TJ Walker tells Alonzo that strong presenters shouldn't hold back to match weaker teammates. Instead, rehearse on video, work backwards from what the audience needs to take away, and iterate until everyone on the team is memorable and effective.
Questions this video answers
August 5, 2015.
"99.9999% of the time" (speaker's emphatic claim).
tjediatrainingworldwide.com
Chapters
So what is the best way to give a team presentation when different members of your team have different skill levels? So this is a question that comes in from Alonzo, one of my online students. Here's exactly what he's asking. He says, TJ, during team presentations, should you hold back and not overpower the public speaking skills of your other team members? If, if their communication skills are below average, or should we always give our best effort no matter how skilled or unskilled the people are around us? As you can probably guess, my recommendation is do your very best possible. Think of it this way. If you and I are giving a team presentation, are you going to shave off all your hair and paint it gray just so your hair doesn't look better than my hair? I don't think you would do that. If you're giving a new business presentation or a presentation to a board of directors, at every single moment you have an opportunity to either communicate a message or not communicate a message. If you do have a team member who's awful and there's nothing you can do about it, how does it help matters or how does it help the team if you love the opportunity to communicate? So I believe every single minute you have, every single second you have, try to do your very best. I simply see no possible way that that could harm you. I've never seen a company say, you know what, we were going to buy from that company, but the first speaker was so much better than the second presenter that we don't like them. That just isn't the way people think. Now, I want to dig a little deeper here at the underlying issue, though. You suggest that someone on your team isn't a good presenter. Here's what has really happened. Typically, organizations spend all this time writing and rewriting and rewriting and editing a PowerPoint deck, and then that becomes the presentation. And then they have five different members do their 10 minute chunk of that deck and they sort of talk to the deck and there's always someone who, who's a little awful, a little nervous, uncomfortable, and they're kind of, and they're reading the words off the deck. The problem there is not that they're a bad communicator. The problem is that they're not given any direction rehearsal, and they have a very, very poor plan. Your presentation cannot be reading off slides or simply going through slides. What you've got to do with every single team member is figure out what, what are the ideas that are most important for the audience? The prospects, the clients, the board of directors to understand and remember. And then you got to work your way backwards from that. And each person on your team needs to rehearse on video until that person and the rest of the team thinks, okay, that's interesting and memorable and that's the best the person can do. In my experience, 99.9999% of the time when someone tells me they have a team member who isn't a good communicator, they never did the first fundamental practice on video. Until you practice with someone on video and give them feedback, let them see how boring or awful they are, give them a chance to refine. You don't know that someone is an awful communicator. If this person on your team has ever had one interesting conversation with you in the hallway, or one other person, other client or prospect, then that person is a great communicator. It just means that the natural skills they have they're throwing away when they get up to give the so called serious team presentation. The problem isn't the communication skills. The problem problem is how you're preparing and how you're rehearsing or not rehearsing. So I don't want to get you off the hook if there's someone on your team who's doing a poor job. Do a rehearsal and you know what I'm going to say. Pull out your cell phone, record it on video, keep doing it until everyone is happy with their presentations. Alonzo, thanks for the question. Keep them coming. By the way, if any of you have questions that relate to public speaking, presentation training, media training, just contact me. You can contact me on this YouTube page, you can contact me on any of the online training platforms I'm on, or you can always write to me tjediatrainingworldwide.com.
