Presentation CREDIBILITY — Professional Presentation Mastery
Being right is one thing, getting them to believe it is quite another
The fifth of fourteen posts based on The Business Stage Act™ study.
Background: We’re exploring six core professional presentation elements over this current series of posts with the hope of improving the thought leadership circuit. In this post, we have gone deep on the fourth ranked element — Presentation Credibility.
“Without character, there is no credibility; and without credibility, there is no trust.” Warren Bennis
Presentation credibility is like a bank account. You can keep adding to it and experience some level of compounding interest. You can invest in your credibility, and experience multiples on your initial investment. Or you misstep, withdraw from your credibility bank, and soon find out you are crediblity bankrupt. And credibility is so like money, once you’ve lost it, it’s so hard to get it back.
When I was asked to do an occasional keynote presentation in my twenties, I’ll be honest I was palm-sweaty nervous. I didn’t have a tonne of work-life experience under my belt to draw on. I didn’t have a long line of lettered credentials behind my name, steep post-graduate educational background or brazen professional track record built up yet. Beyond crazy work ethic, some radical ideas and decent company credentials, I had presentation imposter syndrome, and was well aware of my credibility gap. If I couldn’t convince myself I was the absolute right person to deliver a message, why should anybody else?
Business & psyschology professor Robert Cialdini wrote a number of great books on crowd behavior. As a recovering executive marketeer, a staple on my book shelf was Ciadini’s Influence : The Psychology of Persuasion. In it Ciadini points to six elements of persuasion:
- Reciprocity — give to get; people want to return favours from people who give freely first, in presentations this could be explicit — heh, I could get something free, extrinsic — heh, he is making me look good, or intrinsic — heh, she shared her vulnerability or value, I appreciate that
- Commitment & Consistency- get audiences nodding their heads to your first arguments, people will likely continue agreeing as they like to maintain image of what they believe and value
- Social Proof — provide signs that the audience in front of you is not alone in agreeing with you; audiences are more likely to do or believe things if other people are doing or believing them
- Liking — people support people they like, so try to connect, associate, and attract with audiences on some level
- Authority — incubate this feeling in your audience “they must be right; look at what they’ve accomplished”; people are persuaded by people with authority
- Scarcity — opportunities seem more valuable with limited availability or things that are hard won; the modern idiom is FOMO (fear of missing out)
Cialdini sums it up his central argument of decades of influence and persuasion study by stating “people will do business with people they know, like and trust based on your knowledge, your creativity, and your credibility.” We’ll cover this angle as it related to presentations in this post.
#4 Presentation Credibility (8%)
A professional audience will only allow a new face, rookie, or neophyte so much wiggle room. Professional audiences don’t necessarily need to know you ahead of time, but on stage, they better get a good sense of what you are capable of, and fast. Here are seven key presentation credibility pillars (ranked):
i. Competence Before You Present — I’ve metricized this but a gram of reputation is worth a kilogram of credibility. Answer the question “is the audience pre-disposed to believe your intelligence, knowledge and expertise on the subject in advance?”. If no, ensure you are building your reputation in the space and that they can find breadcrumbs for your qualifications online; are you a known author, executive, professor or personality who has achieved something? Have you shown some of the impact of, and testimonials to, your work online? If you are new to a specific space, address the gap head on and show why your perspective might be fresher, different from the orthodoxy or contain thinking that is gaining new momentum.
ii. Show, don’t Say Credentials — nobody likes a blowhard, don’t use precious time to go through your career or academic wins during a presentation. However, social proof with a soft nudge works. Choose one of two options instead:
- have a host introduce you with a listing of credentials — sometimes I actually make it easy for my host by providing the bullet points myself (so it’s not you doing the bragging); or
- refer to ancillary pieces in your presentation that speak to your credibility but don’t reference them without context — they are proof signals not the benefit noise (e.g. companies you have worked for, award won, book covers published, things built).
iii. Character in the first two Minutes — ask any stage comedian and they will tell you the first two minutes of an act make or break an entire set. You simply can’t climb out of bad opener. It’s true of the professional world as well. People are watching you intently, finding reasons to believe or distrust you. How will you get into their brains, or even better, hearts? Get the audience on your side early on by:
- showing your boundless passion for the topic;
- showing why you thought the challenge was worthy of your and their attention;
- showing your legitimate concern and empathy for the audience; and
- by establishing some common ground with the problems, hopes, values or annoyances faced by your crowd.
An intro that shows character and the traction you have already recieved for your idea, product, or service will make you more believable.
iii. Confident Delivery — occasionally you will find audiences that recognize your nerves and start pulling for you, but that is scary tightrope. Facts on your side or not — if they see you sweat, they are less likely to believe you. If you speak with conviction and with a quiet, assured confidence, you are more likely to be successful. A mix of non-verbal and verbals strengths give speakers suasion powers. Eye contact, body language, tone and pace, emotional octane changes, obvious command of your content, and ability to ask and address questions are key here. Rehearsing and being comfortable with your material will improve some of this confidence, repeated performance across many presentations will build more of it, and being intrinsically comfortable with who you are on stage will clinch the deal.
iv. Show the Landscape and the Other Options — recognize there will be different viewpoints and sophistication levels of the audience, find a level setter for them. Too often, stage speakers or sales people launch straight into the central argument fearful if they go off script, they might not get them back. Why? Confidence? Limited research? Lazy? Only interest is persuasion? Not sure, but I would wager more than two-thirds of speakers do this, living in fear that by presenting a full view of the universe, they won’t get back to their focused solar system. If you want to funnel crowds to your view, it is your obligation to share the full landscape of your topic, even some areas that you may need to dismiss as you go. My first few slides usually include some form of messiness of the topic we are discussing, and frequently it’s one of the hero visuals asked for later. By sharing the entire landscape, it shows honesty, appreciation for different views, and the fact that you have explored the furthest regions of the topic before landing ion your core argument. You are not dogmatic, you are credible.
