The Bible - source of my second rule of presenting! ;)
To quote The Bible (Matthew 7:12 to be specific): ‘Do unto others as you would have them do to you‘. Â It’s a great rule for life, let alone presentations.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people complain about the poor quality of other people’s presentations and then, apparently without any realisation of the irony, stand up and give an almost identical presentation! Â (As an aside, and on a personal note, this attitude is the bane of our marketing: “Oh yes: that’s really important… I know a lot of (other) people who you need to train (them)! ;) )
But Matthew 7:12 begs the question: why would you make other people suffer the same amount of bordom and mental pain that you’ve had inflicted upon you?! Why not do something different? As the saying goes:
If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you’ve always got!
So why not do your presentation differently? Why not – as my Rule Number Two says – do to others as you’d have them do to you? Why not take the time and effort to make your presentation effective? If you’re sitting through boring and/or pointless presentations why not do yours differently!
Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you…
This, I guess, my version of Nancy Duarte’s first rule: “never give a presentation you wouldn’t want to sit through”.
So the next time you’re wasting your time at a bad presentation, ask yourself a few key questions.
- Why do I not feel this presentation is going well (be specific – don’t just say “‘cos it’s rubbish!”)?
- What can I do to make sure my presentations don’t suffer from the same problem? (Again, be as specific as you possibly can be!)
- How can I get the training (or equipment, or whatever) is needed to make the answer to question two a reality?
Of course, if the answer to number three turns out to be getting some presentation skills training from us, so much the better! (Hey, we’ve got to make a living you know – we don’t get paid for this online stuff!)
…and at the end of your presentation, get yourself some good feedback. Â By ‘good’ I don’t mean feedback saying how good you were – I mean feedback that is good of itself: good feedback should, amongst other things, tell you how to improve. Once again, it’s important to be specific – not just “Don’t forget to keep eye contact”!
It’s simple really – just do unto others!
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Rule one is here.
