CHAPTER 11

PRESENTATIONS

The Fifth Moment: Presentations

We have to get personal for a moment. It’s possible to give a compelling presentation even if you don’t like doing it. As people who spend our lives public speaking and helping other people speak better, we need you to hear something and believe us. You can do this. We’ve helped people go from boring to engaging and from nervous to enthusiastic. It’s not necessary for every word to be smooth. The best presentations don’t always go off without a hitch. You may not think that you can improve, but you can. In order to manage and lead people effectively, you have to.

The Trap

You don’t prepare. It’s that simple. The format for giving presentations reveals the essential places where you have to focus on what you say and how you say it. Give too much information, and your audience may become overwhelmed. If you present badly, they will stop paying attention. Fail to emphasize the most important words and ideas properly, and your audience won’t retain your point. Practice the wrong way, and you won’t feel comfortable with your content. Your body language and tone will suggest that you aren’t ready. Your audience will feel the material isn’t important. If you’re giving a team presentation and you don’t prepare together, you will be a bunch of people with the same business card, but not a team.

The Format

1.   Identify the type of presentation you are giving. It’s not one size fits all. A budget review is very different from an inspirational talk. This isn’t brain surgery; it’s being clear about what you have to prepare. See “The Different Kinds of Presentations” later in this chapter where we’ve put together an exhaustive list of the most common types of presentations and the clear ways you can prepare for them.

2.   Decide on a theme. What’s the one thing you want your listeners to remember—your main point? This is your takeaway—that clear, declarative sentence framing what you’re saying. You need to be able to state it in less than 10 words. This is the chorus you come back to over and over.

Use the theme as your test. In theory, you ought to be able to reconnect to your theme after every example or subject change. If you can’t understand how a story or a point ties to the theme, neither will your listeners. That means either that the theme is off or that this particular information, while exciting and important, doesn’t fit into this presentation. In general, you should say the theme at least three times: at the beginning, middle, and end of the presentation. Whether you say it more than that depends on your speaking style. There are some presentations where you can have more than one theme, but you should never have more than three. Your listeners simply won’t retain more than that, and you risk them losing all your messages because of overload.

3.   Decide on illustrations. Everything that supports your theme has to be there on purpose. As you explore your content, think about how each story, piece of data, example, or editorial will contribute to your main theme.

4.   Write it out. You can write your presentation word for word or just sketch an outline or mind map. Use what works for you. The act of writing it down will formalize your thoughts and help expose areas that need to be adjusted. Even if you’re not going to use the notes when you actually present, this is where you force yourself to make choices. You can use your computer or the back of an envelope and scraps of paper, as some say Lincoln did when writing the Gettysburg Address. There is no one size that fits all, but to be effective, you have to prepare.

5.   Consider visual aids. This is a huge problem in business presentations. If you use visuals such as PowerPoint or Keynote, you need to keep them simple and supportive. The only reason you want to project something 10 feet high or screen share in a virtual meeting is to emphasize something you say. The error too many people make is writing their PowerPoint visuals as bulleted lists of full sentences. Then you project that file, and the visuals become too much information for listeners to digest. More on visual aids in the “Visuals” section.

6.   Practice your delivery. You need to become familiar and comfortable with what you are going to say and, just as important, how you will say it. This does not happen by thinking about it. You have to do it. You don’t need to memorize. Remember, you’re not an actor. It’s okay to use notes, and you should mark your notes to cue yourself and adjust your delivery.

In general, we’ve found that when you practice six times, you’ll see an improvement. The first rounds are about adjustments. The final work is about synchronizing words with visuals and body language. Don’t feel that practicing is slacking off from real work or tell yourself that you don’t have the time. Practicing is part of doing your job. Book a conference room. You don’t have to practice the whole presentation. If your time is limited, practice your transitions from the four-step outline we’re about to teach you. When you’re giving an hour-long presentation, it’s often not practical to practice the whole thing six times, for a total of six hours. But you can practice the transitions six times in an hour. When you know the order and how you will make the transitions, your familiarity will produce comfort.

