally die than talk to a room full of people. 

Everyone gets nervous before doing a talk. If a speaker tells you they don't then they are lying. I sleep really badly the night before a session or a talk and I do this for a living! You can't get rid of the nerves, its how you deal with them that matters. One of my favoriate phrases is "You can't stop the butterflies in your stomach, but you can teach them to fly in formation".

I also like feeling nervous, it shows you care and that can only be a good thing. The moment you arn't nervouse at all you probably don't care and therefore shoulnd't be speaking anyway.

But back to Dave.

While he’s stood there frozen, time seems to slow and he thinks back over how he got here.

The first real presentation he did was at school when he was 11, it was about the Romans. He remembers standing up, feeling nervous and excited and doing his talk. He remembers the board disinterested faces of his class and the glazed over eyes of the teacher. He clearly recalls the lacklustre round of applause. Afterwards the teacher said he did well, but his best mate Alom said it was rubbish (kids can be honest and cruel!).

He remembers walking home feeling crap, embarrassed and vowing never to do a presentation again.

Many people with aversions to public speaking are afraid of looking foolish or of being judged poorly by the audience. Some like poor Dave here have had negative experiences in the past which colour how they perceive what will happen now. But that was then, this is now, and in the grown-up world the audience is on your side. Don't think of them as a panel waiting to judge you, think of them more like cheer leaders...No one comes in, sits down and goes – well I hope this is crap! They want to you do well.

They will also forgive you almost anything, if you connect with them. The best speakers connect with their audiences emotionally, the audience “likes them” and therefore things that might seem huge to you as the speaker don’t matter very much to the audience – its useful to remember that.

The first really great presentation Dave saw was at his University open day. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do but liked the look of the campus so went along, all excited to see what being a student would be like. It was seeing a presentation by a lecturer in business studies that really did it for Dave. The talk didn’t centre around what Dave would learn but rather on the chance to work in industry for one semester. This was exactly what Dave cared about, getting to learn at the coal face, meet professionals and prepare himself for earning money and having a career. More than that the speaker was energetic and passionate, clearly an expert, and made Dave feel positive, inspired and motivated.

  He left the lecture hall feeling excited at the idea of studying at Northumbria his decision made. When asked by his mum how the open day went he said it was great, studying there is going to be fantastic if all the lectures are like the one I just saw….

Poor deluded Dave...

Because over the years he was there he had one lecturer who was good, and even he failed to spark that fire of enthusiasm Dave had found on the open day. Mostly the presentations where dry and information heavy, with slides full of text, bullet points or graphs.

As human beings we engage rationally with information (stuff we want to learn usually for some benefit) and we engage emotionally. Currently we think that about 95% of the brains processing power is devoted to unconscious systems, and this includes emotional response and decision making – essentially, we like to think that we make decisions rationally but mostly its to do with unconcious processing and emotional response. As presenters and speakers if you fail to engage you audience’s emotions they are not going to listen.

You know this if you've ever been to a talk that should have been interesting, the content was stuff you should have paid attention to, but the speaker failed to engage you. That’s because we respond emotionally first. Only if your audience feels engaged will they listen to the rational logical stuff. Many of those bad presentations fail because the speaker and content focused almost solely on the rational stuff… the information, the logical arguments, the numbers and graphs…that stuff is just not engaging, its crucial and important but its not the stuff that is going make your audience pay attention.

In order to get people to listen to your logical arguments they have got to be emotionally engaged.

Back in Dave’s life things have got interesting, he’s at university and having a blas. Joining clubs, making friends doing things he can’t remember in dingy night clubs –but hey the trebles were cheap!

He had to do a couple of group presentations during the course which he hated, they weren’t really given any support so more or less did the same stuff that the lecturers did, busy PowerPoint, info heavy, lots of graphs, dry delivery – deep down Dave thinks that they were probably rubbish but he isn’t sure how to do them differently and anyway everyone does them like that.

This is the start of the cultural problem with presentations. Dave is perfectly capable of doing great presentations but the majority of ones he’s seen are a bit rubbish – and everybody seems ok with that…that is just the way things are. So when he’s doing presentations himself he’s simply doing what everyone is.

The degree is now over, and Dave is off in the grown up world, earning money and doing business.

Here he starts being exposed to some great speakers, he seen a couple of keynotes at conferences which were truly fantastic – like that one back on the open day. However, they are rare, and everyone knows that some people are just good at doing it. Dave knows that he’s not one of them, so as much as he admires those speakers he is almost reassured that most business presentations he sees are like the ones his lecturers did at uni. Basically, a bit rubbish.

This is not true. Anyone can learn to become a great presenter, there is no such thing as people who "just can" and people who can't. There is also no recipe or magic bullet, no shortcut to getting good. Tt takes work and practice, but anyone can do it.

Often folk say to me that they aren’t a loud confident personalities and that is what stops them becoming a great presenter. To those people I say “Quiet has a voice as well, and sometimes quiet is the most powerful voice in the room”.

When Dave first started his boss sent him to a conference on innovation. He was pretty hyped about that, there were some big names speaking and folk who run loads of businesses and made heaps of cash.

The headline speaker was a serious deal the industry, they came onstage to an expectant hush, the audience including Dave were waiting to see what they're hero said. The speaker proceeded to talk about themselves for the next 30 minutes, about how great and successful they were, about how their ideas were the best and everyone should learn from them… Dave found himself losing respect for this big name, he was swiftly bored, and asleep.

Afterwards he couldn’t remember what the talk was about just that it was a bit rubbish. 

This is the “this is what we do talk” and it is completely endemic in business. Anyone recognise it? coupled with an arrogant speaker it is one of the dullest presentations you can do…and yet so many people do. 

Yes you need people to know what you do but unless they are specifically interested in your area or particular product they don’t really care. The key to making a talk that is going to interest your audience is the think about them. What is it they want to hear about? Not what you want to tell them. What do they care about? The audience should be the hero.

Your first responsibility as a speaker is interest and engage them, if you don’t then there is no point in being there. So put aside your own ego and ideas (this is hard, we all like talking about ourselves) and do a profile, who are they? what do they care about? What sorts of things engage them emotionally? Then you link what they care about to the message you want them to take away.

Dave got promoted and found that as part of being higher up the tree he is expected to go to conferences and events... and speak.

And so we return to where we started with Dave about to go onstage… he’s nervous, and terrified. He put off preparing and so had a mad panicked dash to create slides and get all the data in. He hasn’t practiced really though he did go over it in his head…The introduction finishes and he steps out, stands behind the lectern says hello and proceeds to do a talk which is as dull and boring as all the ones he has hated his whole life.

Thats a shame because in the audience is a young woman who is hoping that the presentations in the business world are more interesting than the ones she experienced while doing her apprenticeship in finance…surely in the real world you can’t get away with being that rubbish…she is disappointed.

We have created a culture where presentation is seen as an unpleasant thing you just have to get through, we expect and accept that most presentations are dull and waste our time.

But as has been said before presentations can change the world, they can be an extraordinary tool for business. A good presentation has the capacity to influence people to buy your products, raise your reputation as a company and crucially they can make people want to work with or employ you.

So long as...

You work at getting good.

Remember to engage emotionally as well as logically.S

And most significant of all, put your audience first.