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Everybody can get better.  Even the most experienced presenters can learn new techniques that improve their skills.  I can get better.  My partner Tim can get better.  Tony Robbins can get better.  EVERYBODY can get better.  This fact was brought home to me forcefully in a class we taught recently.

Our company has a contract to offer tips and techniques to a group of experienced professional consultants; a room full of men and women who routinely stand before an audience.  This particular week the class concerned our “approach” to the preparation of any formal talk.  We call it the “Power Presentation.”

You may have heard the CommunicationSteroids podcast on the subject.  The “Power Presentation” is a way of thinking about your talk prior to actually writing the script.  It asks the presenter to identify and put in writing three things:  Destination, Declaration, and Organization. The “destination” is the place you want to take your audience; the things you want them to leave the room with.  It should be a single line and deal with a single over-arching theme.  It is not going to be a line in the presentation.  The “Declaration” is a powerful sentence that will grab your audience and compel their attention.  It is the heart of the speech…and their reason for listening.  It often begins with, or at least contains, the words “you can” or “you will.”  And it is a sentence that will appear in the talk, usually the last line of the introduction and somewhere in the conclusion.  The “Organization” is exactly what it sounds like.  It is the exposition of a reasonable progression of ideas that support the Destination.

Tim and I have always been amazed how many people don’t think about these things before they sit down at the keyboard to begin to write.  We find very often that even the most experienced of us tries to immediately write the presentation, verbatim, from the first word to the last; or, to at least cobble out an introduction ahead of anything else.  And all this before they’ve clearly mapped where they’re planning to take their audience or why their audience should care!

We weren’t absolutely sure our advanced class would be entirely thrilled with “going back to the basics” in this way.  But, we think it’s a very valuable way to approach a subject, so we spent some time on it.  At the end of the class we gave the group an assignment.  We asked them to pull out one of the presentations they were already giving and “rethink” it in terms of the “Power Presentation.”  We asked them to identify and write down the Destination, the Declaration, and the organization, and then to present that breakdown to the class as a group the next week.  It went beautifully.  After all, this is a group of skilled speakers and they all pulled it off without any problem at all.

At the end we told the group that, while we’d often taught the principles of the Power Presentation, this was the first time we’d used this particular exercise.  We asked if they felt it had been valuable and to share with us what they got out of the experience.  I was amazed at the enthusiasm of their comments.

Everybody who responded said it had been valuable and had caused him or her to look at that presentation in a new way.  The executive of the enterprise said it was a great tool to keep her focused on her objective (we think so too).  I didn’t hear any comment, nor did I see any body language, that gave me reason to doubt that every member of the group had benefitted.

And that’s the point.  Even the greatest speakers, the most powerful orators, the most skilled motivators need to maintain their edge and keep their focus sharp.  Tim tells the story of a presenter he knows, a man who speaks to groups all over the country, who, periodically, hires a coach to work with him.  He recognizes that even the best can fall into bad habits, or ruts they may not even recognize.  Even the best can learn new tips and techniques that will make them better.

In the world of professional journalism it’s said: even editors need an editor.  In the world of presenting: even coaches need a coach.

photo credit: Scot Rumery

Communication Steroids