Originally published in 2012.
In the previous three blogs we looked at the audience: the importance of not taking your audience for granted, researching your audience before your presentation, and finding out what your audience wants. Let’s move away from the audience for a bit and think about you. What do you want to achieve with your presentation? How do you want to make an impact on your audience? A large number of presentations do not make any impact and are immediately forgotten. Do you know why? The presenters did not have any intention in mind. Logically, if they did not plan to achieve anything they will not achieve anything. To help you find your intention and make an impact there are three key questions that you can ask yourself during your preparation:
- What do you want your audience to think/know differently as a result of your presentation?
- What do you want your audience to feel differently as a result of your presentation?
- What do you want your audience to do differently as a result of your presentation?
That’s right. A presentation that makes an impact changes the way in which the audience thinks, feels, and/or behaves. Your intention should have two characteristics:
- Specific
- Valuable to your audience.
First, your intention has to be very specific. It is not enough to say “I want them to know more about what I’m doing”. What specifically do you want them to learn? “I want them to behave differently” is not good either. What specifically do you want them to do? The second characteristic is that your intention has to be valuable to your audience. If I haven’t convinced you yet that a presentation is not about you, it is about your audience, you may be tempted to answer that you want your audience to realise you are great. Unless you are in a job interview, your audience won’t care how great you are. However, if you give them something of value, they probably will think you are great. Next time you present, are you going to make an impact?