CHAPTER 17

Leveraging Team Presentations

Getting the players is easy. Getting them to play together is the hard part.

— CASEY STENGEL

Thirty years ago, how many news anchors usually delivered the news? Write your answer here:______

Now, in any city in the world today, on any television station, when you turn on the news, how many people are delivering the news? Write your answer here:_____

Why did the industry change? Why did it go from one anchor to a team?

Write your opinion here:

One of the key people collaborating on this book, Robin Wallace, who also writes for one of the cable news networks, understands better than I do what news producers figured out a while ago: having multiple people cohost the program broadened the audience appeal of the broadcast. A viewer who didn’t care for one anchor might tune in because he liked the other; the coanchors and the other members of the on-air team interact with one another on camera, infusing the broadcast with energy and entertainment, and creating a much more dynamic newscast.

Today, the evening news is delivered by an entire team. It doesn’t matter what station you watch. There are a man and a woman, maybe a wacky weather person, and a sports personality.

Team presentations are a growing trend in your sector, too. When done well, the team approach can be extremely effective and can achieve better results than a one-person show. Teams create energy, bring some entertainment to the proceedings, and keep filters down. Team presentations and audience involvement are growing trends because audiences respond to them.

Many of the techniques for individual presentations that we have learned so far can and should be employed by a team for the same reasons, and to accomplish the same objectives. From voice modulation, to audience involvement, to strong language and powerful openings, the techniques that are effective for an individual are also effective for a team. The first step in planning a team presentation is determining whether an individual or a group approach is the best strategy for the presentation.

The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.

— PHIL JACKSON

Team presentations are usually the best option when no one person has the knowledge and the expertise necessary to give the entire presentation. For example, if your company is rolling out a new software application, you may want to have someone from engineering discuss the amazing technology behind the application and how it works, and someone from marketing lay out the research and data showing which segment of the population is the best target market for the product. Then, someone from sales could go over the strategy for reaching that ideal target market. The most important factor in putting together a team presentation is to make sure that everyone on the team has a role. Not everyone on the team will necessarily be required to speak or will have an equally important role, but each should have a clear function.

Let’s look at how some of our core techniques apply to team presentations.

Eliminate Weak Language

“Okay, now I am going to hand off to my colleague, Joe,” or, “Thank you for the hands off, Trista.”

These are examples of weak language, team versions of the individual “Today I am going to talk about …” theme song opening that we want to avoid. Team presentations need strong transitions, which can be achieved using any of the techniques we have learned so far. It is not necessary to formally introduce your colleague, or to tell the audience that you are about to “hand off.” Close your part of the presentation strongly, with an action closing, just as you would if you were a solo presenter. The team member who follows you should be prepared with her own strong opening.

Be Creative

Team presentations allow you to expand upon your creativity exponentially. For example, you can position the members of your team at different points in the room, pass around props, act out demonstrations, and role-play. One of the best ways to grow people in sales, or in almost any area, is to engage them in simple role-playing exercises in which they are able to view a situation from different perspectives and improve how they handle both opportunities and challenges. The possibilities are endless.

Chemistry Matters

Let’s tune in to our favorite news program. Is it NBC or FOX? CNN or MSNBC? Each of these news outlets has its own distinctive, signature style, and we could discuss these differences at length. But they all have something very much in common as well: the chemistry among the members of their news teams. We see team members listening attentively to one another’s reports, laughing together, commending and thanking one another for a job well done. They appear to be one big, happy family, and our mirror neurons respond to that chemistry. We feel like we’re part of the family as well.

We have all seen programs and presentations in which team members or panels seem to be in conflict with one another, or where the chemistry is off or wrong. The audience will mirror that tension and awkwardness, and become alienated by the bad chemistry. The lesson: support your teammates during group presentations.

Recognize the Audience as a Member of Your Team

When a team has worked together to create a group presentation, its members can often get so caught up in what they have decided to cover that they forget about their audience. The presentation becomes more about the team, and not enough about the audience. The audience cares about its own agenda, not yours. All of the same rules for lowering filters, connecting with your audience, getting over yourself, and remembering that it’s all about the audience apply to team presentations.

There are no more individual presentations for you guys. For the rest of your life, think of every presentation as a team presentation. Even if it’s just you on stage in front of a thousand people. All of those people are on your team if you start to imagine them that way.

