An east five step process

Introduction

I vividly remember my first real public speaking experience. I was in 8th grade and attending a “Model UN” conference (yes, I was and still am a nerd). I was in one of the various committee rooms with maybe 50 other students and we were debating various bills that had been written by the students. Finally, I worked up the nerve to make a comment on one of the bills (I have no recollection of what it was). I raised my hand and was called upon by the chairman. And then it happened. The room began collapsing in on me. It became incredibly hot and I started sweating. The collar on my shirt shrank at least 3 sizes and started choking off my air supply. I managed to get a few words out — it is even possible they formed a complete sentence, though I doubt it. Then I sat down and, after an appropriate wait, escaped through the back doors to find some fresh air.

It has been said that the fear of public speaking is greater than the fear of dying. I certainly started out with a tremendous fear of it, but over time I have grown to love giving presentations. Standing in front of a group of people is a unique opportunity to convey a message and change minds. Great presentations can be inspiring, informative and entertaining. And they can be fun. But far too often, presentations are none of those things — they are simply boring — a disjointed series of dull slides with, each with one bad clip art image and 4 bullets of text in a seeming random order that even the presenter can’t seem to follow. Perhaps the worst presentations I ever saw were during my time at IBM, where I’m convinced they gave out bonuses to those who could fit the most bullet points onto a single slide. I view giving presentations as a privilege — your audience has given you their most valuable commodity — their time — and I think it’s an obligation to use that time well.

Throughout my career, I’ve worked hard to improve my own presentations. I read a lot of books about presenting, speaking, and related topics (you can see a list of my favorites in the appendix). And as I’ve gotten better at building and delivering presentations — many people have asked me for advice on improving their own presentations and skills. However, most of them do not have the time or inclination to read through several multi-hundred page books on the science and art of persuasion and giving great presentations.

I wrote this post to give people a quick and easy guide to learning to build and deliver great presentations. This isn’t intended to be a scholarly work on the neuroscience of story-telling and human reaction but instead a simple method you can follow to help you build and deliver great presentations. Hopefully you find the advice in these posts practical and useful. The sections flow in the order that you should tackle the tasks involved. You could write a full book on each (indeed many people have), but I have tried to keep these short(ish) and full of practical tips and tricks.

  1. Clarify your message
  2. Build your case
  3. Develop your story
  4. Design your visuals
  5. Stand and deliver

Clarify your message

Though truly horrific visual design may be a more obvious weakness, the bigger problem most presentations suffer from is the lack of a clear message. Far too many presentations simply jump from one topic to another and yet another with no clear focus. Others seem to convey lots of facts and information, but don’t draw a clear conclusion. Don’t let you presentation turn out like this!

The most important decision you make when starting to build a presentation is what your core message while be. Every presentation, at its most basic, is about convincing people of something. What will your audience believe after your presentation that they will not before? What will they do that they would not have? Some presenters believe that their presentations are purely informational — they don’t want to be ‘selling’ something to the audience. I don’t believe this. Every presenter has a conclusion they have drawn that they want to convince the audience of. And if you don’t know what this message is, you are very unlikely to be able to convince your audience.

This may sound like a simple, obvious element of building a great presentation, but it is not. This is often one of the hardest parts of the entire process — and you should make sure to spend enough time to really consider this. Why is it so hard to figure out what your key message is? Because it forces you to clarify what in your presentation is important and what is not — and most presenters think everything they have to say is important. But let’s be honest with ourselves. Most of your audience will not remember 80% of what you said the day following your presentation (probably more like 90%). If you have really clarified your core message you should be able to deliver it in 30 seconds. You should be able to give the “elevator pitch” version of your talk. What’s the one thing you hope they repeat to someone about your talk tomorrow?

I have a general rule for focus: if you have more than three priorities then you don’t have any. It’s your presentation, so you get to set the priorities. What are the three key messages you are trying to deliver? You need a crisp answer to that question before you start. And that has to drive everything about your presentation — what information you choose to include, what stories you tell, what style you use, how your structure and order the talk. Everything is built around conveying your three key messages in the most compelling way you can. Do I really stick to the rule of 3? Usually. If I’m being completely honest — I occasionally let it stretch out to 4 or 5. But I generally view that as a failure and I do my best to avoid it.

