Yearly Archives: 2013

Know Your Audience and Build Empathy

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Designing a presentation without an audience in mind is like writing a love letter and addressing it “to whom it may concern.”  Ken Haemer, Presentation Research Manager, AT&T

Award-winning author and presentation expert Nancy Duarte has a new book out: HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations. Over the next few days, I will be posting an outline of the book’s 7 sections as well as zeroing in on a specific topic each day.

Section 1: Audience

  • Understand the Audience’s Power – your idea’s fate is in their hands
  • Segment the Audience – Focus on who matters most
  • Present Clearly and Concisely to Senior Executives – help them make big decisions on a tight schedule
  • Get to Know Your Audience – it’s easier to convince someone you know
  • Define How You’ll Change the Audience – what do you want people to believe? How do you want them to behave?
  • Find Common Ground – resonate through empathy

Get to Know Your Audience

Knowing people – really knowing them – makes it easier to influence them.

You are trying to influence them, right? If you’re not, forget the speech and just send a memo.

But if you’re really trying to influence them, you’ve got to connect with them. To connect with them, you’ve got to know something about them.

  • What are they like?
  • Why are they here?
  • What keeps them up at night?
  • What gets them up in the morning?
  • How can you solve their problems?
  • What do you want them to do?
  • How might they resist?
  • How can you best reach them?

When you know you are doing a presentation – whether a weekly sermon, new initiative, or a committee report, do your people homework before you begin preparing your words. Only when you know WHO can you began to think about the WHAT.

People don’t fall asleep during conversations, but they often do during presentations – and that’s because many presentations don’t feel conversational.

When you really know your audience, you are engaging them in a conversation even if it seems one-sided. Knowing your audience well helps you feel warmly toward the people in the room, speak sincerely to them and help them want to listen to you.

Next: Message

This is Part 2 of a series looking at Nancy Duarte’s new book HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations

Part 1

 

 

 

 

Engage Your Audience, Sell Your Ideas, and Inspire People to Act

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If I am to speak for ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now. – Woodrow T. Wilson

There are typically very few – if any – leadership positions in which the leader is a lone ranger with no teams to work with or report to, no organizational support, and no larger group to speak to on occasions.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are few leadership positions where the leader is constantly working with teams of all sizes, being supported by a few – or a few dozen – individuals, and is regularly speaking to a larger group.

One of those positions is a pastor.

When a pastor steps to the pulpit – in a 100 member church or a 10,000 member church, and everywhere in between – it would be easy to feel as if he were in a position of power. After all, he is up in front of the crowd, maybe even elevated on a stage, and people have come to hear him speak. The speaker is the star of the show, right?

Wrong. The audience is.

I would pause just to say that God is our ultimate audience, and everything we do as a believer is first to an audience of One. That, to me, is a given.

The speaker is not the star of the presentation – the audience is, because they will determine whether your idea spreads or dies, simply by embracing or rejecting it. You need them more than they need you. They have the control, and the speaker needs to be humble in his approach to speaking to them.

How, then, do you become an excellent presenter?

Nancy Duarte is CEO of Duarte, Inc. She teaches workshops on the art of presenting and is the author of two award-winning books: Slide:ology and Resonate. Wait a minute – better make that three!

Harvard Business Review has just published Duarte’s newest book, HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations, and once again she has delivered a valuable tool for speakers everywhere – but especially pastors who stand up every week and deliver a presentation – a sermon – to their congregations.

Duarte’s Guide is broken into 7 sections as follows:

We live and work in a first-draft culture. Type a text or email – send. Write a blog entry – post. Throw some images together – speak.

According to Duarte, though, it’s in crafting and recrafting, in iteration and rehearsal that excellence emerges.

But, you say, I have so many other things to do and I can’t worry about becoming an excellent communicator. Guess what? Becoming an excellent communicator will help you get those things done.

Ready to start?

Next: Audience: Know your audience and build empathy

Want to read more by Nancy Duarte? Click here to read her “10 Steps in Preparing a Powerful Presentation” and also download a free summary of her book Resonate.