Building a Presentation
“You can’t build a great building on a weak foundation.”
- Gordon B. Hinckley
Recently I did a motivational presentation for a local elementary school. This was a great opportunity for two reasons. First, I was able to speak to the most important people in the world, the future. Secondly, it made me stretch as a motivational speaker.
These young people are the future of our country. The more times we can talk to them about positive subjects, that will come more real for them as they move along their path, the better prepared they will be for the future.
Setting up a talk for corporate leaders, businesses, civic groups, college or professional sports teams is not simple, but there is a system that I have found that works very well. In that system I take for granted that they have some background in their lives on the subject that I am going to be speaking about.
Speaking to 600 Pre-K through 6th Grade students I could not take anything for granted. I could not assume they would have any name references, historical references, sports references, life-lesson references. I had to build my talks to reach each of the students at their level of understanding.
To understand the process, I have broken my topic into 10 steps.
This week I will be writing on the first three steps in building a presentation.
Next week (March 27th) I will write about the steps where I developed the content for the talk.
The week after that (April 3rd) I will talk about how to add examples and sew the talk together with the transitions and the flow on the stage.
Next (April 10th) I will write about how to Introduce and Close the presentation.
I did this in one complete blog, but it was 12 pages long. I have found that most people don’t have that kind of time to invest in a blog. So, I cut it int 4 sections. I hope you will follow along.
Step One: Understanding Their Message
The first thing you must understand as a speaker is that you are there to help the organization that you have been hired to speak to. You are there to re-message or to amplify their message by using your stories and your words. Too many times a message can get stale coming from the same source using their present set of examples and stories. After hearing the same lines for years and years the base of any company begins to dread going to meetings. They are already turned off when the walk in the door. It is the speaker’s job to get them excited again about what they GET TO do.
Unless you are tasked in changing the culture or in overhauling the current process that the organization is currently using, you are there to put a new light and add energy into accomplishing what the leadership already has in place.
When I was asked to speak to the elementary school, they wanted me to use my book (Move or Die) and its stories to help them push their messaging to the student body. The old “same song, different singer” approach. The school currently used a program called RAISE. This is an acronym for: Respect – Accountability – Integrity – Service – Excellence. And also, Leadership.
I knew I could find the right message to fit their message. My problem was that I hadn’t worked with this audience since I read books in my son’s elementary school nearly 20-years-ago.
Step Two: Brainstorm Topic Ideas
I started by fitting the message of RAISE into my book. I knew a lot of my stories and examples would fall flat if I tried to go with what the themes that I have used in the past. I had to find ideas that they could hold in their minds. Not only did my topics need to be powerful but I also needed to have strong examples to help bring the topics home.
I eventually came up with 10 topics that my book spoke about, that would also fit into the RAISE program. Only five of the topics had strong examples. Of those five three had visual examples that did not require a screen with PowerPoint slides.
The coordinator for the talk said that there was a screen and projector available to be used, but the program was going to be in a gym. To make the pictures clear I would need the lights to be dimmed. This could slow the flow of my talk. Because of this I tossed out the two topics that needed the A/V (audio/visual) help. (NOTE: The presenter before me did a great job. She read her book and had a corresponding page on the screen. But even when the lights were turned down the pictures did not show well and the children began to drift away from the story being told. So, I am glad that I opted out of that.)
Whenever there is a part of your program that depends on a A/V system, a white board or another system that is out of your control always have a Plan B.
Earlier I my career I spoke at numerous coaching clinics about my Explosive Athlete Program. I made sure that I had not only Plan A, but also Plan B, C, and D. I had several options to available. I would carry my own laptop with all of the appropriate wires to connect to their system. If they had a computer already hooked up, I had my program on a thumb drive. If things went wrong and they didn’t have a projector I also carried with me the clear plastic sheets that would be used on an overhead.
Some of you may be too young for the overhead idea. My point is that I was ready for most any issue. At one of my I talks I asked what type of A/V system they would be able to provide, they reassured me that everything would be taken care of by the hotel. When I arrived, 30-minutes before my talk, I found there was NO A/V set up and a junior clinic worker shrugging, saying that no one had told him.
I didn’t let this faze me, because I knew my program so well that I didn’t need the slide show. The slides were for the audience. Not for me. I use the slides to expedite their note taking. In some of my talks, when I knew there was not going to be any A/V systems, I would make hand-outs of the Major Points of my talk so that they can focus more on the message and less on taking down every number or point I am making.
Teachable Moment: If you have a Power Point program as part of your presentation, you shouldn’t look at the slides unless you are making sure you are on the right slide or you have a specific example (picture or graph) that you are referring to. If you need the slides as a crutch everyone will see that you really don’t know your information. They will wish you had just sent everyone the slide show of your program, which would have saved them the time they spent watching you read off of the slides. My point is, don’t just throw together a Power Point program. Know your program and then use the slide show to take allow you to teach to a hire level.
Step Three: Make the Outline
After I had my topic, I set up my outline. It looks something like this – I say “something like this” because mine is always hand written so I can make changes. If I use a computer to makes changes the old ideas are deleted with o trace. When I am in my building stage, I am arranging and rearranging ideas a couple of dozen times. I need to remind myself what paths I have taken already. In some cases, I have found that my first idea was the best. Instead of having to know the inner working of “word” I can go back through my notes and see where I started. The second reason why I put this outline on Word for you is my handwriting is only decipherable with the Rosetta Stone.
I have my own “shorthand” system that I developed when taking notes in class as a college student. This carries over to even today when I write in my note books as I am preparing a talk or an article, I will begin to stream dialogue through my head. I can’t stop once the “spirit” hits me so I need to keep writing. If I were to stop the flow of ideas might stop also. So, I just write my own language. When I go back to read what I wrote, I will add letters or connecting words, that I had skipped in the original writing, in order to flesh out the entire concept.
This outline is very simple. It’s an A – B – C system. A) Topic Intro (or Transition) B) Topic C) Topic Example.
Host Intro:
Intro to Talk:
A1) Transition into First Topic
B1) First Topic:
C1) Example of First Topic:
A2) Transition into Second Topic:
B2) Second Topic:
C2) Example of Second Topic:
A3) Transition into Third Topic:
B3) Third Topic:
C3) Example of Third Topic:
Restate The Intro using Topics:
Close:
It’s just a skeleton. Very bare and non-descriptive. But it gives me a structure to build off of. Think about your skeleton. Without the organs and flesh we would all look pretty bland.
Each topic has a number (1 – 2 or 3) and each section has a letter (A – B or C). It seems that this would be a choppy talk and very mechanical. But that’s why I have the terms “Transition into” instead of “Introduce”. The transition, which I will talk about in Part III of this blog will , carry the flow seamlessly from when I introduce the topic and the main ideas, until I close the talk at the end.
Developing the content is relatively simple. The transitions are where the work is.
Next week I will talk about the Step 4 adding content, “the flesh” of the program. If you have any questions, please send them to me info@thecoachcarlisle.com
Have an amazing day!
