Define Your Objective And Goal
Every day, I get to work with mid-to-senior level leaders to develop their presentation skills. Many have been tasked with delivering a presentation to senior leadership within their organization or initiate a change within their departments. When the opportunity to speak in front an audience occurs, the most common question that arises is, ‘Where do I start?’ The answer is to define your objective and goal for the presentation FIRST.
Most people will dive right into developing content or slides, when actually, the first step starts long before. The first step, before any content is developed, is to determine the objective of your presentation. Why are you delivering this presentation in the first place? What is your goal? What are you trying to achieve? When you are clear about your objective for your presentation, your message will be clear to your audience and it will be easier to develop.
Most presentations will fall under one of these three categories: informational, influential, or inspirational. That’s not to say that your presentation can’t be all three. However, one of those three objectives will be the priority for your presentation. Most business presentations fall within the informational or influential categories.
A question that I am often asked is what is the difference between an informational and influential presentation? In an informational presentation, you take a neutral stance on the information you are delivering. An informational presentation could be a status update, an instructional presentation, or perhaps, a “how-to” demonstration. In these cases, you are empowering your audience to make their own decisions about what to do with the information you present.
In a presentation that is designed to be influential, you take the role of an advocate. Your objective in this case is to change an attitude, belief, or sway a position that your audience holds. Your presentation is designed to be persuasive and includes a call to action on what you want your audience to do as a result of hearing you speak. Most presentations will have a degree of influence built into the presentation. It then becomes a matter of how much influence you wish to exert over your audience and how strongly you make your call to action. That will determine your presentation design.
Surprisingly, many speakers don’t fully think through their objective before developing their content. Dong this pre-work can greatly determine how successful your presentation will be in the long run.
What is your main objective and goal for your presentation?