Seriously, we are: have you ever stopped to think about what your audience is hoping to get out of your presentation? I don’t mean the cost savings, innovation, or integrity associated with your product or service; I mean human-to-human wants and needs.
We are perilously advanced as a species. Put a man on the moon? No problem. Solicit and incorporate feedback from 307,006,550 people (US population) elect a group of individuals to govern a 353,744-square mile landmass (US geographic area)? Done (in the sense that accusations of voter fraud tend to cancel each other out in our great nation). Save the Whales? All accomplishments start with the best intentions.
So why is it so hard for us to drag ourselves into a meeting? We’re animals of collectivity–our greatest asset is our ability to perform coordinated efforts for the common good, whether for departments, companies, nations, or humanity. But ask an executive to sit through a partner’s 15-minute budget increase proposal and you’re as likely to see him pull the fire alarm as offer 1/32nd-of-a-day’s attention. It’s atrocious, but that instinct is natural. Most presenters serve up the same dish time and time again. Fear is an understandable audience response.
If you’re going to present the same old way, you can expect to get the same old treatment. Not the way people treat you day in and day out, but the way everyone hates terrible presenters and the presentations they deliver. Day in, day out. We think of a prepared presenter as someone that doesn’t stutter much and makes it through the speech without crying, but true preparation is being prepared for the state of the audience from the start–and being armed to change it.
We’re all counting on you. Get prepared, and change our minds. You can’t help the way an audience feels when they walk in the room, but you can do something about the way they walk out.
