top tip to rock your next presentation
Have you ever finished listening to a presentation on a topic you were really interested in, but ended up feeling like it was a waste of your time? It’s always such a letdown—and so unfortunate, all around. Even though the speaker may have been extremely knowledgeable about the material and had surely done a lot of preparation to put the presentation together, it somehow failed to make a positive impact.
Presentations can go awry for many reasons, but one completely avoidable one is the failure to take a few minutes to plan your main message before building out the slide deck.
Think about the process you used to create your last presentation. Did you jump straight into a software tool and start making slides? If so, you are not alone; it’s a popular approach that feels productive since you can make a lot of progress quickly.
But now recall the outcome of that presentation. Did it go the way that you had hoped for? Did you end up creating slides you didn’t need but had a hard time editing? Was your audience engaged and clear on what they were meant to do, or remember, once you had finished? Why or why not?
A reliable starting point on the road to more effective presentations is to begin by crafting a single-sentence Big Idea. If you can’t clearly articulate your main point in a single sentence, how do you expect your audience to get it?
It's difficult to be concise, but by demonstrating that you can separate the essential from the non-essential, and communicate with clarity to any audience regardless of their familiarity with your topic, your mastery of the material becomes evident.
It’s surprisingly easy and relatively fast to craft an effective Big Idea. Because things are always less scary when broken into component parts (and when you have a guide to help you!), you can practice crafting your stellar single sentence with this free practice exercise or join me Monday, March 6th at 10AM Eastern for a guided practice session (subscribe to premium to participate).
