How to tell facts from assertions in your presentation

We’re all lazy – or at least our brains are. We all use mental shortcuts to save us having to work things out (heuristics). It’s why, for example, we tend to do the same things as we’ve always done or the same things that other people do… because those things haven’t killed us yet, so they’re presumably safe. We don’t spend mental energy figuring out what’s safe for ourselves – instead we use cues and shortcuts to do much of the thinking for us.

What that means in presentations is that audiences tend to take for granted what they’re told. They assume that the speaker is an expert and they assume that his or her statements are true. After all, if people wanted to figure things out for themselves they’d not be in your presentation… they’d be out there figuring things out for themselves.

Great – from a presenter’s point of view: people’s default will be to take what you say at face value.

But unfortunately it gives us an extra responsibility, because that means it’s all too easy to get lazy ourselves, to take our own beliefs for granted and start to believe that they’re facts.  The concept of ‘the illusion of truth’ means that we tend to believe what we hear and assume it’s true – probably even if it’s us that says it. After all, we tell ourselves, “I’ve been saying that X > Y for years now and I wouldn’t have started to say that all those years ago if I didn’t have evidence for it, even if I can’t find that evidence now”.

It’s the mental equivalent of reading a story in a newspaper and then checking it by buying another copy of the same paper. We fool ourselves into thinking we’re objective when we’re not.

So how do we make sure we don’t slide into that grey-zone of assertion?

Recognise that you don’t know what you’re talking about

Ask yourself – honestly! – if you can cite the source of what you’re claiming as a fact. If you can’t, it’s probably just your opinion. You might be right, of course, but that doesn’t mean you can pretend you’re justified by ‘the evidence’.

Get a critical friend in

Ask someone you trust to challenge you, perhaps by sitting in on a presentation or perhaps by sitting in on a rehearsal. Give them an amber card to wave for every assertion they hear and a red to follow it with if you move on without  substantiating it.

You might want to include your sources and evidence in handouts or a big, unreadable slide at the end, in which case the red cards will be unfair, but better this way around than you not realising you’re talking rubbish.

Listen to yourself

Of course, listening to a recording of yourself is almost as good as getting a critical friend in (see above) but you might have to resort to that if you don’t trust any of your friends. However, what I really mean is to listen to what you say for absolutes. I’ve never met an absolute truth: all truths are qualified (except this one! ;) ). Danger signals are when you hear yourself saying things like

• always
• never
• every
• none

or anything else that brooks no argument.

Check your age

Or at least check the age of your presentation, its content and its material. Old material is almost always going to be an assertion because it hasn’t been checked against reality recently. There are honourable exceptions, of course, if you’re talking about the existence of God, for example (who has either always existed or not and isn’t going to change) but I can’t think of much else.

I’m not sure of the exact age at which a fact degenerates into an assertion and it’s going to change depending on the topic you’re covering. Geology changes less quickly than SEO and search algorithms. Politics changes hourly :)

And me?

You do realise this whole blog is full of one big assertion, don’t you! ;)