Purposeful and Persuasive Presentations: Part 2 - Examples and non-Examples

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us at JLC Media. This is a follow up podcast, a second follow up podcast to a webinar we did on presentations. And we thought it might be useful for us, but also for those that might be listening to talk a bit about what really has resonated with you as a great podcast and what was not so much. And we're going to develop a little understanding about those features that make something really, really good, something that not so much so that each of you can remind yourselves as you're planning your presentation that these are some really good ideas I need to hold on to. So that's kind of the focus of this conversation. So, Vince, what are you hearing me say? What are you thinking?

So you said that we're going to have a follow up conversation based off professor presentations, based off the webinar and that together we're going to look at exploring what things make those, that application of those presentations appealing or not appealing to an audience.

Yeah, whenever you teach in a concept like the concept is effective presentation, you need to do examples and non examples. That helps people get the gist of what's going on. So we're going to do a little bit of that right now. Colleen, what did you hear me say? What are you thinking?

No, what I'm thinking is the second you said example and non example, I think many people instantly get a picture in their mind of a non example because I can think of hundreds and many of them are myself. So I'm really looking forward to the conversation because I think each one of us can come up with some really good stories, whether they're personal experiences or one that we have observed.

You're making me laugh because I could think about. I used to do my best to get out of meetings in any way that I could, and for all the reasons that I think we can think of. And back to my own issue about having negative bias. You know, there are some things I just, I don't want any part of that. So it should be fun to talk about. Joe, how about you? Glad you hear. What are you thinking?

Yeah, I think it should be really interesting for the audience. I think again, the examples, the non examples, people always want to talk about those. So I think they'll enjoy it.

Beautiful. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to ask you to give me the non example or the example, and then I'll just add the content, the theoretical content to it as we go forward to give people a little more of what's underneath it. Once again, if you are interested in presenting, you need to use concrete language when you're teaching a concept. Presenting a concept, concrete language. Cause that's what produces pictures and that's what produces. If you can, if it's vivid enough, it'll give you a good emotion. So let's begin with some non examples. Cause they always seem to be easier for us to grab onto. Again, that is life in our world today. Presenting in our world today. People are pretty quick to say, this really was awful. Let me tell you why. So how about give me one, just one, maybe two examples, non examples of effective presentation.

And.

And then we'll play a little bit about why that is not the best way to go forward. Who'd like to start?

I will. I will throw myself down on the sword and use myself as an example. That actually came about because of Ray. So Ray was booked to do a keynote, I believe there were 250 people in the room in this location in Lincoln, Nebraska. And so he calls me, I'll never forget. And he goes, colleen, I'm sick. I can't go. And they created this event. I'm going to send you. I'm like, yes, sir. Tap me in. I'm a good doobie. I've been studying this. I've been reading it. I prepare, I write all my notes down. I've got this killer facilitator guide. Put on my best outfit. Bam. I go to this location. Oh, my gosh. I walk in, they're dead animals on the wall. So I'm a big fan of my space, right? I'm feeling comfortable in my space. All of the chairs with the 250 people were lined up theater style. And we don't do that, right? We show up and we want world cafes, small groups of four. So already in my mind, I go to. Oh, God, here we go. Right then when they introduced me, they say, well, thank you all for coming. We were expecting Dr. Ray Jorgensen, but today we have Ms. Colleen Sullivan. And I'm sitting there going, oh, my gosh. So already in my mind, I'm already in a space of a tiny bit of anxiety and fear. So I stand up there and I begin with my notes. And I'm going through the motion and I'm doing my best. I'm saying the same words Ray said. I'm closing loop. I'm doing all these things and I'm going. I don't feel connected to the audience. They're not talking, they're not. What is going on? This isn't working. And I start to panic. And so what do I do? I call a break and I run to the bathroom when I call Ray and I go, ray, this isn't working. I just. It's all going sideways, right? It's all going sideways. And I will never forget. Okay, show up, be yourself, close the loop. You gave me a few key things and I was like, okay, okay, okay. So I ran back out there, put my notes down on the table and did my best to show up as me, not as you.

That's really. So I. This is not a new story. I've had people call me after a meeting or a board meeting or something like that. This didn't go like I expected. And they tell me, I did exactly what you do. And I said, well, to a point Vince has made in a previous webinar, you got to use your own voice. And this was a place where, you know how they say, fake it till you make it. And my belief, and this is definitely in the literature, the psychological literature, is you can fake it until you are it. You can actually, your behavior can change your self talk. So the more you practice showing up and being yourself and being that authentic you, that natural, you remember simplicity, restraint, naturalness. The more you do that, the more powerful that presentation can become. That's just beautiful. Thank you, Colleen. Joe Revint.

