Want to be a Better Presenter? Start by Being a Better Audience Member
All communication is a two way street. To be a better presenter, you need to practice driving on the other side of the street.
Presentations are awesome. Some weirdos (myself included) are looking forward to being in meeting rooms again, being a captive audience and watching presentations. There are some amazing presentations you will attend that will stick with you for years. These are rare. However, you can also get great value out of mediocre or even “bad” presentations. This is only true if you pay attention.
I think back to my theatre training. We were taught the critical role the audience plays in the success of a theatre performance.
The Importance of Being a Good Audience Member
Every performance consists of two groups of people: the performers and the audience. Everyone must be engaged to make the performance work. Although the performers initiate the performance, feedback from the audience is necessary to elevate the performance. Look at any late-night talk show over the last year and you will see how the hosts have struggled to capture the same magic they had with a live studio audience.
This feeling of magic is what drove many performers to get up on the stage in the first place. Their goal is to help the audience feel this magic. They yearn for audience to feel it because they know how amazing that feeling is.
So What is Different about Presentations?
When we attend a theatre or musical performance, we are already in a state of readiness and believe that we are going to have fun. Not so with presentations. More often, we are in a state of readiness to be bored out of our skulls.
No wonder most people don’t like giving presentations. When it’s time for us to give a presentation, we believe that everyone else will have the same point of view. We can’t stand the idea of being the boring one at the front of the room.
The Most Fundamental Presentation Practice
There is no way you can become a better presenter without first believing that people may actually enjoy and get value from your presentation. You therefore need to practice what it feels like to enjoy other people’s presentations.
Good news — the practice is surprisingly easy. All you have to do is start paying attention.
Okay, I’m lying. The concept is easy, but the execution is not. Let’s face it, many presentations are nowhere near as interesting as, well pretty much anything else your tired and wandering mind starts to think of. Paying attention is proving to be difficult over Zoom, and it will still be difficult when we get back to attending presentations in person
Even before the pandemic, we had fallen out of practice and often didn’t see the importance of paying attention. We would drift in and out of a presentation, getting the general outline, and think that was enough. Many people used their attendance at a presentation as an opportunity to catch up on work. After all, no one was going to interrupt them if they were in a meeting room and far away from their desk.
The problem is, if we are not paying attention, we are not engaged, and we severely reduce the chance of having a connection with the presenter and with the presentation.
Benefits of Paying Attention
Here are the some of the benefits you will get as a future presenter by paying more attention during presentations:
You can learn something
Of course, there is the subject matter of the presentation. You can also learn something about presentation skills. Did they use a particularly effective illustration in the presentation? Did they read off the slide, or did they completely ignore the slide? Was it done consciously and effectively? How was their pacing? Take any skill you want to work on, and you can learn from others during their presentations.
You can practice non-verbal communication skills
Non-verbal communication skills are key to successful presentations. You can observe body language, tone of voice, gestures, etc. What was effective? Were there any non-verbal cues that undermined their message? You can practice your own body language while listening. You can show that you are interested and paying attention. The easiest way to do that is to actually listen. In most cases, your body language will automatically follow.
You can practice regaining focus and being present
When you lose focus, bring it back by observing something specific. This will derail your distracted thoughts and bring you back to the here and now. Anything will work: How are they holding the slide changer? Is the font serif or san serif? What color is their hair? Did they just blink? The goal here is not to evaluate anything — all you want to do is bring your attention back to the room.
You can practice showing respect
The presenter has put in several hours of preparation for this day. Even if you think they didn’t do that great a job, it is almost always the case that they thought they did the best job they could given the time constraints given to them. You can then bring that feeling of respect to your audience when you present. Your future audience members are busy and there will be some that would rather be anywhere else than in that room. Respecting the audience’s time is critical to building the empathy you need to be a good presenter.
Most importantly, you are practicing awareness of connection
As you practice paying attention, you start to become aware of when there isn’t a connection and when there is. Practice being aware of that feeling of connection. Strengthen that muscle of empathy. You don’t have to ask questions, you don’t have to lean in, you don’t have to nod. All you have to here do is notice it.
Downsides of Paying Attention
There are a couple potential downsides to paying attention to a presentation, aside from not being able to catch up on your emails for an hour or so.
It’s tiring
Paying attention is hard work. We don’t expect it to be, but it is. If the presentation isn’t that great, you will have to work even harder to pay attention. Allow yourself to drift away for a bit if you have to. Just be sure to regain your focus when you can.
You might stand out
There is a possibility that you are the only one actually paying attention. The presenter might end up looking at you far more than at other people in audience. This is especially true if the presenter is starting to feel nervous. If you are not comfortable with them continually coming back to you, one technique is to acknowledge them via smile or nod, and then look to their slide deck on the screen at the front of the room. That will communicate your interest in the material, and hopefully subtly boost their confidence in their presentation
Paying Attention is Just a First Step
Of course, just because you have learned to get value out of other people’s presentations, that doesn’t mean that people will automatically start to get value out of your presentations. This is where your other presentation skills kick in, skills like effective use of intonation and strong visuals, knowing how to structure a presentation, and knowing how to rehearse and prepare.
For those skills to be effective, you must first instill in yourself a belief in the medium of the presentation, a belief that presentations can be good. If you can start to enjoy other people’s presentations, it is much easier to believe that people will be able to enjoy your presentation.
This is the first in a series of articles I am putting together on presentation skills. Yes, there already are nearly an infinite number of excellent articles, books, lessons, etc. on presentation skills. My goal is to share some of the less talked about skills I learned in my professional training as an actor and then honed first as an ESL Instructor and then later as a Risk Management professional in a large multinational financial institution.
The next article will cover why you need to care about the subject of your presentation, and what to do if you don’t care.