So if you only get three key messages — what is everything else? Everything else is how you convince your audience that you are right about your key messages. That involves evidence, stories, style and lots of other elements. But all of it has to start with the key messages you are trying to support. The audience may not remember all of the supporting evidence you use (though they might remember some of it) — but that’s not important. They can always look those things up later — but to succeed our audience must (a) remember our core message and (b) believe it.

Build your case

Once you have determined what your key messages are, you have to determine the best way to convince your audience that you are right. How are you going to change their minds? The best way to do that is through the use of narrative and story — and we’ll cover that in the next post. But before you can define your story — you need to figure out what’s the best evidence you have to use — you have to build your case.

This part of the process is one of the easiest to overlook entirely — and we all often do (myself included). We start combing through old presentations: stealing numbers, bullet points or (most commonly) full slides from old presentations. And then we re-assemble them into a new presentation. This isn’t a bad way to start the process, especially if this presentation is a close relative to something we’ve already delivered. But if you are building a new presentation — you should really start at the beginning and think through what evidence you should be using.

I find the best way to approach this part of the process is with sticky notes. I highly recommend avoiding laptops at this phase — I simply find that analog tools help me be more creative. Take every relevant story, statistic, graphic, etc and put it onto its own sticky note. Take a good 30 minutes to just think about different stories and pieces of information you could use. After 5 minutes it will feel like you’ve thought of it all and you should move on. Don’t. At this point you’ve only gotten the obvious stuff. But often the most useful items here are the non-obvious ones. Start getting creative. Are there relevant analogies you could draw? Personal stories you could use? Are there memorable quotes from someone famous? Head to Google and do some related searches. See what you can find. Once you get into a flow, this can be the most interesting part of the process.

Once you’ve gotten everything down onto sticky notes — put them all up onto the wall or a white board. It is very helpful to be able to see all of them at once. Then start to group them into themes or categories. You will usually find that there are a few common ideas that your items all center around. It may take some time to start to see the patterns — just let yourself play with them for a while. Physically move the stickies into clusters of ideas and see how they all fit together. Once you’ve started to find the categories — label each one. Do it with a new sticky and pick a new color for labels. Keep your label to a word or brief phrase. As you label the categories — it’s worth heading back to the first step for a minute. You will often find that the categories themselves spark new thinking about stories, data or graphics you could use in your presentation. Feel free to start expanding those lists and putting up some more sticky notes at this point.

The last part is definitely the hardest — choosing what to use and what to drop. If you’ve really gone through the process and spent the time thinking about possible items to use — you should have more than you need. Now you need to start to narrow down to the most compelling 2–3 items for each category. What makes your case the best? Take those stickies and put them at the top of the groups. Don’t toss the rest out just yet — just choose the best points that best illustrate your key points and messages. This will be the core of your presentation. Now it’s time to turn your groups of evidence into a story.

Develop your story

Now that we have all the pieces — we need to put them together. This is actually my favorite parts of building presentations — figuring out how to put all the data together into a compelling narrative. How do we take the information we have and turn it into a compelling argument? There are many ways to structure your presentation — but the key to making a presentation memorable and impactful is to develop a consistent flow or narrative to what you are saying.

Have you ever watched a presentation being given where there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to how the points were put together? Where they just seem like a random collection of thoughts? The biggest clue for this is when a presenter keeps looking back at their slides and being surprised by what they see: “Oh yes, my next point is…” These are painful to watch (and very common — even when someone has taken care of all the other elements of building a great presentation).

Human beings are wired to remember stories — much more so than facts other forms of information. We think in stories — so the best way to put your presentation together is to think of it as a story. Human beings are simply wired to think in terms of stories. They help us both understand and remember things better — two things every presenter would like their audience to do! So, it’s time to start putting together the story of your presentation.

