Presentation Skills: You Talkin' to Me?!

I. Introduction

Over the years in business life, it seems to me that there is the need to create and deliver good presentations. This has become the fulcrum around which many critical activities move. These critical actions include decision making, negotiation and persuasion, providing clarity of vision and direction or even working oneself out of ditch of trouble. In our world now, with exploding modes of communication, there appear to be a myriad ways in which to accomplish this communication. One almost years for the old days of the acetate transparency. Nevertheless as we march on into this brave new world, we are getting used to all these modes of communication including small meetings, large meetings, one-on-ones, offsites, telephone conference calls (huge time drain!), video conferences, WebEx, not to mention all the social networking sites through which we communicate.

But underlying these various means of communication, the objectives remain constant - to use a metaphor, to move the ball forward. There are some universal guiding principles that appear to drive some of the presentations and discussion and speeches that I have seen and have been involved in over the years. I hope these list of attributes that can drive a good presentation make sense to you.

II. You talkin' to me?!

This is a well known Southern NJ phrase - 'you talkin' to me?!' This conveyed in a semi-hostile, impersonal tone puts the recipient of this phrase instantly on the defensive. This very succinctly captures the essence of communication. Who ARE you talking to? Who is your audience, why are you talking to them?

Why should they listen to you? What happens if they don't listen to you?

Misreading the audience, what is on their minds, the context of the meeting is a sure fire way of not just an ineffective presentation, but a disaster. Let us say that you want to persuade a group of people to go on a mission and get something important done. But what really is on their minds is how they are going to get compensated for their work. Without addressing or acknowledging the question of compensation, there is no way of talking about the mission. And not know that compensation is on their mind is sheer folly.

III. What d'you say?

When I was in management consulting, we had a derisive term - it was 'show up and throw up' Meaning, you have a presentation and by God, you were going to show up at the meeting at present it. I personally have a simple goal in my presentations. I want to talk less than 50% of the time and I want the audience to participate more than 50% of the time. This cannot of course seem artificial or appear like you do not have anything material to say, or worse that you are 'borrowing their watch to tell them the time." Rather it is a way of engaging the audience and ensuring that they are interacting with the material.

But this has funny consequences sometime. I was once holding a telephone conference call for folks around the country. And since I could not physically see the people to read their body language, I would frequently pause in silence to see if anyone wanted to jump in. An impatient senior colleague of mine, Collin, 15 minutes into the call said to me in exasperation, "SPK, what is with your frequent pauses?!" So then I learned to speak for a few minutes and explicitly ask for questions or comments. Knowing the format and how to interact in it was important, but the underlying concept of not showing up and throwing up still held.





III. Zoom barabar Zoom

I was once in a boardroom at a client meeting making a strategic presentation on the company entering a new business. The chairman of the company, Fred, was sitting across the board room table at the far end. He kept squinting at the screen. He finally stood up and said (and this was a Purple Heart decorated Navy Pilot), "young man, I can't see a darn thing." And he brusquely walked all the way over to my side of the table, pulled up a chair and sat right next to the screen.

The CFO of the company in the same meeting thought that our recommendation was idiotic. So there you go, I was wrong on content and wrong on style! Two years later the company did end up entering the business and now, 20 years later lead the market in this category.

It is happening to me now that I need slightly larger font to see better. We should perhaps keep this in mind and make our font bigger, brighter, bolder and colorful!

IV. Saying one thing but hearing another

Frank Luntz is a well known pollster in American politics. He has found ways to identify words that better resonate with citizens that can help move a point of view or even legislation. There is one famous example when he was trying to help the Republicans fight estate taxes. In other words get rid of estate taxes. But no one in the country wanted to abolish them, because they saw that these taxes were levied on the estates of rich people and so why not tax them. So Frank Luntz did his research and found out that people were turned off by the word 'death.' So he asked the republicans to rename estate taxes as death taxes. Almost immediately, the law passed! Another example, why is it called life insurance rather than death insurance? After all the insurance is paid upon death! Life insurance sell better, much better than death insurance!

There is another innovation in American Politics as well. When there is a political debate, a group of watchers are given a meter. A red line on the TV is for republicans and a blue line for democrats. Whenever they like something the audience can move the dial up and down if they don't like something. Since it is an average across the group and each entry is anonymous, the attendees tend to be more candid with their response. This way the pollster finds out what words an audience likes and does not like.

The underlying story here is not the words or its packaging, but the emotional connection between the speaker and the audience. You might think you are saying one thing, but the audience is hearing something else.

I was making another presentation once, and I was asked to come up with a plan to rationalize the sales force of my client company across the United States. I had the map of the U.S up. I had black circles to indicate the old locations and white circle to indicate new locations throughout the country. The CEO, an older crustier sort of gentleman was glaring at me. I knew something was wrong. So I paused. Leo (that was the CEO's name), turned to Pat, my senior partner at the table next to him and said gruffly, "what is with this Jersey Cow picture?"