The Four-Step Outline

This is what you write out to organize your thoughts. If you use it every time you give a presentation, your audience will always remember your message. Master communicators can do this on the fly. Someone can ask you a question about anything, and you can give an answer that makes sense by following this pattern of thinking.

In all cases, your presentation should be well organized. The four-step outline works in all presentations. How you implement it depends on your style. It works for everything from informal presentations, such as a wedding toast, to formal presentations, such as financial reviews, Board meetings, and product updates. The titles of the four steps will become your mantra for remembering what makes any presentation effective.

1.   Tell what tell. Tell your listeners what you’re going to be talking about—the length of your presentation, your topic, and any other special instructions. You have to do this because then they relax. They know what to expect, and they can settle into listening to you.

2.   Tell why they should listen. This is a brief statement about why these people should be listening to you. It’s not necessarily why they should agree with you or why they should buy what you’re selling them, but why should they be paying attention. This is the “what’s in it for me” step. Even if they don’t like you or like your topic, they will understand why you’re talking about it. Even if they already know why they should be listening, this will remind them and get them thinking, “I’m in the right place for the right reason.”

In a keynote speech, for example, Step 2 could be a 10-minute story, with that whole story being about why they should listen to you. In most business meetings, it’s just a brief statement. The stronger your Step 2, the more engaged your listeners are going to be. Remember, you can speak at around 183 words per minute, but they can process 600. You control what they are thinking about with the 400 words bouncing around in the back of their heads when you give them compelling reasons why what you’re saying matters.

3.   Tell. This is the body of your presentation, where you will spend most of your time. It includes stories, examples, editorials, and emotional appeals to your audience. But remember, people won’t hear any of this if they can’t relax and understand why to listen (Step 2).

4.   Tell what has been told. This is your summary. A summary includes two parts: first, you summarize your most important points, and second, you provide an action statement when applicable—what you want your listeners to do now that they know this information. A summary does not contain everything, and you are not repeating yourself. None of us remembers everything we hear the first time. Repetition is essential for retention.

When you use the four-step outline, you outline not only your entire presentation, but each topic you discuss. The entire outline repeats itself again and again throughout the presentation. As a result, even if you are nervous, when you are well organized, your listeners appreciate it and experience you as effective.

Don’t wing the four-step outline unless you know what you’re doing. A master chef can walk into a kitchen, take various ingredients, and produce a delicious meal on the fly. He can do it because he’s spent time learning the various attributes of the different ingredients. He knows what tomatoes will taste like at various temperatures, and how they will mix with greens. Master communicators are just as familiar with the various attributes of human communication. They know that even though they have been presenting for 30 years, practicing will give them more impact. Until you reach that level, don’t wing it. Practice it.

Presenting to Those Above You

Your boss has just told you that you will be presenting to the senior management of the company. It’s up to you to deliver an update on the project you’re working on to secure continued funding and resources. If you nail it, you can hire the resources you need to bring your vision to reality. If you don’t, your project may be stopped.

While executives are different all over the world, we’ve found that these rules produce the strongest ethos in most settings:

1.   Prepare your presentation in sections, with each section following the four-step outline.

2.   Be prepared to jump around, connecting each section to your main point.

3.   Ask listeners if there is a particular topic they would like you to start with or make sure that you cover.

4.   Don’t take offense if they stop you abruptly. Your comfort with their interruptions reveals your confidence.

You may not have to adapt your presentation. Be comfortable enough with the content and the order of your slides so you can. The stress reaction we all experience when we are surprised is what you want to avoid through preparation. When practicing, have a colleague ask you to jump to the end of your presentation or something in the middle. Have the person interrupt you as you’re making an important point. Practicing how to recover from being thrown off makes the disruption an opportunity to show your poise and confidence.

