{"id":1808,"date":"2012-12-03T15:44:33","date_gmt":"2012-12-03T15:44:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/presentation-skills-blog.co.uk\/?p=1808"},"modified":"2012-12-03T15:44:33","modified_gmt":"2012-12-03T15:44:33","slug":"no-one-is-interested-in-my-presentation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/no-one-is-interested-in-my-presentation\/","title":{"rendered":"No one is interested in my presentation…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m working with some pretty cool people at the moment, with pretty important jobs.<\/p>\n

A large part of the presentations they have to make are about things which are really (no, really, seriously!) important<\/strong> – thinks like Child Protection Issues and Data Governance.<\/p>\n

And if you don\u2019t think they\u2019re important, consider how you\u2019d feel if someone didn\u2019t protect your child or didn\u2019t protect your confidential health records.<\/p>\n

The problem they said they\u2019d got – when I asked at the start of the training – is that they\u2019re having to give presentations on subjects no one cares about and so no one wants to listen to.<\/p>\n

\"Me,<\/a>

Me, bored<\/p><\/div>\n

Pardon?<\/p>\n

No one is interested in data protection?<\/p>\n

Well no, frankly.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of those things that no one cares about until something goes wrong – and there are plenty of examples of that happening!\u00a0 Not long ago (for example) the HMRC lost information about approximately 25 million people in the UK. No one cares about air until they\u2019ve not got any; no one thinks much about water until they\u2019re thirsty; and no one bothers about protecting confidential data until there\u2019s a breach of that confidentiality.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s the problem.<\/p>\n

What were my clients doing about it?<\/p>\n

Manfully struggling on with presentations about how to \u201cdo confidentiality issues\u201d… actually it was womanfully but you get the idea! And wasting their time and – because the audience weren\u2019t listening – wasting their audience\u2019s time too.<\/p>\n

So what should they have done?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s face it, no one comes to hear you speak because it\u2019s you. They come for the content.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They\u2019re sitting there thinking \u201cWhat\u2019s In It For Me?<\/strong>\u201d\u00a0 That means that if you can\u2019t answer that question you\u2019re not going to get anywhere.<\/p>\n

Instead of trying to tell people \u201cwhat to do\u201d, I suggested my clients put themselves in the audience\u2019s shoes. As soon as they did that, the solution was obvious. Instead of doing the \u2018how\u2019 the presentation (at least the start of it) should concentrate on the \u2018why\u2019.<\/p>\n

Why Should You Do Data Protection<\/strong> is a much better title than How You Should Do Data Protection<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Unless your audience has already bought into the \u2018why\u2019, they\u2019re not going to concentrate on the how.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can tell you how to do tricks with a yo-yo but unless you already know why you should bother doing the practise you\u2019re not going to listen.<\/p>\n

I can tell you how to maximise the difference between foreground colours and background colours – but unless you know why you should bother you\u2019re not going to listen.<\/p>\n

I can even tell you how to cure the common cold, but unless you know why… well perhaps that\u2019s one example too far! :)<\/p>\n

Technical things like \u201chow\u201d can often be done at least as easily by things like videos, or PDF downloads but \u201cwhy\u201d is much more effectively done live.<\/p>\n

In short – tell me why I should care before you tell me how to do it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Take a look at this video from Simon Sinek<\/a> as an example. Early in his delivery he asks key questions which end up with \u201cWhy do you get out of bed in the morning and why should anyone care?\u201d …and it\u2019s not until after that point, when you want to know what\u2019s what that he tells you the details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m working with some pretty cool people at the moment, with pretty important jobs. A large part of the presentations they have to make are about things which are really (no, really, seriously!) important – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1820,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-key-posts","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1808","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=1808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}