How to be a Presentation God: Build, Design, and Deliver Presentations that Dominate!

9.1. LESS REALLY IS MORE

We talk a lot about trust in presentations: how to build it, how to maintain it, how to leverage that trust into millions of dollars in slush funds for our personal pleasure, and so on. But we rarely look at trust from an equally valid angle: How can you trust your audience?

If you've never thought about this before, you should. When we stand behind the dais and look out across a sea (or puddle, depending on the situation) of faces, we're at an even greater disadvantage than the audience. Forget superficial character judgments; we don't even have time to verify they're not all blow-up dolls. Most of us hop up on stage and get straight to talking, never vetting the audience for the capacity to steward a message that, as aforementioned, is as precious as our flock of nirvana-doves.

This may sound audacious, but how important is your message? Is it nuanced? Are there gray areas, or intangibles that the audience must sense rather than see? So often, the potency of our content is wrapped up in our own unique perspective and understanding of the issue(s) at hand. Are you willing to take that nuanced message and put it in the hands of the scrubby-looking guy in the back with crooked sideburns and his shirt tucked into his underwear? What if he's the southeastern regional representative for your company? How confident can you be that he's getting the full measure of passion and drive that you're putting out there regarding the new product line?

What's worse about ...