The Different Kinds of Presentations

This is your cheat sheet. Presentations have an impact on the largest number of people at one time. In each section, we will tell you the best approach, what to expect from your audience, and the biggest mistake most people make. The most common types of formal presentations in organizations are:

•   Updates or briefings. Approach: It should be deductive, well structured, and organized point by point. Audience: You might consider starting your presentation by framing the parameters of what you are prepared to talk about and then invite requests for changes to the agenda. Be ready to jump around in your content. The biggest mistake: Not being prepared to be interrupted. Be prepared to be interrupted, and welcome interruptions because they show that you know what you’re talking about.

•   Sales presentations. Approach: These presentations are emotion-driven, focus on benefits, and should never describe a feature without following with a benefit. Audience: Again, be prepared to be interrupted, and welcome it. Make sure your presentation is about your listeners. Invite them to share what they want you to focus on. The biggest mistake: You are not there to train them, and you could risk providing too much information.

•   Conference presentations. Approach: They should be theme-based. Begin with a story that leads to a theme, supported by a structured outline of your logic. Audience: You probably will not be interrupted. Take your time, show everyone how happy you are to get the chance to talk with them (whether it’s a smaller or a bigger crowd than you expected), and enjoy matching the emotion in your speech with the emotion in your content. The biggest mistake: You go into one topic too deeply. You’re providing a generalist’s perspective so that they will want to know more later.

•   Keynote presentations. Approach: These presentations are challenging—more on this in a moment. Audience: People are excited to listen because you’re kicking things off. The biggest mistake: This is one of the more misunderstood presentations. Many conferences offer multiple keynotes. Keynote is a term, a metaphor from the keynote in an orchestra. One individual provides the keynote for other musicians to use to tune their instruments.

In a keynote presentation, it’s the same thing. The keynote should set the tone for the rest of the conference. It’s not just that the speaker is a big name. The presentation provides a key theme. The best keynote presentations will pose the challenging questions and concepts for the rest of the conference. A keynote speaker should be inspirational and informational. He should have insight and knowledge about the topic of the conference. His “theme” should tie into those of all the other speakers at the event. The listeners often pose questions, but the speaker shouldn’t answer them. Instead, he should inspire the listeners to seek the answers through the other speakers and events at the conference.

•   Town hall presentations. Approach: The leader or manager kicking off a town hall meeting must give a presentation. This should be similar to the keynote presentation. Set the tone, excite, and then inspire people to participate. Audience: You need to have an organized time for questions and answers after the kickoff. The biggest mistake: You don’t plan enough. You can’t wing it. Set the proper framing for the meeting, as well as a structured agenda. If you have other speakers, they must be in sync with the approach.

•   All-company meetings. Approach: It should be similar to that for a keynote presentation, but with more specific answers. Audience: At the company meeting, employees are often looking for an inspirational speech with solid information. If you are delivering bad news, be empathetic, show your emotion, and take your time. The biggest mistake: Now what? You don’t invite your listeners to use what they’ve just learned. End with positive and inspirational action items.

•   Marketing presentations. Approach: This depends on the audience, but if it is to consumers, then appeal to their emotions, including stories and examples. Audience: If it’s consumers, be ready to be interrupted. If it’s top executives, also be prepared to be interrupted. As with a sales or update presentation, love the interruptions. The biggest mistake: You do the same presentation no matter what the audience.

•   Venture capital presentations. Approach: You hope these listeners will finance you. It should be deductive and inspirational, and should use less time than you are given, leaving plenty of room for questions. (Venture capitalists listen to presentations all day—too many of them bad.) Find the balance between emotion and logic in your content and delivery. If your strength is logic and not emotion, use a teammate to kick up the pathos. Audience: Expect to be interrupted as you go and prepare to jump from one section of your talk to another with ease. The biggest mistake: Besides going on too long, you don’t keep track of all the components that must be conveyed before the presentation ends.