Yeah, so I wouldn't tell a story about a specific presentation. I might give some more general things that I've seen bad ones do. Having been in a lot of jobs in the Pentagon and elsewhere where the coin of the realm was sit through meetings hour after hour, day after day, week after week. So. So I tend to be pretty judgmental about these things, perhaps because I've done so many of them. So I don't mean this perhaps to sound as harsh as it will come across, but again, when you do a lot of this every day, I think you begin to look at it more as a trade off, that your time is valuable and it's short and so your ability to get other things done can be directly impacted, hampered in many cases by presentations. So, you know, Albert Einstein could explain the most complicated things we know or think we know about the universe in like two slides. So when I pick up a presentation and it's 30, 40, 50 slides, it's. I always just wonder in my own head, what have you got to say that could possibly take that much time? So the. And so that not everything. And again, I'm not saying that things have to be short and simple. I'm saying you know, things have to be relatable and understandable and there has to be considerable closing the loop. So. So the idea that there's a big packet of slides frequently indicates to me that the briefer thought the subject was complex and tried to address all of the aspects of that complexity by lots of material, as opposed to doing the mental hard work and heavy lifting of boiling it down to more of the essential message. So, so how is it presented? Is it relatable? Is it designed for the audience? Again, how many presentations have we sat through where it's in a hall where there's 500 or 5,000 people and there's one screen at the front and you know, it's size 8 font on the slide. Okay, that's an automatic failure. I mean, you know, the audience checks out. If you look to your right and your left, people are all on their phones, they're all doing other things because nobody can read that. And clearly it was important to the briefer. But I'm not reading that. I can't even see it, let alone read it. And so. Oh, well, okay, well, in my room I'm going to make sure they have flat panel displays all over so everybody can read it. Yeah, that's not the problem. The problem is that your message is still too complex and it isn't boiled down to its essentials. Many times I have seen the essence of the presentation, the truly impactful, factual information that leaders or a group should have been allowed to consider buried in the backup or. And again, it's a function of. I have so many things to say and it's so important that I say those, that here's something that's really factual, but I have to push it all the way into the back, constructing the presentation so that it remains open to new thinking and new ideas, because I think the presentation cannot be arrogant and cannot be focused. Well, this is the way it is and you have to learn to like needs to invited of. This is what we have learned, this is what we have experienced, and this is what we see as the path forward. But we invite you into the conversation so that you can help us understand and enrich that journey. Many times this is poorly done in the presentation and I think this many times slides are presented and so let's say that you have a reasonably short presentation. Let's say that you have a reasonably clear and you've done the work. To boil it down, I still think it's important that you back up from your presentation and review it from a higher elevation to think about what are the takeaways, what are the key takeaways at each two or three slides. And again, I would regard this as closing the loop, as we say. So if you give a slide that's a sheaf of numbers that speaks to so many people in the room in so many different ways, as you can clearly see from the numbers. No, no, nobody can clearly see from the numbers. What you need to say is, although readiness is important to us, and we say that maintenance is a key in part of readiness, our funding behind maintenance has actually declined for the last 10 years. And so if you don't deliver that kind of punch in the words, as well as I'm a big fan of banners across the bottom that are short and punchy and convey the point that you're trying to get across, I would say that these are kind of the. The non examples, if you will, that could be important to people.

Well, you did both actually, and you got some. We learn what to do sometimes by not doing what we could do. So this idea that. And this is something if listeners. Big deal. Every slide has to have one intention, not 51 intention. And if we go beyond that, we're in trouble. And Joe made an incredible point that sometimes the significant information is hidden someplace in the presentation. So we get lost. We have a theme, right. But the theme gets distracted by so many other pieces of information that we're throwing into the game. So in the webinar we talked about Gar Reynolds sensibility of Zen, simplicity and then restraint. You don't have to put everything on there. We already know you're a good guy. We already know you're a good gal. We already think you're intelligent. You don't have to prove it through the brief theme. Every slide should have an intention that is related to the significant theme. Joe. That was beautiful, Vince.

So let me see if I can build upon Joe's story, please. So, you know, I was living in Tokyo, Japan, when the Fukushima nuclear reactor went up a few years ago. And there was a significant American population and military population there. And so as this thing happened, unfolded, it became a focal point of interest within our nuclear community. There was a lot of communication and briefs began to happen daily with leadership teams on what the status was and what was the impact on, on our population. And I will tell you that every day you would listen to these briefs and I would have to go back after the brief to get someone to interpret what the heck, because they were using the language that was very important to those experts and people in the nuclear community, the rat, the dads, the X, Y and Z. But they were never really clear in terms of what that meant day to day and what the driver. We just know, bad, not bad. We have to get people out of the country. And I just remember, as important as that issue was, my takeaway from that experience was just how confusing it was to the entire population because the language and terminology was not matched to the audience, and they were talking to military leaders who were conveying this information to family members.

Right.

And it just really became such a confusing issue. And just, you know, as important as the issue was, it was just not a very well structured presentation framework, and I'll always carry that with me. Dignity and simplicity and communicate your thoughts and ideas. That was my example of a nine.

