At some point in our careers, all of us have sat through a deadly boring presentation. Slide after slide of size 10 font, multiple indistinguishable charts and a sleep-inducing delivery. Thirty minutes of your life you’ll never get back.
It might sound extreme, but in reality it’s not as rare as it should be. And without the right preparation, it’s something all of us can be guilty of delivering.
Whether online or face to face, presentations are an opportunity for leaders to motivate and inspire their teams. A chance to set direction, highlight potential risks, or simply connect as human beings around a common goal. Done well, they can be a catalyst for engagement, productivity and growth. Done poorly, they can easily confuse, demotivate and derail.
I started my career as a professional actor. Back then, my job was to take an audience on a journey. To leave them feeling transformed by the words I spoke. Now, when I work with senior leaders, coaching them on their communication skills, I set them the same challenge to transform their audience.
We need to remember that you update software, not people. When you have a chance to speak to your team, you must do more than just deliver information.
Most presentations fail because they focus on the detail, not the outcome. We obsess about what we’re going to say rather than asking ourselves why we’re saying it in the first place. A great presentation is the transfer of energy from one human being to another. The data is important, but it shouldn’t be your starting point.
Too many leaders jump straight into creating slides, or delegate the scripting to a junior member of the team. It’s a guaranteed way to bore your audience and kill your message.
Instead, if you want to truly engage, you need to get clear on your intention. You need to work out why you’re delivering the presentation before you put pen to paper. To do that, there are four simple questions I suggest you ask:
- What do I want my audience to know?
- What do I want my audience to feel?
- What do I want my audience to do?
- Why now?
Let’s look at each of them in turn.
What do I want my audience to know?
Human beings have a finite ability to process and retain information. You don’t want to overwhelm your audience. While it can be tempting to tell them everything, your job is to strip your message back to the essentials. Ask yourself: what do these people need to know at this particular moment to help them take the next step? It’s far better to have people leaning in and asking questions than zoning out, swamped by detail.
A good rule of thumb is to decide on three key messages you want your audience to take away. You can probably stretch this to four, but if you’re trying to share five or six big ideas in a single sitting, you’re on track to lose people. Think of these key messages as buckets: they can hold lots of supporting information, but everything inside each bucket must connect back to the same central idea.
What do I want my audience to feel?
Most leaders and managers don’t give the emotional intention of their presentations a second thought, but this is where the magic happens. Of course, you’ll be sharing information, but it’s how people feel about that information that really matters. What is the emotional journey you want to take them on? How might they be feeling when they sit down in the meeting room or join the virtual call? And how do you want them to feel when they leave?
Work with active verbs. It doesn’t matter how you feel as the presenter; what matters is how you make the people listening feel. Are you trying to excite them? Challenge them? Reassure them? There are thousands of options to choose from. The great thing about this approach is that it not only changes how you speak, but it also changes what you say. If you truly commit to motivating your audience, for example, it will sound very different to trying to scare them!
I’d recommend shifting your emotional intention every five to seven minutes so the energy doesn’t become monotone, but at the very least, be crystal clear on the final feeling you want to leave people with. That’s what they’ll remember most.
What do I want my audience to do?
Too many meetings end with no clear action points. Your job as a leader is to ensure that those listening to your presentation know exactly what you want them to do next. In the distracted world we live in, there’s little room for subtlety. When you finish speaking, if people don’t know what your ‘ask’ is straight away, their to-do list, inbox or next meeting will quickly hijack their attention and your presentation will be a distant memory.
Be clear on your call to action and repeat it throughout. Then make sure it’s the thing that’s still ringing in people’s ears when you wrap things up.
It’s also important that what you’re asking people to do is achievable. By all means paint a picture of future success, but if you want people to act on your words, give them a logical next step. What’s a small action they can take immediately that builds momentum? This drives progress rather than overwhelm. Be as specific as possible and tailor your ask to the audience in front of you.
Why now?
The final question to consider as you plan your presentation is an important one. If people don’t feel a sense of urgency, they are unlikely to act. Whether your audience is motivated towards finding a solution or away from the pain of the current situation, you need to make it clear why now is the time to do something.
Action happens at the intersection of logic, emotion and timing. If you’re going to persuade your audience to take the next step, they must understand your argument, feel emotionally connected to it, and sense that this is the right moment to act.
As leaders and managers, your job is to help people focus on what matters most. You can’t force anyone to care, but if you can create a compelling case for why the time is right, you massively increase the likelihood of getting them on board.
These four questions will change the way you present and the way your audience engages with you. If you’re delivering a formal presentation and have time to plan and rehearse, build it around this framework. Equally, if you only have a few moments before you need to speak, grab a piece of paper and jot down your answers to organise your thinking.
No one walks into a meeting, town hall, pitch or presentation thinking, “I hope the next half hour is a complete waste of my time.” Your audience wants you to succeed. They want to learn something and find value in what you say. Show them the respect they deserve by taking the time to get clear on what you want them to know, feel and do, and why now. When you do, you’ll transform not only what you say but their experience of hearing it too.
If you want to really cut through and be memorable for the right reasons, all you need to remember is that every great performance starts with a clear intention.
Written by Dominic Colenso.
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