Don’t take this article’s title too literally. In other words, like, you shouldn’t, um, well, totally write your presentation like you speak to your best friend over, say, coffee on Saturday morning after a super-great date, you know? The principle of writing like you speak refers more generally to your presentation’s tone. Treat your presentation as you would a business conversation. Be mindful of your audience when deciding how formal it should be, but present in a manner that’s natural and engaging. Generally, people want to feel like you’re inviting them into a conversation. “Let’s talk about this subject together,” always sounds better than, “I’m talking at you about this subject now.”
Speak Simply
Writing in your own everyday language will make you and your audience infinitely more comfortable with your presentation. You want your audience to understand you and remember your main points, so speak simply. To get a little psychological, Wray Herbet recently published an article in Scientific American summarizing an experiment that proved if we hear something said simply, we will think it’s simple. If you’re aiming to have people believe your message or actually do something to help you achieve a goal, you better make them think it’ll be easy.
Converse Comfortably
If you write and, thus, speak like you normally speak, you will present more confidently. It helps to write a few keywords in the Notes sections of your slides. When all you need to remember is to connect the dots with ordinary old words, presenting suddenly seems less stressful. Writing and speaking like you speak will also help you navigate the inevitable interruptions that occur during a presentation. When your boss interjects with a comment or the projector suddenly goes kaput, you’ll be in much better shape to handle these bumps because you’ll be thinking more like you do during day-to-day conversations. Being comfortable and speaking simply will automatically give your presentation a more inviting tone. Instead of trying to make sense of an unfamiliar tone and seemingly-impressive business words, your audience will actually listen to what you say.
Outline Your Logic
Writing a presentation like you speak doesn’t mean that you can skip the writing or the practice parts altogether. In a perfect world, we would all speak eloquently all of the time. Fortunately, you can produce a certain level of fabricated eloquence through less writing and more practice. To begin, don’t write your presentation precisely like you would a speech. It might be more helpful to create and practice with a detailed outline. Writing and memorizing a presentation word-for-word is the quickest way to sounding like a corporate robot.
Structure your presentation logically. Your audience will appreciate your conversational tone, but they will not value a rambling presentation. For example, you may have experienced a presenter who immediately bursts into a sort of idea-frenzy. You are then left to wonder whence she came and where she is going or you can decide to completely “fuzz out.” Either way, you’ll probably ask yourself, “what just happened?” Great ideas are great, as long as you can present them sensibly. No one wants to feel like you just dumped them in a radical idea landfill.
To Thine Own Self Be True
When writing your outline, boil your presentation down to its main points to ensure that you convey them and use words that you would realistically use. “But,” you exclaim, “I’m not interesting . . . or funny . . . or creative, and I have plenty of ex’s who will back me up here! Help!” Take a deep breath and feed your self-esteem a cookie. Each one of us is interesting. So, be yourself. If you wouldn’t make a joke in real life, now is not the time to start. There is NOTHING worse than watching someone you know isn’t funny try to make a scripted joke during a presentation. In the rare event that you really are painfully boring right down to the depths of your soul, recruit a more lively colleague to suggest some exciting graphics for your slides.
And practice, practice, practice! The more intimately you know your presentation and how you sound when delivering it, the easier it will be to speak naturally and effectively.
