I have been looking at various presentation websites. I am impressed and not impressed, and I am concerned about the distinction between making a convincing argument to serious people with serious decisions to make, vs. giving an entertaining performance to people who need to be entertained.
Because I accidentally live in New Jersey, my career has been largely in the pharmaceutical industry. It is a highly regulated industry because it deals with serious issues of human health, and on top of that, the cost of health care is becoming a national crisis.
As a result, I have been involved as a consultant in helping brand teams, scientists, and regulatory staff make fact-based arguments to senior decision makers within the company, and within the FDA. These presentations require a respectful, buttoned-up approach because they deal with cancer, mental illness, diabetes, and other causes of human suffering.
So imagine my surprise when I went to a website populated with performances given by “World Champions of Public Speaking,” and saw presentations that were more like Off-Broadway one-man shows than they were about making serious arguments addressing a serious topic.
I have heard from multiple reliable sources that I am not a stick-in-the-mud. I admire theatricality, humor, and the ability to hold an audience, but some of these performances are essentially vaudeville—theatrical presentations that contain a point or a lesson.
They are performed, I suppose, at large-scale business meetings, like conventions and National Sales gatherings. But if any Vice President of finance, HR, sales or marketing in pharma ever wound himself up and uncorked a performance like these World Champions deliver, he’d be escorted to the door by a pod of security guards.
[ctt title=”When a presentation is done well, it speaks to the audience about what is most important to the audience” coverup=”c1t7Z”]
Public speaking is a tool. Tools have a purpose. The primary purpose of business presentations is to convey information to help an audience to make a decision or a prediction. When such a presentation is done well, it speaks to the audience in the language of the audience about what is most important to the audience. And it tends to be substantive, not silly.
Scientific presentations have a style of their own. The speaker may occasionally display a sense of humor, but the experts in the audience are there for the matter, not the manner.
Yes, the physical clowning of the World Champions of Public Speaking rubbed me the wrong way. They were doing some kind of new performance art, which may be the next big thing. But I prefer the old kind of Public Speaking Champion–one man or woman bringing a new idea into the world and mesmerizing me through the magic of their language and the measure of their character.