•   Presentations when you want active participation from your listeners. Approach: It should be conversational and instructional. For example, if you want to see a show of hands, raise your hand and say, “Give me a show of hands from people who . . .” Audience: Expect to be challenged, and be prepared to say, “I don’t know, and I look forward to getting back to you by the end of the day.” The biggest mistake: You let someone take over the presentation. When someone talks too much or too long, find a pause in his monologue and say, “Tom, that’s great thinking, and let me hear from Jim or Carrie, too.”

The Basics

Visuals

A visual aid is just that. It’s to aid you. It’s not the presentation. You are the presentation. You are not a human aid to the visuals. In the business world, people have learned to think through PowerPoint. The problem is that people write all their thoughts on PowerPoint and then throw them up 10 feet high or take over the whole screen on a virtual presentation. On the same note, in most business presentations you usually can’t just have a deck full of photographs.

In your daily business communications where you’re updating the vice president on your progress, do you actually need visual aids? What will your visuals emphasize? We’d rather have you outline your presentation first, before you put the PowerPoint together. Too often when people put their bullet points on a slide, they make them all sentences and expect the audience members to read them from a slide. This problem is plaguing visual aids throughout the work world.

Visuals are not just slides. They include your hands and anything you hold up, and there are three simple guidelines:

1.   Be synchronized. People shouldn’t see it until you say it. You have to say everything that’s on the slide. You’re saying right now, “Oh, no. That’s so boring.” Exactly. If it’s boring to read everything that’s on the screen, change your visual. Should your listeners be reading or listening to you? Try to read an email while someone’s talking to you. It’s not easy. When you’re out of sync, you’re making them choose. You become technically boring. Your listeners will read faster than you can talk. You’re talking about point number one, but they’ve read through number six, and now they don’t need you.

So use short bullet points—either a single word or a brief phrase. What takes longer to present, one slide with six bullet points, or six slides with one bullet point each? What’s heavier, a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers? They take the same amount of time to present, but one is synchronized and the other is not. People say, “My deck already has 73 slides. I can’t add more.” The number of slides is irrelevant. We hear terms like “death by PowerPoint” because presenters have busy slides and start talking one bullet point at a time. It becomes physically difficult for the listeners to pay attention.

Synchronization is different in virtual presentations. Don’t start with slides. If you have a title slide up while people are gathering, take it down before you begin speaking. Because the slide consumes most of the screen, people can’t appreciate your nonverbal communication. They need to experience you before a slide will be most valuable. Begin with what you are going to tell them and why it matters. Then use slides to emphasize the points you want to make. Turn off screen sharing when you aren’t using slides for a period of time because your audience needs to see you as much as possible to build a connection. Always finish with you talking without slides. The last thing you want people to remember is you delivering the clear point of the presentation.

2.   Introduction and setup. If what a slide shows is text, click the button when you get to the word. If it’s a graph, describe to your listeners what they’re about to see before you click. For example, here’s your introduction: “As we talk about the numbers from the last year, I’m going to show you a graph that maps our progress for the last four quarters.” Then you give the setup: “What I want you to look at is Q4, on the left side of the screen, which I’ve circled in red.” Then you click. The setup gives the visual specifics of what you want your listeners to look at. It guarantees that every one of them is looking at the part of the graph you want them to look at. If you don’t introduce and set up a graph or chart, they will be looking at the screen and trying to figure it out for themselves. They’ll no longer be paying attention to you.

3.   Talk and do. If you’re an architect setting up your model, a teacher writing on the board, or a minister pouring wine, your ability to talk while you do things is often the difference between visuals that work and those that distract. Don’t write on a whiteboard slowly, one letter at a time, after you tell them what you’re going to talk about. In the computer world, if you’re doing a demo, don’t sit there in silence while your computer is rebooting. Clear everything off your desktop except the application you’re using. When the computer does restart, you can then start again easily instead of having people stare at you anxiously while you look at your computer and say, “It’s here somewhere.” In the virtual world, talk as you share your screen. Radio silence disrupts appreciation of your message.

