In Critical Distance – part one I sketched out the idea that experts often make bad presenters because, well, because they’re experts… and all two often they’ve forgotten what it’s like not to be an expert.
So what’s to be done about it? Well firstly, just by recognising you’re the expert it puts you in the right frame of mind to think like your audience. They key question to ask yourself is “how did I get from where they are to where I am?”. That should give you a starting point for your thinking, but it’s not enough, because it presumably took you a long time to make that journey. Your audience wants to make that journey more quickly – it’s why they’re at your presentation, after all. Otherwise they could make that journey for themselves.
Your job, as the presenter is to be the shortcut for the audience, from where they are now, to where you are now, as an expert.
What that means is that you need to ask yourself a second question, namely “What can I do to make that shortcut as effective as possible?” That might mean starting out with a brief statement of why they need to follow you to where you are in the first place, for example, but it almost certainly means you have to provide a set of signposts.
What were key stages in your journey? If you were climbing a hill, at what points did you stop, rest and look at the view? You don’t have to haul your audience up that hill after you (they may not be ready, even if they’re not just deadweight!) but you can make things easy by telling them the right paths to take for example. Most of the time when I’m walking I spend a considerable amount of time figuring out where I am and which way I should be going. And what equipment I’m going to need.
You can tell them all that sort of stuff easily enough, can’t you?
An alternative analogy might be to think of yourself as a bridge. Where did you get stuck and, obviously, how can you build a bridge over that space for your audience?
Or maybe it’s easier for you to think of yourself as any of the following:
- a crane, lifting your audience to where you are
- a tow-truck, dragging them up the hill
- a straight road, no deviations or side explorations necessary and getting lost is a think of the past
- a sat-nav, giving step by step instructions (though perhaps this needs combining with the following
- a map, showing the overview of the route clearly and simply.
Whatever analogy works for you, great. The point isn’t the choice of analogy, it’s that you make sure you remember you’re presentation is the shortcut, not the destination
