{"id":2763,"date":"2014-09-30T14:41:13","date_gmt":"2014-09-30T13:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=2763"},"modified":"2014-09-30T14:41:13","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T13:41:13","slug":"inferences-in-presentations-so-watch-what-you-say-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/inferences-in-presentations-so-watch-what-you-say-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Inferences in presentations – so watch what you say (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tweet_grab\"<\/a>In\u00a0a recent\u00a0blog<\/a> I talked about the need to be clear at the very start of your presentation about any assumptions you were making, not just to avoid mis-understandings, but perhaps more importantly to mean you take the sceptics in your audience with you.<\/p>\n

The problem was how to do this without boring everyone at the start. I\u2019ve outlined a few, simple ways below. Remember that none of them are perfect and each of them was used for a very specific set of circumstances: before you adopt, adapt!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Handout<\/strong><\/h3>\n

If there\u2019s something your audience needs to know before you start you can have them on a handout to be given to people as they come in. It has the secondary advantage of meaning that people who arrive late (and are therefore being disrespectful to everyone else) don\u2019t get time to read them and so can\u2019t contribute intelligently to any discussions. (Not being able to contribute intelligently might not stop them contributing, of course, but at least you get to occasionally roll your eyes and say something like \u201cWe covered that on the handout that we read at the start of the meeting\u201d – unless it\u2019s your boss, of course!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Handout 2<\/h3>\n

Like handout, but you give the handout at the end. It has the advantage of meaning that no one will read it instead of looking at\/listening to you as you speak. You can refer to it during your presenting (All the workings and assumptions are in the handout I\u2019ll give you in a minute\u201d) and it means you\u2019re less likely to get questions, because your audience knows less. \u00a0 (While that might sound appealing from the point of view of convenience, trade it off against your integrity! :) )<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A slide (or two)<\/h3>\n

Much like a handout, really. The downside is that starting like this would be terminally boring for your audience. \u00a0A possible alternative is to have a slide (or better, a rolling set of slides) going as the audience comes in, before<\/b> you speak. I\u2019d be inclined to mix it up with a countdown or something so the audience knows you\u2019re doing it on purpose, but that\u2019s just me.<\/p>\n

Actually, done well, I can see this one working quite nicely, as it could look very, very professional and slick.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A simple statement<\/h3>\n

Standing there and simply telling your audience can be a death knell. My advice, generally is not to do it. That said, if you\u2019re as cool as Patrick Stuart then go for it! \u00a0It\u2019s a high risk strategy and not for everyone\u2026 not least your audience!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do nothing<\/h3>\n

Simply getting on with your presentation and not making reference to your underlying assumptions has a lot to recommend it. Firstly, it means you don\u2019t have to confront anything head on – until the questions at the end that is! Secondly, if no one has reconsider that you\u2019re making assumptions, why would you want to draw attention to it?. (There\u2019s the question of moral integrity, of course.)<\/p>\n

Actually, the idea that you don\u2019t draw attention to issues has a lot to recommend it but it\u2019s a fairly high risk. \u00a0My experience is that (a metaphorical) 90% of the time, no one notices your assumptions – but for that ten percent when they do it\u2019s particularly embarrassing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Questions<\/h3>\n

This is a bit like doing nothing – but with you preparing your responses in case anyone does question you. \u00a0I recommend that if you go down this route, you use the idea of putting slides which address your assumptions after the end of your slide deck. \u00a0Make a note of the number of the slides in question so that, when\/if anyone asks you about it, you can leap straight to that slide (you do that by typing the number of the slide into PowerPoint or Keynote and then hitting \u2018Return\u2019). It looks very slick, by the way, if you put black slides between these slides and jump to them, rather than the answer-slide. Once you\u2019re on the black slide you can fade elegantly into the slide you want to show. Then you fade to another black slide, equally elegantly. \u00a0Once you\u2019re in that black slide you can jump to any other black slide, in any order, as you respond to questions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

I’m pretty sure that there are other ways, but I’m in a rush… so I’ll leave the rest for you lot… what do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In\u00a0a recent\u00a0blog I talked about the need to be clear at the very start of your presentation about any assumptions you were making, not just to avoid mis-understandings, but perhaps more importantly to mean you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2763","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\/2763","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=2763"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2834,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2763\/revisions\/2834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}