Brett Rutledge Editorial November 2011

Welcome to the November Editorial. It has been a busy month of speaking – including a lot of time spent in the company of technical speakers with presentations on very weighty subjects. The upshot of that is I have spent the last month being constantly reminded of all of the mistakes people make while presenting and how that results in large portions of their audience losing the will to live!

Not that the presenters will take responsibility for the condition of their audience or even notice that their audience has a condition. The most common defense that you hear is that they are doing the best they can with what is essentially a very boring topic. Here is a newsflash for everyone: there are no boring topics – just boring people. Everything in the known universe is interesting but the explanations often leave a lot to be desired. That’s why you won’t find a child anywhere who doesn’t like learning but you will have no trouble finding kids who hate being taught.

So this month we are going to focus in on a couple of these heinous crimes against nature and explain how boring, incompetent people are sending us all to an early grave.

PowerPoint & People Who Don’t Know What They Are Talking About

For most people PowerPoint is not a presentation tool. For most people, PowerPoint is, in fact, a presentation planning tool. They use the templates provided as the basis for building their entire presentation and then rely heavily on those notes for their actual delivery. In other words they don’t know what they are talking about.

From an audiences point of view there is no presentation situation that necessitates PowerPoint so the fact that it is used so heavily says an awful lot about a presenter’s motives. Many will claim that they use it to make things more interesting or to make the presentation itself more effective. However, both science and your audience will tell you the same thing – it does neither. Science tells us that PowerPoint used in conjunction with a real live, talking, human being results in cognitive overload. This is a fancy scientific term to describe a situation where you can read or listen but you can’t do both. Therefore if you are using PowerPoint there is a strong likelihood that I will not listen to you. The more text that you put on the PowerPoint the more I have to read and the less opportunity to listen. I can also read faster than you can talk and am now annoyed that you are covering information that I already know.

The inevitable conclusion is that these text-heavy slides are not there for my benefit as an audience member because they make it almost impossible for me process the information being shared. Therefore they must be there for the speaker. If the speaker needs all that information on those slides then it must be because without them they couldn’t deliver the material. Therefore… they don’t know what they are talking about!

Experts Who Can’t Tell What Is Important

Another problem that occurs when you are presenting to an audience (particularly if it is on one of those technical subjects) is that the person presenting is an expert on their subject. Experts have great difficulty in articulating their expertise for two primary reasons:

1. As an expert you are not only knowledgeable but also enthusiastic about your subject. To you everything is important and you will often make the mistake of thinking your audience is as knowledgeable and enthusiastic as you are. They are not. Worse than this, of course, is that you have the best of intentions. You want to share your knowledge and help your audience. Because you think everything is important you will do this by sharing all the information at your disposal and try to be as thorough as you can. This inability to prioritise will leave your audience bored and confused.
2. As an expert you also tend to talk in abstracts. That is you use terms and phrases for which you understand the context and make the mistake of assuming everyone else understands the context. They don’t. If you want people to understand the importance of what you are talking about (particularly with technical subjects) it is vital that you explain yourself in terms of a context they already understand. Watch Stephen Hawking explain the intricacies of the universe and you will see what I mean.

Linear Thinking and Storytelling Don’t Mix

Presenters who tend to talk on technical subjects usually have fantastic stories to share. Unfortunately, they don’t normally bother to share their stories and instead bore everyone stupid with a long list of data, methodology and findings. Firstly, if you want to make a point and have it stick then use examples. Secondly, if you are going to use some examples and tell some stories then it is important to learn how to tell them. Get our attention by getting to the point rather than engaging in a linear exploration of chronological sequence. You are not writing a novel!

Basically it is about creating an information gap to fire our curiosity. Surprise us with an unusual outcome and we will then want to know how you got there. If you take your time building to that outcome you are likely to lose us along the way.

Seriously…get in touch

So, there are just a few of the things that have been getting on my wick lately. If you would like to explore any of these in more detail or want some feedback on a presentation you have coming up then please get in touch.

Remember there are no boring subjects – just boring people. See you next month.

The Articulate CEO’ is continuing in 2011 with a mix of podcasts, video and blog to highlight communication successes as well as mistakes in the business world and what we can do to learn from them. If there is anything you would like to see highlighted in terms of content then please let me know and I will do my best to address it for you.