v. The Evidence — show the legitimacy of how you back up your central idea; just because you have an opinion doesn’t necessarily make it right in professional eyes. Professsonals can be one of the toughest audiences — they spend 2,000 hours a year working in a topic at least somewhat related to your area of discussion. Provide the most effective arguments in your favour with evidence. Expose the counter arguments and how they are untrue based on evidence as well. Show off the pains you have gone to to prove your argument right. When in doubt about the evidence, show it don’t say it. When operating in a completely new domain, tap into parallel evidence in areas that are known and established, to add to your defence.
vi. All-Star Visuals — a picture is a thousand words, and frequently there are many complex or new-to-the-world concepts that are too ethereal to communicate in soundbytes. I know some people that will dismiss speakers based on the style or caliber of their visuals; ensure the purpose, layout, smartness and fidelity of your supporting sldies, visuals, props or prototypes interplay with what you are saying to deliver the goods.
Caution — some speakers love one word slides on photographs. It’s a common tool to focus messages and provide impact, but it also can communicate how little substance you have on the topic. Personally, this minimalistic form of presentation style was novel 10–15 years ago, now I find a level of sameness to it. Build credibility by spending the time visually architecting the work; the downside is great informative visual takes longer than a set of bullets or one word photographs but can reward your presentation handsomely.
vii. The Close as a Bridge to Next — do five things to embed what journey you have gone on together with your audience and where you could go next:
- Synthesis — craft the summary 3–5 arguments for their takeaway, either ranked in importance or chronologically
- Closing Catalysts: Leave them wanting more by a providing a memorable quotable quote, provocative question/ insight or rpeatable earworm
- Power Extro — Never close on Q&A, always provide your recap of the time spent last
- Free — using Cialdini’s reciprocity principal, give people some ability to access toplines of your work or other things of value for free, presentations are valued at just one-to-three high impact touches of six required to make a persuasive sale
- Lifeline — No matter what the immediate impact of your presentation, life unfortunately marches on; after your presentation, provide the easiest, most interesting or exclusive way for your audience to stay involved and in touch with you.
Frequently the close is the toughest part of a family vacation, the most angst-ridden part of an author’s or director’s life, and the most overlooked part of presenter’s choreography. People frquently don’t do goodbyes well, but in presentations never miss out on a good ending.
Presentation Credibility — Other Resources:
- Establishing Credibility (Lumen)
- 8 Steps Presenters Can Take to Build Credibility With an Audience (PR News)
- Speaker Credibility (Changing Minds)
We’ll provide seven follow up posts on our Professional Keynote Presentation series:
I. -Fifteen Leading Types of Professional Presentations
II — What I Love and Hate About TED Talks
III — Top Six Ranked Presentation Ingredients & The Presentation Venue
IV — Professional Presentation — Ten Preferred Formats
V — Professional Presentations — Establishing Credibility
VI- Professional Presentations — Most Requested Topics
VII- Professional Presentations — Presentation Content
VIII — Professional Presentations — Presentation Delivery
IX — Top 10 X Factors in Professional Presentations — #6–10 Special Sauces
X — Top 10 X Factors in Professional Presentation — #1–5 Special Sauces
XI — How to Not be Tone Deaf — Reading Audiences and Cultural Difference for Professional Presentations
XII — A Professional Presentation Canvas — 16 Elements to Get right
XIII — A New Offering in the Professional, Practitioner Friendly Space
XIV — Speakers Corner — Professonal Presentation All-Stars & Rebels Have Their Say
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About Sean Moffitt, Futureproofing and the Grey Swan Guild
I connect the dots. It’s what I do. It’s what today marketplace, technosphere and culture demands. It’s what I’m passionate about and good at. And it’s what some people and companies pay me for. I spend a disproportionate amount of time living and breathing change and “the future” and connecting them both.
I have four big professional passions:
- I love to build companies value the right way and get to the future beyond innovation (my corporate shingle Futureproofing)
- I love to make sense of today’s biggest challenges and tomorrow’s Grey Swans (my collaborative shingle Grey Swan Guild)
- I love to help out passionate startups/scaleups, people with a cause, institutions making a difference, students eager to bite into the change apple, anything Canadian and anything that marries sports & fitness with technology & trends (see various boards, universities and incubators I work with)
- I love to share the freshest perspectives and what I know with others through books, webcasts, research projects, keynotes and guest lectures (look under my personal website SeanMoffitt.com)
Plus I’m a real person, trying to minimize BS & pretention, avoiding wasted time and leaving things better than when I first arrived. When not staying up to speed with the many facets of the new economy, I can be seen around Toronto and some world capitals either cycling, running, travelling, brunching (rhe forgotten fourth meal), enjoying a finely crafted beer, sifting through a page-turning book, Wordle-ing, rooting for my favourite sports teams, chewing on classic films or Netflix’s hidden gems and playing ice hockey (it’s a Canadian patriotic ritual).
Contact me if you find any of the above interesting.
SeanMoffitt.com : http://www.seanmoffitt.com/ and https://medium.com/@seanmoffitt
Futureproofing: https://futureproofingnext.com/ and https://medium.com/@Futureproofing
Grey Swan Guild: https://www.greyswanguild.org/ and https://greyswanguild.medium.com/
