16
Technical Presentations: Effectively Design and Deliver Technical Information
With so much emphasis on doing, it may seem that knowing is not important. The reality is, of course, that knowing and receiving information is extremely important. Sometimes that is what your goal is. In fact, some of you may have been disappointed to learn, but as you read this book that much of what you have called training in the past is, in fact, a presentation. Your task has been to convey knowledge, not to help improve another individual’s skill.
It may be preferable to transform your presentation into a true training class. I hope that many of you will identify this gap and change your presentations into effective and experiential learning. But presentations are not going to go away, and it is important to get them right as well.
Presentations that are designed correctly can help to build a strong foundation for future training. Most training classes have at least a few presentations sprinkled in them and most product specialists will deliver more technical presentations than they do training classes. When these presentations are related to products, however, the goal is still to change behavior—or at least provide information that can lead to a change in behavior when that information is applied.
Many of the training concepts described throughout this book can be applied to technical presentations, with a few notable exceptions. While a presentation does not generally include hands‐on learning, it can be an effective prerequisite to experiential training.
When to Use Presentations
In Chapter 6, I offered Table 16.1 as a way to emphasize that training is different than a presentation. The chart emphasizes the value of training in regard to teaching a skill or changing how an individual performs a task.
TABLE 16.1 Presentation versus training chart.
| Presentation | Training |
|
|
Notice, however, that all of the things listed in the presentation column are good things! Many are important to do. Take a closer look at the positive reasons for delivering an effective technical presentation.
When the Objective Is to Deliver Information
A presentation is successful when it changes or enhances knowledge—and changing and enhancing knowledge is important to do. Information is necessary in order to change knowledge. There are many ways to deliver information, but a presentation has advantages that a mere document or even a video does not. Just like face‐to‐face training, it has the powerful element of human interaction.
When information is coupled with a presenter’s experience—their stories, their expressions, and their ability to tailor it to a specific audience—it becomes more powerful. Books are helpful, videos are powerful, but a good speaker can capture attention and deliver information more powerfully than either of those methods.
There are times when that is all that is required. There are times when you need to deliver important product information, and changing a skill is not required. There are also times when familiarity or urgency requires this information to be delivered in a setting that requires a presentation. In these cases, the goal is to give a presentation that will eventually change behavior.
When Time Is Limited
Sometimes there are real and unchangeable time constraints that will require information to be presented via a lecture or presentation. Information, of course, can be delivered most effectively in a proficiency training setting. However, when time limits remain the same, many new instructors are surprised at how much material they have to eliminate in order to deliver hands‐on learning. Most trainers who do much presenting are used to delivering significantly more information in less time. In most of these cases, the right thing to do is to convert that presentation into a true training class and increase the time required to do so. Experience has taught me that it generally requires at least twice as much time to teach something well as it does to present the material. However, that is not always a practical option.
While it is important to limit the amount of material delivered in a presentation (many present too much at once), the material you use in a presentation can vary significantly from your training content. A good presenter can more quickly change a listener’s knowledge than even a great trainer can change a student’s skill.
When time is limited, it can be helpful to take a hybrid approach. Use presentations, either in person or virtual, to deliver prerequisite information and follow up with hands‐on exercises or a list of projects that the student can do. This approach should be used sparingly, because the learning from the presentations will be minimal, unless the student is already an expert.
When the Audience Is Large
Presentations are often delivered to a larger and broader audience than hands‐on training classes. Audiences with varying degrees of expertise require the presenter to address a given topic in broader terms. Often, the learning must encompass enough background information to help a beginner and enough advanced material to benefit an expert. These presentations often are the learning event—they are not part of a systematic learning curriculum—so they must present an entire package in a concise format.