Body Language

Let’s say that you are giving your part of a team presentation. While you are speaking, one of your team members standing behind you is looking at his watch, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and glancing out the window or up at the ceiling. His body language is undermining what you are saying to the audience. Because body language is such a powerful element of communication, we are always sending messages with our gestures, movements, and facial expressions.

During training sessions, when we videotape students practicing a given technique, the tapes of the team training sessions usually catch people drifting off while another member of their team is speaking. What would happen if, during a team presentation, all three members of your team began to speak at the same time, with each person telling the audience something entirely different? This is exactly what happens when one person is communicating with the audience with words and the other members of the team are communicating through body language. Everyone is speaking to the audience at the same time. If the audience is getting a cacophony of messages, it will raise its filters against the noise.

Your body language should strengthen your colleague’s message. When a member of your team is speaking, you should be looking directly at him, sending him positive energy.

During our in-person coaching sessions, the video never lies:

Through his body language, President Clinton strengthened and supported her message, letting the audience members know that it was worthy of their undivided attention. Had he seemed distracted, the world would have gotten a very different message.

When you are part of a team presentation, you have several options when your colleagues are speaking:

You can face them and give them support with your body language.

You can study the room and read the audience, assessing who is engaged and thinking up options to engage the others.

You can echo what your colleague is saying to the audience by writing key points on a whiteboard or flipchart while she is speaking. (Make sure the speaker finds this helpful first.)

You can set up for the next piece in the presentation, but be sure you do not create a distraction by doing so. If you have to write out a sign or prepare a video camera, do it in the back of the room or offstage.

Identify One Person to Take Charge

Choose one team member to play the role of stage manager. This person will keep the presentation running smoothly and be empowered to make decisions on the spot, if that becomes necessary. You do not want your team holding a debate before your audience (unless that was part of the plan). When a matter must be decided instantly, defer to the person in charge. He can pass the decision back to others as needed.

Build on One Another’s Strengths

Successful team presentations require chemistry among the team members, firmness on the goal of the presentation, and flexibility on the strategy for reaching that goal. If the team members are not “clicking” with one another, you may want to reconsider the plan. Team members should complement one another in terms of personality, knowledge, and talent.

Firmness in goal, but flexibility of strategy, is a key concept that we teach in our executive training and management courses—and one that we will examine in depth in a later chapter in this book on managing meetings—but it also applies to public speaking when the presentation involves a team approach. The goal of the presentation must be firm. Are you introducing a new product? Outlining a problem with a client? You must know what your goal is and what you want to accomplish, and be firm on this point.

How to achieve that goal—the strategy—requires flexibility. Perhaps one team member thinks the group should act out a commercial, while another favors a more traditional approach. One may want to open with a body poll, while another wants to stun the audience with a startling statistic. These are all strategies for the presentation, and team members should be open to one another’s ideas. This is where teams need flexibility.

Let the spotlight shine, in some capacity, on all the team members. It will give each of them more credit and credibility, which will resonate with the audience. Audience members will be impressed with the fact that your company or organization has a deep bench of talent and expertise working on the job.

Don’t Overplan Before Your First Dry Run

When you are planning your presentations, instead of spending an hour planning, then doing a quick run-through before you go live, spend a half hour planning and more time practicing. During these dry runs, be open to the fact that your presentation won’t be perfect, and allow yourself to laugh at your mistakes. Then, do more planning and more practice. The purpose of the practice run is not just to determine the length of the presentation; it’s a time to identify weaknesses and make necessary modifications. Ask one another, “Did that sound boring? Did we involve the audience at all? If we were the audience, what would we be feeling? How do we reach those extra three centimeters?”

You want to practice, refine, modify, and polish, but you do not want to become overly attached to your plan. In the history of all team presentations, not one has yet gone completely according to plan, and that’s okay. Your audience does not know what your plan was, or what was supposed to happen, so it won’t know that something is going wrong. However, if you become flustered or upset or thrown off because the presentation is not going as planned, your audience will pick up on that.

SUMMARY

Team presentations are usually the best option when no one person has the knowledge and expertise necessary for the entire presentation.

Group presentations can make for more dynamic, entertaining, and creative presentations.

Teams can often get so caught up in their presentations that they forget about the audience. All of the rules about focusing on your audience still apply.

The audience involvement techniques that are effective in individual presentations are equally effective in team presentations.

Spend less time planning and more time practicing.

Practice

For your next presentation, try the team approach. Recruit some of your colleagues to play a role or to contribute their expertise. Junior colleagues are likely to jump at the chance to participate in a team presentation with you.