{"id":2759,"date":"2014-09-15T14:25:54","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T13:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=2759"},"modified":"2014-09-15T16:02:16","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T15:02:16","slug":"inferences-in-presentations-so-watch-what-you-say-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/inferences-in-presentations-so-watch-what-you-say-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Inferences in presentations – so watch what you say (1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago I posted a presentation tips tweet and – because of the 140 characters limit in twitter it was necessarily brief and terse. I\u2019d intended it to be an invocation for presenters to treat their audiences with respect and remember that just because they (the audience) didn\u2019t know something it didn\u2019t mean that they (the audience) shouldn\u2019t be treated with respect. It looked\u00a0like this:<\/p>\n

\"tweet_grab\"<\/a>
\nAnd a storm blew up in my face because of negative connotations of the word \u201cignorant\u201d. In the end, I gained a few followers, had an interesting conversation and learned one new word – not bad for a chat I was having in a pub in Scotland on a free wifi! In the process, however, something interesting happened.<\/p>\n

People found me guilty of doing things that, not only had I not done, but hadn\u2019t been<\/strong> done by anyone (or at least not in the conversation)! So what was going on? \u00a0Was someone sneaking in on my ID, writing things to get a response and then deleting them and logging off again before I noticed\u2026 repeatedly?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to assume it wasn\u2019t that. Fair enough?<\/p>\n

I think the solution was much more simple.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Twitter doesn\u2019t allow for subtle communication, which means a lot gets implied.<\/li>\n
  2. Some things get inferred above and beyond to what was implied.<\/li>\n
  3. Cultural difference mean that different things get inferred by people in different parts of the world and in different circumstances.<\/li>\n
  4. People will infer what suits their<\/em> view of the world, not necessarily anything to do with an objective<\/em> view of the world.<\/li>\n
  5. People will respond to you in the light of point four, irrespective of other people\u2019s reality.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The last point is fair enough – after all, all of us can only ever respond to what we perceive. It would help, of course, if everyone\u2019s realities were the same. \u00a0Okay, the world would be boring as hell, but at least we\u2019d stand more chance of not mis-understanding each other!<\/p>\n

    So how can we use this (blindingly obvious?!) revelation in presentations? Like this…<\/p>\n

    Ask yourself before you start to design your presentation what your audience already knows<\/strong> (or thinks, or believes). Challenge yourself to see the world from their eyes. Then stop and have a cup of tea and do that again, because no one ever manages to do it the first time. Get a friend to challenge you – every statement and assumption. (As an aside, see how long it takes you to get annoyed at them, even though they\u2019re helping you.)<\/p>\n

    So much for the obvious.<\/p>\n

    Now onto something that takes a little more guts.<\/p>\n

    At the start of your presentation, challenge your audience\u2019s assumptions, particularly those which you know<\/strong> (really? you know??!<\/strong>!) to be wrong.<\/p>\n

    Don\u2019t spend a lot of time on it, but be clear what your assumptions are. \u00a0Let\u2019s take a silly example. Suppose your presentation is about why tall people are smarter (I\u2019m exactly six feet tall, what do you<\/b> think?). If there\u2019s someone in your audience who knows<\/b> that it\u2019s not because they\u2019re taller – it\u2019s because they\u2019ve got dark hair (I\u2019m grey) and anyway, it\u2019s people of average<\/i> height that are smarter\u2026 well, you can see that\u00a0they\u2019re not going to listen to a word you say, no matter how interesting or compelling your evidence might be about the \u2018why\u2019 of things.<\/p>\n

    A simple statement at the start of your presentation will deal with that. \u201cThe research done by X, Y and Z established that taller people are, on average, smarter. I\u2019m going to be looking at why that is.\u201d<\/p>\n

    At the very worst, you\u2019ve deflected your (presumably shorter) antagonists\u2019 wrath towards X, Y and Z who did the offending research. If all else fails you can say something to the effect that you\u2019re happy to discuss the research later, but for now, can we at least take it as a hypothetical<\/b> \u201cif tall people are smarter\u201d or \u201cassuming tall people are smarter\u201d and move on for everyone else.<\/p>\n

    At best, you\u2019ve reassured the sceptics that your assumptions have been validated. Obviously X, Y and Z need to be respected authorities on the subject of height-vs-smartness for this to work but if they\u2019re not, you\u2019d not be presenting your own findings in any case, would you?!<\/p>\n

    What\u2019s the downside of starting a presentation with a few basic statements of \u201cWe believe\u201d? To be honest, it\u2019s the boredom factor. A list of assumptions isn\u2019t the most fascinating start to a presentation – so I\u2019ll deal with that problem next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A few days ago I posted a presentation tips tweet and – because of the 140 characters limit in twitter it was necessarily brief and terse. I\u2019d intended it to be an invocation for presenters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2759","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=2759"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2794,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2759\/revisions\/2794"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}