Ed Batista

Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good People

Why do so many well-meaning people give such bad presentations?  Last year Andy Goodman and Cause Communications sought to answer that question in Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes, an outstanding book that I can't recommend highly enough.  (Ironically, I've been involved in planning a series of presentations this year, but I only just rediscovered Goodman's book because my wife and I are moving to a new apartment and sifting through all our belongings. Timing really is everything.)  The title's emphasis on good "causes" stems from Goodman's work in the nonprofit sector, but his conclusions are broadly applicable in any industry.

Goodman's perspective is similar to Seth Godin's Really Bad PowerPoint, but he dramatically expands the scope of his critique with the help of data generated by 2,501 respondents to a 43-question online survey in Q1 2005.  Here are Goodman's "Fatal Five," common problems that can derail a presentation, with comments from survey respondents:

1. Reading the slides. ("Watching someone read PowerPoint slides is a form of torture that should be banned under the Geneva Convention.")
2. Too long, too much information. ("Too many slides with too many words, too many points, too much data, too long, too didactic.")
3. Lack of interaction. ("Presenters have a responsibility to mine [their audience's life and work experience], direct it, and facilitate the economical sharing of that information among the group.")
4. Lifeless presenters. ("Even if I'm interested in the topic...if the speaker is boring, I'm easily distracted by other goings-on in the room like someone's cool shoes or outfit.")
5. Room/technical problems. ("The frequency with which respondents mentioned these kinds of problems suggests that...presenters often do not anticipate them or fail to have a backup plan.")

But Goodman's respondents didn't just complain about bad presentations--they also told him what factors contribute to an excellent presentation.  Their "Three Most Wanted" list:

1. Interaction. ("Interactive presentations that create opportunities for the audience members to work together and with the presenter are almost always top notch.")
2. Clarity. ("Clarity of three to four well-framed key points the speaker wanted the audience to take away, coupled with smart use of metaphors/anecdotes that helped drive them home.")
3. Enthusiasm. ("Whether respondents used the words energy, passion, engaging, dynamic or lively, they all wanted the same thing: presenters who were enthusiastic about their topic and conveyed that interest to the audience.")

If an audience and a PowerPoint deck are in your future, "Bad Presentations..." is well worth your time.  And if you're a full-time employee at a nonprofit, foundation, government agency, or educational institution, you can get one free copy.  (If you work for The Man, it's still just $17.50.)

UPDATE: A digital version of "Bad Presentations..." is available for free from Andy Goodman.  Printed  copies are no longer available from Goodman, but you can usually find a few copies on Amazon.

Ground Rules for Meetings

What makes a meeting successful? A team I'm a member of kicked off a project a few weeks ago, and before the first meeting the team leader asked everyone to come with two "ground rules" that would govern how we work together.

I've been through similar exercises before, but I was struck by the usefulness of this particular list, which I've reproduced below. I've fleshed it out a bit to make it more self-explanatory, but this is basically what we came up with:

GROUND RULES

• Be clear about how decisions will be made.
  • If one person (particularly the team leader) owns a decision, make that clear from the outset.
  • If the group is going to make the decision, specify the process to be used (consensus, majority, etc.)
• Use good brainstorming practices; specifically, don't criticize suggestions when we're in idea-generating mode.
• Begin each meeting by checking in.
• End each meeting by reviewing what went well and what could have been done better (and don't allow other work to bump this review off the agenda.)
• Rotate facilitating and note-taking roles.
• Raise any concerns as thoroughly as possible. If a discussion has to be taken offline, update the rest of the team at the next meeting.
• Everyone's free to challenge the productivity of the meeting.
• Distinguish clearly between "thinking" mode and "doing" mode.
• Two key words to bear in mind: "realistic" and "sustainable."
• Load-balancing is encouraged, and we'll revise assignments as needed.
• Bring your calendar with you so we can schedule future meetings efficiently.

Unfortunately, conflicts with other projects have kept some us--particularly myself--from attending many of this group's meetings!  But the culture we established at the outset with these ground rules seems to have helped the group stay focused and productive despite the disruptions.

Photo by Michael Sypniewski of the Asbury Park Press, from A Day at Bangs Avenue School.

Making Lemonade

A colleague of mine runs a nonprofit that's staffed almost exclusively by people who are formerly homeless and seeking to stabilize their lives.  The organization is both a training program that allows its employees to re-enter the working world and a social venture that runs a successful online business to support its operations.