Identify Key Words or Terms

Choose the key words and terms that emphasize your point, and then reread Chapter 6 on adding color.

How Do I Calm My Nerves?

You may never overcome nervousness, but that’s okay. Nervousness is not the problem for most people. In many cases, you can use nervous energy to strengthen your delivery. You can learn to control it. What is technically referred to as the “fear of public speaking” is commonly known as one of the top three fears in the United States and is worse outside of the United States. So, if you feel nervous, know that you’re not alone.

This fear is so common because public speaking affects people differently. One speaker can stand in front of 1,000 people at a conference and feel comfortable but will feel very nervous speaking in front of the Board or giving a wedding toast. Another speaker will have a completely opposite response to the same environments.

There are two areas that you can focus on to make you feel more comfortable: the physiological and the psychological. Physically, the body is prewired to react when faced with fear. We take in air differently. We go from diaphragmatic breathing, which is used in yoga when we are in a relaxed state, talking, or singing, to upper thoracic breathing, which is how we breathe when we are running or working out. This is done to create pressure that will be released for upper body strength. Upper thoracic breathing is great when we need to punch, run, or lift, because we release that extra pressure in our movements.

When we are doing public speaking and are faced with fear, we don’t release that pressure. As a result it comes out in other ways, like shaky hands, a quivering voice, turning red, or losing our train of thought.

Here are two techniques to stop it:

1.   Learn to breath diaphragmatically. Control your breathing. Stand straight up, take a deep breath in, then, as you exhale, count out loud, saying, “1 by 1 and 2 by 2 and 3 by 3,” and so on until you reach 20. When you run out of breath, stop. The number you stopped on represents the strength of your diaphragm. When you can get to 20 comfortably, push your number to 30. Make sure to do this in front of a mirror while wearing a tight shirt. The goal is to breathe using your diaphragm, the area below your ribs that looks like your stomach when you fill it with air, and not your chest. When we work with professional athletes, they have a tough time with this because they are trained to breath upper thoracically most of the time.

2.   Focus the energy. Hold your index finger and thumb together, press as hard as you can for 10 seconds, and then let go. This creates a pressure point in your body that will redirect the nervous energy so that it goes to your fingers, instead of to your brain or red cheeks. Repeat as needed.

If you want to deal with the psychological aspect of public speaking, you have to change what you believe about speaking. There are many spectacularly goofy devices that people will offer as advice, like the famous “visualize them in their underwear.” Instead, for true and sustainable change in your nervousness, identify what you believe about that speaking situation and change it.

For instance, if you believe a deal and your livelihood is dependent on a presentation, you will feel nerves. You should feel nerves. The belief “I must win the deal or I will lose my job” has to change to “I love presenting on this topic I know so well.” Turn the false statement of the talk’s risk into a simple goal or purpose that you know you can live out. “Impress one person” or “Teach each person one new thing” are examples of goals. “Communicate value” or “Introduce a new idea” are examples of purpose. You may need to write down the new belief about what the presentation means.

Your clarity about why you are presenting is so important because this is not a theatrical approach. You are not an actor. Unless you are, in which case you should use what you’ve learned that works for you. But know that your people don’t have the kind of time needed to learn acting technique. Theatrical-based approaches for overcoming things like “stage fright” are different. An actor may be brilliant on screen but a nervous wreck at the award shows.

At work, you’re not being paid to pretend or to act like a leader. Your presentation has to be your style for a reason that is true to you. Don’t be afraid to use therapists, coaches, or trusted advisors to help. There’s rarely an over-the-weekend fix. But with time and practice, you can learn to control the anxiety. You may even find yourself looking for opportunities to speak in public.

