It is my belief that presentation skills get greater as they become more meaningful for the audience. This means that a presentation skill that makes the speaker look good is not as great as a presentation skill that benefits the listeners.
Many skills taught by speech coaches are essentially packaging for the speaker and are not meaningful contributions to the audience. This is not to say that packaging is unimportant. It is important because it helps to predispose the audience to see the speaker as a trustworthy source of information. Examples of such packaging include the use of effective hand gestures, focusing the eyes on one listener at a time, and standing with the weight on both feet.
These skills enhance the appeal of the speaker, and perhaps make him easier to listen to, but what do they do for the audience? In fact, they could make it harder for the audience to discern the truth. Skillful speakers can deceive, and listeners can be misled.
Nevertheless, looking good is a good presentation skill, but it’s not a great one because it benefits the speaker more than it does the audience. A great presentation skill provides a meaningful contribution to the audience. The improved image, authority and influence of the speaker is a by-product of that contribution.
So here’s the question. Whether as a leader, sales person, researcher, or influencer of any kind…what are the great presentation skills that one must demonstrate in order to make a meaningful contribution to an audience?
The speaker must:
1. Take apart the thinking of the audience on a given topic and rearrange it so that it’s new, improved, and widely embraced by the audience.
2. Move the audience out of a state of contemplation and into a state of action or preparation for action.
3. Give himself so generously and authentically to the audience, and create such a memorable experience for them, that he forges a personal bond with the majority of his listeners.
Please keep in mind that I do not claim these are ironclad laws of the presentation platform. Rather, they are my attempt to define great presentation skills, as opposed to merely good ones.
Two examples. Charlie Green of Trusted Advisor Associates took my thinking about sales and rearranged it. I now think of selling as problem solving, as doing well by doing good, so now it’s a lot easier to pick up the phone and prospect.
Beth Frates is a physician at Harvard Medical School. She speaks on the subject of exercise—her theme is exercise is medicine. Not only is that a powerful idea, but she has all the science to back it up, and the stories to make it compelling. Plus, she’s working on changing the role of the physician from subject matter expert to coach, or change agent, and in order to to that, she has to equip doctors with the interpersonal skills to help their patients do the actual work of change. By the way, she’s a dynamite presenter.
Good presentation skills benefit the speaker. Great presentation skills benefit the audience. I urge you to start the journey from good to great.