I’ve been away a few days in an intensive session helping a team get ready for a high-stakes multi-day presentation.  It occurred to me that a blog on how teams can present effectively would be useful, since so much work these days is done in that way. 

1.  Introduce each other; don’t introduce yourself.  Even though you’re all on the same team, nonetheless, it’s more effective to introduce other people than yourself.  It is inherently more believable for someone else to say, “What’s great about Jeff is that he’s tilled in this vineyard for 25 years; he knows everything there is to know about grapes,” than it is for you to say, “I’ve got a lot of experience.”  Besides, talking about oneself in this way makes most people uncomfortable; why start out uncomfortably?

2.  Appoint an MC; preferably one who is comfortable playing the role.  To the extent possible, you should always build on the strengths of the personalities on the team.  If you’ve got a real extrovert, have her be the Master of Ceremonies.  The MC should think of herself as the audience’s advocate, helping them through the day or days.  But note that sometimes introverted people do better playing a character than themselves.  So it can work to create role-plays and stories for team members to ‘inhabit’ who are otherwise shy presenters. 

3.  Look interested when a colleague is speaking.   If you’re presenting as a team, your audience will be judging the entire team.  It’s the height of arrogance and un-team-like behavior to do something distracting when another teammate is presenting.  Don’t do it.  Ever.  Look interested – and be ready to help if something goes wrong. 

4.  If you’re presenting something technical, or a demo, be prepared for things to go wrong, and get help.   Demos are the Devil’s children.  When they go well – a rare occurrence – they’re quite impressive.  But usually the Imp is in the room and something goes wrong.  Then it’s important to have a Plan B, a co-presenter to talk through things, and support from the team.  The best approach is always to be real.  Don’t think of it as an error, but rather an opportunity.  Explain what’s going on, don’t try to hide it and work it into your story line:  “What’s happened here is that my Internet connection has gone down; I’m now going to try to re-establish it.  This would not normally happen under real circumstances because…..”

5.  Rehearse the hand-offs and transitions.  Rehearse them again.   I always recommend “surfacing” what’s going on when you have a complicated journey to take the audience on.  “We’re about half-way through part one, here, and now Jimmy is going to take over for about 30 minutes on why yak butter is the preferred dietary option.”  “We’re headed into a break here, and we’ll take questions for a few minutes.  Then it’s coffee time!”  “It’s mid-afternoon, and we’re slightly ahead of schedule, so let’s go to the afternoon break a little early and give you a bit of extra time.  We’ll reconvene at 3:30.”  That kind of talking-as-you’re-doing is very helpful for teams that may not get to practice the entire event as much as they need because of time and budget limitations. 

Quick Tip:  In the last days before the big event, a ‘tech’ rehearsal is very important, where you run through all the things that have to happen in the order they should happen, without doing all the actual speeches.  Just the hand-offs, the openings and closings, and so on. 

6.  Practice ‘Just-in-time-information-sharing’. Too many teams present an agenda at the beginning (boring) and then plunge in.  It’s far better to talk through the agenda as you’re experiencing it.  In the same way, don’t introduce all the speakers at the beginning – it’s too much for the audience to remember.  Instead, do a high-level intro, and introduce people with their (relevant) qualifications when they’re about to take over.  “I’m going to ask Jane to walk us through this next section on infectious diseases, because she’s survived 3 bouts of malaria contracted on site.” 

7.  Don’t hog the limelight.   Do stand up to speak.  If you’re presenting as a team, give everyone a chance to shine.  Don’t let one superstar do all the talking.  That’s not teamwork.  But do stand up to speak; the tallest person in the room commands the attention and authority, so if everyone is sitting, it’s a simple way for the speaker to be the center of attention while he is speaking. 

8.  Make it a conversation.  Don’t think ‘us’ vs ‘them’.  Try to bring the audience into the process as much as possible.  Rather than saving Q & A for the end of the day, encourage questions as you go along, if that is at all possible.  It’s much better to handle the concerns of the audience as they come up, rather than having audience members stewing about an issue for an hour, or a day, before learning that the problem was a simple one. 

9.  Panels are good; conversations are better.  As humans, we find interactions among our fellow beings inherently interesting.  A soliloquy can be fascinating, but a good discussion is even more interesting.  Most interesting of all is an argument; don’t shy away from controversy and disagreement.  Properly done, the power of seeing a team debate internally is extraordinary; it makes the team look very strong, open, and fearless.  Panels can be a great way to foster these exchanges, but beware the typical problem with panels:  you hear too much from people you don’t want to hear from and not enough from those you do.  A crisp conversation between two people usually works better.  But see Rule #10. 

10.  Mix it up.   Use all the means at your disposal to vary the mix and keep it interesting for the audience.  Vary the length of presentations, the number of presenters, the kinds of presentations, and the kinds and times for audience participation.  Don’t do all the presentations with Power Point – use video, flip charts, props, and so on to vary the kinesthetic experience of the audience, as well as their visual and auditory experiences.  Always remember that sitting in a hotel meeting room is like a sensory deprivation chamber – typically there are no windows, there’s a background roar from the A/C system, the lighting is bad, and there’s little for an audience to do except sit.  Every way that you manage to change that experience up will be wonderful and invigorating for the audience.   

What experiences have you had presenting as a team?  What went well, and what went not so well?