Tips for presenting

…to exec-level folks and to humans generally

Introduction

Each time we’re asked to give a presentation is an opportunity to equip and motivate our audience to do something they might not have done otherwise.

I’m on a long journey of learning how to be a more effective communicator, and I’ve picked up some tips along the way which I find myself sharing again and again — usually a sign I need to write a blog post!

Presenting to humans generally

How important is this presentation?

The amount of time you spend preparing to present should be in line with the importance of the message you need to land.

• What’s at stake here? Investment, unblocking progress, reputation, an easier ride from a demanding stakeholder…?
• How much could you gain if your presentation goes exactly as you hoped? How much could you lose if it fails miserably?
• What are the expectations of your audience? The quality bar for a TED talk is much higher than for a session with your own team.

There is much, much more advice available on presenting, but what follows are some bare essentials.

Clarify your objective, stick to it, and do it justice

• Ask yourself these three questions…

1. Who are the people in my audience?

• What jobs do they do?
• What do they care about?
• How is my topic relevant to them?
• What do they already know or think about the topic?

2. What do I want them to do differently as a result of this presentation?

Examples might be

• Give me feedback on my idea
• Support my recommendation
• Help me influence someone else
• Relax in the knowledge things are progressing as they should

If your answer starts with “understand…” or “be aware of…”, ask yourself what they will do differently as a result of that understanding or awareness? That’s your answer.

3. What are the key points I need to land for them to be equipped and motivated to do that?

Write down the answers.

Yes, really. Actually write them down. You’ll need them later.

Cut to the chase

Aim to land those key points quickly. You probably don’t need as much background information as you think. And if you do, give people a reason to listen (other than politeness) before you launch into it.

There’s a boring but useful format that goes like this:

1. Tell them what you’re going to tell them

If one or more of your key points won’t land within the first minute or so, think about summarising your key points up-front.

2. Tell them

The main body of your content

3. Tell them what you told them

This is useful for longer presentations, if you need to remind the audience of what you’ve covered. For a ten minute update it just looks weird.

Bonus tip: Sometimes you need to go a step further and “start in the action”. If there’s genuine peril and urgency, don’t save it for the middle of your presentation. If the key message is “we need to fix a compliance issue by next week or we risk a fine of £10M”, open with that. You’ll have your audience’s full attention.

Write your content

It’s not essential, but consider starting with notes or an outline outside of your slide deck. If you want to start in the deck, aim to keep it rough and move quickly. Getting too attached to a beautiful slide before you’ve worked out the flow can be dangerous.

Why are we doing this?

Work is only great work when it leads to great outcomes. Don’t forget to talk about who your work is great for and why. If you’re recapping for an audience that already knows this context, it can be as little as one sentence, it doesn’t have to keep you away from your main message.

Show don’t tell

This is advice given to screenwriters (don’t have two characters tell us about how they met, show us a flashback of how they met), to authors (don’t say “she was nervous”, let us build a mental picture of a nervous person — “she chewed her lip and noticed her palms were sweating”), but also works for business communication.

Sometimes the ‘show’ part is obvious:

• A slick demo is usually better than a screenshot
• A screenshot is usually better than a description
• A graph of usage numbers going up is better than “usage went up”
• A few pieces of verbatim feedback are better than “customers like the new feature”

Sometimes the ‘show’ part is less obvious:

• Examples of how something is improving are better than “things are improving”
• A list of times when the team went above and beyond is better than “the team continually goes above and beyond”

Slide design for non-designers

Brain stuff

• People read faster than you talk
• Most people, in most situations, prioritise visual input over speech

So if you put a slide on the screen with several bullet points, or a table of data, or a complicated diagram, people will usually tune out what you’re saying until they’ve digested what they’re looking at. Often they’ll form an opinion or question about something on the screen and think about that, tuning you out for even longer.

Your presentation will be more successful if you can manage the attention of your audience — keep it where you want it, not wherever it wanders.

• Ideally, aim for one simple idea per slide.
• If you need to show a list of points, or several visual elements to show how they relate, use animations to build the slide one idea at a time
• Few words
• If you need to put longer text on the screen like a verbatim quote, read it verbatim, or pause a few seconds to give your audience time to read.
• An exception is when you present to people not fluent in the language you’re using — short lines of text that reinforce key parts of the message can be helpful for those audience members
• GIFs are distracting. We evolved to pay attention to moving things, so they will steal focus from anything else that’s going on. In an informal presentation, if you really want to use GIFs, put them on their own slide between the main content, and don’t leave them replaying on a loop for more than a few seconds. Or consider using a still image instead.

Edit ruthlessly

Go back to the key points you wrote down at the start and remove any content that isn’t essential to landing one of the key points.

“But what if they ask me about…?” Let them. People like to have questions, so don’t try to answer them all in the deck. But do be prepared for them! Appendix slides can be useful for the most obvious questions, but it’s usually not worth the effort to prepare something for every question you could possibly anticipate.

Rehearse

How much time you need to spend on rehearsing is proportionate to the importance of:

• Giving a top-notch presentation
• Running to time

A handful of people have a superpower that they can do those things without rehearsing. Chances are you’re not one of them. Almost every great presenter you’ve ever watched has rehearsed multiple times (and if it’s a TED talk it’s dozens of times) before you get to see them.

• If it’s not out loud, it’s not a rehearsal. Muttering under your breath doesn’t count. If you think you’ll get weird looks, put a headset on and pretend you’re presenting on a call.
• If it’s really important, aim for three end-to-end rehearsals (ones in which you don’t stop halfway because you decide to change one of your slides).
• Get feedback. If it’s really important, after you’ve rehearsed a couple of times, get some colleagues to watch and give feedback.
• Watch yourself. Record yourself giving your presentation. If, like most people, you find it hard to listen to the sound of your own voice, this won’t sound appealing. But you will get used to it, and you will learn a lot from it. Try to be curious and non-judgmental — above all be kind to yourself. The goal is to learn, not to find fault.
• If “good enough” is good enough… once, out loud, and going back to iron out any clunky bits, will probably do.
• If you really don’t have time and have to wing it — good luck!

Presenting to exec-level folks

Endless context switching turns your brain to mush

When you’re presenting to people at executive level, it’s very possible you’re their fifth meeting in a row, all on completely different topics. No matter how eager they are to hear from you, frazzled brains need extra help for your message to stick. The following points (all explained above) are especially important for execs and other brain-fried people:

• You might not get much time in these folks’ calendars, so make good use of what you have by clarifying your objective and sticking to it
• You’ll need to get their attention quickly, so cut to the chase
• You’ll need to hold their attention, so show don’t tell
• Endless context switching makes it harder to focus — keep their attention where you want it with one idea at a time
• They will thank you if you keep it short, snappy and to-the-point, which you will if you edit ruthlessly and rehearse

Further reading

If you want to go deeper, these are the resources I’ve found useful

• Resonate by Nancy Duarte. There’s an interactive version online (you need to register but it’s free).
• Yes Yes Marsha blog by Marsha Shandur

Thanks

Thanks to Mercedes Gleeson for contributions and editorial help, and to Bex Campbell for prompting this post.