Read the room

We spent February on the formula for a great story. This month - how to deliver it!

Let’s say you have a powerful insight that your audience (internal or external) needs to understand, data to back it up, and a story to bring it to life. Amazing!

But is it landing with your audience? How can you tell? Keep your eyes on them!

When you see arms folded, fidgeting, surreptitious phone checks, that means either your story isn’t interesting OR it’s unpalatable. Seeing that might dim your motivation and make the rest of the presentation a slog.

Or, you see happy head nods, notes being taken, engaged eye contact, and think you are an inspiring genius. You get high on your own supply and blather beyond your allotted time.

It can be SUPER challenging not to over-rotate on how your audience is or isn’t receiving what you’re saying when you’re in the middle of saying it.

BUT, the data you glean from your audience can be invaluable in a mini-postmortem. Who was bored? When? Who was thrilled? Why? Who looked lost? What were you covering at that point?

Create your own feedback loop. Watch and note. Then, after the presentation, make assumptions and changes which you test next time you present, once again watching to see whether your assumptions were correct. Keep the process going until you hit your sweet spot.

Continuous improvement works for presentations too!