Post date: May 31, 2016 4:20:50 AM
Delivering great presentations is a key skill of business leaders. Depending on how a presentation is delivered, the audience may be either positively and intensely influenced or thoroughly disengaged. Great presentations are often well researched, well planned and well executed pieces of art. They are heavily laden with emotional hooks anchored in rational and highly persuasive arguments. A beautifully designed PowerPoint slide show may be helpful but cannot deliver a power packed punch, let alone influence the listeners to an actionable degree.
Many presentations fail because they rely on ‘showing' too much information or showing too few ‘pictures’or failing to connect the dots effectively or for reasons of poor delivery. So, what makes a great delivery?
1. 1. Connecting personally and introducing a relatable story-line
The best speakers are excellent rapport builders. They instantly connect with the members of the audience by playing up common themes and help them to shut down their defenses. They have an uncanny ability to resonate with the audience's needs and expectations. This, they then use to push a story-line that the audience find themselves intimately connected with. And guess what happens? The listeners are instantly hooked!
2. 2. Being ‘other-oriented’
Great speakers are other-oriented. They quickly assume the positions of their audiences and see, hear and feel like their audiences do. This extraordinary ability to perceive an issue from the other's point of view gives them the power to fashion an argument or a story that appeals to their audience ‘s intelligence and line of reasoning, thereby making it compelling and irresistible for them.
3. 3. Demonstrating passion through ‘exaggerated’ use of body language.
An analysis of the best speakers on Ted talks showed that speakers who used their hands a lot and gestured excessively received very high ratings and their videos went viral. Their messages were perceived as far more credible and touching compared to those delivered by speakers who used little or no gesturing at all.
4. 4. Painting vivid mental pictures with words and spatial props.
Great speakers are masters at using words along with the right intonations, tone variations and vocal variety to paint beautiful moving pictures in the minds of their listeners. They use spatial props with their hands and gestures and create vivid pictures in the minds of their listeners. They understand that great presentations are possible only when they connect with their audience at the emotional level by infusing feelings through the right use of right words.
5. 5. Eliciting positive states.
One of the greatest skills of extraordinary speakers is their ability to elicit any desired emotional state in their audience at will. Once a desired emotional state is elicited, communication now becomes easy as the listeners have lowered their guards and are willing to be persuaded and influenced.To achieve this resourceful state, great speakers use words like ‘imagine, think about, just feel,’etc. to perfection.
6. 6. Ending with a call to action.
When the audience are sufficiently engaged and emotionally anchored, great speakers now encourage the listeners to act in their best interests. They leave the audience with actionable options in order to achieve the stated goals of their presentation. In other words, they “hit the iron while it is still hot”.