This article was automatically translated from Japanese using AI. The Japanese version is the authoritative version.
One thing you can’t avoid in university life is giving presentations.
Not only in classes, but also in the lab, in seminars, and in club activities, there are many occasions when you have to stand up in front of people and present.
From elementary school through high school, you mostly just sit and listen in class, and there are few chances to give a long presentation. Yet
the moment you enter university, you are suddenly put in front of an audience again and again.
That said, it’s also true that many people around you dislike presenting or feel they’re bad at it,
and unfortunately there are plenty of presentations that leave the audience thinking “that was poorly done” or “that was boring.”
So I’m going to keep posting the presentation know-how I’ve picked up during my university years.
This time, the topic is the mindset behind giving a presentation.
A typical trait of poor presenters is that they give a talk that the audience is made to sit through.
For example:
・spending too long on a single slide
・leaving dead air during the talk
・using too many slides
・failing to make the connections between points clear
and so on.
As a rule, you should assume that the people listening have almost no motivation to listen to your talk.
Nobody starts out interested in your presentation.
The audience feels the way you did in middle school, sitting in the gym listening to a 30-minute speech from the principal.
Few of us listened to those speeches with genuine curiosity every time.
If you give a self-centered talk to an audience with no desire to listen, you may come away satisfied, but the audience will be bored.
Some people, seeing that the audience looks unengaged, is checking their phones, or has dozed off, will fall into self-loathing and conclude that their presentation is hopeless.
To avoid that, you need to give a talk that people actually want to listen to.
Presentation technique matters, but what matters most for a talk people want to hear is how you yourself think about presenting.
Once that mindset changes, your talk will naturally become audience-oriented.
The key points for a talk people want to hear are:
・be clear about the single most important message of your talk
・keep the talk simple and minimal
・eliminate anything that even you find confusing or distracting
That’s it.
Suppose your talk contains ten points.
If you deliver all ten with the same emphasis, the audience will retain nothing at all; but if you present just one as clearly important, the other nine may amount to zero while that one point will at least stick in their minds.
Narrow down what you want to say, keep it short and to the point, and make it easy to follow
Aim for a talk that people listen to naturally, rather than one that forces your views on them.
If you keep that in mind, your presentations will improve on their own.
If you know someone who is a good presenter, ask them all sorts of questions.
If you don’t, watch the talks that are so often held up as models—Steve Jobs, President Obama, and the like.
They can reach a huge number of people with words alone.
Their technique is impressive, but above all, they are perfectly clear about what they want to convey.