Making a stellar presentation requires you to connect with the audience—this post is about connection and is the third in a series on presentation technique (prior posts: How to Get a Standing Ovation and Go Own the Room: Enthusiasm).

We know this all too familiar feeling that the speaker, presenter, or lecturer does not connect with his audience. He is distant, he does not seem to communicate with you, and his content is out of place. The sad effect is that his message comes across less powerful, which is not desirable for neither the presenter nor the audience.

What this presenter needs is a connection with the audience. To establish such—and to do it well requires great ability. It also requires that nervousness does not get on top of the situation and take control; however, in this post we will disregard nervousness and focus on ability. (I will treat nervousness in a later post.)

“Connection” can be broken down into three basic parts—Conduit, Content, and Context. All three have a positive, causal impact on connection, and—to some extent—they also correlate with each other. Let me take them one by one. (more…)

Good presentation technique (and good conversation and good karma) requires enthusiasm—read my post on Enthusiasm, Connection, and Sincerity to get a heads up on what I’m talking about. This post will elaborate on enthusiasm.

It’s Not What You Say
It’s how you say it (communication break-down chart)—there is no doubt that enthusiasm about your topic enhances your message, and it increases the effect of the conveying of information. The tricky part, then, is how you get enthusiastic. Even if you are enthusiastic about a topic, you may be nervous (or have tonnes of other things to think of) when you present, thus not being able to convey your enthusiasm. This is clearly an obstacle to effective communication.

Let me break down enthusiasm into two basic components, namely (1) teaching and (2) learning.

Teaching
Truly enthusiastic individuals know peculiar things about their topic, and they have an innate desire to share knowledge about their passion. Conveying enthusiasm is about showing a willingness to teach others (or at least convey, communicate or talk about) the topic at hand, and especially anecdotes and other peculiarities. This willingness should be burden-free. The virtue of wanting to share, underlines your enthusiasm of the subject matter. If you were not enthusiastic, why would you know this stuff, let alone teach/talk about it?

Learning
Enthusiasm never ends. Enthusiastic people spare no opportunity to learn something new, and they do so with a wonderfully childish and unbiased approach. Their enthusiasm is not about confirming what they know (nor the opposite) but about learning. Enthusiastic presenters treat their audiences as equal peers, because they know that presenting is in fact communication and conversation, and that they can extract as much from the presentation as can their audiences.

Be Enthusiastic
Conveying your enthusiasm, then, can be achieved by expressing interest in and fascination of teaching and learning your subject matter, using some of the characteristics I described above.

All this, of course, assumes that you are, in fact, enthusiastic about your subject matter. If not, conveying enthusiasm can give you a hard time.

Today, I held a workshop on how to create great visuals, i.e. slides to accompany/aid your presentation. Although they do not make much sense by themselves, check them out for key points. I will also, occasionally comment on the points made in my presentation–right here on my blog. For now, suffice it to say: Don’t follow the examples given carelessly–it was a workshop, so I used a lot of slides to tease the audience and show examples of poor visual display. But, of course, there are also points to follow.

Visual Display Workshop (February 2006)

Today, the theme for the CBS Case Competition 2006 was officially revealed. The programme was quite impressive with three guest speakers on hot topics in business.

As the case writer, I presented and revealed the theme (photo on the left). I uploaded some of the slides I used (Slides: FUHU Presentation), if you want to have a look at them. Unfortunately, they are not self-containing, and you really need me present to get most out of them–and I haven’t produced hand-outs, so I can’t upload them. The slides are in Danish, but you should be able to gather some of it, and–in any case–you will be able to look at how I design slides.

Photographs from the FUHU/CBS Case Competition Rethinking Business Seminar (by Morten Maegaard).

I told you about Guy Kawasaki’s new blog before—and it keeps getting better. One of his latest posts is about how you get a standing ovation, i.e. how to present well. He has eleven good points (go to his post for full details):

1. Have something interesting to say
2. Cut the sales pitch
3. Focus on entertaining
4. Understand the audience
5. Overdress
6. Don’t denigrate the competition
7. Tell stories
8. Pre-circulate with the audience
9. Speak at the start of an event
10. Practice and speak all the time

I think they are all good points, however, I disagree with point 5. It can be as disastrous to overdress the audience as it can be to underdress it. Preferably you should match-dress it, which goes well in line with Guy’s point 4: Understand the audience.

Although I do not have all of Guy’s experience, I also have a couple of tips, which I go by. They all point to the fact that the good presenter should own the room—be omnipresent. How to get there is very difficult, but one step of the way is to realise that you have to speak to everyone (or as many as possible) in the audience—they have to feel you are speaking to them (and—almost—them only).

I try to achieve this by being enthusiastic about what I talk about. When people feel you are enthusiastic, it is much easier for them to be so as well. It is much nicer to hear from someone who loves what he does or speaks about, than a boring nuthead.

I try to connect to the audience, so they feel I am in the room. It is as simple as establishing eye contact while making key points, but also utilising other body language—smiling (!), using my arms, using the depth of the room (walking to and from the audience) (not just the width—walking from left to right on the stage).

Finally, I try to be sincere. If you’re faking it, there is a good chance the audience will spot you, so you might as well just lay it off to start out with.

In summary, my three points, for now, is:

1. Enthusiasm
2. Connection
3. Sincerity

Go own the room.