I’ve always thought there was more to learn from the process of building a presentation than there was from the delivery–much like the experience of parenting is found in the details of your child’s upbringing, and not necessarily when they walk across the stage at graduation. Presentations are a true exercise in leadership and cooperation: there’s pressure, there’s risk, and there are (sometimes) lots and lots (and lots) of opinions about what should be said in a short amount of time.
Unsuccessful presentations aren’t delivered from the stage; they’re fatally flawed from the get-go. Missing the target starts with a first step; no one side steps at the last moment when success is in full view. Even more so, unsuccessful presentations aren’t one person’s failure. Teams make the thing fly, and teams make the thing spiral out of the heavens in a tangled mess of steel and flames.
We don’t believe in the lone ranger. We don’t believe in the solitary genius–at least when it comes to presentations. There are artistic platforms where everyone wants to see the expression of a single human being. But there’s also a reason they’re called starving artists.
When it comes to making change–and when you can’t leave a thing to chance–it pays to learn the life lessons a presentation puts in front of you. We need people: their ideas, their critiques, their skill sets, and even just their presence. We also need time: I’ve seen many talented and intelligent speakers whose confidence in their first impulses was so high they failed to fully develop their presentations.
Finally, we need a vision that goes beyond ourselves. Good collaboration and good refinement simply don’t occur when the vision is selfish or limited. People, from your team to your audience, need something to believe in. The biggest lesson you can learn from presentations is the need for purpose: without it, why bother? It’s the number one cause of uninspiring presentations–no one likes going through the motions.
Question: How do you facilitate collaboration in the presentation production process? What helps your team step outside of the box and work together?
