As businesspeople, we don’t get that many chances to face a public audience and give an actual talk. The majority of the time, we are giving internal weekly reports on projects or revenues. We feel constrained to deliver in the same way everyone else is delivering – monotone, lifeless, dull accounting of the progress or non-progress of our section. We fear if we start ramping up we will be disparaged as an idiot, so we keep the lid on what we are doing. Going full Hamlet on the project update will certainly draw some negative criticism from our bosses, who will quickly tell us to stop clowning around and get back to the usual methodology. Are we doomed to stay in first gear as presenters for eternity?
Probably. Work reporting has a certain format and level of expectation which is it should be hum drum and ordinary, not melodramatic or dynamic. What can we do though within that frame to work on our skills? Firstly, we need to re-set our habits. We need to develop a work rhythm presentation which won’t get us called in to the boss’s office for a dressing down, but which also allows us to work on some of the basic skills.
Planning the report needs a makeover. Usually the planning component is pretty marginal. Instead let’s think about what is the key insight from the numbers or the project progress or lack thereof. What is the message we want to convey? Once we determine that, then we start to build the framework for the delivery. Usually we are one of a number of people presenting and the rest of the troops will be doing a sterling job to put everyone to sleep with their efforts. That means we need to plan our opening of our report in a way which will grab attention but without being too over the top. If we start with the equivalent of “the sky is falling” that will get flagged immediately by the boss as negativity, seeding panic and will warrant a powerful scolding about our negative impact on the team spirit.
So we are looking for a start which is less powerful, but powerful enough. For example, we could say, “We had some surprises this week”. Those surprises could be positive or negative, but that simple statement will get everyone wondering, “Oh, yeah – what surprises?” and we will have achieved our aim to grab everyone’s attention. We are basically practicing the dark art of creating newspaper headlines. The start should be short, sharp and attention grabbing. We are trying to work a pattern interrupt into our headline, to break though the mental barriers in the room.
When we get into the main report it is a good idea to frame the key points. We could say, “We had some surprises this week. Let me go through the three things which were unexpected”. Now we have set up a simple navigation process to allow our audience to follow our report. We could have said, “We had some surprises this week. I will go through the macro and micro factors behind these”. Now we have framed two chapters of the report, making it easy to follow. Another approach could be using time. “We had some surprises this week. Let me go through the lead up, where we are now and what we can expect next”. We can now cover the past, the present and the future in three chapters and this is simple to follow.
Our final message needs to be clear. It may just be a simple summary of the key points, a call to action, a recommendation, a warning, or a rallying call for support from other teams. Our report may be only five to ten minutes long, but it gives enough scope to apply these frames to the talk and mimics exactly what we do in a forty minute public speech. We get to apply the formula we need, even if only on a smaller scale. We need to be using our voice to highlight key words and phrases, our gestures to accent data or insights and our eye power to connect with everyone in the room. There is no reason why we shouldn’t be doing this every time because this is what makes for effective communication.
If we do draw some negative comments take a long hard look at the perpetrator. Are they skilled in communication and presenting? If they aren’t, then just ignore them. What if it is the boss? We should always keep a professional tone, no going over the top, but keep going, because often the boss cannot present to save their own life and are no model for us. Just tell them you are taking these weekly reporting opportunities to develop your communication abilities. If you are not leeching into thespian antics, then there should no basis to be reining you in.
Another area where we can excel is in using our slide information. I say this because everyone else will be making all the usual mistakes of cramming everything on to one slide, having too many fonts and too much data which simply cannot be read. If we are using spreadsheets, then distributing copies to everyone beforehand is a better idea than putting up columns of numbers no one can understand. If we are paperless, we can still show the spreadsheet. Usually there are only a few numbers to highlight, so we should concentrate on those. The spreadsheet becomes wallpaper and we use animated popups to highlight a specific number in very large font. We can then talk to that number. We keep repeating this process for the specific numbers we need to talk about and there usually aren’t too many of those in a short report.
Graphs are a good way to show numbers. We need to recall the golden rule of a slide has to be fully understood within two seconds of it going up. The key is to avoid having more than one graph per slide if possible or a maximum of two slides, if a comparison is required. Line graphs are good to show trends and pie charts are great to show proportions. Try to keep the animation to a minimum, because it just distracts from the key message.
Our thinking changes to “I am giving a five minute or ten minute segment of a forty minute speech and I will prepare accordingly”. This way our frame of reference is always the full professional presentation rather than the sad excuse which most people deliver. In this way, we are able to practice our skills within the realm of weekly reporting reality.
