65. People Feel Safe When Things Are Predictable

In the previous section, I said that people like surprises, but you need to balance surprise with predictability. When things are predictable, people feel comfortable and safe. Your job as the presenter is to balance surprise with predictability. When people know what to expect, and they know what comes next, they will feel calmer and they will trust you. If they don’t know what is going on or what happens next, they might get nervous and become emotionally uncomfortable.

Confidence and Predictability

The more confidence you project to your audience, the higher their tolerance for unpredictability. If you are an inexperienced presenter or if you are giving a presentation that you’ve never given before, you should build-in plenty of predictability cues for your audience. As you get more experienced in general—and with that talk in particular—you can lessen those cues. Predictability cues include:

• Providing a high-level overview in writing (or verbally) at the beginning of your presentation, describing what you are going to do (or what you are going to talk about) and in what order.

• Returning to the high-level overview and various points in your talk so people get a “you are here” experience.

• Telling people what will happen next (“Next I will talk about XYZ, then we’ll have a discussion about ABC before we take a break.”)