When you are weaving your pieces into a story — it’s important to think about how they all fit together. There is often a chronological narrative you can use to bring the points together and create a story. Many presentations are about solving a problem or answering a question — in that case it’s often helpful to start by laying out the problem’s history and causes before moving on to how you developed your answer or solution and then ending with what that solution could mean for your audience.

As with any story, it’s important to set up the conflict(s) that your presentation will resolve. These are your key messages. What about those messages will be surprising to your audience? What would they need think/believe before the presentation? Those are the conflicts you must design your presentation to solve. But before you do — you need to introduce them! Too many presenters begin by telling you about their conclusion — and not about the question they were trying to answer. It’s always best to start with the problem.

The best way to start crafting your narrative is to take all of your sticky notes and your key points and try to start organizing them into a coherent story. I prefer to do this still on the whiteboard/wall. Just start re- ordering them left-right in the order you would present them. Can you find a narrative that makes sense to you? What’s the overall story you’re telling?

Often as you do this you will find it’s hard to work all of your points into the story that is evolving. Many times, your best points/statistics/images seem to be the ones that don’t fit. There are really three approaches to take when that occurs. You can keep trying to find a way to fit those into your narrative, you can come up with a new narrative, or you can drop them. Don’t be afraid of any of those options — only you know how to best make the case for your presentation.

However, as that narrative starts to take shape you may also find that new images or data come to mind that can bolster your case. Some of your best ideas may not come out until this phase of the process — and that’s okay. Be willing to go back and add some more stickies to the board and think through more points you could use. Though I lay this process out in a linear fashion, it’s never that clean. Some of my best images and analogies have come to me at this point in building my presentations.

Once you feel comfortable that the narrative is in decent shape — and only then — you can start thinking in terms of slides.Which points are one slide — which should be more than one? Do you need to combine them? At this point it’s good to start moving to a model of one sticky note per slide in your outline. The best way to tell if you’ve really crafted a narrative and story that works is to think about what you will say between your slides. How will you transition from one point to the next? If you have that nailed down and all of them feel natural — then you are probably well on your way to crafting a compelling narrative.

Design your visual

Now we have arrived at the most visible part of most presentations: your slides. The mis-use of slides (and other visual media) is become so commonplace that many people have forgotten how they can be used effectively. Designed properly, they can re-enforce your message, highlight your key points and make a memorable impression on your audience. Designed poorly, they can distract from your presentation and confuse your audience entirely.

It is important to remember that your slides are -not- your presentation. You are. Your audience came to hear you speak — if they wanted to read your materials they would just do so. So design your slides to augment your presentation and not to -be- your presentation. Don’t print all of your notes about what to say on your slides and then just read them to your audience. Don’t even put everything you’re going to say on your slides at all. Use your slides to visualize and enforce your key messages.

They key question to ask is how to visualize each of your key points and make sure that they re-enforce your message. Go through each of your key points and think about how you can really make that point memorable. What image do you want the audience to have stuck in their head after you presentation? What data will most help you to drive your point home?

It is important to note that I am -not- a designer. I have a lot of experience building slides and other visuals for presentations and I’ve done so with the help of designer (which is incredible to have) and without. However, with the tools available today it is easy for anyone to build beautiful visuals. There are a few basic slide design models I like to stick to. There are obviously many variations on these themes (and lots of books to help you with them), but these are a solid starting point.

A full-bleed image. This is an image which takes up the entire space of the slide. This is a very powerful technique for getting a visual to stick in the minds of your audience. This can be augmented with a 1–2 lines of text. The best reason to add text is if you have a good quote or statistic related to the image. It can often be most powerful to have an image that is not directly related to your topic but can be connected to it (e.g. a shark with the line “if you’re not moving forward, you’re dead”).

A diagram or infographic. This is a single graphical representation of your idea. It could be a flow chart, an organizational chart, a timeline, a “layer” diagram or one of many, many others. This is more complicated to build than the full-bleed image, but when done well can be a fabulous way to convey very complex information.

A graph. Graphs are a great way to turn numbers into a story that can be seen quickly. They are great at showing trends, outliers, growth, relative comparisons, etc. When you are building a graph, figure out what your story is and make sure the graph highlights it. If one item is much bigger than the others — change it’s color. If there is a trend of growth, highlight it with an arrow. Also, please stick to line and bar graphs. There really is never a good reason to use a pie chart (it makes things hard to compare).

