Chapter 15

THE SCHOLAR

MEET THE SCHOLAR

AScholar steps onto a stage in front of a large audience. The room is quiet, waiting for her to begin. She walks to the lectern and sets down a thick pile of notes that corresponds with each slide of her presentation. Although she is not a natural performer, she has the information she needs to feel confident. Or perhaps, considering the sweat on her collar, she is just “confident-ish.”

Her presentation is data-driven and to the point. The audience listens respectfully, impressed by how much the Scholar has prepared for the event. Of course, a few audience members check their iPhones to see what’s on the menu at Panera for lunch. But in general, the presentation is delivered smoothly and without any major problems. Well researched and fully prepared—that’s the Scholarly way.

The Scholar is represented by the owl, which has always been a symbol for the wise, curious, and studious among us.

If you received the Scholar profile, it indicates that you tend to put in the extra research and time to make your presentations powerful. Your content also benefits from the knowledge you have gathered over the years. You are an intellectual speaker who knows what you are talking about. Messages you deliver also have staying power, especially when they are paired with statements, numbers, or facts that inspire awe.

Scholars have the ability to make an unexpectedly strong pitch as long as they are able to organize their excess and direct the presentation to a singular call to action or final point. The word edit should be your nearest and dearest friend as you revise notes or content on your slides. The more you cut, the more you’ll be able to cut to the chase during your talk.

However, Scholars are not without their weaknesses. All of the facts and stats in the world can’t spare you from delivering a dull performance or being unpersuasive if you aren’t cautious. Avoid data dumps at all costs. They may leave your audience impressed with your Excel chart abilities and little else. You also should be wary of coming across as uninvested or even uninterested in your message, both of which you can avoid with the use of storytelling, emotion, or just a pinch of delivery flair.

When done correctly, being a Scholar positions you as a uniquely authoritative figure. The following is geared to help you overcome common challenges for your persona. You should note that every Scholar will be slightly different, and some of these messages may hit home while others may not. The goal is simply to break you out of your well-researched, studious little shell. The result? A whip smart presenter with the ability to drop numbers, when appropriate, to support his or her message. We believe in you.

HOW YOU SCORED

So how did you score the Scholar? These results were calculated using our four-quadrant algorithm in which anything on the outside corner of the specific quadrant is considered high and anything near the main intersection is considered mid-low (Figure 15.1). Here is a simple rundown of your placement in each quadrant and how we arrived at your profile:

Figure 15.1 The Scholar

EXPLORATION

You scored high in this area, as most Scholars tend to put a hefty amount of work into their exploration of a subject. They crunch numbers, cite sources, and make sure that they are well rehearsed beforehand. They also have a tendency to create multiple drafts of their presentation storyboard, although design does not take center stage in their preparation.

SHARING

Most Scholars tend to be humble about this experience or downright nervous the entire time. You scored much lower in this quadrant than you did in Exploration, which could be due to a number of factors. Nervousness, inexperience, and natural comfort onstage all play a role in this category. Scholars need a lot of work in this area, and most likely already know it.

RESPONSE

Scholars tend to do a good to sometimes just-OK job in this area. They may mingle with the crowd and answer a few spontaneous questions, but they don’t often have an extensive plan for follow-up after the talk. Most are just happy it’s over. However, it’s important to improve in this area: networking can strengthen a message, and Q&A sessions will please extroverts, who make up most of your crowd.

DURABILITY

Because you put so much work into your research, your messages tend to have longevity and relevance for the future. People will remember and pay attention to what you said long after the presentation was delivered. A long-term reward is often the fruit of early labor in the preparation stage. Both these strengths create aha moments for your audience that lasts long after the talk is over.

SPOTTING A SCHOLAR IN THE WILD

Meet Jenny, a number cruncher at a huge corporation that produces expensive headphones. She was given the task to deliver an annual “how are we doing” presentation with her findings for the year. Because she’s worked at the company for five years now, she plans to use her go-to approach of charts, graphs, and stats.

But here’s the thing: this year, she knows that the numbers indicate that a certain line of headphones should be cut from production. Jenny feels that all of the proof is there and that the numbers on her slides will point the audience in the right direction. To back up her point, she ensures that each slide is crammed with information about that particular headphone line.

Jenny has the right intentions and is correct in thinking that her higher-ups will want proof about this new information. But her approach is wrong. Data isn’t going to jump off the slide and slap her audience in the face. It’s her job to do that with a presentation delivery or design that works in tandem with her message.

This is a classic Scholar move: to put everything on a slide, stand back, and say, “Look at this,” expecting the audience to be convinced. While some members of the audience may take the time to read through a slide and catch her meaning, most will need a little more explanation to understand the information fully.

The best way she could improve her presentation would be to be clear about her primary point, that a line of headphones should be cut. That fact alone could (and should!) take up its own slide to be placed at the beginning and end of the presentation and perhaps even mentioned again in the middle. It doesn’t mean she has to eliminate stats, but the stats should always act in a supporting role to the main purpose.

Jenny needs to make it short and sweet. She has all of the information she needs to convince her audience, which for many other personalities is the most difficult first step.

A Scholar with a clear goal and the right data can be unstoppable. If Jenny heeds our advice in this situation, she will probably surprise higher- ups with a change in pacing, and she will probably get them to pay attention. She will also accomplish her most important goal, which is to call attention to a specific data anomaly that will lead to companywide change. And she will retain her thorough, well-backed style. That’s how an ideal Scholar works.

YOUR NATURAL HABITAT

Scholars prefer to speak in front of people who are already interested and willing to learn something new, such as in a classroom type of environment. The size of the audience doesn’t matter because interaction is a low priority.

