What is a great presentation?

You know it when you see it, don’t you? But it can be very hard to pinpoint what you’re seeing. Usually we attribute a great presentation to the presenter’s personality, charisma or style. It seems that great presenters have some intangible quality that is just out of reach.

This good news is once you examine what a great presenter is actually doing you realise charisma and personality are not at the heart of great presenting.

Let’s examine exactly what happens in a great presentation.

A great presentation grabs the mind of the audience at the beginning, navigates them through all the various parts, themes and ideas easily, never letting go, and then gets them to the point of action or result.

It does this by:

1. Beginning with the audience’s needs, thoughts and feelings. A great presentation ensures right from the beginning the audience recognises how the messages of the presentation will relate to them.
2. Having structure and flow that allows the presenter to take the audience through the data in the most direct, easy, jargon-free, enjoyable and understandable route possible.
3. Achieving the goal of the presentation. This means the audience is thinking, feeling and doing what the presenter planned for. For example the audience understands the concept or has bought into the idea.

The wrong presentation path

Unfortunately, very few people do this. Most people take a path similar to that shown below.

Most presenters don’t consider the audience and their needs properly when they are preparing the presentation so they start the presentation at the point they think is important and then they simply dump data in all directions. While they talk their messages get lost in a fog of facts.

Because of a lack of structure the audience has to work very hard to unearth the point of the talk and understand the data being flung at them. In most cases an audience is not prepared to work this hard. In some presentation scenarios an audience may not even know why they should listen in the first place.

The sum of the parts

Presenting is a skill. The skill of presenting involves two distinct, individual parts you must consider separately:

Both have different elements you need to master:

A great presentation is made up of all the elements above; however, please note that 90 percent of the success of your presentation is determined in the Communication – Content Crafting Phase.

In order to stand and speak with confidence and impact you must prepare a great story you can wow the audience with.

What is your presentation skill level?

What your presentation score tells you:

Score of 1–4 = very nervous and no presentation skills

A person on the lower end of the scale usually has limited or sometimes no experience on their feet so presenting is terrifying for them. Couple this with a lack of knowledge about what makes a really great presentation and this person is left feeling unsure and incompetent.

Score of 5–7 = confident but limited presentation skills

The majority of people I train, especially business people, fall into this category. They do have experience on their feet. They are also what people might call talkers or extroverts.

If you fall into this part of the scale the good news is you have overcome the hurdle of managing your nerves, which is fantastic. You may feel comfortable and even enjoy presenting. However, what you still don’t necessarily have at this stage is the skill to structure and shape a message that is engaging, impactful and meaningful for your audience.

You can present for 20 years and stay at this level. Conference rooms around the globe are filled with presenters who like to talk and have lots of data but never actually get a clear message across.^*

Score of 8— = confident and presenting skilfully

When you are truly at this level you have mastered your delivery skills (although you will still get nervous, which is vital) and you will also be capable of crafting a message that always gets the right results. At this level it is about inspiring and leading with your presentations.

How do you know where you really are on this scale?

Your feelings are not an indicator of your abilities. You must examine the components that make up the skill of presenting and objectively measure yourself against them. You must experience yourself as the audience does.

Becoming a presentation leader

The only way to be successful in a presentation is to lead your audience from the start of your presentation to the end.

To do this, firstly you have to make a decision to take the focus off you and make your audience number one. You must make them the most important person in the room.

Secondly, you must get to grips with your words and your messages. Owning what you say is vital to being credible and authentic. If you don’t own what you are saying all you are doing is impersonally reading data.

Unfortunately a lot of people when they present struggle to feel empowered and lead their presentation because they are too focused on the nervous feelings that arise when they have to stand and talk. Being judged by an audience is difficult for all of us. Every human being has a fear when they present of embarrassing themselves or making a fool of themselves. Because of this real fear they don’t lead when they present; they merely survive. In an effort to survive the experience of presenting they prepare a Slide Focused Presentation that acts as a crutch. They then stand up and read the slides as quickly as possible and sit back down, relieved it’s all over.

Ultimately, they approach their presentation in self-survival mode. The problem with this mode is it is about the presenter surviving the experience of standing and speaking rather than putting the audience first and creating a positive and engaging experience for them.

A final word on this

Every so often I come across someone who has a presentation horror story. This is a time when they presented and it all went unspeakably wrong. I am talking worst case scenario, the scene we all dread, the silence we don’t recover from, the going blank that breaks us.

Sometimes this experience is so traumatic it causes an individual to avoid presentations at all costs. They simply can’t risk another failure, another humiliation, another public defeat.

If you are someone who has had such an experience I want you to think back to your horrible experience for me. I want you to be really honest and ask yourself why it went so wrong.

1. Were you told to speak at the last minute without any warning?
2. Were you not prepared enough but maybe didn’t realise it until it was too late?
3. Did you realise too late your audience were not who you thought they were or your information was not relevant to them?
4. Did you have a catastrophic technology breakdown and were unable to deliver the talk without the slides?
5. Did you prepare in your head and then were unable to find the words?
6. Did your negative beliefs (nerves) gain control of your presentation leaving you paralysed with fear?

Any human being would fail in these circumstances because it was too late to deal with the situation they found themselves in. All of the above scenarios can be overcome with forward planning and preparation. One bad experience presenting does not need to dictate your presentation future.

I want you to chalk your negative experience up to just that, experience – something to learn from. The question is what did you learn?

In the following chapters I am going to equip you with a method and framework that will give you the structure, security and sureness you need be a great presenter.