Here’s a hard truth I took a while to learn…
Don’t think of your presentation as a broadcast or performance
Of course it is, and you should never lose site of that for reasons I’ve explored in this very newsletter a million times, but there are times when that idea serves you badly.
Firstly, if you think of it as broadcast, you risk alienating your audience. In the same way people like buying but hate being sold to, people like hearing you but hate being performed at. I’ve found it a veeeerrry useful tip to imagine that my presentation is one side of a conversation. Think of it as if you’re talking to your aged, not-up-to-speed but respected aged aunt or something on the phone.
You say something, she asks a question and you say something else in response to that.
Now… take out the questions she asks and what you’re left with is the guts of your presentation. Not only is it a starter for the structure, but if you’ve really been speaking to this mythical aged aunt, you’ve probably pitched it at the right level of complexity, too.
I can’t count the number of presentations I’ve created using this tool or a variation of it, including my TEDx!
Sometimes I’ve done this face to face with friends, sometimes I’ve done it over the phone but more often I’ve done it by pretending to be on the phone. (Occasionally that’s been while walking around the park to kill two birds with one stone.)
The reason I’ve tended towards the imaginary friend is that it doesn’t burn out good will with anyone around me but more importantly it doesn’t get bogged down in the irritation of your real-life friends who might go off track. Alternatively, my experience is that they have a tendency to want to rush to the solution, not recognising that this messy process is the fastest way to where you need to be.
How do stories fit into this?
I’ll stake a cup of tea on this being the case: if you’ve got the right person on the far end of you imaginary phone call, you’ll almost certainly have used a story or two – and they’ll have been the right size too. They tend to come in one of two ways:
- examples. You’re talking… and talking and you realise that the person you’re talking to isn’t getting it, so without thinking too hard you through in something like “It’s like when Jimmy got his new job… he wanted to XXX but realised YYY…”. Bingo, your short story. It might need a bit of refining to fit your presentation but it’s a great starting point
- questions. It’s pretty much the same thing but coming from the other person. They might say “So is that like when Superman can go faster than the speed of light but can’t beat Batman in a fight?”. Assuming they’ve got it, they’re giving you a great example to work with.
In both cases you’ll need to check out things like how to tell the story and whether you’ve got the right to tell it (morally and legally) but because it’s grown organically out of a (pretend) conversation it’s almost certainly going to give you a great start.
Can you give me an example, Simon?
See what I did there? 😉
Yes. The story I share about 15 seconds into this clip came from exactly what I’ve describe above. One of my family literally went “It’s just like when that <expletive deleted> shouted at your Dad on his way home. Do you remember?”