Guest Post: Lulu Chen

Lulu is one of Chris' Summer 2010 Professional Speaking students. This is her second guest post on the blog. Here she writes about real-world presentations.

Imagine on a beautiful Monday morning you are sitting down to listen to a presentation. What kind of presenter will help maintain your good mood from the weekend? A gentleman who talks in a very long-winded way? A scholar who tells you all the nitty-gritty details of his research works in the past three years? A junior analyst who is very nervous and has no spare attention for her audience? No! They will definitely color your Monday blue.

So, don’t be the one that ruin people’s Monday morning! A good presenter should be selective, sticky and able to receive feedback from her audience.

Being selective in the amount of information to be presented is crucial. Presentation is used to communicate a concept or idea which is generally new to the audience. Our brain takes time to process new information, and before it fully understands the current batch it does not have the capacity to entertain the next batch of information. After a few rounds, if our brain cannot catch up with the presenter, it will close off, leaving the presenter talking to a pool of quiet air. So, be selective in presenting points. It’s best not to give an overwhelming amount of new information. If it’s really a lot, group them into magic number ‘3’. Pace out the speed of talking and leave time for audience to digest. It is also important not to give all the back-stage details of the point you want to highlight. The audience’s attention span and patience are limited. They will ask questions if they are interested in the details. Plus, it’s never the last time you meet with the audience – take your time to slowly tell them your story.

Sticky is another tactic to knock your points into other people’s minds. As we can infer from the word ‘sticky,’ the presenter should focus on the topics and craft simple messages to deliver the topics. While simple, they need to be concrete as well. For example, if the CEO of UPS tells his express delivery guys, ‘We need to provide best services to our clients,’ the delivery guys may not know how to deliver the ‘best service.’ But if the CEO says, ‘We should not open any delivery package on our own; we need to ensure 100% on-time rate; we will not deliver package to wrong places,’ then it’s more sticky and concrete for the delivery guys to follow.

Last but not least, listening to and observing the audience is the critical part that makes your presentation a success. It’s always good to make the presentation a conversation, which requires the presenter to listen and interact with the audience. The audience will feel more respected if they are being heard. In addition, by observing the audience, the presenter will know what she should skip and what to expressively elaborate, so as to keep the attention of the audience.

In summary, as a likable presenter, we should always be selective, sticky and observant to our audience.