When you are asked to give a presentation, it’s usually because you are the expert. And sometimes, when you are the expert, it can be difficult to explain your ideas in a way that the general audience, the non-experts, can understand. How do you build your credibility (by sounding like an expert) without making your presentation inaccessible to others (by sounding like an expert)?
To answer that question, let’s get the help of an expert. Dr. Deborah Tannen is a master communicator. She also happens to be a professor at Georgetown and a New York Times bestselling author. And she shares some tips in her article “Crossing Over” about how to adapt your message for a general audience.
1. Build Connection
One of the first things you’ll need to do in adapting your presentation for the general audience is to break down the “us” versus “them” thinking. Academics, experts, techies. They have their own stereotypes. But they do have one thing in common. Tannen says that we tend to regard other groups with a bit of initial distain or scorn. So you’ll have to fight against this in your presentation.
For example, say that an administrator from the district office of education comes to talk to a group of teachers. We have to assume going in that the teachers might generally feel that the administrators don’t understand what it’s like on the “front lines” of teaching. On the other hand, administrators might feel that teachers don’t understand the pressures of running district-wide educational programs. However, the administrator can build connection by reminding the audience that everyone in the room is passionate about education. He or she can remind them they are all on the same team, fighting for their students. Instead of focusing on how the two worlds are different, focus on what they have in common. This helps to make sure the presentation applies to everyone in the room by uniting them.
2. Remove Jargon
Jargon is language that is specific to a field. And it’s something you’ll want to weed out of your presentation if you want to adapt it for the general audience. That’s because language usually either builds bridges or barriers. In an article for Forbes, John Kotter explains how some terms like “roll out” and “train” can become empty business buzz words that aren’t doing our presentations any favors.
Think about this. Have you ever been around a group of friends or coworkers who seem to have their own language? They trade phrases and inside jokes which make you feel like an outsider. The same can happen with presentations. If you choose to use language that is unfamiliar to your audience, it will send them the not-so-subtle message that they don’t belong in your world. So take stock of the terms and phrases that you and your colleagues use that other people outside of your field of expertise don’t use. Then either define them, simplify them, or remove them all together.
3. Be Concise
The final tip for adapting your presentation for a more general audience is to tighten things up. Tannen says, “As with teaching of any kind, the need to present ideas succinctly, in nontechnical terms, helps me clarify my thinking. . . Reshaping my research findings to make them comprehensible and useful for general audiences, including reducing them to nuggets that can be expressed in twenty seconds, forces me to be crystal clear not only in how I articulate my findings but also in how I conceptualize them.”
So when you adapt your message for a general audience, you have to eliminate a lot of the background and detail that might interest those in your field simply because it won’t interest your general audience. By making your information both more simple and more concise, it provides greater accessibility to your information. And isn’t that what presenting is about anyway? Crafting your message in a way that it reaches the most people in the most effective manner?
When you speak outside of your field, remember to build connections, remove jargon, and be concise. That’s the true mark an expert—being able to adapt your message to fit your audience.
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