Most public speakers deliver a significant amount of material and challenge the listener to choose how they will apply that information. No speaker expects any listener to remember 100% of what they hear. Attendees with advanced skills are going to capture more information and apply that information differently than beginners will. This is why presenters who use lecture as their only method of teaching get frustrated at the lack of practical results. They assume that listeners will apply the learning in the same way they themselves, as experts, would apply it. When their students apply it differently, they get confused. The reality is that their students may be applying it differently because they learned different things. This is the beauty—and the danger—of a one‐way delivery method.
There are two ways to overcome the problem of multiple applications. The first is to embrace it and encourage it. Depending on what you are teaching, this is a natural and positive response to many presentations. It is the ambiguity of the objectives of a lecture that make it a great tool for stimulating creativity. While training focuses on how to do something specifically, presentations focus on how to know something generally. Both are important, as long as one isn’t used exclusively to do the other. In other words, you can’t use training exclusively to teach general knowledge, and you can’t use presentations as the exclusive way to teach a skill.
The second way to overcome the problem of multiple applications is to make the presentation so simple and straightforward that there is only one application. This is difficult for most presenters to do. It means that your presentation must be short and have only one or two simple applications. These simple learning sessions are often referred to as “bite‐size learning” or “micro‐learning.” Providing small bits of information at a time is effective because the brain only needs to remember one or two small details in order to put it into practice. The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t take into consideration the various levels of the audience. The application you choose may be great for one listener, but not for another. When that happens you lose them as an intentional listener.
This method works well in short, recorded presentations, however. The reason is that the listener is choosing this application to learn about; it isn’t being forced on them by the instructor. I encourage micro‐learning for peer‐to‐peer training and learning that is meant to serve as continuous improvement for experts.
Some large audiences are comprised exclusively of experts at similarly advanced levels. A large conference of physicians or electrical engineers, for example, may have less of a problem with varying skill levels, but is too large to teach in an experiential manner. Lectures can be meaningful to these audiences precisely because of the similarity of background and education. Presenters can often get very technical because the receivers of the information are at similar expertise levels as the deliverer of the information. The assumptions that the deliverer is making are probably more accurate, which makes the information more attainable and more likely to be absorbed.
In all of these cases, however, the intention is still to convey knowledge, not to perfect a skill. Doctors attending a conference must still take the knowledge they learn and apply it in their practice. The same is true of engineers or product specialists.
To Motivate and Encourage Change
One powerful reason to use a presentation is to motivate or encourage change. In Chapter 4, I covered the four principles of learner readiness. When ability is equal, these principles will influence how much and how quickly a student will learn. Look at the four principles in Table 16.2 from the perspective of a technical presentation.
TABLE 16.2 Four learner‐readiness principles.
| Principle | Question they must be able to answer |
| Learners must recognize the need for learning | Why do I need to learn it? |
| Learners must take responsibility for their learning | Will I put forth the effort to learn it? |
| Learners must be able to relate the learning to their experience | Can I relate it to what I already know? |
| Learners must be ready to apply it | When will I need to apply it? |
Presentations are a great way to prepare a student to learn. An experienced presenter can use a technical presentation to convince students that they need to learn more or perfect a particular skill. A captivating speaker can use a technical presentation to motivate a student to give their best effort toward learning. A good storyteller can use a technical presentation to help students relate what they have learned or will learn to what they already know. A good communicator can prepare for training by helping students consider when and how they might apply the learning.
Since these four elements are critical to effective learning, presentations can play an important role in the success of product training. It is important then to design your presentations effectively.
How to Design Effective Technical Presentations
The 4 × 8 Proficiency Design Model introduced in Chapter 9 can be modified to design an effective presentation. When developing a presentation, only five of the steps are required, though each of those has slight differences (Figure 16.1).
Figure 16.1 Five‐step technical presentation design process.
- Business goal
Defining a business goal is always important. This is usually a very simple process when one is creating a technical presentation. The goal doesn’t need to be long. Unlike training, the goal does not necessarily need to be measurable. For example, you may want to do a technical presentation just to have a presence or demonstrate thought leadership. It may be as simple as getting in front of a customer for the first time.
