Episode #356: Go Bigger When Presenting

I was held up at the hospital, which those who live in Tokyo will know, is a typical occurrence, so I was late to the presentation. One of the speakers had just started, as I slid into my seat at the back. The screen was hard to read, because the scale of the content was small. The presenter was speaking in a voice range which was probably fine for those seated at the most proximate tables, but was hard to catch at the back of the room. I missed the very start, but I could tell the speakers hadn’t tested the audio or the screen for visibility when they were doing their set up. They just turned up and turned things on and away they went. Not a great idea for presenters.

I always recommend to get there early and check for sight lines, audio quality and screen accessibility. When we are using a screen or a monitor, we have to be careful where we stand, because we can be cutting people out, if they are seated in a spot where we are blocking their sight access to the screen. We need to know where these invisible boundaries are before we get going. That is a simple task. We just go and sit on those chairs and see where the boundary will be for us, when we are standing and presenting. The same with the size of the fonts and diagrams. Go to the extreme corners and rear of the seating area and see how clearly those audience members will be able to see what we are presenting on screen. In this case, there were a lot of small drawings and diagrams and at the back of the venue, they were hard to see.

The audio is another key point. Speakers are not sound engineers, but they can have the tech team help them to get the volumes right. In this case, the volumes were too low for the size of the room. If they had checked it when they arrived, which I doubt, the room would have been empty. We need to allow for the host of bodies in the room, which will weaken the spread of the audio, once the audience has filed in. The volume control needs to allow for that and to be set a little higher than normal. This is another reason why professional speakers always repeat the questions they receive from the audience, if there are no microphones being employed. The speaker may be able to hear the question, but other members of the audience will have trouble catching what was being asked. In this case, there were hand microphones for the questioners, so everyone could easily hear the questions.

The other issue was the size of the presentation. By this, I mean how big were the speakers going with their voices, energy and gestures. There were two speakers and in both cases they were very contained. For those seated at the front, it was probably fine, but quite a different experience for those seated at the back. We have to remember the importance of having “speaker presence” and adjust ourselves to go bigger when presenting. This is why sitting in the extreme distance seats at the start, before the audience arrives, is so insightful. You realise that you are much smaller on stage, for those at the rear, than you imagined.

Getting the voice strength up is important, but often speakers cannot gauge how much stronger they need to be. They somehow imagine that a normal chatting voice volume can be applied, when they are the presenter. As presenters, we want to be conversational, but we shouldn’t misunderstand what that means. We should be relaxed, but louder than in normal conversation. For those seated down the back, we need more energy from the speaker, in order to be able to connect with them. We buy energy, passion, confidence, commitment and the voice is a major tool to project all of those things. We don’t have to be shouting, but we do have to be projecting our energy to the far reaches of the room.

Gestures need to become bigger. They don’t have to be too exaggerated and massive, but they do have to become bigger. One exception though, is that if you are ever presenting in a 5000 seat venue, then your gestures really have to be ramped up. On stage, you are a peanut in size and it is super hard to connect with the people in cheap seats, right down the back. Even if the venue isn’t that mighty, we still need to be conscious that we have to up our gesture game, to accommodate the audience members at the back. We cannot be only presenting to those seated up the front.

The output level of these speakers was at about the 75% range. They clearly needed to do more to reach all of the people in the room. If they had these thoughts in mind, when they arrived at the venue, then they would have made the necessary adjustments. Like a lot of speakers though, they got there, made sure the slides were working and that was the end of it. Just a little more attention to the venue considerations and the audience positioning and things would have been a lot better.