Three Surefire Ways to Improve Your Presentation, and Engage Your Audience

 

By Mike Adams, PMP® 
President Elect - PMI Otowi Bridge 
@MichaelAdamsPMP

Get Me Outta Here

My eyelids tugged relentlessly towards sleep as I snapped my head, first right, then left. I pleaded with my senses to stay alert, and struggled to maintain mental focus as the speaker heartlessly inflicted his torrent of tedium and monotony. Joseph Wearisome’s presentation was mirrored only by the weather outside, where the sun was choked in a coffin of featureless, impenetrable cloud. Her golden glow dulled to grey drabness. Indoors, we sat captive, in this second floor meeting room, all thirty of us desperate for an early reprieve, but the clock smirked as it indicated ninety long minutes remaining.

I threw my focus about the room, first noting Bill, whose head hung back, mouth open, eyes shut. I thought, he’ll soon lean right or left and wake with a start. I wondered if he might snore, and introduce some levity to the lackluster proceedings. Glancing to the opposite wall, I saw Marjorie’s head droop forward, slowly accelerating downward, until suddenly she awoke and popped vertical, mouth closed, eyes wide. Within minutes, her eyes eased shut, and her head again began its descent towards the cool, inviting surface of the meeting room table.

This seventh week of project management training required coffee, will-power, and endurance. Our presenter had arrived unprepared. He stood up front, his back to the class, and read aloud each PowerPoint slide. I couldn’t make myself listen, so I fixated on the clock. Eighty-seven minutes left. My thoughts flitted from topic to topic and landed on John Green’s video series, “Crash Course History.”¹

This put a grin on my face as I relived history classes from middle school and high school. Why were they so boring? Green’s history videos were fun. This realization brought annoyance as I questioned why schools won’t make history interesting. Suddenly, I looked at Wearisome, and through a partial grin, I whispered, “If history lessons don’t have to be boring, neither do business lessons!”

For the next eighty-five minutes, I asked myself how John Green might present Wearisome’s narration. What differentiated Green’s presentation from Wearisome’s? How would Green present business ideas? He had already charted a course for effectively communicating history, and his message had impact, how could we apply his methods to business?

Green consistently does three things in Crash Course videos that keep his audience engaged.

1. Green always tells a story. He doesn’t regurgitate facts or figures, he tells a story and uses fact to make his point.

2. Green’s stories are human stories. Crash Course History videos make it easy to imagine events so that the story seems personal.

3. He encourages interaction. Despite Crash Course History being a video series, Green invites questions from, and interaction between viewers.

These methods are confirmed in two Forbes articles: An April 2014 article, “7 Essential Tips for Writers Who Hope to Engage Millions of Readers,”² begins by suggesting you “tell a story.” Later the article suggests writers avoid telling readers what to do, but instead rely on the audience’s empathy. A couple of months earlier, in Forbes’ January 2014 article, “Five Easy Tricks to Make Your Presentation Interactive.”³ the article suggests creating opportunities for audience participation with presenters, as well as interaction with each other. Why, because interactive presentations are more memorable and impactful.

So how do you tell a story...about business?

In 2012, my step-son created a biology presentation for his Middle School science class. His topic was the ebola virus, and he told the ebola story, beginning with the first case in 1976. His presentation covered researchers, their frustrations and fears, as well as ebola survivors, their memories, and their nightmares. His presentation put a human face to ebola, and focused on the impacts that ebola has on people. He used facts and figures to tell his story, but relied on people's empathy. He earned an A.

In his story, he didn’t submerge his audience in facts and figures, rather he focused on who got sick, what happened, where it happened, when it occurred, and why it was so deadly. In my experience, Business writing too often omits who, where and even what, in favor of focusing on when and especially why. People seem to believe good business writing is always written from the third person, and free from bias. This is false, in fact, nothing we write can ever be free from bias. This doesn’t mean we should abandon the goal of objectivity, but rather than pretending we’re unbiased, we should simply acknowledge that pure objectivity is unattainable. We write business articles and deliver business presentations for the purpose of making a point, or influencing opinion. So rather than pretending to be objective and then boring our audience into sleep, let’s simply identify our point, and craft a good story to make that point.

Consider the topic of cyber security. A 2012 Michigan State University paper, contends that computer users, rely on stories to guide their computer security decisions.⁴ They don’t read white papers, or articles from security sites, they decide based on what happened to their aunt or brother-in-law who got a virus or had their identity stolen.

Read the following article introductions, and consider which you would most likely keep reading. Why?

• Computer security is important, home users can easily experience negative consequences while performing apparently harmless activities. The cost could be thousands of dollars.

or

• The cost of poor computer security can be astronomical. My friend, Tracy, recently spent almost $5000 recovering from a security hack that she fell victim to while printing online coupons.

An informal workplace poll revealed a unanimous preference for the second article. The reasons given were that they could imagine the situation. They could imagine themselves or someone they know getting a computer virus. They wanted to know how it happened and how they might avoid it, and how to fix it once it had happened.

Computer viruses, however are sort of dramatic. How do you tell a business story? Why not start with potential titles? Consider something like “Three Tales of Scope Gone Wild,” or “The Creep at Work: How to Keep Scope in Check.” Either title indicates that the article will tackle scope creep, and they both seem likely to tell the story of scope creep and the heroic victory of a skilled PM. Which are you more likely to read, “Three Tales of Scope gone wild,” or “Three Case Studies on the Effects of Unmanaged Scope?” If you selected the second title, keep reading, because this article is definitely for you. Seriously, you must stop creating content for people to read when they suffer insomnia.

