#99: How to give a presentation that actually lands

Speaker A: Andrea, welcome to the stepsetto podcast. Thank you so much for making the time.

Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you, Matteo. Looking forward to this conversation.

Speaker A: Andrea, you specialize in helping business owners, teams, leaders deliver clear presentations. You are the author of Confident Presenter and Timeless presenter and the head of Ideas on Stage uk. Now, needless to say, I would love to pick your brain on communication on presentations. And as someone who has worked his whole career in client facing roles, I have been in many presentations myself, I have delivered a few of those. So there is a lot that I could really ask you in these 15, 20 minutes, whatever it will be. I'd love to start with a concept that has always fascinated me, which I think is wildly underrated. And that is the power of simplicity. I know that you speak about this in time. Timeless presenter in many videos, in other podcasts, we often say keep it simple. We say it, but we don't do it. We say we want to keep it simple, but we always end up cramming information, notions, numbers, slides into the same presentation. Why do you think simplicity is so hard to apply?

Speaker B: Because often we know so much about our subject and we are also so close to it that we think that everything is important. So we think that we need to communicate everything, but we always need to put ourselves in the audience's shoes. If everything is important, then nothing is important. For example, Mattel, my wife, I'll give you an example, uh, which has nothing to do with public speaking, but there's a link and, and I'm going to clarify the link now. She works as a therapist and coach for parents who have children with special educational needs, autism in particular. And once I remember she showed me a report that was written by an expert in her field. And in that report that expert wrote a recommendation for some parents communication strategy that they could adopt with their child. And their line read something like alternative augmentative communication with pregnancy, predominantly receptive images, like, very complex. Now my wife is an expert in this field, but you also took, uh, maybe half an hour to understand what the expert might have meant. And she, she told me after half an hour, maybe what they mean is that these parents should use pictures to help their son understand. Now if I tell you use pictures to help your child understand, that's much more effective in communication than the previous version. The problem with this is that in this example, these reports are written by experts for the families, not for themselves. But the way they have written it looks like they have written for them, by them, by them, for themselves. And the same is true in presentations. It's the same principle. We often make our communication, our presentations about us. The key to great presenting is to always talk to your audience about them, even if you're talking about you. There's a book, we were talking about books before, before we got started, a book by Lucy McCarrahair, Book Builder, which is a book on how to build, how to write a business book. And there's a chapter there that I loved. The, the title of the chapter is be kind to your readers. And uh, we could say the same thing, be kind to your audience. She says, for example, that if you need to explain something, if you can do it in 2 minutes, if you can explain the same concept in 20 minutes, often the 2 minute version is going to be more effective in communication. I'll give you one final very quick ex. Like you don't say inflated spherical object, you say ball. Now often we are not aware of it, but in business communication, in business presentations, we use language which is the equivalent of inflated spherical object. Because we think that if we use complex language, industry specific terms, acronyms, uh, jargon, that we understand, not necessarily the audience. We think that if we do that then we sound smarter, more credible. The opposite is true. If you look at people who you consider smart and credible, what they do is they replace complex language with simple language. So your topic might be complex. Yes, it might be technical, that's okay. But the language you use to explain it should never be.

Speaker A: You hit the nail on the head. Because using jargon, complex words, and look, I come from advertisement, digital advertising and tech, let's say. So using acronyms is a thing. We constantly use acronyms and we somehow take for granted that, uh, the listener knows exactly what we're talking about. Somehow. Sometimes it lands, sometimes it doesn't. I absolutely see your point. There is often a pushback when suggesting that we should keep things simple, right? So we say, look, there's this big client coming to the office. We should keep it concise, simple. We should leave room for questions for a discussion. And there is always a little bit of friction when having these conversations within your team. You hear, uh, we have so much to say and they're making time for us. So we really want this to land. We should provide them with as much information as possible. Do you have any tip, any advice for somehow convincing either your team or your lead that keeping things simple actually is the right way to go about it?

