Naked presentations

Amongst presenters and professional speakers there’s a jargon term for delivering without slides, props or other help: it’s called “doing it naked”. (Even good professionals get nervous and prefer some clothing.) And there’s some well-meaning but awful advice for nervous presenters – that they should imagine their audiences either naked or at least in their underwear. It’s based on the idea that if you do that you’re less afraid of your audience as you realise that they’re only human too.

Like you, they put their jeans on one leg at a time. And like you they get nervous if they’re up on stage at the front. Just like you, the idea is, they’re fallible.

The problem is, of course that doing all of that works (if it works at all, which it never did for me!) by undermining my respect for my audience. And if I don’t respect them, how can I hope to influence them?

How would you like it if you thought they were imaging you in your underwear?

A better way is to concentrate on your audience as collaborators. Yes, you heard me. They’re not there to judge, they’re there to work with you to be entertained and/or educated. You have different roles but you’re both there for the same reason, the same event.

An analogy that some of my clients find useful is this: imagine you’re dancing with your audience on Strictly Come Dancing.  Both you and the audience are there to do the same thing (the dance = passing on idea and facts in your presentation) but you’ve got different roles. You lead. You steer the dance just like you steer the presentation.

That means you have to be clear about where you want to go and you have to give clear instructions to your audience: they can’t follow if you don’t lead!