Guest Post: Madhusudan Srinivasa Raghavan

Madhusudan is one of Chris' Summer 2011 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here he writes about the power of virtual communication.

It was summer 2010 when our management team at my previous organization was conducting a post mortem on an executive review meeting that ended with the client walking out of the room. The meeting feedback portal had a lot of suggestions for improvement and a plethora of things to address. However, one item that stood out as an important area of concern was the fact that our presentation was poorly structured as it never conveyed what it had for the customer. It was a moment of reckoning for us as we realized the power of virtual communication.

More often than not, most presenters fail to impress the audience primarily because of the fact that the audience never understands what is in it for them until the end of the presentation. While it is important that the presenter conveys his point of view, it is also vital that the presentation must be oriented towards the audience and must have some take-away for the listeners.

A sound structure is pretty important as the flow of the speaker would keep the audience engaged through the course of the presentation. The presentation must have an interesting introduction, good details backed with facts and a powerful conclusion. The attention span of the listeners does not remain constant throughout the lecture and hence adding stories will always help the cause as it is bound to capture the audience’s imagination.

The logistics available must be fully utilized based on need. While details are an integral part of the presentation, it is a given that the presenter is at the focal point and not the slide deck. Hence, having content that are visual and creative will help the audience relate to things better than when conveyed through slides that are too verbose or complicated. Also, too much focus on the slide deck would mean that the presenter loses out on eye contact with the audience during the process of reading through the slides. The presentation must focus on conveying the message and slide decks would just aid the speaker in the process, while the limelight is on the presenter.

It is inevitable that there will be logistical glitches that might disrupt the flow of the presentation. The wit and the presence of mind of the presenter must come into play to engage the audience with humor. The presenters could avoid such logistical interruptions by reaching the venue ahead of time and conducting a dry run with the equipment that would be used for the final presentation. This implicitly means that the presenter needs be there ahead of time to the presentation. Reaching the venue late would not only mean gaining a bad first impression, but also would create a sense of panic which might upset the morale of the presenter.

Last but not the least, any form of communication in an organizational context must result in action. Most presentations fail miserably as the audience go out of the room with the “SO-WHAT” question. As a presenter, it is very important that enough time is spent on preparation to address the need of the presentation. The success of any presentation can be attributed to the fact that audience had a clear message in it, in terms of what was the situation or detail and what is the take away and, most importantly, what would be the next steps. This, according to me, would be the most challenging part to the presenter as he/she needs to keep in mind that the presentation leads to action.