By Ethan Rotman
Imagine this scenario: You have agreed to make a presentation at a staff meeting. You take time to outline your talk, prepare your handouts, and create effective visual aids. You practice. You confidently walk into the room wearing jeans and a button-down expecting to see a table with six to eight people. As you enter the room, though, you find there are close to 80 people sitting in an auditorium. They are dressed in business attire. There is a lectern on the podium with a microphone and a large screen behind. The paradigm of your presentation changed suddenly. It requires different preparations, more handouts, and an entirely different presentation strategy. In an instant, you go from feeling confident and prepared to feeling scared.
Your mind flashes back to when you were invited to speak. You wonder what you were told, what you heard, and suddenly wish you had asked a lot more questions.
The very first part of preparing for a presentation is to define the parameters. Think about how the situation described above could have been different if the following questions were asked:
- How many people will I be
addressing? - How will the room be set up?
- Who will be in the audience and what is their background?
- What do you hope to accomplish by having me present to your group?
- Is the audience a group of strangers or do they know each other?
- What other speakers are on the agenda and when will I speak in relation to them?
- What type of audio-visual equipment and software do you have?
- Will there be technical assistance available?
- What is the appropriate dress for this occasion?
Some additional questions that may be of help include: Will alcohol be served? (This is to gauge the audience, not for you to drink!) and What is an emergency number I can call the day of the talk in case I have a problem?
Don’t assume you understand the parameters of a presentation. Make sure you ask the right questions. Find out as much about the situation as possible before you begin preparing. The more you know about what to expect, the better prepared you will be. Your confidence and credibility will soar.
This speaking tip is one is a series provided by iSpeakEASY. Visit www.iSpeakEASY.net for more tips and articles. Contact Ethan Rotman directly at 415-342-7106.
Lyman Grover
August 19, 2010 at 7:25 pm
So true. That’s why I personally prefer the “iceberg” approach to interpretation, i.e. research the resource to ten times the depth of any presentation one can ever imagine making as preparation for the times when one has misjudged the situation. Then, if a situation arises as you describe, one’s presentation can be modified to a different “tip of the iceberg” on the spot, with no one the wiser.
The most memorable experience I have had like that was when I was teaching English in a private high school in Inner Mongolia, China, a few years ago. The Chinese headmaster of ‘my’ school asked me if I would go the next morning to his friends’ private school for teaching English to adults and talk to her about teaching methods I was using. I agreed and she picked me up in her limousine the next morning at 8 AM. On the way to her school I asked her what she wojld like me to cover in our conversation. She said I could cover whatever I liked during the six hours, 9AM to 3PM, I would be teaching conversational English to the Financial Administrators of the City of Batou, all high-ranking Communist party members, who had to pass a government mandated test in English in the next two weeks. It turned out to be a fun day!