How to present with yourself in mind

I am in my 22^nd year of education and came across many presentations, many classes about presentations and I gave many presentations. And I present rather well. But what does that mean, to present well?

As I said, I have seen many classes and talks about “how to present” and the vast majority of them were really good. But all of them got one thing wrong. They were missing one dimension of freedom.

But let’s first have a look at what they did. Most classes in presenting start off with some kind of rules. Speak clearly, start with a joke, have a structure… and so on and so forth. And then two dimensions of freedom are introduced. Firstly, who is your audience? Secondly, what is your goal? This means, as long as it is appropriate for your audience and your goal, you can break the earlier mentioned rules. Sounds legit, but still missing something; a further dimension of freedom. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

A presentation has to be engaging. Have eye contact with your audience, interact. This is a rule of presenting! Really? I had the opportunity to choose an elective taught by Frank Blackler. Those who are into knowledge management might know him as he is one of the most influential scholars in this field. However, his classes looked like this: Frank gave us his massive hand-out for the class, set up the presentation and grabbed his notes. Than he talked. He dived into the world of his research and at some point he seemed to be totally disconnected from the presence. If you wanted to ask a question, raising your hand didn’t work, you had to say loudly “Excuse me Frank” and he might have realised that there are people around him. Speaking from “the rules”, a horrible class, speaking from my personal experience, one of the best classes I ever had. Frank has decades of research in his bag and following him into the world of his research was worth every minute. There was no need for interaction because he and his personality made this class awesome.

The dimension of freedom I mean is: You!

Mind your audience, true. Mind your content, true. Mind yourself, very true. Another rule is to start presentations with a joke or any other kind of attention catcher. This is surely a good advice, however, I barely do that. I am almost 2 meters high, am rather massive and wear a Viking beard. This rather unusual appearance in a business school does the job for me. I don’t have to catch attention, I get it for free. And anyway, trying to be funny is probably the worst thing I , as a German, could do.

While it is for Frank his incredible wisdom and for me my physical appearance, it might be for you something totally different. Your voice, your hair, your passion or your energy. You name it. But one thing brings us all together. When we present, we can use those little things which distinguish us from others. So before you give your next presentation, think about it what makes you different to all the others who talk in front of audiences. Even if you think it is something weird or awkward, try to leverage from being different and break the rules.

If you liked this article, subscribe to this blog. Next week I’ll write about the rules of presenting and the week afterwards about breaking them all ;-)

Original Post Written by Marcus Huelsdau on April 29,2015