Connect: If you don’t connect, they won’t care
I’m curious: which of the following best describes you as a presentation listener?
- “Get to the point in 5 minutes, or I’m checking out.”
- “Just give me all the facts and data, then I’ll drill you with questions.”
- “Just engage me in a conversation, it’s so much better than a presentation.”
- “I’ll give feedback if the speaker really wants me to, but I’d rather listen quietly.”
So, which one is more “you”?
If you showed this list to your friends and coworkers, chances are their choices will be really different. And chances are, what they think of as a good presentation would be really different also.
But there’s one thing that’s the same for all of us: we want the presenter to talk to us. Not everyone, or some general audience, but us. Or even better, moi specifically.
In fact, the very best presenters make you feel like they’re talking directly to you. The room darkens, a spotlight finds you, and the speaker builds a connection with you as if no one else was there.
But here’s the problem: It’s pretty hard to build connections. Because most of the time, audiences don’t really care about what we have to say. What’s happening in their lives is far more interesting than what is coming out of our mouths.
They won’t care… until you connect.
And the first step of connecting is to accept that your audience members have their individual preferences, come from diverse backgrounds, and have different expectations.
Going back to our little survey above, if you picked number one (“Get to the point or I’m checking out”), would you want the speaker to engage you in a conversation and tell you a story before they told you the main point of this discussion?
Personal communication preferences aside, would the CEO of a large company care about exactly the same thing as the head of her R&D department?
Everyone would probably answer “no”. But then, why do most of us fail to spend enough time connecting with our audience before we open our mouths? This would certainly baffle Abraham Lincoln, who’s one of the finest speakers to ever walk this earth:
Are you spending 2/3 of your time thinking about the audience?
Truthfully, have you ever spent 2/3 of your preparation time thinking about how to connect with the audience? Our team has coached hundreds if not thousands of speakers, and we’ve never met any who spent their time in that proportion.
We all know about the power of connection; yet when it comes to preparing for our next presentation, it’s all too easy to think that we know our audience well enough, and to go straight to planning what we’ll say.
No wonder most people think most presentations are horrid.
Show them you care
For your next presentation, challenge yourself to spend 2/3 of preparation time thinking about — and verifying — what your audience wants to hear (seriously, record your time use), and 1/3 on what you want to say.
Trust us: they’ll reward you by caring in return.