Even so, it is important to know why doing the presentation is helpful to your business or product line. Sometimes just thinking about why you are doing a presentation can open up other opportunities or ideas for improvements. Often, they lead to developing effective training as well.
- Intended audience
Like the business goal, stating the intended audience is important, but may be much broader. Knowing if you are addressing experienced engineers or interns should change your objectives. More importantly, it will affect how you achieve those objectives. All presenters make assumptions about their audience. You can’t give all the background necessary to learn about every topic. Nor should you. Doing so would bore most audiences. However, it is also unhelpful to assume too much knowledge. Instead of boredom, audiences are left wondering what you’re talking about or feeling left behind.
No two audiences are exactly the same. No two presentations should be exactly the same. Do your best to get as clear of an understanding of the typical audience before you create the presentation. Later, when it comes time to deliver it to a new audience, you should verify that the audience, or at least any assumption you are making about the audience, hasn’t changed. If it has, but only slightly, you can likely make the appropriate changes in the delivery of your technical lecture. If, however, the audience has significantly changed, it may require rewriting the objectives.
I recently asked an engineer to create a presentation about a topic he was very familiar with. His target audience was new employees—college graduates with no previous experience. His first response was that it would be simple; he had delivered the presentation many times and was confident it would be easy to do. However, what he failed to account for was that his previous deliveries were to other engineering experts. Recreating the presentation for subject matter beginners proved to be much more difficult than he had anticipated.
Never assume you can take the same content and recycle it for any audience. Take the time to get it right. Otherwise, you are wasting your time.
Determine the Delivery Method (Optional)
A quick perusal of Chapter 9 will remind you that I advocate determining the delivery method after the objectives and educational activities have been determined—when one is designing training. Designing a technical presentation is different. Because the delivery format of a presentation has less effect on the objectives, it is fine to determine its delivery at an earlier stage. Often this is dictated when the request for the presentation was made (which may be one indication that it is a presentation, not a true training class).
Another difference is that this step, at least at this point, is completely optional. A presentation can often be delivered in more than one format and you may, or may not, make that decision now.
- Set the objectives
Informational Objectives
- Writing clear objective is very important, even for a presentation. In fact, the best presentations have clear, actionable objectives, similar to training objectives. They should still be both observable and measurable. The difference is that the instructor may not have the opportunity to observe and measure that those objectives were actually met. For example, you may determine that you want the audience to be able to define three differences between product A and product B. Stating that clear objective will help you design a lecture that emphasizes and simplifies those three differences. You should make it so clear that any normal person will leave that lecture and be able to state the differences, even if they never had to do so in class.
- Because presentations tend to be more about distributing knowledge and less about enhancing a skill, it is easy to get careless with the objectives. Avoid vague or unmeasurable objectives. Instead of writing that you want the student to “know more about your product,” write that you want to the students to “list 5 things about the product.” Clarity is strength. The clearer your objective, the more powerful your presentation.
Motivational Objectives
- Presentations, even technical ones, offer an opportunity that is less obvious in technical training. Namely, they are great for increasing motivation or inspiring change. Motivational objectives are both easier to write and harder to measure. They are more emotional and their influence is often short‐lived. You may want to challenge listeners to make quality a top priority or to incite more sales of a particular brand or product. Both are good uses of a powerful presentation.
- Even with motivational objectives, however, clarity will make your presentation more powerful. If you state clearly how your listeners can make quality a top priority or specifically describe how and why one product should be emphasized over another, the presentation will be more successful. The fact that you aren’t teaching a skill is never an excuse for a vague objective.
- Writing objectives for a presentation (or training class, for that matter) can sometimes influence one to change the intended outcome from a presentation to a training class. You may set out to create a presentation and realize that you really need to teach a skill. You may set out saying that you want to create a training class and then realize that a good technical presentation will do the trick.