Next step, your story probably ought to review decisions. Who made them and why? You might explore the impacts, and consequences. You could explore ways the situation might have been avoided or enhanced. In any case, your audience will thank you for not sterilizing the story. Instead, you could use a tried and true technique perfected in James Bond stories. Start your story in the middle of an action sequence. After that, when your audience is hooked, move on to background information and introduce the main characters.

Empathy...in business? Really?

Empathy happens when an audience imagines themselves experiencing events in a story. Maybe they flush with embarrassment when a story relates poor decisions and their consequences. Perhaps they glow with pride when the story celebrates triumph for tasks done right. Either way, you’ve tapped into empathy, when your audience experiences emotion while hearing your story.

Why is that important? Because your audience becomes invested in your story. The lessons they take away will be personal, memorable, and impactful. Your audience will discover their own wisdom, and if you’ve created a venue for interaction, they may share that wisdom. Your presentation’s value  is directly affected by your willingness to trust your audience and have faith that they’ll generate wisdom from your lessons. Transmitting wisdom is difficult, however exploring decisions, results, and allowing others to find their own wisdom is a process that can lead to new ideas and new solutions. It is what sets great presenters apart from those who are good or OK.

A great example of effectively channeling empathy comes from Ted Cruz’s 2016 Presidential Primary campaign. Cruz’s campaign mined volumes of social media for data that they used to profile potential supporters. They used that data to develop individualized approaches for volunteers to use when knocking on doors. Prior to knocking on someone’s door, volunteers would check a custom app on their smartphone and learn what approach they should use with the people living in this house. Should they focus on disagreements with the current President, or on religious faith? Cruz’s campaign had invested a lot of effort into determining what individual approach would activate potential supporters’ empathy and resonate with their predispositions. A December 2015 Washington Post article detailed Cruz’s approach, and in it, his campaign credits their surprising success in polls with this data driven approach.⁵

What could we learn from this as project managers? The biggest thing is to know your audience. We should invest time into knowing who is on our stakeholder register. Who are team members are. What our executive leaders care about. When we craft presentations, emails, or articles, we can then ensure that our message is tailored for that specific intended audience, and that it activates their empathy, so that they will find wisdom in the story we tell.

Interactivity only applies in certain circumstances, right?

Not really. Technically the answer is yes, but only for those who want their audience to remember little of their message. I have, for example, watched countless TED talks. Every single one was interesting, engaging, and well delivered. However, I can’t even remember the topics for most of the talks I’ve watched. Which TED talks do I remember? The ones I watched with other people, and discussed after having watched them. Those TED talks stand out for me, in fact I emailed some of the TED presenters, so far with no response but their talks stand out in my memory.

The key here is interaction. Presentations impact me when I’ve had the opportunity to interact with others about the message--to engage with a group and explore how the topic does or doesn’t apply in various situations. After I’ve heard how others understood the message and how it seems relevant to them, my understanding of the topic shifts and suddenly, the talk becomes memorable, impactful, and relevant. Without that interaction, topics often feel abstract, regardless of how interesting or well presented.

So how do you make a business presentation interactive? The forbes article referenced above suggests letting people know there will be an opportunity for discussion and questions, but more importantly, to let the audience know you’ll expect interaction. Pause at various points and ask participants to take a few moments in small groups of two or three and formulate some questions or points of interest that they’d like to explore later. Alternately, begin the presentation by asking what they expect to get out of this event. It’s always good to know why they are there.

What about project kick-off meetings or status update meetings? I sat down with a co-worker and explored options for making a project kick-off meeting interactive, and we came up with a few ideas:

After giving an overview of the project, say something like, “Let’s take five minutes to explore how this project might impact your work. Based on the overview, what do you see?” Pause and wait. If no one volunteers after fifteen seconds, ask everyone to explore that question with their neighbor for a few moments, then ask for people to share. Be sure to take notes on what you hear, this could be valuable information that tells you what stakeholders expect.

Continue your presentation, but after delivering another chunk of information, ask people to take a few moments to consider their biggest concerns for this project. Be sure to record these as well. Some groups are reticent to perform risk management, but if you ask people about their concerns they’re often excited to share. With this information, you can do a risk analysis, search for risk triggers and possibly recruit risk monitors, by asking the very people who identified the the risks to begin with.

At the close of the presentation, ask people to take a few moments and think about what they’re most looking forward to out of the project. Like the concerns above, here is an opportunity to look at positive risk and possibly recruit people to monitor those and help you take advantage of them when the opportunities arise.

Beyond that, leave room for questions and encourage people to email or set appointments with you as they have additional thoughts about the project.

In person interaction is great, but if your presentation is online, or an article, maybe you want to encourage comments by closing with a question, and ensuring that you respond to every comment. Reference other comments when you respond, and encourage an online discussion, you might get new content for your next presentation out of that. Most importantly, your audience will benefit from an in-depth group exploration of the topic.

What are some of your ideas for encouraging interaction, creating empathy, or telling a good story? If you don’t think this a good idea, why not?

¹ https:// www.youtube.com/results?search_query=crash+course+history

² http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathycaprino/2014/04/10/7-essential-tips-for-writers-who-hope-to-engage-millions-of-readers/

³ http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2014/01/28/five-easy-tricks-to-make-your-presentation-interactive/

⁴ https://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2012/proceedings/a6_Rader

⁵ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cruz-campaign-credits-psychological-data-and-analytics-for-its-rising-success/2015/12/13/4cb0baf8-9dc5-11e5-bce4-708fe33e3288_story.html

Thank you to Nina Fresquez for editing assitstance, and for assistance in generating ideas to make project kick-off meetings interactive