All Communication is "Presentation"

All Communication is “Presentation”

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve received a panic call from a client asking for help at the last minute–and I do mean last minute, sometimes only hours before an event--because the presenters slated to speak at televised regulatory hearings,  or corporate board meetings were ill-prepared, I'd be a wealthy woman! It takes 30 minutes or less of preparation to get the know an audience in advance of the presentation, and yet...

Whether you're presenting to an audience of one or one thousand, the same guidelines apply, and many of the same obstacles will trip you up in getting your message across. 

Here are the four main communication potholes on the road to success:

1) You don’t know where to begin when it's time to speak.

2) You don't paint a clear picture. 

3) You let others interfere with or distort your message while you're delivering it – you're not prepared for the Q&A.

4) You don't let your personality come through – you don't SPARC-kle.

Now let's look into how to fill them.

Know Your AudienceYou don’t know where to begin when it's time to speak.

If you don't know how you are going to end the journey for the audience, how can you possibly know where to begin  It’s like taking your car out of the garage and aimlessly driving down the road in search of a destination. 

I developed this foolproof plan for communicating with an audience that can serve you effectively, whether you're speaking to one person or an audience of one thousand.

You know what you want from your audience. To get there, you need to find out what your audience needs / wants from YOU. How many times in my career have I heard employees, when asking for a raise, talk about why they need one. Business owners don’t really care about why you feel you need a raise unless you can tell them how it is going to help their business. 

You need to step back from what you want and take some time to analyze your audience. What are the benefits for your audience if he, she, or they accommodate your request?

You need to communicate in a way that is personalized, that's customized to that audience. There is no such thing as a “one size fits all” approach to effective communication.

You need your audience to understand the information, especially if they are not from your team, or your company or for that matter, your industry. The person or persons receiving your message needs to know what you want them to do with the information. No one can read your mind about what you want, and that includes your spouse or partner. 

And, most importantly, you need to be able to motivate your audience to do what we want them to do with the information. In other words how you present is as critical and what you present. You want your message to land on their shoulders, shake their shoulders and get them out of their seats and doing what you wish them to do.

Making a Power Map

This tool is most effective when you need to persuade a group about something, but it can also be used for a one-on-one discussion.

If you are presenting to 20 or fewer people, I suggest that you actually make a list using their names, and underneath their names, decide if that person is an ally, neutral, or adversary. 

Let me know how it goes for you.

Get more tips about getting out of your own way in Your Self Sabotage Survival Guide by Karen Berg: https://tinyurl.com/y786t4ax