Every presentation has a person who is speaking, and an audience that is listening. To be successful, knowing how the human brain works is vitally important. The more you know about human cognitive function, the more likely you'll be able to put together a presentation that inspires, challenges and motivates your audience to take some sort of action…which is likely your ultimate objective.
Over the past few years, I've collected some nuggets that can quickly help you put together a vastly improved experience for your audience. Here are the four primary areas to keep in mind when creating and structuring a presentation that will ensure it has the greatest impact:
Number 1: People learn in small chunks…not a long firehose of PowerPoints. I encourage you to check out www.ted.com. It's a collection of great talks by people on a whole host of topics. You'll notice that the majority of those talks are less than 20 minutes long. Why is that? Realize that the "sustained" attention span of an adult is thought to be no longer than 15-20 minutes. And, that's for someone performing surgery, handling fragile objects, or anything else requiring consistent results on a task over time. Listening to your presentation likely isn't one of those things…so count on your audience's attention span being much less.
With that, when a person loses focus, they can choose to re-focus as well…but it's our job to create that re-focus. When putting together your presentation, think about that. If the presentation has to be longer than 20 minutes, then think about how you can give the audience a brain rest every 5-10 minutes. The best ways to do that are to tell a relevant story, engage the audience with a question or an activity, or anything else that forces the disengagement then re-engagement.
Number 2: Remember that most people can't read and listen at the same time. If they're reading your text laden slides, they're not listening. If your slides are covered in text, it will take a while for your audience to start listening to you. When possible, use pictures to emphasize your points rather than words. When putting together a presentation, try to build it out without using ANY slides first. Then decide what a slide can do to emphasize the points you're making.
If you have to use text, keep them short. Don't use sentences unless you're showing a quotation or a definition. Also, keep in mind that most people can only hold around 5 items in short term memory.
If you have more than 5 bullets on a slide, the majority of the audience won't be able to remember them without re-reading the slide…which means they're not going to be listening to you. Remember, your slides aren't your speaker notes.
Number 3: If you want people to act, you have to call them to action. At the end of the presentation, be specific about what you want your audience to do. Will your audience be motivated to do something at the end of the presentation? If so, what is that something?
Number 4: Have passion for your topic. The words you use only equate to part of your audience's engagement. If you're passionate about the topic, don't bottle that excitement up…let it flow. Your audience will mirror your emotion. If you're excited and passionate about a topic, they will be more likely to be excited and passionate about it as well.
So much of that passion needs to come through in your first two minutes…when the audience is deciding whether to invest the cognitive attention to listen and engage. When practicing, record your first few minutes, then ask yourself while playing it back, "Would I want to listen to me for the time allotted?"
Take these four learnings to heart, and I promise you your next presentation will do more to inspire, challenge & motivate your audience.
Todd
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