- For example, you may want to challenge listeners to choose the right product for the right job and assume you can do so in a presentation. After you begin to write the objectives, however, you realize that the majority of students don’t have enough experience with the products in question to make that decision. It would be a waste of time to motivate them to do something they cannot do. When that happens, change it to a training class. The first two design levels are the same—you are still on track!
- Create the outline
After the objectives are clearly defined you can write the presentation outline. As you write the outline, refer back to both your objectives and your intended audience. For each new topic, write down what you expect the listener to already know. Make sure that what you write matches the audience. This will help to avoid leaving information gaps in your outline or adding unnecessary material.
There are many help available for making a good outline. Most outlines have at least three parts. The first part, an introduction, prepares the listener to learn. This is important because of the learner‐readiness principles discussed in Chapter 4. You need to tell your listeners what they are going to learn and why it is important for them.
The second and longest section, often referred to as the body, is where you give out the information or inspiration that you want. The body of a technical presentation is often a systematic layer of information that must be given in a specific order. Most technical experts find this easy to put together, since they like to think in systematic and organized sequences anyway. The difficulty is not adding the necessary information. The problem is subtracting the unnecessary information.
Not all information is equal. Your first outline is a draft that needs revision. You aren’t done just because you have numbers and letters or bullet points. Always go back and revise it, comparing each line item to your intended audience and objective. Delete anything that does not help to meet one of your objectives. The next step is to differentiate between content that is absolutely required and material that is nice to know. In my outline, I put a plus (+) sign next to anything that is required and a minus (−) sign next to anything else. A minus sign means that I could still meet the objective even if I don’t cover that material. This is especially helpful when time constraints require flexibility. You already know what can be cut or shortened and what cannot be eliminated.
The last part of a good outline includes the closing section. Always leave time to wrap up your presentation with a reminder of your main objectives and a call to action. An effective presentation does not allow the listener to doubt the speaker’s intention nor does it leave the hearer wondering what they should do with the information. Remind them. Keep it short and simple enough to leave the room and repeat it. Take all the information and squeeze it into a simple and succinct call to action.
Unlike training, presentations do not always have specific activities that help the learner to construct the knowledge for themselves. However, your presentation should be engaging nonetheless. As you create your outline, note some ways you can engage the audience in order to drive home your point. You may come up with more than one way, so you can vary it depending on the audience size or background.
- Create the content
Once your outline is ready you can start putting your content together. Create content that specifically addresses your outline. Not more, not less. If you are using a visual aid, like PowerPoint, be sure to follow the advice in Chapter 10. Your slides should only be a tool to help communicate; they should not contain all of the information you are delivering.
As with training, the temptation will be to pull existing content and make it fit. Instead, start with the outline you created and find or create content to match it. Use graphics and fill in the information with verbal communication. Only use text to emphasize key things you want them to remember.
In Figure 16.2 the slide has too much text. The audience will be encouraged to read the entire text and so will the speaker. The pictures may or may not be helpful, but the listeners will have little time to look at them if they are reading the text.
The brain functions best when it does not have to multitask. While some people are better at multitasking than others, we should avoid forcing our audience to do two or even three things at once. If you ask them to look at pictures, read the text and listen to you, their comprehension level is likely to decrease. Instead of writing out long paragraphs of text, try something different.
In the second example in Figure 16.3, you can still state the facts, but the brain can more quickly process both the text and the picture, which is available only to provide a visual context for the listener.
If you are concerned about distributing information to the students after the class or lecture, put the information in the notes section, not in the slide you are using as a visual aid.
Figure 16.2 Slide with too much text.
Figure 16.3 Simplified slide.
Delivering Your Presentation
Most of the principles outlined in Chapters 11 and 13 apply to giving presentations and facilitating training equally. The biggest difference will be in how you engage your audience.
While there are tips and tricks that will help you engage more, the truth is that every audience is unique. The size of the audience, their readiness to learn from you, their previous experience with the topic you are presenting, and any number of biases will affect how you can engage them comfortably. But you must engage them and the more you know about them, the more natural your interactions with them will seem.
