Becoming a great speaker doesn’t start by taking the stage and opening your mouth. It starts by assuming a posture of curiosity and opening your ears. Let’s talk about the normal sequence of presentation preparation. Normally, you’d sit down and write your presentation, then you’d practice it, then you’d deliver it. Right? But we think there are two crucial steps in the process that speakers too often skip over. In order to make your presentations better, you need to take time to lean in and listen.
Lean In
You can usually tell when someone is interested in something or someone because they orient their body forward; they lean in. When you are preparing a presentation, leaning in is the first step in the process. Some people call it research. We prefer to think of it as taking a posture of curiosity. Chances are, you might be able to write a great presentation without doing much research. But we promise your presentation will be even better if you take some time to lean in before starting to write.
That’s because leaning in, getting curious, is a precursor to innovation. According to Michael Hvisdos, founder and CEO of Inquizo, it’s crucial that “curiosity is encouraged and nurtured—because without curiosity, creativity will never follow.” We can only build creative presentations if we took time to lean in first.
Hvisdos goes on to say, “Four-year-olds ask 300 questions a day. By the time they’re in middle school, that tally plummets to near zero. Curiosity begins with questions.” So we have to get back to asking more of them, especially when we are preparing for a presentation. After you have spent some time leaning in, it’s time to write your presentation. But there’s another step that needs to happen before you take the stage.
Listen
After the research and writing (or the leaning and writing), you might be tempted to jump right into practicing. But wait. Before you start rehearsing, you should take time to get feedback. This is the stage of the presentation process that involves listening to other opinions about what might need to change in your presentation.
Author of Say What You Mean, Oren Jay Sofer says, “To truly listen . . . requires that we empty ourselves and make space to receive something new. This entails a fundamental letting go of self-centeredness.” That’s what makes receiving feedback so difficult. We have to set our ego aside and look at both the feedback and our presentation through new eyes. We have to be ready to cut and change, scrap and revise.
In order get into the right mindset for receiving feedback, content marketing specialist Marta Kuzma suggests taking a deep breath and then “assuming positive intent.” She says, “most people give feedback to solve a problem or improve something they care about . . . assume positive intentions because it will help you manage your own response.” Take time to seek out and truly listen to well-intentioned feedback. Then weigh it carefully against your own ideas about your presentation before you start practicing.
At Ethos3, we truly believe that if you take time to lean in and listen early on in the preparation process, your presentation will be better for it in the end.
Want more ideas for how to elevate your presentations? We are here to help.
