Presentation Advantage summary

If you’re not making presentations, you’re not living. Presentation is the act of sharing information in order to inform or persuade. That’s a broad definition that encompasses a lot of interactions both formal and informal, in-person and online, one-to-one and one-to-many.

When you’re standing in front of a boardroom trying to get funding for a project, you need the presentation advantage. When you’re standing in front of a friend trying to win an argument over where to eat dinner, you need the presentation advantage.

We’re talking about more than just how many bullets to put on a slide or how to project your voice – although, yes, we will discuss those things as well. But the central emphasis of the presentation advantage is on communication and connection.

Throughout this Blink, you’re going to hear about a whole alphabet of tips and principles. We’ll start with the letter “C.”

Your first goal in presenting is to get your listeners to change their minds or see something differently. This is called a paradigm shift. If you can’t get someone to experience a paradigm shift, you won’t be able to get them to take a desired action. To lead your audience to a paradigm shift, you need the three C’s of connection.

The first C is connecting with your message. Ask yourself what strategic goal this presentation will help you accomplish. Maybe your goal is to retain and attract employees. You know that childcare is a big issue for people, and that you’ve lost employees because of it. So you want to convince your board to fund an in-office day care. Connecting with your message means knowing why that day care matters in the bigger strategic goal of employee hiring and retention.

The second C is connecting with yourself. This is about integrity and authenticity. While there are behaviors you should shape in yourself, such as posture and gestures, you don’t want to be phony. Your audience will spot fakeness in a heartbeat, and you’ll fail to make the necessary connection. Avoid spin in the form of double-speak or euphemisms. Be straightforward, honest, and passionate about your message. Most of all, listen to your feelings. If anything about your presentation feels uncomfortable, awkward, or fake, listen to those feelings – and make some changes.

The third C is connecting with your audience. Nobody wants to be lectured at, and nobody has time to waste. So make your presentation a conversation with your audience. Engage them, and involve them in the presentation. Ultimately, you want them to buy into your idea and take action to bring it to life, so it makes sense that they would get to be a part of the initial conversation.

Now that we’ve shared the secret sauce of making connections, let’s move on to the three D’s of presentation: develop, design, and deliver.