Same old, same old: presenting on auto-pilot

6 ways to know if your presentation needs a makeover

There are many situations calling for repeated presentations of the same material. Examples: inductions for new employees, 'how tos' of any type: how to do the Heimlich maneuver correctly, how to write a speech, how to care for a new-born baby…

If you’re the provider of that information, once you have a formula ticking off all the essential boxes it's tempting to keep using it. While that's completely understandable, it's also dangerous.

When recycling is not the answer

How many times can you recycle a presentation before it becomes stale, routine: lifeless?

If you can repeat the entire thing without pausing to think, or even consider your audience as being distinct from the one who heard it the last time, it's time to change.

You're on auto-pilot. When you're in that mode you've blocked off any possibility of real communication. You’ve blanked your audience out.

Here's an example, one you might recognize.

I knew an inhouse corporate trainer who re-hashed the same set of notes for years complete with jokes so old they'd grown mold. Nobody laughed. Instead, they rolled their eyes and were embarrassed. His audience endured his presentation because they had to.

And another.

Me, when I was teaching, looking through my folder of notes on figures of speech, and wondering, hopefully, if I could reuse the same material without revision, again. Because it would save time. And I was overworked- nearing burnout.*

6 ways to tell if your presentation is tired

1. You update your handouts by changing the date and you've done that several times before.

2. If you use slides; the clip art or images are out of date.

3. Your examples or references no longer fit the audience.

4. You don't feel energized when you deliver the content.

5. You haven't practiced or run through the presentation because you know it inside out.

6. Your audience doesn't respond either by asking questions or laughing in the places you originally thought they would.

Taking back control: retiring autopilot

The cure is simple. Toss it all out and begin again at the beginning.

While your information, what you cover, may remain the same, how you cover it may be very different this time around.

Why? Maybe because:

• your audience is different: for example, younger, older, less knowledgeable than previous audiences…

• you’ve thought of new more effective ways to present the material.

• you have either less or more time than you had previously.

• the criteria for measuring the success or effectiveness of your presentation has changed.

The ultimate success of any presentation depends on how well it meets the needs of its audience. The three key questions answering that are:

1. who is my audience?

2. what do they need to know and why?

3. what is the best way to deliver that information for them?

Please don’t be tempted to repeat and repeat a presentation verbatim. Ultimately that will come back and bite.

For the sake of your audience and your self-esteem, make the time to do the analysis and put together a fresh re-energized one.

Here’s a comprehensive ‘how to’ on speech planning which goes into shaping material to fit an audience, time allocation, setting etc, etc, with multiple examples to illustrate. Use the page index to move around it.

And if you’re repeating presentations because you’re exhausted by the demands of your job, please seek help.

Until next week,
Kind regards,
Susan

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*For more on burnout in teachers: Burnout in teachers hits record high