How to Create Captivating Presentations

As professionals, we often don’t realize the power we have to bring forward momentum to stagnant or confused groups in our organizations. The truth is that your ideas are the most powerful tools you have. Everything around you was originally in someone’s head, so tomorrow’s reality is being born inside someone’s mind today. 

But great ideas can easily die if we don’t communicate them effectively. These days, business presentations often prove lethal to ideas. How many presentations have you sat through where slide after slide was packed with text and gawdy graphics, and where the presenter was droning on and on, clearly reading directly off slides? 

The good news is that with a few key principles, a presentation can be exponentially more effective. Here’s how:

Know your audience. Take the time to get inside the minds of your audience. What keeps them up at night, both professionally and personally? What will they be worrying about at the time of your talk ? Maybe they’re more concerned about what to have for lunch? 

I once was given the opportunity to speak to a beer company, but I knew nothing about beer (I’m more of a wine gal). So, I hosted a beer tasting at my firm so I could try different kinds of beer and absorb wisdom from my colleagues on the subject (many creatives do love a good craft brew!). Your audience is more likely to be engaged and believe you if you’ve made efforts like this to understand them. Otherwise, you’re just a traveling salesman coming through their office, right? 

Another important rule to keep in mind is that, contrary to the beliefs of many business leaders, the audience is the hero, NOT the presenter, and certainly not the presenter’s slides. After all, your audience is the agent, the entity that’s being asked to do all the work you’re describing. They need to internalize your vision and really believe it themselves if they’re ever going to do the hard things you’re requiring of them.

Choose the right format. Maybe you’ll need to use PowerPoint, or maybe you only need a whiteboard. Don’t just choose a format because it’s what everyone else is doing. I recognize that this can be difficult in corporate environments when certain communication vehicles are expected. But no matter what format you choose, let the medium support your main message. Use the software as a tool that’s supporting you, not the other way around. 

I recommend outlining and storyboarding your presentation on sticky notes before you even touch PowerPoint. This not only makes for a better presentation because it brings the human dimension back to presenting – it also prepares you for technical hiccups that could very likely occur. What if the projector breaks and you can’t use slides at all? 

For an executive from a major Silicon Valley technology company who asked my firm for help on presenting to his CEO, we decided that this one-on-one conversation would be more impactful without slides. We guided him on sketching his ideas in real-time, which gave his conversation the innovative yet casual atmosphere that fit with the CEO and his company’s culture in general. The meeting was a huge success. 

Needless to say, weaning yourself from your slides requires lots of rehearsal. A recent study showed that only 25 percent of executives surveyed put more than two hours into preparing for very high-stakes presentations. Even the dazzling communicator Steve Jobs rehearsed his talks down to the last detail. Give your talk beforehand to a group of people you trust who will give you honest feedback.

It’s all about story. From the time that humans learned to communicate with one another, they’ve been transmitting lessons and truths from one generation to the next through stories. Great stories contain contrast, created through cycles of tension and release that keep an audience on the edge of their seats, fluctuating from struggle to bliss and back. After studying hundreds of historic speeches, I discovered that the backbone of great talks is a “What Is”/“What Could Be” framework. Speaking of Steve Jobs, I analyzed his 2007 iPhone presentation and found that the concept fit his talk. Jobs began his presentation by talking about the way technology is today. Then he launched into what it could be and how the new iPhone ushers in a new era. Being the true visionary he was, he stayed more often in the “What Could Be” than the “What Is,” but every speech and speaker follows a unique pattern to fit the goal, occasion, and his or her personality. 

This framework demonstrates that presentations, much like music and film, have a tempo and a rhythm all their own. Your message should be tuned to this rhythm, but so should your visuals. Don’t use graphics without purpose; they should make your points more emotionally compelling, not distract from it. And, like great works of art, less is more, and only the essential elements that drive your message forward should be included. 

This goes for data visualization, where you must illustrate the story that the numbers are telling. Hans Rosling did this masterfully in a much-viewed TED Talk (http://resonate.duarte.com/#!page139) about how statistics can change the world. His excitement and passion about a subject that many people consider dry was intoxicating! 

Visuals can mean graphics on a slide, but they also include physical objects that you have in front of you at a talk. Bill Gates caused his audience to collectively gasp when he released a jar of mosquitoes in the auditorium during a talk about malaria in developing countries. (An important disclaimer here is that the mosquitoes he had weren’t infested with malaria.) This is what I call a S.T.A.R. moment, an acronym that’s short for “Something” – be that a visual, stat or revelation – that “They’ll Always Remember.” 

You can build these principles into your regular routine in preparing and practicing presentations. They can also apply to any kind of communication, from a Monday morning meeting to an email to your team to a discussion with your spouse about finances. Use these principles to nurture your nascent ideas so they can grow into a reality that changes the world for the better.