While you may be anxious about public speaking, it will be counterbalanced by the fact that you want a large number of people to be exposed to new concepts and innovative ideas. You would feel satisfied if the audience was able to share the way you felt about the topic or if they walked away with a working knowledge of the main points. We call this “closing the knowledge gap,” which describes the space between “I don’t know anything about this topic” and “I feel interested and motivated about this topic.” In short, your ideal natural habitat would be on the TED stage or a similar large-scale educational venue.

BRAWN (STRENGTHS)

Detail oriented

Factual

Curious

Many other presenters tend to halfheartedly do their research, gather facts, or make sure their claims are credible, but not you. You are more than willing to put in the extra work to make your speech accurate and thorough, no matter the topic. For you, detail-oriented work and passion go hand-in-hand. This puts you at a large advantage with content that stands on its own without any “flashiness” required to cover flaws in logic or flow.

Well-backed points also hold up the most strongly against critique, and you will be ready to face any question that a Q&A can throw at you. Use this to your advantage and keep an arsenal of information nearby that doesn’t appear in your presentation but can live in speaker’s notes. The audience doesn’t always need to see your winning hand, and luckily for Scholars, an ace is always handy in the form of great research.

TRAPS (WEAKNESSES)

Unemotional

Not persuasive

Boring

The facts and stats will naturally be there to support your message, but Scholars can struggle with bringing emotion to the stage. A lack of stories, using little persuasiveness, or simply not being relatable can hurt a presenter who sometimes values being correct more than sharing something meaningful.

The problem is not your intent or even your own ability. Most often, Scholars are simply including too much information in their presentations. Audiences can only remember so much. If you really feel drawn to giving them a car owner’s manual of data, consider using a takeaway document that you can hand out afterward. Otherwise, let your data home in on specific points that support your argument without weighing down your talk.

YOUR NATURAL ALLY

Want to learn how to spice up your Sharing and increase your Response? Take lessons from Activators (Chapter 2) and improve your skills while helping them strengthen theirs.

YOUR PREY

Students, armchair learners, and people who are generally curious will be enthusiastic about your message and eager to examine the data for themselves later. You can lure these learners to your presentation by creating promotional materials that boldly advertise, “Lessons will be taught here!” Even though we advocate simplicity and respecting your audience’s memory space, there will always be those in the audience who love to be dazzled by facts and figures. You have a natural foothold with these lifelong learners: use that to your advantage to attract as many as you can to your next speech.

YOUR PREDATORS

Audience members who are Performers or Activators expect to be energized by other storytellers like themselves when they walk into the room, and they are at risk of falling asleep during your talk. It’s just a fact that not everyone will enjoy your facts. Work toward creating an emotional connection with your audience alongside the compelling, stat-heavy, chart-filled presentation to appeal to a broad range of personalities.

FIVE DOS AND DON’TS

DOS

1.   Be mindful of the fact that presentations exist to persuade. Even if you want to educate your audience about a topic, you also should be persuading them to take on a new perspective or gain a new frame of mind.

2.   Inject some emotion into your talk by sharing a relevant story about yourself. Consider answering these unspoken questions to prepare: Why are you onstage today? What makes this message dear to your heart? How did you come up with this idea?

3.   Make your presentation more engaging by including an interesting handout, prop, or some uniquely designed slides to wow the audience during your speech.

4.   Smile, move around the entire stage, make eye contact with your audience, and use hand gestures to keep from coming across as robotic. Remember, it’s not just a lecture. You are selling yourself on that stage.

5.   You work hard on organizing your presentation and supporting your main points with credible data. Try spending an equal amount of energy on rehearsing your delivery to engage your audience.

DON’TS

1.   Don’t be a reactive presenter. Think outside the box. Try to deliver a kind of presentation that you’ve never seen before.

2.   Don’t drown your talk with data, facts, and stats. Each main point needs a supporting point but often no more than that. Audiences tend not to remember more than three points, so cater to their poor memory and spend more time talking about high-level concepts than nitty-gritty percentages and charts.

3.   Don’t neglect to use high-quality photographs and other visual aids on your slides. Charts and bullet points alone will put your audience to sleep.

4.   Don’t include more than three important takeaways for your audience to remember after the talk. Trust us, they won’t remember any more than three.

5.   Even if your presentation is meant primarily to be educational, don’t leave out a call to action at the end. Give your audience such an exciting rallying cry that they jump out of their chairs to accomplish it when the talk is finished.

THE IDEAL SCHOLAR

There is no such thing as a bad persona. There are only areas to improve on within your range of strengths and weaknesses. With that in mind, what do ideal Scholars look like?

1.   They are capable of using the right data at the right time. They know how to present the information beautifully in a way that captivates and supports their main points rather than overwhelming their audience.

2.   They move past their belief that research alone is enough to prepare for a presentation, and they are able to enhance their delivery with more personal touches to become more engaging presenters.

3.   They gives their audience a compelling call to action by building up all of their information to support a final argument.

Let’s look back at Jenny, the data-loving employee who is going to present in front of her higher-ups. When she follows these tips, here’s how her revised presentation goes:

1.   She works to make her message more engaging by relying on talking points that support the information rather than a lot of text on the slides.

2.   She starts with the most crucial point, showing the necessary information in bold text on one of the first slides. This makes it clear to her audience that while a summary of the fiscal year is important, it has also revealed something more important that needs to be changed.

3.   She creates a final slide that conveys her suggestion to the higher-ups in light of the information presented. In this case, the words on the slide will simply say, “We need to cut production of Headphone X.”

The result? Her bosses are convinced, impressed, and ready to take the necessary steps to follow her advice. Scholars can easily sell their audience on an idea or change minds as long as they are willing to make the data work for them, not against them.

Changing your perspective is how you are going to evolve from being a mere barn owl to becoming a fearsome bird of prey. Now, get out there and be the best Scholar you can be.