Hal is a Director. When he presents to his senior leadership team, three of them pay attention. Four are “laptops open” and checking their emails, looking up occasionally. Two don’t really understand what he does and don’t support him at all.
Andrea is a Vice President. She has a champion on the senior executive team. But only one. When she presents to all of them, they listen politely, thank her and drag their heels about moving forward on her recommendations.
Russ is a CEO who speaks at industry conferences. He wants to be an opinion leader for his industry. The ratings of his speeches average 3.8, marking him as an average speaker, nothing extraordinary. He’s generally perceived as trying real hard, but not inspiring.
Which brings us to a really good point.
If you have an audience of 100 people, with how many do you want to have a great connection? What percent of them do you want to resonate with your message?
Most people are happy if 10 out of 100 come up after their presentation to tell them how great it was. But that’s only 10%.
There’s a false idea out there that “you can’t reach everyone”. Clearly that notion was put forward by someone who couldn’t do it. Yes, it does hold true for many people, they aren’t able to reach everyone.
But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
If you communicate skillfully, you should be able to reach 90%.
The problem is most people have no idea how to do this. While they feel they may do okay one-on-one, when you put them in front of a group, they get thrown off trying to talk to multiple people at the same time.
When they get up in front of a group, they’re not themselves. They’re straining to be someone others will consider a good presenter. They’re working hard to be “convincing”. This combination of factors makes them feel they need to perform.
Understand this: great communicators don’t perform, they communicate.
Most people don’t know how to cross that bridge to truly great communication when they’re in front of an audience.
So not only do their slides go into “presentation mode”, they go into an artificial presentation mode themselves. They force themselves into that unnatural stream of hyped-up or monotonous, continuous outpouring of words you see so much of in corporate presentations.
They try to cover their nervousness, fail to connect with everyone in their audience and talk too fast.
If this is happening to you, the tough part is falling short of your own expectations. That’s brutal.
How do you transform into an individual who is free, unself-conscious, compelling, impactful, lovable even, and most importantly, totally comfortable and uniquely yourself?
Our Transformative Presentation Skills workshop was named by our clients. After training thousands of people, we looked through their evaluations to see the one word they used most often in describing their experience from this training. That word was transformative.
In this workshop, you learn how to really connect, to reach everyone in your audience, not just 10%.
I’ve seen it with Hal, Andrea and Russ, the folks I wrote about above. Hal now has his senior leadership team with laptops closed, valuing his recommendations and even asking him to present to top tier customers.
Andrea’s recommendations are moving forward with senior level support at a speed she never imagined.
And Russ is viewed as one of the top CEOs, powerfully dynamic and a major opinion leader in his industry.
They all hit the tipping point of being able to reach an exceptionally high percentage of their audience, captivate them and get them on board.
If you can’t make it to the workshop, that doesn’t mean that you can’t work on these skills. The first step is to discard the feeling that you’re performing and that you’ll be judged.
Shift your focus from performing to communicating, and instead of worrying about whether or not you’ll be judged, simply make sure you are understood. Understanding is the essence of communication. Simply put, intend for each person to fully understand you.
It sounds like a small shift, but you’ll prove to yourself it’s far more than that when you start to see the effect of reaching more of your audience.
Be the cause!