No, that's great. So. And actually, I'll play one out also. I got employed before Colleen, actually. So it's a long time ago now by the company that used to build. They built stuff for the shuttle, they used to build the gantries, and they built a lot of buildings. Right. That's what they did. Well, they were going through, having trouble finding people to lead certain subsections of the company. And so they asked me to accompany one guy who was going to do a presentation to this group, a board and the executive director that was going to build a building. So he goes up there with these charts and these dense PowerPoints and showed stress coefficients, longevity. And it went on for about 30 minutes, I think it felt like hours. But about 30 minutes at the end, he finally stopped and looked at me and I said, I think we should see if they have any questions or if they heard something that surprised them and said, all right, well, Ray says I should ask if you heard anything surprised you or do you have any questions. And one of the ladies raises her hand, she says, will it look pretty? He had no response. There was nothing there. Right. So everybody that was there wanted something from the presentation, and it was small enough he could have found that out right in the beginning, but he didn't. So this ability to really make sure you connect with the audience, and if it's a large group, you do that through these stories that we've been talking about. Being yourself, being natural, showing up, vulnerable. Right. That's the connection that happens in a large group. In a small group, you can simply say, what do you want to get out of this? It's such a simple question, and all too often we don't get there. Best presentation you've ever seen. Give me one quick example. Best presentation you've ever seen was.

Okay, I'll start this one. So a gentleman did a presentation in an 80. He was really explaining why our maritime posture in the future needed to be a certain way. Why do we need so many ships and do our mission? He put out one graph that was really the only graph he used. And he showed the populations across the globe and how over time, it was a time graph, how the populations were moving closer to water. And so if you look across the globe, our engagements as a Navy was going to be focused in these population centers around the world, which were going to be based around maritime water areas. And based off that in it was the reason our posture and our investment had to go a certain way. So I thought it was. And it was not my community, but I thought that was one of the best presentations where a person took a subject that I had no, that I didn't have that information. But he really made a connection on why this is important, why we need to make an investment, and why we need to move in the direction that we're moving. I thought that was very well done for a very broad audience.

So what I'm hearing strongly is there was a compelling why there was a theme and the data that this gentleman or lady shared with you really helped make that theme or focus point stay alive. That's really good, Vince. Thank you. Joe, you got one best one you ever seen?

Well, I think the. But the best one I've ever seen. And I think it's a reasonable thing to hang on your wall as a model. And perhaps many of the listeners know it well. It's very prevalent, I know, in military circles. It's a slide that shows Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. And it conveys an incredible amount of information in one slide, if you will, in that it talks about the level of forces and you can see how the forces diminish over. There's an element in there that demonstrates the different temperature levels that troops had to operate because they were all fighting outside, how the weather was getting increasingly worse. And then for the return, how you go from well over half a million troops only down to 9 or 12,000. So that communicates that slide. And again, it's very well known. I'm sorry, I can't attribute it to who did it, but it is very well known in circles because it communicates on so many levels about what is occurring and what you're looking at. And I think in my mind that's. That's kind of the gold standard of again, without Making it overly complex so that anybody can pick it up and read it and understand it. That's the. That's the true test of time.

That's excellent. And so whoever did that, I don't know what they've studied in the way of graphs and things like that. The most impactful graphs from the literature are behavior over time graphs. And that's just what Joe just drew that with his hand. Behavior over time. That connects to people in a way that's just magnificent. That's what's underneath that. And it is really. I had a guy, I watched guys show how the population bubbles were changing, right? Longevity was changing, family size was changing, except in a few places. And it was so impactful to watch these. These movements in population and western world, you know, seeing that there were some misunderstandings about what really was happening globally. So thank you, Joe. That was great. Colleen, best one you've seen.

Best one. And I can name a lot. I feel like I've seen a lot of speakers before. I worked with Ray. I actually worked with speakers. One of the best speakers that I've seen, her name is Belinda Ellsworth. And that woman was incredible. I've seen her in a small group, but I think the one that really resonated with me was in Salt Lake City. She was there for a convention in front of 5,000 people. And she was in the middle. It was around little stage, people were all around her. It was incredible. Her ability to show up, to connect with the audience, to use the language that resonated with every single one because of the. She understood the culture of this particular organization. Her examples were money, her timing, her presence, all of the things that pulls the audience in. And also, to Vince's point and what we've heard many times, this sense of simplicity. And it was simple. It was like three different stories. There were no slides. It was all Belinda. And it was incredible each time I saw her speak, but especially this time, I remember standing ovation, Standing ovation. And then everybody was running over to her table to buy what she was selling. She was incredible, beautiful.

There's something that happens in an effective presentation that we, as a team, we call it with it ness. So those of you that are school people, you can go into a classroom today, you can tell in moments whether the kids are with the teacher or not. You can go watch a presentation, you can tell almost very fast, is this audience with the speaker or not? And what you are learning here are examples and non examples so that your presence is impactful. Impactful. Gang, this has been wonderful. Thank you. I appreciate your time. I think if you want to learn more about this, feel free to hop on the website. Send us a note. We'd be happy to talk with you about presentations, design, story, how this stuff really helps people resonate with an audience. Thank you so much for being with us folks. Take care. Sincerest thanks for listening to this episode of the Everyday Leadership Conversations podcast. The Jorgensen Learning center offers a variety of programs for individuals and organizations to to enhance their communication and leadership skills. To find out more about programs and upcoming webinars, check out our events page@gojlc.com.