If you are even remotely connected to modern organizational life you have sat through your fair share of presentations, be they routine readouts to a small team or the spotlit keynote before an audience of hundreds. Although a few of these might stick with you afterwards, those are the rare exceptions as most fail to leave much of an impression. The experiences tend to be unremarkable, often monotonous or draining, occasionally cringe-inducing.1

But unless they were part of some elaborate performance art stunt, those speakers did not set out to bore or confuse you. To the extent they even thought about it, they sincerely believed their content was valuable and would be appreciated.

If you have been on the other side and tasked with giving the message, you know firsthand the challenge of capturing an audience’s attention. The default method for delivering these presentations usually involves imitating the patterns used previously, with maybe some updated slides. Yet if those are rarely effective as a listener, consider what that means when you adopt the same approach as a speaker.

Fortunately, your next presentation doesn’t have to be routine. Above all remember that the chance to present is a rare gift, as time is one of the most precious and non-renewable resources someone can offer you. Several people will be presumably dedicating a meaningful chunk of theirs to hear what you have to say.2 When you have a message to give and the sustained attention of others to receive it, run down this checklist of six things to ensure that you steward the opportunity well:

  1. There is something important I want to say. This one should be blindingly obvious, but from the long and storied history of meandering corporate presentations it’s clear that many speakers skip this most basic of gating steps. Before you start thinking of format, or visuals, or snappy anecdotes to warm up the crowd, ask yourself what exactly is the idea that you need to get across? Others will care about what you say in direct proportion to the extent that you care about it. Your topic could be anything: a quarterly financial report, an update on the project you’ve been piloting, news of some policy change, a Nobel prize acceptance lecture—whatever it is, there should be some germ of an idea that is colored by your strong sense that “This is important, so others must know this”. Crystallize this idea into a single sentence, and use that to refract everything that comes next. □
  2. It has meaning to the people I’m saying it to. A presentation is a unique form of conversation, and just as with face-to-face interactions good communicators listen well and understand their counterparts. Valuable conversations respond to and build on mutual engagement. Such back-and-forth will likely be muted during the presentation itself, but make up for this by knowing your audience well, both before and during your presentation.3 What is important to them, and why? What is their context? What register will connect with them most powerfully? How will your message be received? Articulate why the idea important to you in #1 is important to your target. □
  3. I have earned the right to deliver this message. This is not about rank or other nominal qualifications, but about making the investment commensurate with the impact you desire. Great speakers are both passionate and informed. Without the former, your message is boring, absent the latter it’s merely a rant. There is no substitute for preparation. Excessive practice is what confers the right to appear extemporaneous. Successful stand-up comedians might appear to be improvising on the fly, but they have worked similar situations countless times.9 Politicians can deliver stump speeches without notes because they have done so at a hundred campaign stops. Expounding coherently on something substantial is preceded by a deep immersion in the subject. Why should someone listen to you? When you know why, others will too. □
  4. It shows what’s worth seeing. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a well-crafted graph is worth at least a dozen thoughtlessly slapped-together PowerPoint slides.4 Instead of verbal contortions to describe some statistic of significance, consider how to depict it so that could be instantly grasped and absorbed. The power of visuals is not limited to data or a corporate context, and in some cases the picture is metaphorically painted in the mind of the listener. Some of the greatest orators have created powerful imagery as an organizing scaffold; think Theodore Roosevelt’s arena as the place for striving, or Martin Luther King’s mountaintop. Those speeches live on decades after they were delivered because they engaged the mind’s eye. Different senses resonate more strongly with various people, and great presenters harness the power of more than one.5 □
  5. The content is designed for live sharing. Speaking is not writing, and a message delivered in real time is not at all the same thing as an essay read out loud, as if the speaker were a speech synthesizer come to life.6 Just as a conversation doesn’t follow the rhythms of a newscast, a presentation is not structured like a term paper. Speaking is not reading either, which most audience members prefer to do at their own pace.7 You should know the reasons why a live presentation is the optimal way to communicate your message, and not an email or document.8 Humans are inescapably visual, so in-person communication goes far beyond words. Your whole presence is your instrument, so make sure you leverage it fully. There is a version of your idea that is best suited to a live setting. Find and convey that. □
  6. My message motivates an action. Unless your presentation serves some perfunctory purpose, spewing disjointed information that leads to no change is a waste of everyone’s time. What do you want to happen at the conclusion of your talk? How should your audience think differently about your topic, and what should that lead them to do? As it extends beyond the confines of the presentation itself this is one of the easiest questions to ignore, but one of the most powerful if handled well. Do you want people to buy something, vote differently, commit resources, change their preferred toothpaste—anything? Great speakers are like orchestra conductors, drawing out the power of complex ideas in ways that independent actors could not, for a result that is collectively more powerful. Presentations are more than passive relaying of information. If no one should do anything differently after your message, why exactly are you delivering it to them? As with #1, the intended result should be articulated succinctly before you start. □

take the road less travelled

Deployed well, this more deliberate and structured way of looking at presentations can help elevate them from something to be endured to anticipated. Whether your next opportunity to give one is big or small, on the main stage or in that tiny conference room with the balky projector, use these criteria to demand more from yourself. In the process you might uncover what engaged, motivated audiences are capable of.

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  1. I was going to say enervating, but then I’d sound like someone cramming vocabulary for the GMAT. ↩
  2. Perhaps unwillingly if they were forced to attend the meeting, but that gives you even more of a reason to exceed expectations. ↩
  3. Unless you have some active hecklers, in which case you might have to speak up more. ↩
  4. Seriously people, if one more person pastes an unedited screenshot of an Excel spreadsheet into a slide and then projects it in a low-contrast environment 20 meters from the audience I think Edward Tufte is going to have a conniption. ↩
  5. If the venue is particularly advanced perhaps you could pipe in smells to help make your point, which is a good idea if your subject matter is related to foodstuffs, less so if you’re talking waste removal. ↩
  6. Actually, given advances in speech technology Alexa might come across as more human than your more wooden human speakers. ↩
  7. The temptation may be overwhelming, but please do not read word-for-word text from slides. The audience can do that perfectly well on their own, and if they can’t read the text then why are you showing it? ↩
  8. Or group text, or flyer, or Slack post. ↩
  9. Before Jerry Seinfeld’s first of many sets on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, he rehearsed his five-minute monologue 200 times. ↩