Speaker B: Well, the best way to convince somebody of that is to put it into practice. Do it, do it yourself. Show it that if you actually Simplify it in your own presentation, then let's see how it works. Because in the end, what's the objective of a presentation? We want the most likely the audience to do something, or at the very least, we want them to believe something new or different. We want them to feel something new, different. Even better, we want them to do something new, different. So put into practice, take action, and then let's see if you've achieved the objective. And when it comes to simplifying, what we also need to understand is when I say, for example, that we need to speak simply, uh, and by the way, the language you use is just one aspect. It's not the only way, the only thing we need to do to simplify a message. It's just, it's one way. When I say that we need to speak simply, it's not about oversimplifying, it's not about dumbing things down. It's really about finding and using language that every, everyone in your particular audience can understand. You mentioned, for example, acronyms. Now it very much depends on who you have in front of you. When we use an acronym, we need to ask ourselves, are you 1000% sure that the people in the audience understand what the acronym means? If the answer is yes, often the answer is not yes. But if it's yes, then go ahead and use the acronym. If not, then there's room for simplifying. Now, for example, if you take the first 1000 words of Steve Jobs launch of the very first iPhone many, many years ago, and we are talking about a business presentation launching a new product, you said you come from tech, so that's also, uh, technology. You take the first thousand words, the introduction of that presentation, and you upload them onto tools like Grammarly, I don't know if you know, the Hemingway app, you upload some text and it gives you, first of all, those tools give you suggestions for improving what you wrote or what you said. But they also give you a number. And that number tells you how old someone needs to be for them to be able to understand what you said, what you wrote. If you do this exercise with that presentation, it returns a grade of 8 to 9 years old. Believe it or not, an 8 years old watches that presentation and they will be able to understand what he was talking about. And we are talking about a business presentation. And again, this is just from a language perspective. If you're interested, we can go a little bit deeper. That's not the only way we can, uh, the only way for us to be able to simplify A message.

Speaker A: I find that fascinating to say the least. We were discussing a few passages in your book prior to the call. Timeless Presenter. I really, really liked it. There is one principle. I believe it's Principle 21. If my notes are not betraying me,

Speaker B: you know it better than me. I don't remember because there are almost 300. Yeah, perfect.

Speaker A: And that is find the 1%.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

Speaker A: So basically focusing on the core idea, uh, the main idea, focusing on what matters. And to me that landed very, very well because it's basically telling me, get rid of the nonsense, get rid of all the information that is not necessary. And it's the most practical advice I could read about making things simple. Now there is a follow up question to that. So it is clear that you need to have a core idea very, uh, clear in your mind before you even. Usually before you even open PowerPoint or whatever you use for slides or presentation and whatnot. Now don't bite my head off if I ask this, but does this core idea need to be always crystal clear in your head before you approach a presentation, before you approach a conversation, an important conversation with an audience, with clients, or is there a scenario where it can get clearer and clearer over time?

Speaker B: Okay, good question. Now there are, um, just thinking about it, there are, um, scenarios where the, the presentation itself, which in those cases it's not even a presentation, it's more of a, of a conversation. Maybe you're having a meeting and you need to debate something, you need to discuss something. The very act of communicating is the very thing that helps you and the audience reach a particular conclusion. For example. So you go into their communication scenario, into their meeting, not knowing what the, maybe, what the decision is that that needs to be taken, whatever the context is. So in those cases, then perhaps you arrive without having 100% clarity on what it is that needs to be said, what needs to. What it is that needs to be done or decided. But in many other cases, what we are talking about, okay, you need to give a presentation then, yes, you have in preparation for it the moment you arrive there. You have to be 100% clear about when I say the 1%, what's the 1 thing they need to understand, what's the one thing they need to remember. If you don't have that clarity for yourself, you can't expect the audience to have it for you. And that 1% comes from a conversation I had with Dan Ping, the author of To Sell His Human and many other international bestselling books. And he told me that when he was at university, he studied law, and he had a professor who always pushed him and his classmates to find the 1% that mattered most in any topic. And that professor told them, if you find that 1%, if you can understand it, and then if you can also explain it clearly, then you understand the subject. If not, then something is missing. So the 1% is, what's the big idea, uh, behind this presentation? Any presentation, by the way, Matteo, should be based on one big idea. Not two, not three. One big idea. What's the key? Takeaway? What's the one thing they should understand, remember, and take away from your presentation? It doesn't mean that that's the only thing you need to communicate, but any presentation should be based on one big idea. And if you don't have clarity for yourself on, um, what that 1%, that, uh, one big idea is, again, we can't expect the audience to have it for us.

Speaker A: Now, I'm switching gears, and this is probably a question. You get a lot, or at least there's versions of these questions that I'm sure you've got before. But nevertheless, I think it's a very important thing to clarify and have the chance to ask you directly. So let's imagine you're a client and I'm presenting to you. And let's say that, um, uh, say the presentation is tomorrow and I am sending you a. Call it a courtesy copy in, uh, advance so that you can have a look at the slides or whatever format it is that I'm presenting in. Is there any such thing that jumps to your attention? Anything that you'd considered a red flag when you look at the presentation, and I'm talking visually, specifically, number of slides, fonts, colors, format, whatever, anything that makes you go, my God, this is going to be so bad. Matteo is going to bomb this. I hate this already. What could that be?