The database that supports their online services recently melted down, resulting in several agonizing weeks of technical troubleshooting that my colleague said she wouldn't wish on her worst enemy.

But she also found a silver lining in the experience: it was an incredible training opportunity in crisis management for her employees.  She wasn't minimizing the frustrations that her team suffered or the negative impact on their business, but she was determined to see the upside as well.

The nature of her organization's work compels her to look at the big picture regarding the impact on her staff, but that's hardly the exclusive prerogative of a training program manager.  It makes me wonder what opportunities the rest of us routinely miss because we're conditioned to focus on the downside of a crisis.  I'm not advocating a Candide-like approach to management, but there's something to be said for looking at a bowl of lemons and realizing you're about to make lemonade.

Photo by Alanna St. Laurent.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Successful Debriefing: Ask, Don't Tell

You've helped lead a team through an experience, and now you want them to debrief what happened and draw some conclusions that will allow them to be more effective in the future. Here are some ideas that may be useful, particularly if past debriefs haven't yielded as much learning as possible.

A leader can easily push their team to the "right" answer too quickly if they don't appear to be headed in the leader's desired direction. Instead, check your need to appear competent or your impulse to be time-efficient, and allow people to make progress toward their own answers at their own pace. This often entails resisting the temptation to tell people what happened--that's an efficient way to convey your point of view, but it's not an effective way to help people actually learn from experience. Learning that results from being told is much less likely to be internalized.

It's more effective to ask questions that help people arrive at their own understanding of what happened, even though this will feel like a less efficient process. You can share your observations as well, but then ask them to interpret those observations--don't jump in with your own interpretation unless it's absolutely necessary.

To get people to talking more extensively and reflecting more deeply on their experience, it's important to ask simple questions that can have the effect of making you look uninformed or even naive. Asking complicated questions may demonstrate how smart and well-informed you are, but in the process you'll do more talking then they will, and they'll learn much less as a result.

In general, the more you talk when leading a debrief, the less effective you are. When you do talk, questions are usually more useful than statements. And your questions should be open-ended inquiries, not leading questions that are really statements in disguise.

 

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For Further Reading

Experiential Learning Cycles

Experiential Learning Revisited

William James on Experiential Learning

Your Guide to Active Reviewing (Roger Greenaway)

• Greenway, a British trainer and consultant, is one of the leading experts on debriefing, which he calls "reviewing." Don't be put off by the somewhat baffling design of his website--it's a treasure trove of resources.

Updated April 2021.

Photo by Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index.

 

Dancing Your Way to a Better Team

How do you maintain team cohesiveness during periods of extensive turnover? You could try dancing.

The Oakland A's Triple-A affiliate in Sacramento, the River Cats, have seen an astounding number of players pass through their clubhouse this season--a player has been called up or sent down 174 times, according to a recent article in the SF Chronicle by Susan Slusser.

Despite this turmoil on the roster, the River Cats won their division and are about to begin the Pacific Coast League's playoffs, a feat that A's assistant general Manager David Forst calls "incredible." So how did manager Tony DeFrancesco keep his team together? Slusser offers an explanation:

Infielder J.J. Furmaniak, who's bounced between Sacramento and Oakland this summer, said that DeFrancesco was proactive about making sure new faces felt included. He did that by having every addition introduce themselves during pre-game stretching--and then doing a dance. [emphasis mine]

"Even the big-league guys did it," Furmaniak said. "Well, (Mark) Kotsay did some dancing, anyway. Tony made sure no one was sitting alone in a corner, everyone was interacting."

I love this idea, and it's relevant even if dancing wouldn't fly with your team. The underlying concept is twofold: first, as a leader you need to take proactive steps to connect people when turnover is high, and second, that process will have a greater impact if you find a shortcut around the interpersonal barriers that exist among strangers.

Having new players introduce themselves to everyone is a good plan--and most managers would have stopped there. The brilliant wrinkle that DeFranceso added was having them do a dance as well, which got everyone laughing and brought the new guys into the fold much more quickly.

I haven't danced in front of my current colleagues, but a few weeks ago we did an improv session with Chris Sams of BATS Improv that included a lot of physical movement and a lot of silliness as well. It was a great opportunity to get loose and have some fun, and afterwards we felt more connected as a team, even though we'd been working together for the better part of a year. There's much more to be said about the value of improv in a team-building context, but the relevance here is that the exercises allowed us to see a different, less formal, more personal side of ourselves than we usually present at the workplace, and I imagine the River Cats' dances had the exact same effect.