A table of numbers. I generally avoid using this method, particularly for larger audiences. However, for some presentations (particularly scientific ones), it is important to show data in a more specific way than just a graph. In this case a table is useful.

Bullet points. I listed bullet points last, because I think you should do you best to avoid them. If you must use bullet points, keep them simple. No more than 5 bullets on a slide — and preferably 3. If you really need to put more than that on the screen — then use multiple slides. But remember — people won’t remember all of that information. And you don’t have to put up on a slide everything you say. Use your bullet points to highlight your key messages — not to list all of them.

And a few more pieces of advice. These are particularly areas where most templates, presentation software, and your instincts tend to lead you astray. Hopefully this little bites of advice help you stay on track.

First of all, your design should fit the format of your talk. If you’re giving a keynote presentation at a conference, stick to very simple slides — omit the company name and slide numbers, and don’t add “Confidential to the bottom” and think if you really want a title on tope of each slide. If your presentation will be given more in meetings and then delivered to your audience after, you might want to stick to a slightly more traditional design and even include more information in the slides. You should also consider having a separate version of the presentation or even a document that you send to the audience after the meeting that has all of the details you talk about — that allows you to keep the slides themselves simple.

It’s best to have one or two related colors that you use — and often a specific color for call outs so you can focus your audience’s attention. Adobe’s Kuler tool (kuler.adobe.com) is a great resource for building simple color schemes. Same thing with fonts. Pick one and stick to it. Two max. Be consistent.

Think before you animate. How does your animation enhance your point? Does it? If you can’t easily explain why you are adding animation — don’t. They don’t make your presentation look more professional, and they can distract the audience. That being said — animations can be very powerful when used properly (e.g. to show relationships between two items or a transition between different points).

Please be consistent. If you choose not to have titles — don’t have titles. But don’t vary that between slides. If you do have titles — make sure they are in the same place, size, font, color, etc on each slide.

Stand and Deliver

No matter how fabulous your presentation may look — a huge portion of how people react to it will be determined by your delivery. Well designed slides will not save a poorly prepared, boring presenter. Remember, people come to a presentation to see the presenter — not to see their slides. So, make sure you spend enough time preparing yourself to give the presentation and not just making your visuals.

The most basic advice for anyone who wants to give polished presentation is to practice it. Multiple times. If you see a presenter who looks comfortable and relaxed while giving a presentation, the only reason is because they put in the time to practice that presentation before they got on stage. Certainly some people are more comfortable on stage than others — but more than anything that just comes with having done it a lot. And for any specific presentation — it comes from having practiced.

One thing I do recommend avoiding, however, is trying to memorize your presentation. It can start to happen as you practice — “I said that so perfectly last time — how did I say it again?” It’s great to have a couple of key phrases that you have locked and loaded — but don’t memorize too much. Unless you travel with a teleprompter, trying to memorize a presentation word- for-word will not only stress you out (that’s a lot of words), but you are much more likely to get flustered during your presentation.

There is also a feature in most presentation software called “Speaker Notes”. I highly recommend that you use this feature to keep notes (not a script) of what you want to cover on each slide. I also like to include my transition to the next slide so that I make sure to keep a good flow. Having good speaker notes is a great habit and can help in 3 very different ways:
1. You can have the notes on the screen of your laptop while your presentation is being projected on screen. They can serve as an excellent reminder if you’re worried about forgetting some of your content.
2. They are great for reviewing as you practice your presentation or go over it before going on. You can usually print out your slides with the speaker notes next to or below them as well.
3. Often other people end up giving our presentations. This was especially true for me in some of my sales and marketing roles where I was responsible for building presentations for whole teams to use with customers. Your slides make perfect sense to you — but when someone else gets them it’s very helpful to know what you were planning to cover on each slide outside of what’s on the slide itself.

Using speaker notes is a great habit to get into for all of those reasons. Also — it can help you remember not to put all of the speaker notes onto your slide!