How Innovation Begins with Presentation: Jeanette Horan

Jeanette Horan, a Board member at Wolters Kluwer NV and Nokia, was vice president of enterprise business transformation, part of IBM’s internal CIO office. She was responsible for a global transformation program for the entire company. As she described the business at the time of change:

My work was about the way IBM does business. We grew up as a hardware company, but now 50 percent of our revenue was from services and 40 percent of our profits were from software. The company was trying to go to market as a globally integrated enterprise, so we wanted common processes across the world so that we could go to market with integrated solutions of software, hardware, and services. Our internal IT systems were inhibitors to our being able to do that. It was about simplifying how we take orders, process orders, deliver products, and manage our books.

Her direct staff was less than 20, but she had 600 people working on the project. She presented to audiences around the world, from small internal groups to external audiences of five or ten thousand. She didn’t like presenting at first: “The first time I had to give a presentation, I was scared stiff, and it comes through in the way you present. Then I got to the point where I was very comfortable presenting in a relatively small setting. It came from knowing my material. I was the subject matter expert, and I was confident that I knew what I was talking about.” Now she wins awards for her large presentations.

But leaders and managers become masters in front of large audiences by giving effective presentations to a few people. Horan grew up in the United Kingdom, went to the University of London, earned a math degree, and started working in technology. She immediately ran into bad presentations. “A lot of the brilliant technical people make terrible people managers. They lack self-awareness. They don’t think about or understand how their style is perceived by others. If you have opportunities to understand how others perceive you, and you listen and take the feedback, you can modify your style in different situations. There’s no one style that is effective in every situation, so you need to think about how you can modify your style to get different results.” She took feedback and practiced. Horan said that:

I’ve always done very well in an interactive dialogue; maybe I’m giving a formal presentation, but there are questions and answers along the way. But standing up and giving a speech has been the most difficult for me, and particularly in a very, very large environment with five to ten thousand people in the room and the lights and the stage. It’s very scary because you are up there alone.

Her skill came from repetition, she said:

It’s practice. It’s getting that confidence that nothing bad is going to happen. The floor is not going to open up and swallow you. You’re not going to trip and fall. This is really like having a dialogue with someone in a smaller room, but there are 5,000 others listening. A couple of things have really helped. Knowing the subject. Knowing the audience: What is its context? Why are people listening? Knowing the setting. When I’m giving a presentation, I want to know: Where is the projector? How do I advance the charts? I want to know the physical environment so that I’m not worried about those things.

When it comes to message, it’s about focus. “What is the message in 10 words or less?” Do you know how hard it is for a lot of people to get the theme statement into 10 words or less? I had a lot of people who prepared material for me, and as we sat down, I asked, “What’s the storyboard? How does this relate to what we’re talking about?” I get very picky about the order of things because it has to fit my story. Everything is a story, and it has the theme statement, and it helps you to stay focused. There’s nothing worse than someone meandering around the subject.

IBM even uses technology to spread presentations and rate the success of a presentation, related Horan:

We were 380,000 employees. You have a global project, so how do you connect? We used podcasts. We used to use teleconferences, but the one thing you can’t control is time zones. So we would record something in a group setting, but then it gets published as a podcast so that people can listen on their own time. I knew I had an impact based on the number of emails I got. I knew I was successful based on how many teams ask me to talk to their team.

In the modern world, a great presentation can live forever and build your ethos inside and outside of your company.

How TED Tells a Story: June Cohen

TED meets each year in Monterey, California. It started in 1984 as a conference celebrating the convergence between technology, entertainment, and design. For years the conference was invitation-only, the audience was 1,000 of the smartest people in the world, and the twist was that presenters had 18 minutes each. Over time, the speakers have expanded across disciplines to include public figures like Bill Clinton, business giants like Richard Branson and Bill Gates, and scientists like Jane Goodall. One thing hasn’t changed: they each get 18 minutes. In 2020, TED talks will have been viewed online over 11 billion times, so not only are presenters in front of the world’s most impressive audience, but their talks truly become permanently accessible to the world. If you learn what TED speakers do to excel under this incredible pressure, you can master any presentation.

