When we have to give a formal presentation at work, we usually have an unspoken emotional reaction to the moment.

We could be fatalistic. “I just need to get out of this.”

Or excited. “I’m going to take my experience in theater and make it fun for everyone!” »

Or petrified. “I will bomb, lose my job and starve.”

Our attitude determines how we prepare for the event. If we want to strut, we focus on creativity in the design and delivery of our presentations. If we’re nervous, we focus on our content and generally overwhelm people with details. If giving presentations is routine in our role, we might recycle our preferred format and delivery approach, which might make it seem like we’re “phoning it in.”

The next time you’re asked to give a presentation, consider taking a different attitude. Ask yourself: “What do I duty this group of people? Think about meeting the needs and goals of the audience as your obligation will help you decide not only what information to share and in what depth of detail, but also what level of energy you should use in your delivery. This forces you to hold yourself accountable for meeting the needs of others and can help you prepare differently and act more effectively. You will have shifted your focus from yourself to the audience.

My first job after college was as a high school English teacher in Kingston, Jamaica. At 22, I was shy and incredibly soft-spoken. I had not learned to project my voice, and as a student I was often asked to speak up when answering questions in class. On my first day as a teacher, I walked into a long, narrow classroom and faced a group of forty teenagers spread across four long rows of ten desks each. The sound of shuffling and scratching as they stood to greet me was a warning sign. I knew intrinsically that as a teacher, I of my students an education. That was my goal in the piece. And I knew that if I didn’t bounce my voice off the back wall of the classroom, they wouldn’t hear me, I wouldn’t be able to control the class, and no one would learn. At that moment, I raised my voice louder than ever and greeted the class. I felt like I was screaming. And I continued to scream for the rest of the day, the rest of the school year, and the rest of my career. In fact, my screams is really just loud enough to fill the room, and no more. But it guarantees that I will have fulfilled my obligation, at least at the most basic level.

By asking yourself what you owe a particular audience on a given day, you put your brain in the right frame of reference as you prepare and prepare your material for the discussion. This “debt” to the public will vary. Do you owe them:

An overview of the details?

Encouragement to achieve their goals?

Enthusiasm for a new initiative?

Tenderness in the face of their struggles?

The assurance that everything will be fine?

Convinced we can accomplish the task?

Confidence that I can do the job?

Either way, we owe it to our audiences to make valuable use of their time. We need to formulate a clear message, prepare easy-to-understand materials, and consider likely next steps based on how we think the discussion will evolve.

Regarding your message, ask yourself: “After this meeting, if my audience remembers just one sentence about my topic, what is that sentence?” Keep this message short – no more than ten words if possible. Use simple language. Your content can be complex and full of necessary jargon, but the key message should be easy to remember. Repeat your message often to emphasize it to your listeners. You must not only convey the message to them, but tell them that it is the message. Use lines like,

· “The most important thing to know is…”

· “If you take away just one thing from this discussion, know…”

· “The key idea is…”

If they all have the same clear, succinct message ringing in their heads, you’ve achieved your goal. If they all leave with lots of information to think about and elaborate on theirs conclusions, you have lost control of the message. In this case, you have had no impact and have wasted their time and yours.

Your meeting materials will be effective if you think again about what you owe your audience. If you’re talking to a regulator about your risk controls, you’ll need to go into much more detail than if you’re talking to an internal audience about something more innocuous. Think about your audience’s knowledge base and what jargon they will and won’t understand. On any slide that includes a chart or diagram, explain the parameters of the visual before sharing your main point. In short, tell them what they’re watching, before you tell them why they’re watching it. This will improve their understanding of the data and create better buy-in for your recommendation.

Showing a complex graphic and starting with “As you can clearly see” confuses your audience because they are busy trying to understand your visual. Instead, starting with “On this pie chart, blue represents X, red represents Y, and yellow represents Z,” acclimates your audience to the content. Then you can share: “We’re here today to discuss how these things have evolved relative to each other over the last year. »

At the end of a meeting, people need to know where we’re going. Accountability for executing next steps is essential to moving a project forward. Everyone in the room should know WHO is responsible for What And by when. Without this clarity, you’ll likely return to the same conversation in your next meeting, which, again, seems like a waste of time.

Obviously, this all depends on the purpose of the meeting. Let’s say you need to introduce imminent changes in your organization. Your first meeting on the topic is to socialize the idea of ​​change and assess people’s pain points. You owe your audience a sense of stability and confidence that their needs will be met. This will involve more conversations and less direction. However, the emphasis is always on the wise use of participants’ time.

If the goal of the meeting is for them to spend a lot of time asking questions, expressing concerns, or just venting, make sure you don’t talk too much and have structured the meeting so that everyone has chance to be heard.

In addition to the learning content, your audience must believe in the sincerity of the speaker. You owe them a sense of confidence in yourself and your abilities to get things done. How you share information is as important as the information you share. Take your time. Look at one person at a time to think fully rather than scanning the room. Use your gestures to emphasize key points, which will help you modulate your voice appropriately.

By focusing on what the audience expects of you, you will automatically relax and focus less on yourself and more on the needs of the group you are speaking to.