Thinking about the challenge
How do you even begin to get your head around such an assignment? By embracing the first and most important key to speaking like a leader: preparation.
I’ve been a presentation skills coach for a long time, and it became apparent to me early on that accomplished communicators have three qualities in common.
First, they consider the chance to address others freely in a public forum to be an occasion to be respected, and never taken lightly.
Second, they understand that a presentation needs to be more than a compilation of facts, figures, and opinion but rather a story, the most powerful and sublime form of communication.
Finally, they’re rigorous and disciplined in their preparation.
Skilled presenters spend a great deal of time thinking about who their listeners are, what those listeners know, and what they need to know in order to respond positively to the message being delivered.
They know a presentation shouldn’t be about them. It should be about the people who show up to hear them.
Traumatic listener experiences
The need to consider the audience would undoubtedly come as a surprise to many of the speakers I covered as a young business reporter, back in the day. I heard a lot of bad speeches — mumbled, disorganized, meandering, interminable, and ultimately incomprehensible discourses that sorely tested the patience of the inconceivably polite people in attendance.
More often than not, the speakers knew little or nothing about the background or mindset of those in their audiences, and didn’t really seem to care. They’d mispronounce the names of the executives hosting the event at which they were appearing, propagate a dated or ignorant view of the issues affecting the sponsoring organization, and talk incessantly and reverentially about themselves.
It wasn’t pretty.
These speakers weren’t just rude, they were confusing. As a journalist, it was my responsibility to make sense of the just-completed assault on rationality. Because the presenters weren’t always available for interviews following their remarks and because I had to produce a story, regardless of whether a speech warranted coverage or not (it often didn’t), I was left to grapple with a perplexing question: what was their point?
Out of this early career tribulation came the determination to devote my professional existence to coaching good-hearted men and women in the preparation and delivery of presentations with clarity.
Clarity comes about only as a result of understanding — understanding your audience, its issues, its attitudes, and its motivations. Without knowing all of this, you simply won’t be successful. You can’t be successful.
Audiences can tell, astonishingly quickly, whether speakers have taken the time to learn anything about them or not.
When speakers have done their due diligence, listeners can be remarkably supportive and forgiving. When they haven’t, well, onlookers can become downright hostile, in a silent, seething way that can take on a near-malevolent force of its own.
But you’ll never experience such antipathy, because you’re all about the preparation.
Or soon will be.
GETTING STARTED
You can begin preparing for your big presentation by thinking about others. How can your remarks at “Industry 2020” best serve the informational needs of your listeners, while achieving the goal set down by your CEO?
Schedule an in-depth meeting with your boss and ensure that you share absolute agreement about the objective of the speech, an understanding of what success looks like, and her buy-in on the investment of time and resources it will take for you to adequately research, write, and rehearse the presentation.
You can’t slack off on any of this stuff. Do that, and you’re guaranteed to come up short in Las Vegas.
Schedule weekly meetings with your CEO to review your progress and to solicit her input. For this project, your personal motto should become, “There’s no I in team.”
Regular consultation will eliminate (or at least dramatically reduce) the chances of any frantic, late changes resulting from your boss not having seen the content, while providing you with the ongoing benefit of her insights and advice.
Comprehensive preparation includes several essential components, including learning as much as possible about those to whom you’ll be speaking.
You need to know about your audience
For whatever reason, presenters at every level often fail to embrace this responsibility with the diligence and care it so obviously requires. It’s as if they believe they’ll somehow learn too much about their listeners, and the knowledge will serve to spoil the spontaneity of their presentation.
But that’s just crazy. You simply can’t know too much about your audience.
Put in a call to the conference organizers and learn about the delegates who’ll be attending “Industry 2020.” What organizations do they represent? What are their expectations of the conference, and from your presentation?
Ask for a delegate list, and for permission to contact a handful of respected attendees. You’ll want them to answer your questions candidly.
Ask:
“What are the biggest challenges facing our sector?”
“What keeps you up at night?”
Don’t be reluctant to go deeper when you sense there’s more to learn. You can always ask, “Can you tell me more?”
Your aim should be to acquire enough quality information to understand the attitude of your audience at “Industry 2020.” It’s invaluable intelligence to keep in mind as you build a presentation that tells your story while exceeding the expectations of your listeners.
Think about life from their perspective. These days, the people who run businesses are quicker than ever to dismiss or ignore information that doesn’t relate to their organization’s most pressing needs, whether short or long-term.
Business leaders are more focused than ever. They have to be. They want insights and ideally some answers, yet very few speakers provide them. So be a speaker with the insights.
Be a speaker with the answers.
Find — or create — the “nugget”
Resolve to discover and present at least one “nugget” of information that your listeners don’t know, or may have overlooked. It will get their attention — and boost your credibility.
Can’t find the nugget? Then create it.
Take the initiative. You’ll want to get permission from your CEO and the conference organizers first, but once they’re onside, survey the attendees about an issue that will be central to your speech. Then present the results, with appropriate theatrics, at “Industry 2020.”
The nugget concept also works effectively for internal presentations.
Say you’re given the assignment of presenting to your senior management team. Again, assuming the approval of your CEO, you could poll a select number of customers about the company’s new national advertising campaign, or your co-workers about an internal productivity program, for example.
In fact, when preparing new business pitches, well-run public relations and advertising agencies will frequently survey captive respondents — their own employees — to collect research on a prospective client’s products or service, and then present the findings at their pitch. It’s an inexpensive but effective way of proving to the prospect that the agency is willing to go the extra mile to learn about its business and contribute to its success. Prospects love it. They’re flattered by the attention, and often learn something of solid value about their business.