There are two thoughts that I see people mistakenly beat themselves up with practically every time they deliver a presentation. The silly thing is, these thoughts can be signs that you’ve done well.
I was a young buck trainer, in my early twenties, and I was delivering a two-day course on productivity. I was part of the team redesigning the programme for the UK to make it so that people found it easier to change their behaviour after they left.
My mentor at the time (the brilliant co-creator of High Performance Coaching Ed Percival) had been observing the two days, and was driving me to the train station.
He asked me how I thought the day had gone and I said, ‘It could have been better.’
He turned to me and said something that has stuck with me ever since.
He said, ‘It can always be better. It can ALWAYS be better. What did you do that worked?’
And I started looking at the things that I had done that I’d repeat if I delivered the programme again, and the lessons I’d learned.
From this comes Truth of Presentation Review #1.
Truth of Presentation Review #2 comes from the thousands of presentations I have coached people through.
The eight people on our masterclass each speak in front of the group eight times over the two days. My internal database is thus pretty detailed for what happens before, during and after a presentation.
We teach people how to rely less on scripts, PowerPoint or detailed notes and more on their knowledge and intelligent preparation. Because of this, there’s a reaction that I have spotted again and again.
I see people finish a session and think to themselves, ‘That didn’t go like I planned.’ They slump, or look at their notes, thin their lips and shake their head. It’s at this point I have to intervene.
These are the two things I would have printed on Real.Smart.Now t-shirts…
ToPR#1: It can always be better. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t good.
It can ALWAYS be better. In fact, the moment you think you did a perfect job is the moment you stop being quite such a good speaker. Intelligent people are aware of the subtleties of their situation. Standing up and speaking to a group is a highly imperfect and unnatural way of communicating. There are bound to be things that you could do better. However, it’s not because of how you did that you think you could have done better, it’s because of your intelligence that you SEE you could have done better. It’s because you have high standards that you’re so good at your job.
ToPR#2: It’s never how you planned it. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t good.
It’s never how you planned it. It’s always different – either in what you spoke about, the way you spoke about it, or in the reaction of your listeners. There will often be things, sometimes apparently major things, that you forgot to say. What you have to bear in mind is that we haven’t seen your notes! We don’t know what you had planned. So evaluate your session based on what we actually received.
Speaking to groups is more like playing jazz than classical music. A plan is just a plan.
Review your presentation like you would with someone else you care about
So… when you come out of a session, notice if you think, ‘Ah, I could have done better,’ or ‘Euch, that didn’t go like I planned it.’
If you opened your mouth at all, both of those things are true. What stops you being a buffoon is that you noticed it.
The next thing you think is, ‘But I did good there… and there… and there…’ and, ‘Next time, I’ll do that…’
Feel good about what you did FIRST, then notice what you did well and maybe what you might do differently next time.
In this way, you’ll continue to grow YOUR database of what works, and also enjoy the process.
NB I have been caught beating myself up with both of these recently. It never becomes totally automatic…
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