TED’s long-time executive producer from 2004–2015, June Cohen, explained why people are flocking to view the presentations online: “TED captures the zeitgeist of the moment. It speaks to people’s higher goals. We’re at a moment in our country and in the world when people need inspiration, a sense of optimism; they want to have a sense that there is a higher purpose that they can work toward, and TED is fueling this.”

In your organization, you will rarely give a TED talk—an inspirational, keynote-style presentation. You probably won’t tell your team a story about how you came to love computer programming as a child when you’re doing a weekly update on the bugs you need to fix in your new product. But can you make even the presentation of your weekly update to your team more significant than just giving the numbers?

What makes a TED talk great can make you a great presenter in any arena. Cohen clarified:

A great TED talk tells a story. It doesn’t just deliver facts. It is personal and a little bit vulnerable—it reveals a little something about the speaker that moves the audience. It is mind-opening, a new angle on looking at the world. It uses humor as a way to open people’s hearts and teach them things that they didn’t know. It’s bigger than it seems, and it draws on a higher purpose. Even if you’re talking about a scientific discovery or product, it has a meaning beyond the immediate topic. It’s rehearsed, but the audience doesn’t know it, and it comes in at under 18 minutes.

You can be a better presenter than you ever imagined. Cohen said:

There’s an incredible, unacknowledged power in a single person passionately conveying an idea. It’s the most ancient form of media: Someone standing up and telling you a story and either persuading you of an idea, or communicating what they’ve learned, or just inspiring you. When you’re watching a compelling speaker, it affects you, not just on an intellectual level, but on an emotional level, and I’d argue a chemical level. When you watch people watching an inspired speaker, it’s almost as if they’re in a trance; they’re almost hypnotized by her; they’re being taken on a journey.

People are doing this at work. “You can find it within some great companies,” Cohen explained. “People are hungry for the kind of inspiration they get from a leader when he stands up, tells a story, and aims to inspire, and we just don’t get enough of this in our modern lives. We don’t have a lot of opportunities to be inspired by great leaders and thinkers.”

You can prepare like you’re presenting at TED. Cohen mentioned that:

We explained to presenters that 18 minutes is exactly the right amount of time. It’s long enough to develop a point, but short enough to keep everybody involved and interested. We encouraged them to focus in on their central story. They can’t pack everything they’ve ever done into 18 minutes, and they will give a much stronger presentation once they’ve distilled it down.

On a tactical level, we encouraged them to really think about what they want people to feel, to learn, and to do. What are the “Aha!” moments they want people to have? We had them rehearse. I told this to every speaker, no matter how experienced she was. You have to make sure you can fit it into 18 minutes. Ideally, you’ll have to run through it five times with people listening or actual audiences. Even very experienced speakers prepare well ahead of time. The stakes for a TED Talk became really high. It made people crazy with nerves.

And, Cohen said, TED presenters are at risk of making the same mistakes with slides that plague presenters at work:

One of the biggest mistakes people made at TED and elsewhere was conveying too much information on the slides. Speakers used the slides as a crutch or wanted people to read them as an outline while they were talking. It was probably the number one problem we saw. Now, data-driven slides are expected in boardrooms and in scientific meetings. But the vast majority of presentations don’t require that level of detail. Persuading people isn’t about presenting them with more data, it’s about telling them a story.

How Do You Know the Format Worked?

People remember. They remember your point, your stories, or your data. If it’s the kind of presentation where you need them to act, they know what they need to do. The best presentations are not the flashiest, where you fill up all the time allotted and everyone thinks you’re a great speaker. In organizations, if you are the leader or the manager, you tailor your content to the context. You have a clear message. Whatever the goal of your presentation is, you achieve it.