I was completely surprised. Jersey Cow? Then Pat literally started laughing loudly. He asked me to walk over to where he was sitting with Leo. We all looked at the projection on the screen. Indeed with all those black and white circles on the U.S map in a black and white picture, it looked like a Jersey Cow! I was mighty embarrassed. They had a good laugh at my expense and we moved on with the presentation.

It was not what I was saying, it is what they were seeing!

V. One page only

In our social studies class when we were young, unlike the math and science tests, we would assume more pages meant a higher grade. I feel that business reports and presentations are like that. The presentations are way too large in an apparent attempt to impress. I am guilty of the same.

A CEO of a wealth management business in Cleveland, Bob once said to me, "SPK, when you come and see me next, I would like you to say what you want to say on one page." He got irritated with these big documents I was taking to him every two weeks. I was quite perturbed by this, because my bosses would want to know what I was taking over to show Bob, and they would not approve of a 1-pager, since we had these heavy consulting fees at stake!

I hit upon a plan. I did create my monster document that my bosses approved of. Then I took it earlier to both the CFO and COO and marched them through it so that they were comfortable with our analysis and recommendation. Then I boiled it down to one page and made sure that the CFO and COO were with me when I took Bob through the one page. As I walked through each insight and recommendation (with no supporting material!), Bob would look at the COO and CFO. Thank God, they would not in agreement! So the mission got accomplished and I did learn the very valuable technique of creating this one-pager.

Now my current team is a one-page factory!

VI. Duck!

Not that we want to invite trouble, but having a successful outcome after a difficult and contentious meeting is not only deeply satisfying but potentially increases the chances of buy-in from the audience and higher chances of implementation success.

The art of handling difficult meetings is built over time and seems to me a real apprenticeship process. One of my mentors, who I admire a lot, was once making a presentation. And he was telling the senior executives of this company how they can save money by cutting down some of their supply trucks by making their current routes more efficient. I was the young analyst in the room taking notes. The head of logistics for this company was a gruff old timer. He abruptly got up in the middle of the presentation, walked up to the windows and in a dramatic gesture opened up the blinds. Right outside was the ramp to a highway and it was chock-a-block with traffic. He loudly challenged, "how do you propose to make our routes more efficient with traffic like this?!"

I was mortified. This was my analysis and I could see my career flash in front of my eyes. Everyone in the room grew quite and stared at my manager. There was no good answer I thought. My assumptions were an average and I had moved the averages as a whole in the model with the understanding that we would map out each route in detail during implementation. This was meant to be more of a 'scenario discussion.'



My manager very calmly paused for 10 full seconds, and then said, "well, you know we need to take into account two different variables here. One is urban routes vs rural routes. And the other is time of day, rush hour vs no rush hour. By making sure that each of your routes is optimally configured across these two, we will be able to gain efficiencies."

I had done the analysis, and those assumptions were not in my model. After my mind unfroze, I quite appreciated not only the answer but the way in which it was handled. The answer was correct, the demeanour was calm, and the credibility with the President climbed.

VII. Don't need no stinkin' badges

In a very funny spoof of Westerns, the movie Blazing Saddles with Mel Brooks had a classic line. Some Mexican bandits wanted to play sheriff and when asked for their badges say, "Badges, we don't need to stinkin' badges." Their authority did not come from badges, but from their guns!

Not exactly the perfect example, but the point I am trying to make here is that presentations, samples, projectors, fancy graphs, these can all be props. What really is powerful is whether the speaker knows the stuff and is able to articulate this clearly and has inherent authority over the content and does not need 'badges."

The most famous instance of the his is a State of the Union Speech that President Clinton delivered in the U.S. Congress during his first term. He was so well prepared (and he is a notorious for re-writing his speeches till the very last minute) that no one knew of a mishap at the beginning of his state of the union. His assistant was having trouble loading the speech into the teleprompter and when the audience clapping ended and the President was about to speak, there was no speech in the prompter. President Clinton effortlessly started his speech, and the terrified assistant was finally able to load the speech and catch up with the President!


Having the ability to not look at a single word or number on a presentation and just speak to it can be quite powerful.

VIII. In Conclusion

This is perhaps the most welcome phrase in a presentation or speech. When someone says 'In Conclusion', or 'Finally', the audience breathes a sigh of relief. I have seen people practice several techniques to leave the audience in a better state of mind than being mind numbingly bored! One technique and this works every time, is to give back time. If one can give back 10-15 minutes, folks will love the speaker for it! The second is to create suspense. Plant a question or quiz at the beginning, and circle back to it, since the audience have been patiently waiting to hear the answer. A third is having physical activity. Having people move around, walking to a wall, voting on various ideas, talking to each other gets them out of their seats. The fool proof way though is being upfront. At the very beginning saying that hey, this talk is going to take 25 mins, and then given them a 10 minutes heads up and a 5 minute heads up. I find that the audience loves a speaker who knows that their time is important and that the speaker is conscious of it the whole way through.