3 Tips To Build Presenter Bench Strength
Author: Chris Gasbarro
The USB Flash Drive...my least favorite invention of 1999. Little did it's inventor Shimon Shmueli know that his device may have inadvertently created more bad presentations than good presentations. With the instant convenience of being able to transfer a presentation in seconds, they gave millions of presenters freedom to utter "I have an updated PowerPoint" as they walk into a dark backstage area to hand to the graphics operator…or a brightly lit board room.
Call it “polishing”, I call it tinkering. While the occasional last minute review or slide update is of value, more often than not it is creating more fluid presentation builds that last until minutes before doors open. At risk, is the most important thing: your ability to prepare, rehearse and build mastery of your presentation. Yes, there are naturally gifted presenters who can miss a beat and still entertain and impress. However, they are few and far between. Allow me to demonstrate - try to answer the following questions:
Who is the BEST presenter in your organization?
Who is the 2nd, 3rd and 4th BEST presenter in your organization?
Who will be the BEST presenter in your organization 2 years from now?
How did you do? You likely got #1, got part of #2, paused and struggled on #3.
We live in a world of constant meetings. Many of you reading this have 1/2 of your calendar consumed with meetings, Go-To-Meetings, conference calls and actual meetings (sales meetings, user conference). At some of these awesome meetings we have BIG opening presenters with hundreds of thousands of dollars of AV/Production, followed by 3 days of smaller breakouts with 1/20th the AV budget (for 8 concurrent rooms). How much is left over to invest in presentation trainings? Often, $0. Our responsibility is to build the talent and bench strength of our teams to effectively deliver information.
So, what do successful organizations do? Those that receive “exceeded expectations” on their breakout session evaluations do a couple of things, which if you’re not doing, you can start doing tomorrow…and they’re FREE!
LOCKDOWN - on the Friday before your big meeting (or 2 days out), have all presentations uploaded and don’t allow any changes until on-site. This has effectively allowed presenters to show up FRESH - having gotten a good nights sleep, spent ample time out of the presentation mode, and feeling confident walking in to a set rehearsal time.
GIVE UP - back in my music days, a musician once told me in the studio “Chris, how do you know when an album is complete?…When the band gives up”. I’m thankful Bono and Edge eventually gave up and released some great albums. I’m not sure I would have noticed 2 more weeks of nuances in the mix...
REHEARSE - no matter how good you think you are, you need multiple rehearsals. First, in the conference room before you travel in front of two people you know who will not be afraid to tell you what you’re doing well, and not well. Then, in the hotel room muttering, walking back and forth. Then, take that time on stage with the lights blaring in your eyes that you wish the tech team would turn down. In fact, show up early when the AV team arrives at 6:30am with a tray of coffee from Starbucks, and I guarantee they’ll let you hop on stage and fire up those projectors and get 45 minutes of practice time.
We live in a “deck” world now, and I would venture that most organizations spend more on flash drives and Box.com, than they do on professional development and speaker coaching for presenters.
If you’re interested in more tips or consulting on how to improve the bench strength of the presenters in your organization, we do a LOT of this. Let us know how & when we can help your team: