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

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Building Better Presentations
How to Take Your Audience from A to B – cont’d
When Terrence McNally, another skilled presenter, talks to organizations about the
value of risk-taking, he will ask audience members to think about a time in their life
when they took a chance (e.g., asking that certain girl to the prom, asking for a raise,
changing careers). Then he will instruct them to find partners and take turns sharing
their experiences. This leads to a group discussion that Terrence brings back to the central
purpose of the workshop by asking, “Now, what is one risk you plan to take at work?”
What all these exercises have in common – and what makes them so effective – is that
they are intrinsically related to the subject matter. They are not simply “icebreakers” that
may help people relax but have no inherent relationship to the topic at hand. Audience
members are cementing what they have learned (or are opening the door to learning) by
doing, and once the exercise is completed, they are ready to sit down and begin learning
some more.
Appeal to different learning styles
People learn in different ways, and in a room full of public interest professionals, you are
bound to have more than one learning style represented. (In fact, several learning styles
often operate within a single individual, but some tend to be more dominant than others.)
The more learning styles your presentation can appeal to, the better your chances are
of reaching everyone in your audience. In his book, Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in
Practice, Howard Gardner identifies five distinct learning styles, and his categories provide
useful guidelines for presenters looking to widen the appeal of their material.
Logical-quantitative: Individuals who learn mostly through this style respond strongly
to numbers or deductive reasoning. To find examples of public interest presentations
geared to this style, just hold your head up and look around at your next conference or
organizational meeting. By that measure, you could easily assume that everyone in our
sector is primarily a logical-quantitative learner. Just one small problem: They aren’t.
Narrational: This kind of learner responds most strongly to stories. When Marc
Freedman, president of Civic Ventures, talks about the roles older adults can play in
society, he uses a historical narrative to engage his audience. “I’ll talk about how the
Puritans revered old age, and how they wore white wigs and lied on the census to say
they were older than they were,” Freedman told us. “I’ll talk about how we got from that
point to the notion that older people are superfluous or a drain on society, and then give
a vision for the future that is more uplifting.” As someone who has taught storytelling to
public interest professionals across the U.S., I can readily attest to the power of stories
when it comes to engaging audiences. When you consider that storytelling has been a
constant in human interaction for tens of thousands of years, you have to believe that
most people, to at least some extent, are narrational learners. (You can find more on
storytelling in the next section.)
Foundational: Some people respond more to broad philosophical arguments as
opposed to specific numbers or anecdotes. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a senior attorney with
the Natural Resources Defense Council, provides plenty of stories and numbers when
he talks about the need to protect the environment, but he will often end his speeches