Always talk with the audience, not at them. When the lights are bright and the audience is large, it is easy to turn your presentation into a theater performance. As soon as they feel like a spectator and not a participant, you have lost them. Instead, relax and converse with them. All of them. Turn toward them and speak directly to individuals. They will communicate back, if you let them.
Ask Questions
One way to engage any audience is to ask questions. In smaller audiences you can use questions in the same way you would in a training class. Larger audiences require that you adjust your questions to make sure that you get the response you want.
Unless you know the audience extremely well, it is best to tell the audience how you want them to respond to your question. “Raise your hand if you work for a technology company” is better than “How many of you work for a technology company?” Telling the audience how to respond also creates movement and engagement and doesn’t allow anyone to use ambiguity as an excuse for not getting involved.
Of course, asking for a show of hands only gets the audience involved if they raise their hands! So be careful with your questions. Don’t ask a question that risks falling flat. For example, if you are presenting about an opportunity to sell a particular product and the room is full of people who sell for a competitor, it may not be wise to ask, “How many here want to hear about this product?” Instead, ask, “Raise your hand if you like to make money.” The chances of getting hands in the air with the second question are significantly higher!
When you ask a question of your audience, even a rhetorical question, give them time to answer the question. This may seem odd, since few people will answer the question out loud and you likely don’t expect that. But if you are having a conversation with them, you want to give them the time to answer the question in their own minds. Moving on too quickly will send the signal that you don’t want them to answer the question and they won’t, even to themselves.
Speakers who ask questions of their audiences demonstrate a level of comfort with their listeners and with their topic. You may not be any more comfortable, but you will sound like you are. As your audience engages with you, it will energize you as well and you will find yourself feeling more comfortable addressing them.
Practice, Practice, Practice
You cannot engage an audience if you don’t know your topic thoroughly. Whenever possible, give a test run with someone you can trust to tell you the truth. Find out as much as you can about the audience and the venue. Prioritize your presentation so that, if it was reduced to three minutes you would be able to state your main objectives clearly.
Practice the nonverbal communication skills addressed in Chapter 13. Well before the presentation, choose 1 of the 10 verbal communication skills addressed in Chapter 11 that you want to improve on and get some help on that communication area.
Look for other opportunities to improve your public speaking. No matter how much experience you have, you can improve. Chances are your community has resources that can provide opportunities for development. Look for them and take advantage of them.
Relax and Have Fun!
All of this requires you to challenge yourself and challenge your audience. But don’t forget to relax and have fun. When you get up to speak, you are no longer practicing. Now is not the time to count your own verbal miscues or panic that you didn’t practice your gestures enough. Now is the time to rely on the training you have given yourself. Just as it is with teaching, your job is not really to deliver a great presentation. Your job is to be effective. If your listeners go away with a different idea, a new vision, or an improved understanding of a particular topic, you have done your job—even if you said too many “ums” or forgot to use enough gestures.
Conclusion
Effective presentations—even technical ones—come from the heart. The most effective presenters believe what they are saying and want others to as well. A technical presentation is like a screwdriver in the hands of a subject matter expert and a power driver in the hands of passion. Don’t give a presentation unless you believe in what you are saying. Deliver your message, not because you love yourself or the prestige of public acceptance. Give a presentation because you love to see others learn and improve their lives. When that passion is communicated, it will be effective.
Making It Practical
Many times, subject matter experts do not have the luxury of delivering hands‐on learning. When a presentation is all that is expected or required, delivering it effectively is important.
- You will often get requests for “training” that are really requests for a technical presentation. Can you define some of the differences?
- List the five steps required to create an effective technical presentation.
Before you read Chapter 17, “Culture and Proficiency: Training for Proficiency in a Global Environment,” answer these two questions.
- Does culture change the way people learn a skill? Does it change the way a skill is taught?
- Can an instructor from one culture effectively train students from another culture?