The purpose of a presentation
Like taxes and death, presenting is an unavoidable part of life, and like taxes and death, it makes people unhappy. Let's explore why and what to do about it.
The following text is an excerpt from my new keynote, Happy. It explores the purpose of presentations, why they frustrate us, and what we can do to improve them and ourselves. I've edited heavily for sharing. I hope you enjoy it and that you find it useful.
My job is to answer questions.
My job is to answer questions. Questions about presentations. Questions like, what do I do with my hands, how do I stop being nervous, how do I control an audience? How do I make people laugh? How can I improvise, and my favourite, how do I give a TED talk? If you work in a large multinational company, you may also want to know how to present bad news. Perhaps you want to learn to tell better stories, write a better red thread or be more confident on a conference stage or in a conference room. Pretty much everybody who comes to me looking for help has these kinds of questions.
And then I ask them to present. And I watch them. I watch them struggle with slides, stories and egos. I'll watch them get mad at the universe, hold back, hide facts and figures in Excel charts, and be self-conscious. I'll listen to the little excuses.
When they finish, I'll ask them how it felt, what the presentation was about, and why anybody should care about it. "It felt terrible," they'll reply. I'm not sure, "I don't know. Presenting makes them unhappy.
It's not a presentation's job to make you unhappy.
Presentations, like taxes and death, are an unavoidable part of life. And like taxes and death, presenting makes people unhappy. According to Statista, 41% of Germans fear public speaking and presenting, as do 75% of Americans, according to the Journal of Education and Educational Development. It's hard to imagine enjoying taxes, and only hard-core Stoics can truly become comfortable with death, but why does presenting presentations make so many people unhappy? If it's not a presentation's job to make us feel miserable, what is its job?
The job of a presentation is to answer questions.
For most people, predominantly busy business people, presentations are tasks. They're things that end up on your to-do list. A boss or a colleague may ask you, "Have you finished the presentation for tomorrow?" and you may answer, "Yes, I have a presentation." The presentation's existence is the answer. So, what is a presentation? What's its job? I think it's this:
A presentation is a collection of answers to questions the audience didn't know needed asking, and these answers lead to a solution the audience didn't know was needed but is. And this is its job.
I've recently published a set of presentation protocols, and if you've downloaded it, you will have noticed how many questions I make the reader ask themselves about the presentation they're about to give. Here are just a few:
Who is in the audience?
Why are they there, and what do they need to hear?
What is the subject of your presentation?
Why should the audience care about it?
There are many more, of course. Download the Download the free PDF and have a look!
Better quality presentations lead to a better quality of life.
We spend so much time and energy thinking about improving the quality of our cities, roads, trains, and offices, but we frustrate and anger each other with terrible presentations that are, at best, streams of corporate consciousnesses or, worse, arse-covering executive summaries. By focusing on finding and answering interesting questions, I've found that presenters and their audiences are happier, and the presentations have more impact.
I've discovered being exposed to questions they can't answer, is the thing the majority of presentation people fear the most. As a result, their presentation resilience and confidence suffer. When they focus on finding answers to the questions that matter, they discover a new sense of presentation purpose, are more confident, and, instead of worrying about the presentation, can't wait to do it and share what they've discovered.
And this makes me very, very happy.