For all Expats and Dutch Professionals: Let your presentation run like clockwork! Summer school.

“Oiling the cogs, so that they work smoothly together”. This is in essence what I do as a presentation skills trainer for highly educated Expats and Dutch professionals.

If they all work smoothly together, the clock strikes. Deep and clear. You feel euphoric because you feel you’ve nailed your talk. You are in flow. You have impact.

So, what can be the rust in these 3 most important cogs for highly educated professionals, that can keep their presentation clocks from striking?
What makes these cogs run rough?
And what is to be done to oil them?

Let us have a look.

The first cog, logos (content, structure, argumentation), gets rusty, because highly educated professionals tend to:

Fit a big elephant (too much information) into a tiny box (presentation).
Focus on being complete with information and “not forgetting something”, instead of focusing on how do I bring the information across for my audience?
Immediately jump into the content without giving the audience context, or background.
Forget to put themselves in their audience footsteps.

The knowledge is there, but to make the cog smooth, is knowing what the audience needs from you as a speaker for the information to get to the other side and sink in. Having this knowledge and applying it, will already help you a great deal and will also help you to oil the second cog. Pathos.

Pathos literally means can the information “touch” the audience. Or, in other words, can it come near. For the information to come near, it is important to appeal to the senses of your audience. So, the audience, will not only hear it, but also feel and see it.

Giving more story (read background, examples), will already help (logos).

The pitfalls with Pathos for highly educated professionals are:

Too much text on slides. Forgetting to visualize your content.
Information is too dry or vague. Concrete examples lack.
The information is too abstract and general, thereby staying far away for the audience. Instead of making the information concrete, so that it can come near. A great way to appeal to the senses of your audience is including a metaphor. In a few seconds, the audience “gets” it.
The Why is not clear. The problem is not described, so the audience cannot feel, why it is important. Or the audience does not understand what will be gained and cannot feel the desire.

If pathos is oiled. The third and final cog will already automatically improve. For ethos is literally “the character of the speaker”. Or how do you bring the information across.

The pitfalls for highly educated professionals in this area are:

Talking too quickly.
Not giving the audience time to digest the information.
Not being really “present”, when presenting.
More telling from the head, than sharing. Telling is being preoccupied with the content instead of focusing on sharing. Sharing is talking from a place: I want YOU the audience to get it, in connection with audience rather than being on an island only connected to your knowledge.

Do you recognize yourself in any of these pitfalls as highly educated professional?

PS: if you do recognize any of these pitfalls, good for you. It is a sign that you are knowledgeable and intelligent ;-). (More on that in the next blog).

Do you, however, want to learn how to make your clock chime, so that your knowledge gets to the other side?
Want to have a good presentation in your pocket for a presentation you have in store after the summer?
Or Finally tackle these presentation nerves that keep bothering you and keep you from attaining more in your work and becoming more visible?

Summertime is the best time to zoom in and give them a good run through.

Apply for Summerschool: and let your presentation run like clockwork!