Delivering a tight presentation

Has this happened to you?

You had a 15-minute slot to present something and it suddenly gets crunched to 5 minutes.

How do you adapt and still make an impact?

The first thing to do is take a few moments to create a map of the key points you absolutely must land. ‘Landing’ doesn’t mean coming out of your mouth, but being understood by your audience.

This reorganization is essential to rewire the equilibrium of your nervous system which has just been rattled. Taking half a minute to breathe, refocus and release tension from your body will do you a world of good. Once you’ve done that, remember the following:

1. Focus on what is your ‘Big Story’ and say that right up front. Don’t try to build it up to a great ending. You may not get one.

2. Pause and check for alignment. Dive right in from there.

3. Every slide and every bullet point does not have to be presented. Stick only to those that make a meaningful contribution to your story. Therefore, if you have only five minutes, plan on landing no more than three major headlines.

4. Speak slowly, but clearly. Talking fast because you have less time is a bad idea. Nothing gets through with that approach except you going through your slides.

5. After you land each headline, pause. Let that sink in. It’s surprising what we can do in five minutes if we slow down.

6. Show, rather than tell. Rather than saying ‘I just want to take a moment to set the context so that we’re all on the same page about…’, just set the context in one line. Move on. When we’re rattled, phrases like the one above can take up a lot of airspace. They don’t add value and only steal from the little time you have.

7. Keep moving forward. When we are stressed, we tend to repeat things and that eats more into your time than pausing for a few seconds. This happens because your emotional brain is not getting enough of the ‘feel-good’ hormones like dopamine or serotonin that function like a reward system and keep anxiety in check. Therefore, without that hit, we most likely end up repeating things in different words trying to reach a sweet spot where we feel as though we have the audience’s attention. It’s absolutely normal to feel that way and when you find yourself repeating something, breathe. Read point 4 again to see why it’s so important.

These are the pitfalls I find myself in most of the time. Hope you find them useful!