Some basic presentation psychology….. -ish!

I’ve been doing some reading recently (sorry!) for a course I’m designing.  I came across the idea that emotions on the ‘spectrum’ of Anxiety are caused by uncertain goals, that Angry-type emotions are caused by blocked goals and that emotions related to Fear are associated with unattainable goals.

Perhaps it’s an over simplification, but it works for me in many ways.

What struck me in particular was a client who I was talking to recently who didn’t know why he was making the presentation.  I don’t mean that literally, of course he know why he was making it – I mean it more philosophically, in the sense that he didn’t know what the presentation was for…. he didn’t know exactly what he was trying to achieve with his presentation.

That sounds a lot like an uncertain goal to me…. and sure enough, he was nervous about the presentation.  How could he not be, when he didn’t know how he was going to measure whether the presentation was a success or not?!  If you don’t know what it looks like for your presentation to ‘work’, how are you going to know when you’ve done that?

Personally, I’d say he was suffering from Fear-type emotions, too.  He wanted to make a perfect presentation… and of course that’s pretty much an unattainable goal – there’s no such animal!

It’s not hard to sort this out, of course.  Just ask yourself (before you start designing your presentation) what is it you’re trying to do.  What would count as a successful presentation and how will you know?  Then design your presentation to do that – don’t just “give a presentation”.  How can that work?!

Secondly, accept that you’re not going to be perfect. No one is.  Not even my wife. Realise that “Good enough” is exactly that.  If the presentation works it was “good enough” – it doesn’t need to be perfect!  If you define your target and you hit it, then that’s good enough for me!  :)