I believe one of the best models for presenting skills is the act of giving directions to someone who has stopped her car, leaned out the window, and said, “How do I get to Bloomfield Avenue?”
If you’re standing in front of your house, and you know how to get to the desired location (your own version of Bloomfield Avenue) you immediately envision the route you would take. In the millisecond before you speak, your brain flies over the road map in your head, your eyes may very well look in the direction of Bloomfield Avenue, and your arm involuntarily will rise up and point in the desired direction.
But then you encounter what Chip and Dan Heath, in their book Made to Stick, call the curse of knowledge. Your curse is that you know the details of the terrain–the houses, trees, stop signs, traffic patterns, and where the dog is likely to run out and bark at your menacing tires. You are inside the bottle of your own experience whereas your listener needs you to read the label.
That’s hard to do from inside the bottle. You know the terrain, she needs a map abstracted from the terrain. She needs something simple she can remember so she can accomplish her goal–which is to arrive at Bloomfield Avenue. If you tell her everything you know about the terrain, she’ll get confused and lost. You need to speak to her in the simplest way possible (but not too simple) so that she can extract value from your knowledge.
As the number of twists and turns–rights and lefts–that you pour into her nervous ear increases, the value of your information decreases, because she can’t remember too many turns. When she reaches a saturation point, she stops listening.
If you are attentive to the look in her eyes, or her bitten lip, you might ask her to repeat what you said, to see if she understands and remembers. Or you could volunteer to write it down, or draw a picture. Your initiative is necessary because most of the time when people are confused they are too embarrassed to admit it or unwilling to impose on your time even more.
(I get confused very quickly when listening to directions. I have to repeat them aloud, and even act them out for myself, moving my hands this way and that while I repeat what I’ve heard.)
Your degree of confidence also plays a big part in the value of your directions. If you don’t seem confident, the listener sitting behind the wheel discounts what you’re saying, and only pretends to listen out of politeness while thinking to herself, “I’ve got to find another person to ask. This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
In fact, it’s my experience that when I ask people for directions, a lot of them will make something up just so they can give the appearance of being an expert on the topography of their community (their area of expertise.) I know this because if I’m listening to someone and don’t think he’s really confident in what he’s saying, and I drive away to ask another person, inevitably I get a completely different perspective.
Finally, judging from my own behavior, I believe we prefer to ask for directions from someone who looks well-dressed, which signals to us that he or she is a credible and trustworthy source of information.
Giving directions to a lost stranger has deep similarities to presenting in business. Giving directions is helping your listener by solving a problem for her, being sure that you give her the right information and no more than she needs, and giving her a chance to ask clarifying questions.
Sounds like presenting to me!
Here are the nine take-aways!
- Know your material like the back of your hand.
- Beware the curse of knowledge. It’s hard to read the label from inside the bottle. If you tell them everything, they remember nothing.
- Keep it simple but not too simple.
- Keep it interactive. Keep an eye on them to see if their eyes are glazing over.
- Ask them questions when you see signals.
- Speak with confidence to inspire their confidence in you.
- Allow your body to help you communicate.
- Don’t make stuff up. Say, “I don’t know.” Humility is an underrated virtue.
- Dress the part. Look like a trustworthy source of information.