{"id":1418,"date":"2012-04-10T14:49:03","date_gmt":"2012-04-10T14:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/presentation-skills-blog.co.uk\/?p=1418"},"modified":"2012-04-10T14:49:03","modified_gmt":"2012-04-10T14:49:03","slug":"present-your-data-after-your-credibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/present-your-data-after-your-credibility\/","title":{"rendered":"Present your data after your credibility"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Time and time and time again I see it&#8230; presenters throw facts and figures at the audience in an attempt to be credible. Frankly, it doesn&#8217;t work.<\/p>\n<p>If I don&#8217;t trust you, I&#8217;m not going to believe your data. Deal with it. If I think you&#8217;re a politician (say) with a know political stance, am I going to take your word for facts X, Y and Z? No. I&#8217;m going to assume at the very least you&#8217;ve selected facts X, Y and Z to suit your political stance. No amount of thrown data is going to make me trust you.<\/p>\n<p>On the contrary, it&#8217;s going to make me &#8216;untrust&#8217; the data. (I know untrust isn&#8217;t a word but it says what I mean better than the real word &#8216;distrust&#8217; :) )<\/p>\n<p>I see it a lot in nervous presenters too &#8211; rather than have the courage to stand up and metaphorically say &#8220;this is me and here are my arguments with their supporting data&#8221; they say &#8220;Here&#8217;s a lot of data&#8221; and either pray or assume the audience can put the pieces together in their heads (they usually can&#8217;t but that&#8217;s another post for another day!).<\/p>\n<p>The right way to do things &#8211; as understood by any actor, orator or&#8230; well, frankly, anyone with charisma and personal impact&#8230; is to spend time establishing credibility first. Then, and only then, will your audience be prepared to accept your arguments and\/or your data.<\/p>\n<p>There are no exceptions &#8211; or at least none that I can think of as I write this at stupid o&#8217;clock in the morning! :)<\/p>\n<p>The nearest I&#8217;ve heard to a refutation of my position came from a research scientist who pointed out, quite rightly, that scientists &#8220;don&#8217;t do the posturing and credibility stuff&#8221; at the start of their presentations. My response was that<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>firstly, the very fact that you&#8217;re an independent, objective scientist with no ax to grind is what establishes your credibility; and<\/li>\n<li>secondly, I think you&#8217;ll find your published record means you are judged, just not as obviously! :)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div><span style=\"line-height: 19px;\">What do you think? \u00a0Have I over-stated the case here? \u00a0What about in general terms &#8211; credibility first?<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"line-height: 19px;\"><br \/>\nLet me give you a simple example: on twitter I&#8217;ve recently been followed by a self-described<\/span><\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div><span style=\"line-height: 19px;\"><br \/>\noldest, most diverse and most influential centre-right think tank<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div><span style=\"line-height: 19px;\"><br \/>\nI&#8217;m not making any implied comment on their political stance (or mine) when I say that as a result of this description I&#8217;m going to assume anything they tell me is based on, and biased by, this political position.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"line-height: 19px;\"><br \/>\nAt the other end of the spectrum, how about this for an opening sentence designed to give credibility&#8230;? The presentation was about the advantages of taking part in martial arts for young people and the first words from the presenter were<\/span><\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div><span style=\"line-height: 19px;\"><br \/>\nHello. My name&#8217;s S&#8212;- and I have a black belt in three different marital arts: for two of them I have the highest dan.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div><span style=\"line-height: 19px;\">Suddenly, I&#8217;m all ears and ready to hear her argument and her data&#8230;..\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Time and time and time again I see it&#8230; presenters throw facts and figures at the audience in an attempt to be credible. Frankly, it doesn&#8217;t work. If I don&#8217;t trust you, I&#8217;m not going [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presentation-tips","category-reviews-case-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}