Trying to put everything you know about something into your next speech is one of the most common presentation mistakes you can make. Instead, figure out what your audience wants most and save the rest for next time or never.

If you’ve been asked to speak to a group of people, it’s because someone believes that you know something about a topic that’s useful to them. Whether it’s a five minute speech on how to use the office coffee maker, a thirty-minute summary of the company’s financials for last quarter, or an all-day seminar on knitting, the chances are good that you know more about your subject than will fit into your allotted time. While at first this may seem daunting it’s actually a blessing.

You know a lot about your topic because it interests you. You can’t get enough of it. You love it. And that’s good. But trying to say everything you know about a topic in one presentation isn’t just impossible, it’s not helpful to your audience.

Just the good stuff.

Instead of succumbing to the temptation to tell your audience every little detail, you need to decide on the main ideas you want to get across. The number of main ideas will vary for each speech you give based on the length of time you have to speak and the complexity of the ideas you want to cover. You might have time for 10 points or you may only have time for one or two. But deciding up front which ideas are most important to your audience will help you decide what facts, figures, and stories stay or go.

Just enough to convince them.

Once you have your main ideas in place, only add enough supporting information or evidence to make the case. You probably could go on all day about why each point in your speech is a good idea. But once you’ve convinced your audience, you should stop talking about it and move on. Saying more may lead your audience to stop listening, and could even undermine your credibility. Giving too much evidence can actually make you seem defensive, like you might be hiding something.

Feeling the need to say everything can be daunting, and knowing that you can’t fit everything you know into any speech ever can actually be comforting. No one expects to hear everything you know, and frankly, no one wants or is able to hear it all at once anyway. By taking the time to organize and edit your thoughts into an order and size your audience can handle, you’ll save yourself a lot of mental anguish. And your audience will appreciate it as well.

Image courtesy of Flickr – wagaboodlemuum.

With your next presentation you might be trying to get listeners to invest in your start-up. Or maybe try a new product. You might want them to consider a new philosophy or maybe just a new brownie recipe. No matter the specific goals, though, there’s really only one general reason to give a presentation and it’s a simple one. You have to want to help people. Presentations for any other reason are where we run into trouble.

In my opinion, failure to think of our audience’s needs and desires is the main reason we give so many boring presentations. When was the last time you enjoyed a movie in which you identified with none of the characters? There’s nothing there for you to grab hold of. You can’t relate. The same thing is true of presentations. Too often presenters focus only on what’s important to them. They talk about who they are. What they do. What their goals are. What they want their audience to do. It’s as if they expect their audiences to act out of a sense of awe for the presenter. You can probably imagine how well this works.

Giving a presentation is ultimately an act of humility and empathy. The presenter sets aside her goals and considers things from their audience’s perspective. In her book, Resonate, Nancy Duarte says it this way: “You need to defer to your audience because if they don’t engage and believe in your message, you are the one who loses. Without their help, your idea will fail.”

Helping people with your presentation doesn’t mean that you can’t ask them to do things that will benefit you or your cause in some way, too. But you must show them how doing what you ask will have some positive benefit for them.

Ask yourself why you’re giving your next presentation. There are tons of potential reasons, but really only one of them leads to success. Go to great lengths to make sure that you’re acting in your audience’s best interest and your likelihood of success will increase dramatically.

Image courtesy of Flickr – Matthew Boyle

Give an okay presentation or give a remarkable presentation?

Watch the movie or read the book?

Live for today or ascribe to a higher moral standard?

Most of the time you have a choice. The easy way. Or the way that’s more difficult, but also more rewarding.

The fact that something is more difficult always means that fewer people will choose to go that route. The easy thing is always more popular.

The way you choose to make these decisions says more about you than whether you prefer movies to books. Which will you choose?

A week or so ago, my Aunt, who works at SUNY Binghamton, sent this video of a commencement address recently given there to my Grandmother who sent it to my Dad (I think that’s the progression) who shared it with me while he was in town for a visit. I expected it to be good since so many people I love were sharing it, but I didn’t expect Dad and I to be so emotional by the end.

I won’t add any of my own commentary for now. I just invite you to take twenty minutes or so to watch it when you have a chance.

Here’s a great TED Talk in which John Bohannon offers a simple alternative to terrible PowerPoint (in the style of Jonathan Swift).

This was a really fascinating TED talk, but the part that really got me was when John introduces his modest proposal.

“I think that bad PowerPoint presentations are a serious threat to the global economy,” he says. To which the crowd chuckles, then erupts into applause and cheering. That statement got the biggest audience reaction of the whole talk.

The world already knows that PowerPoint is boring. They’ve accepted, unhappily, that this is just the way things are. But that doesn’t mean they like it.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Authors like Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte have shown us how to be better. WAY better. But it’s still not something that many people are aware of.

We need to spread the word that there’s a better way! So that people who are still PowerPointing in the dark ages will see the light. The first step to getting things to change is helping people realize that there’re alternatives to terrible presentations.

And the best way to get them to see that is to make your presentations remarkable. We’ll change the world’s thinking, one audience at a time. We can! And we must!

Because I am really NOT much of a dancer.