Real. Smart. Now.

One thing that’s important as a specialist is to confound people’s negative expectations of what a person like you is like.

We were training some senior technical specialists in the UK last week, and I was watching their final presentations. One of the major things I noticed was the most successful sessions were ones that dealt with the expectation that an IT specialist would be very focused on their technology to the exclusion of all else. It made an enormous difference when they spoke about the business issues, how the technology fitted into the lives of the people they were speaking to, and used non-technical language.

People will have certain expectations of what a person like you will be like.

If you’re in IT, they will expect someone who is smart but geeky, interested in the nerdy features of their system, and very detail-orientated. If you’re in marketing or PR, you’re interested in making pretty lies, not in telling the truth. If you’re in HR, you’re either touchy-feely, or overly concerned for regulations (depending on what type of HR department the company has!). If you’re a financial advisor, you’re only interested in the sale, and not in genuinely looking after people. If you’re an accountant, you’re boring. If you do anything even vaguely un-mainstream, you’re a bit woo-woo.

When dealing with people’s internal circus (what they’re thinking and feeling about you and your topic), it is often useful to first acknowledge their concerns by stating them out loud, then dealing with them.

With these types of preconceptions, I think it’s better to just be different. If you say, ‘Well, a presentation from an accountant, I bet you think this is going to be pretty tedious!’, it may be that some of the people you’re talking to weren’t thinking that. Also, you’re setting the bar pretty high – a bit like saying, ‘Let me tell you a funny story – you’re gonna love this…’

Much better to just be more interesting by taking the time to telling stories from your life and making sure that everything is super-relevant to their current situation.

Tacitly confounding people’s expectations in this way can leave them pleasantly surprised, and move you a step closer to delivering a presentation they will listen to, talk about and act upon.