Guest Post: Taylor Geisse

Taylor is one of Chris' Summer 2010 Professional Speaking students. Here he writes about real-world presentations.

You certainly don’t want your presentations to end up like this one here right? The presenter is talking about something audience has no interest in whatsoever and the presenter himself also doesn’t seem to care! All in all, a big mess!

In today’s world, there are presentations given every single day for various reasons. A businessman giving a presentation to his colleagues / clients or an individual giving a presentation at a conference are just two of the many presentations that go on every single day. Yet, no matter what the context, the flow is always the same: to logically present a topic, inform your audience of said topic, and leave your audience with something to do or think about. When done appropriately, most presentations should follow this very flow with only the final end goal varying to match the purpose of the presentation.

In any given company, there is a presentation going on at almost every hour of the workday. Although the topics may vary from financial & budget overview to a status update to a sales pitch from a consulting firm, the end goal is always the same: push business forward. Not all work presentations achieve this goal, but the general idea of presentations in a business sense is to identify where productivity or profits are falling short and to take action to improve the business. As work is work, these next steps are often assigned tasks as opposed to thought-provoking ones.

Many of the most interesting and thought provoking presentations occur at conferences such as TED. At conferences like these, individuals present topics that they are passionate about to an audience that is there for the expressed interest of hearing what their peers have to say. Identical to other types of presentations, even business presentations, the presenters must first introduce their topic and some background on it. Where it gets very interesting, however, is when they start provoking thoughts on topics that may have never crossed your mind. This is the precise goal of presenters at conferences, which is to get you thinking about something you may have never considered before, thus expanding your mind.

However, many presentations suffer from poor preparation, poor attention to detail, and/or poor presenting skills. This is quite apparent in the corporate world where presentations are often thrown together at the eleventh hour. Thoughts are disjointed, slides and other details are disconnected, and the presenter is often noticeably unprepared. Businessmen, however, are not the only ones who succumb to these faults of presenting. Conference presenters, such as the clip of individuals at TED shown to us the other day, can find themselves succumbing to these pitfalls that can simply ruin a presentation on even the most interesting topic in the world.

Presentations happen every day, whether we are a part of them or not. It is well understood that a presentation should leave an individual with an action or a thought. However, if a presentation were to succumb to a noticeable pitfall, it becomes hard to comprehend the action one is suppose to undertake and it may even be difficult to discern what the intention of the presentation is.