Once you are on stage, the most important rule is to be yourself and be comfortable. Don’t try to be overly-animated if that’s not natural for you. And don’t try to tone down your enthusiasm if that’s just who you are. You are always the most convincing when you are authentic. There is no ideal presentation style. I’ve known great presenters who were totally different in style — but they were comfortable with how they chose to present and it showed.

There are, however a few basic rules to help you develop a better stage presence.

  • Keep your hands out of your pockets.
  • Don’t put your hands behind you.
  • Don’t hold your hands together in front of your (fig leaf posture).
  • Keep your gestures natural — but do think about when you can use them to make a point (counting on your fingers, pointing, etc).
  • Keep your hands roughly between your waist and your shoulders.
  • The larger the room — the larger your gestures should be. In a small room — keep them smaller.
  • If you’re prone to playing with things in your pockets (I am) take them out before you present. The lectern when I present often has my wallet, phone, keys and a pen sitting on it.
  • Try not to pace. You don’t need to give your whole presentation standing in one place — but you should try to limit your movements some. Finish one point, walk to a different place, stop and turn back to the audience. Now you can start your next point.
  • To use the lectern or not — that is the question. The answer is — it depends. Personally I hate lecterns. My style is very casual and conversational and I feel like it’s just a barrier between me and the audience. Other people feel more comfortable behind the lectern. Make the choice that works best for you. However, if you want to wander make sure you have enough space, the right A/V set up (wireless lavolier mics are the best), and bring a wireless clicker so you don’t have to walk back to the lectern to advance slides (I just keep one in my bag).

Giving a presentation is about making a personal connection with the audience. The best way to do that is to look them in the eye. Many speakers have a tendency to scan the room while they speak — always moving their eyes across the crowd. Instead, pick one person and speak just to them. Make eye contact and focus on them until you finish a point — at least 5 seconds and preferably

  1. Then move onto another person and do this again. Usually, a bunch of people around the person you’re focusing on all think you’re talking to them. And the talk feels much more personal.

There is a great way to practice this (and to learn how much faster you perceive time while you’re presenting). If you can get a couple of friends to watch you practice (you can take turns as well), have everyone raise their hands. When you see the speaker look directly at you, count to 10 (slowly) and then lower your hand. The speaker should focus on one person and not move their attention until that person’s hand goes down. Give it a try — I promise you will be shocked at how long 10 seconds will feel.

On a related note, s l o w d o w n. Almost everyone starts to speak faster once they are on stage. If you practices and you were perfect at 20 minutes — odds are good you’ll finish in 17 or less when you’re in front of a crowd. So focus on speaking slowly and clearly. It may feel awkward to you — but your audience will appreciate it. This is a particularly hard thing for me to do well, as I tend to speak very quickly.

The hardest experience I’ve ever had on this front was speaking in Japan with simultaneous translation. If you’ve never seen this, it’s unreal. A translator in the back of the room listens to you and then translates in realtime into a wireless listening system for your audience. So, any audience reaction is delayed a good ten seconds from your comment (wait for it, wait for it…). The translators always want to meet you before and see the presentation materials so they can clarify any words or concepts they’re not familiar with. And they always ask (or beg) you to speak slowly. Over a week in Japan I began to be better about this and by my last day I was speaking much more slowing and I felt like I was delivering my material much more clearly than normal. It’s amazing what just slowing down can do (and the translators loved it too!).

The last thing to keep in mind — no one knows what’s supposed to be in your presentation but you. If you forget to make a point, don’t worry about it — no one will ever know. Don’t go back and correct yourself (unless it’s a really critical item), just move on and try to remember it last time.

Always remember — audiences all want presenters to succeed. They didn’t come to your presentation to be bored — and they certainly aren’t hoping to spend the next 20–60 minutes wishing they were somewhere else. They expect it to be interesting — hoping really. So they’re on your side.

Additional Resources

I hope this post has been interesting for you. More importantly I hope it’s been useful in helping you build some great presentations. Below are some of my favorite books on the topic. If you want to delve into more detail on some of the points above, these are fabulous resources.