What Went Wrong with Your Last Presentation?

You are about to give the most important presentation of your career. If you convince the audience and gain their approval, you could change your business forever. You worked hard on the presentation and are well prepared. However, not long after you start to present to the audience, their eyes glaze over. They seem bored or distracted. Deep down, you know you've lost their attention. What went wrong with this presentation?

Reflect Back on Your Performance

While your memory is fresh, assess your talking points. You may discover glitches, such as a missing step in a process you outlined. Make a list of these flaws as soon as possible and promptly incorporate the changes into your slides and presentation.

Did You Engage the Audience?

You may see trouble spots regarding the audience’s reaction: Are people nodding, or nodding off? Are they taking notes, or engrossed in their phones? Try to recall specific weak moments, and develop specific fixes to sharpen your skills. For example, engage in a little Q&A with your audience. Questions arouse interest, pique curiosity, and involve audiences. Create tension or anticipation by posing a question and letting your audience think a moment before moving to the next slide with the answer.

The Audience Doesn't Seem to Like You

Whether the vibe in the room feels wrong or the audience acts like they don't respect you, you still need to get through the presentation. Afterwards, find out if there were external factors, such as a recent layoff announcement or other bad news that might be on people's minds. Ahead of your next presentation, check with the meeting organizer to see if there are such events that you should know about before you start. If you have time before your presentation, speak with some of the attendees to help gauge their mood and show your interest in them.

Did You get Interrupted or Heckled?

These are people who want attention at that moment, want to prove you wrong, are insecure with the spotlight on you, or are just having a bad day. The audience is usually as frustrated by the hecklers as you. A good approach is to acknowledge them and their questions or comments. Then mention to them that it is either off track, or give them a short answer if the comment is relevant. If their interruptions continue, offer to meet with them after the presentation to answer any questions or concerns they may have. Keep in mind that if the meeting gets out of control because of a heckler, the attendees will blame the you for not keeping your presentation moving along.

Speak With a Trusted Person in the Audience

No matter how well you planned your presentation in advance, the actual delivery will often expose flaws, gaps, or other shortcomings, even for polished presenters. Feedback from a trusted attendee will help you identify minor problems with the delivery, like weak opening remarks or awkward attempts at humor.

With a little attentiveness to the needs of your audience, you will effectively deliver the important information from your next presentation.

I encourage you to leave a comment by clicking on "...comments" below...

David Schuchman

Don’t Just Prioritize Tasks, Say "No" to Some

Good time and project management doesn't necessarily mean doing everything requested. More importantly, it means doing what is best for your organization, even when the organization may not realize it. Success and achievement are not measured by doing everything requested of you. It's measure by doing the right things. Sometimes to improve productivity and be successful, you must say "no" to some tasks, or at least defer some.

Set Goals

Understand what you must accomplish and when it’s actually needed. Goals give you a destination and vision to work toward. When you know where you want to go, you can manage your priorities, time, and resources to get there. Goals also help you decide what's worth spending your time on, what's not an immediate priority, and identify what's just a distraction.

Prioritize Tasks

One of the biggest work challenges that many people face is accurately prioritizing their workload. Here are some guidelines to prioritizing your task list to keep you well-organized:

• Collect a list of all your tasks: Pull together every request made of you that you could possibly consider getting done. Don’t worry about the order, or the number of items up front.
• Identify urgent vs. important: See if you have any tasks that need immediate attention - work that if not completed on time will have serious negative consequences. Those are important.
• Assess task value: Look at your important work and identify what carries the highest value to your business and organization. For example, focus on client requests before internal work, organizational requirements before desired requests, and how many people are impacted by your work.
• Check priority daily: Be flexible and adaptable. Know that your priorities will change and sometimes when you least expect them to. Keep focused and committed to the tasks you’re committed to doing right now.

It's OK to  say "No"

You may not be able to get to everything on your list. After you prioritize your tasks and add up the ranged estimates, cut the remaining tasks from your list. Focus on the priorities that you know you must and can complete. You can revisit the other tasks at a later time.

You can apply the above strategy to large-scale projects as well as to your daily workload.

I encourage you to leave a comment by clicking on "...comments" below...

David Schuchman