Every Presentation Is an Exchange

It's always a shame to see someone's potential go unrealised during a talk.

A few years back, I was at a giant technology conference, many thousands of people there, decent venue too. With so many talks and giant rooms capable of holding 1000+, it was a vote with your feet kind of conference. Don't like this talk, move on. Don't like the one you dropped into, move to another one.

The room I was in was very busy, not quite standing room only, but certainly a bun fight for seats. The speaker, apparently, had a wonderful story to tell.

He launched onto the stage, confident and focussed, then proceeded to tell the audience that he hadn't prepared, hadn't really finished the talk, didn't quite know what to say and would instead wing it with confidence.

That wonderful story to tell turned into an open confession that the audience's time, energy and attention may not be well spent.

The missed opportunity

It's easy to see a speaker who didn't prepare. The jumbled argument, the meandering topic, not remembering half of the talk, getting lost mid articulation, skipping slides back and forth. But to tell people that you haven't prepared is an interesting opener indeed.

And that's what this presenter did.

And on that surprising opener, the audience voted with their feet. Almost half of the room made an immediate exit, accompanied by desperate pleas from the speaker that it would indeed be amazing.

As he embarked on his talk, winging it with confidence, is became clear he was at least honest about his lack of preparation. A further few hundred people left.

A lost opportunity

What struck me wasn't the poor presentation. It was the lost opportunity.

The majority of success on the stage comes from the 90% of effort put in before the talk itself. The refinement of the idea, the clear through line and story, the slide preparation, the practice and rehearsal, and the pursuit to honour the audience's finite resources of time, energy and attention – by crafting a talk that respects that.

Every presentation is an exchange. The audience gives us their finite resources (and money sometimes), and the speaker gives value, perspective, meaning and something worth paying attention to.

To squander the audience's finite resources through a lack of preparation is to disrespect the very people you seek to connect with. A talk is about human connection. And human connection often runs on two primary first impressions; is this person likeable, and are they competent? To openly admit you haven't prepared is to loose the audience in the first beat.

Before every talk ask

Every talk is an opportunity to connect with other people.

It's worth contemplating the purpose of your talk. Are you trying to inform, persuade, teach, sell, entertain, or a combination of many? Consider though, that the more purposes you have, the harder it will be to get it right. Another way of framing this is to ask - why does this matter for the audience? Why should they care? So what?

It's worth considering who your audience is. What are they expecting? Who are they? What idea do you want them to leave with? What am I trying to make them feel?

Have I rehearsed enough? Is the thread, perspective and point of view clear? Am I ready to stand behind it? And have I done enough to respect the audience's time, energy and attention that they are so generously offering me?

This speaker, for whatever reasons – and no judgement implied – didn't honour that investment. By the end of the talk almost everyone had left the room, which is a shame, because there was a nice little insight buried in the last five minutes.

But that's the thing with presentations at events like this, if the audience don't feel the trade is honoured, they vote with their feet.

It's become increasingly clear to me that the opposite of a great talk isn't always a bad talk. It's an opportunity that never became what it could have been.