Speaker B: Okay, so first of all, if we're talking about the context where I'm the client, you are the presenter, you send me something in advance, then what I would expect to see tomorrow in the actual presentation is something different from the slides that you send me today, and that I know that 99.9% of people and companies don't do that. But slide and documents are two different things and they should be separated. You wouldn't use your toothbrush to comb your hair just because it has bristles like your hairbrush. A toothbrush and a hairbrush are two different things, and we use them for two different activities. Slides and documents or handouts are also two different things. And we should use them for two different activities. What that means is that what effective presenters do is when they are there, live, presenting. And when I say live, it doesn't mean in person. It could be in person in today's world, it could be online, but you are there communicating. You always want to have something on the screen which is, uh, again, we go back to simplicity. Simple, visual, something that supports, reinforces and amplifies your message, not something that replicates what you're saying. Because if you have the typical death by PowerPoint on the screen with lots of text and bullet points, people can't read and listen at the same time. That can work really well as a document that you send before the meeting, before the presentation, after, for more details. But when you are there presenting, you have. You have to have a simplified version of the document. Written text is processed in the same part of the brain that processes spoken text. So that means that for any audience, every time you show a slide, which is full of text and bullet points, too clutter, too many elements. So this would be the red flag for me. Too much going on. The audience will need to choose, do I listen to Matteo? Do I or do I read the slides? We can do both things at the same time. And this is one of the. From a visual perspective, this is one of the most important things we can do. Starting separating things. We use simple and visual slides. What that means is it could be a slide with just an image, or it could be an image, a combination of image and a few keywords. It could be just a big number in the middle of the screen. You are the story, not your slides. You want to use your slides or any kind, any other kinds of visual aid to support your message, to support your delivery, but you are the presentation, not your slides. There's people like Gar Reynolds and Nancy Duarte. These are well known in the field. They use the word slide demand. A slide demand is what most people in companies do. They open up, they use a presentation tool and they create. They use lots of text and bullet points and they call it a presentation. They think that's a presentation just because they're using a presentation tool like PowerPoint or Google Slides or Canva, whatever, it doesn't matter. It's a document. If you look at it, it's a document. It's not a presentation. So they call it a slide demand because it's something in between. It doesn't work. It definitely doesn't work live when you are there. So starting separating things. And I know that it Takes more time, although it doesn't have to be if you know what to do. But if we want to get better at this thing, then we need to put in the work. And this differentiation, this separation between slides that you use live and the slides, it could be a PowerPoint document that you send before, after. This is key.

Speaker A: Andrea, we have about, say, a minute left. We're heading towards the end of the conversation. There are roughly a thousand questions that, uh, I still would love to ask. But, um, uh, let's go with this one. Fairly simple. If I were to flick through Timeless presenter, where would you want my finger to land? Is there a section, a page, a, uh, principle, a message that you really, really, really want me to remember?

Speaker B: Perhaps it would be the importance of practicing. Some people think that you are born a, uh, great speaker, that there's an element of natural talent. There's no such thing as natural talent. Yeah, of course, we all start at levels. And this is true in presenting public speaking. It's true in many other fields. But what really makes a difference is practice. Way too many people in business wing it. They improvise too much. What we need to understand is that people practice not because they are bad. People practice because they are good. Good presenters, good speakers practice because they want to keep being good. They want to keep serving the audience in the most effective way. I'll give you one example here. In the time we have left on the Ideas on stage podcast, I interviewed John Russo. He's the author of Liberate your Greatness. And he told me that he started karate when he was 6 years old. And he said at the beginning, training was quite boring and repetitive. It was just punch, punch, punch, punch, punch. That's it. And it started with his friends. And all of his friends left, they quit. He continued, and today, years later, he can throw six punches per second. And he has a black belt in six styles of karate. But he's got that black belt. He got to that point not because of natural talent. He got to the point because he did punch, punch, punch, punch, Punch, Punch. For 20 years. He shared with me a quote in our conversation from Bruce Lee. He said, apparently Bruce Lee said, I fear not the man who practiced 10,000 kicks once. I fear the man who practiced one kick 10,000 times. And if you think about the principles that you need to master if you want to become a better communicator, and you don't need to know and master 10,000 principles, it's just very few principles of communication. Do you have a message that's simple for the audience to understand, Is it clear for them to follow? Is it relevant to them? The needs, the context, is it engaging? That's it. These are the fundamental principles of communication. That's the equivalent of that one kick, but then that's not enough. Then you need to practice it lots of times. Your journey to becoming the best presenter you can be is a journey of a thousand presentations.

Speaker A: Andrea, you've been fantastic. I hope I'll find an excuse in the future for you to come back on the podcast. I cannot wait. Until then. Congratulations on timeless presenter. Congratulations on your work and, uh, thank you so much for your time.

Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you, Matteo.