Business Presentation Skills – How to Bring Your Data to Life With a Story
by Stuart P. Corrigan
We don’t often think that giving a presentation is public speaking, but it is. When we seek to improve public speaking, we’ll improve our presentation skills. Stuart Corrigan offers a very useful suggestion for public speaking presentations.
It’s become cliché to be told that we don’t make decisions on data alone; emotion plays a large part too. If that’s true it raises a question “how in a business presentation, using data and analysis, do you get your audience emotionally involved?” The answer is to use a story.
Last December I was working with a government department providing advice on how to resurface roads faster and with less irritation for road users and homeowners. In conjunction with a team of the agency’s staff we gathered data that showed that roads took too long to be repaired, and caused considerable hassle to those using and living near to the road.
We had data on exactly how long it took to repair the road, the number of roads that were under repair, those running late, and the number of uncompleted tasks e.g. replacing signs associated with each job. The senior management looked disinterested, “tell us something we don’t know” they said. So I did. I told them this story.
During the analysis we got a call from an upset mother. Her son was disabled, and she needed a marked parking space outside her home. The road had been refurbished two years before but she was still waiting to have the parking space re-drawn outside her home. She went on to explain that not having a designated space meant considerable problems for both her and her son in terms of getting access to the vehicle. That story was the tipping point. Suddenly the data had become real and the senior team bought into the much needed change.
So here’s how to tell embed a story within your data.
1. Make the point e.g. “Your roads take too long to complete.”
2. Share the data e.g. “Last year every road refurbishment ran late by around 250 days.”
3. Embed the story e.g. “Here’s how that data affects real people…”
4. Make a call to action e.g. “We need to change our project management methods”
5. Tell them what to do differently e.g. “What I’d recommend instead is…”
6. Explain the benefits e.g. “If you accept my recommendations what you will get is…”
Just because your presentation includes data, technical information or analysis does not mean that it must lack emotion and excitement. Combining stories with data can make presentations come to life, change attitudes, and deeply rooted opinions. And every so often it can helps you do something so powerful that it changes lives, like getting a much needed parking space for a disabled child.
If you’d like to learn more about how to structure presentations that contain data, analysis or technical information get the first four steps of Stuart Corrigan’s system free here: First Four Steps.
Stuart Corrigan is the Managing Director of Vanguard (Scotland) Ltd, a consultancy firm specialising in change mangement and service improvement.
Article Source: EzineArticles
