The Extreme Presentation(tm) Method

Deadly mistakes presenters make, 1 and 2

Today I am back in Redmond, Wa. delivering another Extreme Presentation workshop at Microsoft. I always enjoy debating the causes of (and solutions to) "Death by PowerPoint" with the makers of PowerPoint themselves, and today was no exception.

The question of audience focus came up a lot today, which reminded me that I'd promised to go into more detail about the seven deadly mistakes presenters make, mistakes that result from being presenter-focused, not audience-focused.

Here are the first two:

Mistake #1: Setting presentation objectives in terms of what the presenter intends to do.

Your objectives should not be about what you—the presenter—intend to do in your presentation. Those are not objectives; they’re an agenda. Your objectives should be about how your audience will change as a result of your presentation: how will they think and act differently after they leave the room. If their thinking or behavior is not changed as a result of your presentation, then why are you wasting their time—or yours?

Mistake #2: Focusing on what you want from your audience.

Most of the time, you deliver a presentation because you want something from your audience. You are selling a product or an idea; why else would you go through the bother of writing and delivering a presentation? But that’s your motivation for being there. What is their motivation for listening to you? The only reason your audience is listening to you is they are hoping for some information that will help them solve one of the many problems they are facing in life. If you want to capture and keep their attention, focus your entire presentation deliberately and undividedly on solving an important problem of theirs.

More to come.

How do I make boring data interesting?

Last night I heard the young tenor Juan Gambina sing here in Washington DC. It was a small gathering, and so we were able to sit close to him. What caught my attention - in addition to his great voice - were the intensity of his facial expressions, and particularly the range of movement of his eyebrows. I am not trying to contradict yesterday's post, and argue for increasing the importance of body language. Instead I want to suggest that his face and body expressed a passion for the music that was inside him, rather than something he does primarily for effect.

But it's easy to be passionate when your material is inherently fascinating - in this case some of the most beautiful music the world has ever heard. What do you do when you're dealing with boring data?

And the answer - I think - is that the interest is not in the data itself, but in what it allows your audience to do. Every presentation you make should be focused on helping to solve a problem that your audience has. Instead of just presenting some research describing customer preferences, for example, concentrate your presention on explaining how your audience's products aren't currently meeting customer preferences, and what they can do about it. If you're trying to solve a problem for them, then whatever you give them is going to be interesting to them.