Episode #304: The First Five Minutes Of Your Presentation

How do we want to be perceived when we give our talk? What constitutes the personal and professional brand we are creating? How can we master the first impression? Often we are not thinking about these things at all. We are too busy piecing together the slide deck puzzle we will use during the presentation. Perception, personal brand, first impressions are a thousand miles away thoughts, as we tinker with the visuals. What a big mistake.

Whether we like it or not, the audience will form an impression of us, they will perceive something about us as a presenter and they will make a judgement about our brand – for good or bad. Given all of this is going to happen anyway, we should make a decision on all three fronts and determine the outcomes we want, rather than leaving it to chance or random luck.

Planning the talk is important, although for a lot of presenters that stops at the complexity level of the decisions about the order of the slides and not much more. We should start our planning with the outcome in mind. How do we want to be perceived? Take a moment and start writing down the type of perceptions you want to enjoy after the talk. It will probably be an easy list to assemble – “I want to be seen as professional, competent, clear, engaging, interesting, knowledgeable, etc.” Now make a new list about what constitutes your personal brand.

In my case, it means how I dress, because that is often the trigger for those all important silent first perceptions about who I am. So it is always an expensive Italian suit, usually Zegna and always worn with the top jacket button done up. It means French Cuff shirts, so that I can wear cufflinks, it means a pocket chief to be an accent to the silk tie. The Italian leather shoes often have a brogue pattern and the shine should always be mirror like. The hair always trimmed and neat.

Basically, I am trying to convey that what we do is deliver quality solutions. We do this with great attention to detail and we are reliable and by just looking at me, you can see that is true. If I turn up dishevelled, everything a complete mess, then the audience may draw the conclusion I or my organisation cannot be trusted with their business. Boris Johnson was able to pull off total dishevelment and still become the UK PM, but I lack his wit, charm, erudition and vocabulary.

First impressions also means how I come across. For me this usually means lots of energy and dynamism. It means using a lot of eye contact with the audience and trying to meet as many people as possible, before I give the actual talk, to create that personal connection. It means getting there early and checking the name badges or the attendee list, to recall any of those pesky names of faces that I have met previously and to look for people I want to meet. Like most people, name remembering is a struggle, so a bit of early arrival name badge checking goes a long way to remedy that character flaw.

In my case with regard to perceptions and brand, I want to come across as dynamic and powerful, so the very start of the talk is critical to deliver that impression. When my name is called, I move quickly and confidently to the middle of the stage and do not spend even one second finessing the laptop to get the slides up. I leave that to others to take care of, so that I can take care of my audience and get proceedings underway immediately and start delivering value. I am already set up with a lavalier microphone. This allows me to free up my hands for gestures when I need them to come forth to accentuate a point I am making. We only have a few seconds available to cement that first impression and wasting it on playing around with the equipment is a big fail. There are many ways to open a speech and I will have chosen one suitable for thAT particular audience in attendance on that day.

Now it is quite possible that your audience may require an entirely different persona as a speaker. It may require a very soft, calm, quiet approach, taking a lot of the energy down a few levels and dropping the decibel level of the voice projection as well. The stage entry might need to be slower and more deliberate, calmer and more considered. If that is the case, then I switch gears and deliver accordingly. For example, if the audience were in their teens or in their eighties, we would think about what would resonate best with them and then adjust our approach accordingly. It makes sense doesn’t it.

However, is this a fake presentation and are we fraudsters, if we switch gears like this? No, but it is a calculation of how to match the needs of the audience, rather than satisfying our own needs. This delivery may need less dynamism, volume and gestures and more pauses for reflection. Is this still within my brand guidelines? Yes, it is, because I choose it to be a broad tent, to accommodate my brand. The dress part may not change all that much, except perhaps the intensity of the tie and pocket chief combination, but everything else remains pretty much the same.

The key point is to consider how you need to arrange your brand and your first five minutes for that particular audience. If you give the presentations only as you like to give them, then that will work with a certain proportion of the audience who are more like you. It will however fail to resonate with a large swathe of the audience who you still want to reach with your message. The planning is the key to get this right. Thinking about who you are speaking to, what initial impression you want to form, how you want to be perceived and what is the personal brand you are projecting, are all key elements of that planning process. This shouldn't happen by chance, it should be a product of your design.