Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes - The Goodman ...

And finally, skilled presenters know how to present, which means engaging a room full
of people who may be distracted, addicted to their BlackBerrys, only vaguely interested
in the topic, downright hostile, or all of the above. They have learned enough about the
audience in advance to tailor their comments to the people in the room, and they have
developed their “platform skills” to the point where they are completely comfortable at the
podium, no matter how many pairs of eyes are staring at them.
Acquiring all these skills takes time, and even highly skilled presenters know that when
they must develop an entirely new presentation, they are in for hours upon hours of work.
Synthesizing reams of information into a few understandable and easily memorized
points can take several hours if not days. Creating slides or other graphics that support
the presenter (as opposed to simply duplicating his content) takes more time. And getting
to a comfort level with the material where the presenter can focus on the audience (and
whether or not they are “getting it”) instead of trying to remember the next point – that
can take hours of rehearsal or even several actual presentations (assuming the talk will be
given more than once).
Now consider how respondents to our survey answered the following questions about the
amount of work they put into their presentations:
How much time, on average,
do you spend preparing for
a presentation?
How often do you rehearse for
a presentation, either alone or
for a test audience?
How much formal training
have you had to improve your
presentation skills?
How many publications have
you read to help improve your
presentation skills?
More than half (53%) spend a grand
total of 2 hours or less.
Less than half (45%) say they “always”
or “usually” rehearse, and 35% report
rehearsing rarely or never.
Only 10% say they have had a
“significant amount” of training.
Only 6% say they have read a
“significant number” of publications.
pg. 13