Most executives face dozens of occasions every day when they have to present a fact, an observation or a point of view to someone else. This does not seem to create any special problems for them in their personal lives. But the moment they think they have to make a "presentation", they don't know where to begin.
Oral presentations are made to various audiences: to subordinates, peers and superiors; to buyers, suppliers, bankers and agents; to audience sizes from one to fifty or even more; in person or on the telephone. These may be in the form of giving directions, explaining instructions, reporting on meetings, selling a product or a proposal, and so on. Many of these are handled without too much visible strain. But when a senior in the office asks us to "give a presentation", we lose our nerve.
Essential preparation
It may come as a surprise that, if an oral business presentation fails, the failure takes place not during but BEFORE it is made. The reason for this is a lack of attention to four essential preparatory steps. For easy recollection, let me call these the A-T-O-M steps.
“A” - Who is your Audience? Understanding one’s audience is as important as understanding the subject one is speaking on. You would not, for instance, explain the basic working of your company’s product in exactly the same way to housewives, retailers and, say, mechanics. You would instinctively pitch the presentation to each group, because each audience is different.
“T” - How much Time do I have? If you know your subject well, the less time you are allotted for your speech, the greater the preparation required. It’s far easier to speak for 20 minutes and say something useful, meaningful or entertaining than to speak for 3 minutes and achieve this. Try for instance explaining the plot of a movie to someone who hasn’t seen it. Which is easier – to speak for 20 minutes or to speak for three? Or try explaining to a foreigner the concept of an “arranged marriage”. Which is easier – 20 minutes or three?
“O” - What is your Objective? Before starting any presentation it is imperative to understand the very objective of your communication, because, as Richard Denny, the American motivational speaker, says, “if you don’t know what you want, the audience won’t know either”. Why are you going to speak to them in the first place? Are you here to inform them or persuade them or entertain them or fill in time? One of the basic philosophies of achievement is first to decide what you want.
“M” - What is the essence of your Message? If you are going to talk about why your audience should contribute to your favourite charity, can you tell yourself in just three sentences the three main reasons why they should do so?
It is strange that many presenters do not really bother to address these issue with any depth or accuracy. That's where the fatal error takes place. If these questions are not answered carefully and correctly, the presentation will almost invariably be a failure. Let's take these questions one by one.
The Audience
Who is our audience? Any sort of communication, whether oral or written or electronic or whatever, is aimed at the receiver of the communication. This is easily understood. One would not recount an incident from the Mahabharata in exactly the same way to a five-year-old, to a foreigner hearing about India for the first time, and to a Vedic scholar. Instinctively, we would emphasize different aspects of the story to each of the three audiences.
Unfortunately, we seem to forget this basic principle when we come down to making a formal presentation. Sometimes, with a totally strange audience, it may take time and effort to gauge them correctly; but in most cases this is not the problem. Often, we know the audience well enough, but forget that we know them when we start speaking.
Assume you have to make a presentation on "Selecting the Indian cricket team for the World Cup" to an Indian audience. If you start with a limp opening line, like, "Cricket is a very popular sport in India", you have obviously forgotten what you do know about your audience. You know you don't need to tell them that the game is popular - they know it. This is the sort of thing you can, and must, leave out of a presentation. You are under-estimating your audience. Or not taking them seriously enough.
The opposite kind of "fatal error" is to go completely over their heads. An NCERT text book meant to introduce school students to Sociology is reported to begin with a densely written Chapter One. “Without even defining the term sociology, esoteric concepts like 'dialectical and historical materialism', 'social physics', …'philosophy of enlightenment', 'formal sociology' … 'circulation of elites'…and others are rather liberally used. Isn't there an easier and perhaps a clearer way to introduce the subject of sociology to first timers?" Obviously, the writer has failed to gauge the reader accurately.
Some speakers seem to believe that they have to intellectually stun their audiences into submission, by using a great deal of high-flown language and technical jargon. Sometimes - only sometimes, - audiences do get impressed; but the message does not get across. At the end of the presentation, the audience may be too petrified to take up cudgels with such a formidable speaker, but that does not mean they are convinced by the merit of what has been said.
Gauging accurately what your audience already knows and figuring out what will sustain their interest and lead them to your desired objective is critical. Gauging the audience implies sizing up their intelligence levels; their motive in coming to the presentation; their attention span; their psychological make-up; their state of physical discomfort (weather conditions, furniture, etc.) in which they are listening to you; and the time they are mentally prepared to give you. In an office situation, the higher one goes up in the hierarchy, the less time one has to listen to presentations. Which means, if you are making a presentation to your superiors, be especially concerned about the time aspect. Remember to cut out all unnecessary details, which you can reasonably expect your superior to know or which he may not need to know to appreciate your argument.
The Time available
This is a somewhat unpredictable quantity. Not infrequently, you are told you have “about 20 minutes” to make a presentation; but, when just before you get up to speak, you are apologetically told, “You know, the previous speaker overshot the time limit, so can you please reduce what you want to say to four or five minutes?”
The opposite also happens. You are scheduled for a “brief” presentation to your director or colleagues – and then suddenly the other scheduled speaker fails to turn up and you are required to fill in the time.
Either way, you need to be prepared. That is, you should know the essence of what you want to say, in two or three sentences; and you should always have a number of examples and illustrations handy to buttress your point.
Your Objective
The second question is: why are you here communicating to them? This is what we call the objective of the presentation. Good presenters start out with a very clear objective. Am I here to impress them with my knowledge? Or to persuade them to donate money? Or to vote for me? Am I here to drive them wild with anger? Or to get them to volunteer their services? Do I want them to applaud me? Or to take action against an opponent that I intend to name? Do I want to convey my own enthusiasm and love for my subject to them? As Richard Denny sums it up, "If you don't know what you want, the audience won't know either."
The Message
That brings us to the vital question of what to include and what to edit out? Most good speakers would agree that, in a presentation of 15 to 20 minutes, it is not humanly possible to make more than say three substantial points. Which means that, of the 50 points you could possibly make, you would have to leave out 47?
Indeed, the problem that most speakers face is not one of inadequate data but one of an excessive amount of data. This makes the process of editing one of the major challenges of oral presentation. What to leave out is as important as what to include. It is this process of selection (and editing out) that is the first challenge of oral presentation. It is precisely to tackle this daunting task that we need to, first, understand our Audience completely; second, be absolutely clear about how much Time we have; and, third, what Objective we hope to achieve by our presentation.
Presenters find that, having made a decision about what the purpose of their presentation is, the actual presentation becomes easier. "Knowing the desired reaction," explains Denny, "means the action somehow becomes automatic. One of the basic philosophies of achievement is first to decide what you want, then the stages to get what you want are not really difficult. Remember…A person who is going nowhere normally gets there."
As I have seen time and again in my training programmes, these four questions really determine your effectiveness in oral presentations. It is not language skills that make the essential difference. Once these four basic questions have been answered it is then quite simple to proceed to the mechanics of oral presentation.
