Improving your presentations
I sit in presentations pretty much all day long. Or more accurately, people try and communicate something complicated in a short period of time, every hour on the hour. It’s part of my job, and if I didn’t like it, I should have chosen a different line of work long ago.
I know venture guys are the world’s expert here. I’m only playing tee ball in comparison. Much has been written on how to make a great pitch to a VC, and after raising a dozen rounds of financing, my style and skills were honed in building out pitches. But there is little information on how to make a pitch within a company, where the stakes are almost always lower but occur far more frequently.
For this posting, I’m going to focus on formal internal communication. Not the informal 1:1 stuff — that’s for another day. Here is my advice when presenting a full topic in front of a room of people, likely more senior than yourself, with visual aids.
Body language matters
Let’s start with an easy tip — try standing up. If you are presenting slides, always stand near the projection screen. It might seem awkward at first, but standing helps in several ways. For the audience, it gives them one point of focus. If you sit on the side of a conference table with a TV screen at the end, your audience has a choice — look at you or look at the screen. Most end up trying to do both, like watching a tennis match. Eventually they get tired and start to tune out, just staring at the screen. However, if you stand near the screen, you can point to what you are describing, making it crystal clear and reducing the workload for your viewers.
When you stand, it also means you are speaking above everyone seated. It gives you an immediate sense of authority. Standing improves your body language (more of this from Amy Cuddy’s wonderful TED Talk). And it gives you an added level of energy that commands control and authority.
Conversations, not monologues
Second, when you begin, determine what type of conversation you want to have. Sadly, most presenters, in their heart of hearts, actually don’t want a conversation. They want a “thumbs up, looks good” and start filibustering their way to get there. “If I have 30 minutes and 30 slides, 1 minute per slide and I’ll get through and off the hook!” In those conversations, people end up leaning back, don’t engage, and it doesn’t accomplish much.
If that’s your goal, leave the theater to Shakespeare. Send an email and cancel the meeting. But if you choose to present, aim to have a few focused conversations. Note that group conversations, like the one above, aren’t easy to lead and do require practice to improve. You have to be succinct, interested in what people have to say and earnestly want to hold a discussion. When questions arise, you have to answer concisely and not lose your rhythm. Sometimes it helps to delay and answer as part of your narrative — “Great question; would it be okay if I answer this in 10 minutes, I have a couple of quick things to address first.” Or know when to deflect — “I think you are asking about X — that’s a little outside of the scope of what we wanted to discuss today. Can we answer this at the end or maybe I can follow up afterwards?”
You also must watch for runaway discussions. If you find the audience, even more senior people, taking the conversation in a direction that isn’t useful to you, wrestle back control. This is a sign of leadership. Managing a conversation requires just the right grip. Too tight, and people feel they can’t participate. Too loose and you end the meeting without accomplishing much. If your conversation is veering off course, you should interrupt. “It sounds like this is an important discussion. But if it’s okay with everyone here, I’d like to bring us back on topic. Perhaps we should pause and resume this discussion another time.”
When it comes to the content of your presentation, people often wrestle with how much background to provide to the audience. Too much and it’s boring and not engaging. Too little and your audience might get lost. Instead of assuming that you need to provide a full background, calibrate with the audience first, either before the meeting or even in the first few minutes. Determine how much they know already and “what is on their mind”. Skipping this step is like jumping into your car without a map. Drive for 30 minutes and hope you hit your destination. Sounds silly, but most presenters skip calibrating and assume they know their audience. Instead, cover exactly what your audience wants to discuss. Use fewer slides and prepared remarks, but feel free to pull from a set of Appendix slides based on the discussion. This should lead to a better, more engaged conversation.
Don’t tell stories, have a focused conversation
Who doesn’t like a good story? Some of the best presentations are essentially great stories. Storytelling is an art, where the narrative and conflict builds over time until the climax, usually near the end of the show. That’s the pattern I see with most presentations. Start with the detailed past, then the current challenges (conflict), and finally peak with how we are solving these problems.
I think this makes sense if you are on stage, not planning a discussion. But stories don’t make sense for project discussions, the most common type of corporate presentation. With a well crafted story, you are probably hoping your audience will hold their questions until the end. Yet your audience isn’t patient to watch the story as crafted. You aren’t at the movies where the actors don’t take questions. Or in an auditorium in front of a podium. Here interruptions and clarifications are part of any discussion, especially when senior team members are involved. Their job is to challenge and often have different context than you do.
If you end up finding yourself constantly interrupted, coming across disorganized, and wishing the audience was silent, that’s on you, not the audience. The presentation is for them, not you — so you have to drive and organize properly.
Instead of a storytelling, flip your story upside down and start at the end and work your way backwards. Reverse the order of the information to encourage conversation and get to the core of the presentation. It sounds odd, but it works nearly every time. (See the movie Memento for more presentation tips like this.)
I’ll illustrate this with an example. Let’s say we are trying to launch a new feature and during our beta testing period, we found an important problem that will delay the launch. We need to meet with our team leaders to make a call to ship or delay.
Typical presentation would start with the background on the feature, i.e. what the feature does, how it works, why we are building it, and how we are measuring success. Next we review the beta feedback: good, bad, ugly. Lastly, we discuss the problem we are facing and the choice we have in front of us with a firm recommendation.
The challenge with this sequence is you need to wait until the end until you have a discussion. It’s likely many audience members also know most of the story, so the background is actually redundant. To avoid this, my version would start with the question at hand — “should we launch or delay, addressing the beta feedback”. I’d then present the team’s recommendation. Then continue to work backwards, describing the beta feedback and finally the background and motivation for the feature.
When you present in this way, the audience ends up asking questions that pull in your background materials. You come across prepared, answering questions with your next slides. But you aren’t asking your audience to be patient and wait. You are interacting, given them what they want. You should also avoid the materials that is clear to your audience. Covering this material quickly yet stopping if it’s unclear shows respect for the audience, showing they are in control of the conversation but you are holding the steering wheel.
Bringing it all together
Let me summarize these tips, including a few additional suggestions, on how to lead an efficient discussion on an important project.
- Check-in with the audience ahead of time to ensure you understand what they know about the topic and what they want to discuss. If you can’t do this, use the first few minutes of the meeting.
- Before the meeting, ensure the attendees know what you plan to discuss, even if it’s just a quick email or message.
- Stand up once the attendees settle and try to keep the tone conversational. If you appear stressed or overly serious, everyone will act the same. If you invite everyone to participate and make the room a safe environment, people will feel at ease and you’ll have a conversation.
- Quickly outline the discussion topics and the agenda. Then go directly to the heart of the discussion. At this point, you’ve likely only used 1 or 2 slides.
- Once you present the topic and the team’s point of view, push everyone to weigh in and ensure you reach a conclusion. Call on people to ensure alignment.
- As the audience has questions, pull from your background material.
- If you get sidetracked, quickly step in and get back on track. But ensure you are respectful and listening carefully. Sometimes the tangent is the needed conversation, so allow the discussion to evolve. But if you are off topic, bring the discussion back and follow up after the meeting if needed.
- At the end, summarize the decisions and send out a short note to the attendees with what was decided.
I hope these suggestions improve how you communicate and make your presentations more effective and enjoyable. Happy presenting!
