Persuasive Presentations

One of the requirements of the leadership role in the non-profit association that I mentioned in my first post is to promote the association and its body of knowledge. One of the promotional activities that I have been privileged to take part in is presenting at conferences.

This Thursday I will be presenting at the Institute of Internal Auditors PNG Chapter annual conference. I drew inspiration from this presentation.

When I did my first presentation, last year I used the points outlined in this Carmine Gallo article as a check list.

Since then I’ve developed my own checklist, which I will briefly outline below. Whilst not exhaustive, it works for me. Some of my more accomplished connections on LinkedIn may like to add some of their own experiences.

Have Something to Say

This is obvious but what I mean is that as you are preparing your presentation you should have an overarching message that you want to get across.

A presentation is a conversation between you and your audience and ultimately it should evoke a reaction from them. Your presentation can include elements of teaching or motivation but ultimately your audience should be asked to make a decision. That is, whether to let the status quo remain or adopt the tools and techniques that you have outlined to make a change?

I like to divide my presentations into three parts, let’s call them CONTEXT, BODY and CALL TO ACTION. CONTEXT, as the name implies, sets the context and outlines a challenge that the presentation is trying to provide tools and techniques to solve. BODY requires the most effort on the part of the presenter because is usually the dullest. It involves defining terms, concepts and principles that the audience will need to understand in order to comprehend the solution that is being proposed.

Invariably my presentations will involve some element of IT Audit, Risk, Security Management or Governance and I prepare on the assumption that the audience are reasonably intelligent but have little previous knowledge of these domains. This means that BODY usually takes up the 50 to 60 per cent of the presentation.

Most of the hard work should have been done in the CONTEXT and BODY. CALL TO ACTION should be about the application of the principals in BODY of the presentation to solve the challenge outlined in CONTEXT.

It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it

Presenting at conferences is a competition for mind share. You are competing with other speakers for the limited attention span of your audience and against a whole lot of other factors. For example, you could have spent hours poring over every minute detail or researching esoteric details in order to present before your audience and all the while you’re presenting sections of your audience could be wondering how their kids are? How to ask the good looking lady in the next row out for a date or whether the Broncos are going to beat the Cowboys in the NRL grand final? (Go the Cowboys!!)

The rule of thumb should be “It’s not about what you say; it is about how you say it”. The presenter should try to make the presentation entertaining, engaging and informative so that the audience associates the message with your brand.

Instead of having a slide with a whole lot of text, consider using an image that is in line with title and having bullet points that serves as reminders on what you want to speak about.

I’ve watched Madagascar 3, 36 times (if you have a four year old son then you will understand) so I use this image when trying to convey the fact that because Value delivery is complex, context specific and dynamic. Essentially, it is in the eye of the beholder.

Your message must move you, before it can move an audience

I alluded to this earlier; the objective of a presentation is to cause your audience to come to a decision.

I would like to suggest to you that you have a higher likelihood of success if you are moved by your message. You cannot fake passion, if you are passionate about what you are presenting on, it will be evident, and your passion will affect your body language, your tonality and your very demeanor.

 Presentations can be a form of theatre and like any theatre, if your audience can identify with you then, half your job is done already. One way of doing this is to include a personal story in your presentation that your audience can identify with. Often it’s not what you are attempting to do, but why you’re doing it that will move your audience.

I will end with a personal story. I came back to PNG ten years ago with an aim to change my country. In my youthful naivety, I thought that I could change this country and achieve some sort of parity with the standard of living that I saw in Australia. I now realize that this challenge is way bigger than me. However, I do have a part to play in our development aspirations. I have the privilege to be in this leadership position and in this space I am trying to use whatever influence I have to grow this association and to increase the number of professionals who can use the body of knowledge that membership in the association allows access to, to build a better Papua New Guinea. In essence, I am trying to change PNG, one assurance professional at a time.