Team Presentation Individual Prep

There are two dominant problems that affect virtually every single group presentation I’ve ever seen.

The first big problem is that each person feels compelled to give an incredible data dump to just put out everything they know on the subject and it’s boring it’s tedious it’s abstract it’s not memorable it goes in one ear and out the other.

The second big problem most group presentations have is they have absolutely awful PowerPoint because the PowerPoint consists of nothing but bullet points lots of words.

If there is a charter group it’s wildly complex because it has 18 different color coded variables so it’s really easy to be dramatically better than most group presentations.

If you just don’t do those two things not saying you can’t have PowerPoint.

Not saying you can’t deliver some data especially if it’s a client presentation and you’re going over a lot of expensive research they’ve paid for and it’s a four hour presentation.

I understand you have to go through some data but here’s the big challenge.

If you’re going to give a presentation when you’re standing up whether you’re part of five people ten people or no people when you’re speaking people are watching you they’re listening to you they’re trying to figure out this is interesting useful.

Pay attention or boring data down let me tune out.

Let me check my email and I’ll read their powerpoint later.

So you’ve got to be thinking about that at every second of your group presentation when you’re speaking and when everyone else is speaking.

Do we actually have something being talked about right now that’s compelling enough to have someone say oh that’s interesting that’s useful I’ll pay attention.

Or is it just kind of boilerplate stuff we have to go through.

You don’t want the boilerplate stuff that we’re gonna have to go through because you’re giving people an out you don’t want to do that.

So now each one of you is gonna have to give a presentation.

I know this sounds mildly contradictory but right now I want you to sort of go off on your own as individuals and come up with your speech your presentation as if you were going to be speaking alone in the room and just trying to cover your part not all the other parts of the group presentation.

So it’s time for us to separate and it’s time to come up with your own messages your own examples your own stories and your case studies because when you’re speaking you don’t have the team behind you.

It’s not a group it is sink or swim when you are speaking in a presentation.

So you’ve got to make each individual presentation great we’ll figure out on the other side how to put these all together and make sure it fleshes together as a group presentation.

But it doesn’t matter how good your group skills are if any one individual presentation isn’t great it’s going to bring everything down in order to have a great group presentation.

Every single presenter has to do a couple of things you had to present in a way that’s interesting and understandable.

You have to present in a way that’s memorable.

You’ve got to do those two things.

If you don’t do those two things nothing else really matters.

So let’s break off now and start working individually on our specific messages and our stories and I’ll give you more specifics on how to do that in a moment.