Many Audiences, One Formula for Success

by Peter and Cheryl Reimold

In a previous article (“On the Road to a Great Presentation; Step One: Care About Your Audience,” Today’s Engineer, October 2003), we discussed an approach to developing a strong message and key points. Your message and key points must not only fit your presentation purpose but, above all, mesh with your audience’s needs, interests and limitations. The more thought you put into seeing things from your listeners’ perspective, the stronger your material will be.

The Basis for the Universal Presentation Structure

Once you have formulated your message and key points, you need to fit them into a structure that will prompt the response you want. One structure works uniformly well for all presentations, whether they are technical or non-technical, informative or persuasive. This universal presentation structure consists of:

Introduction (1-2 minutes)	Body	Summary (1 minute)
Rapport builder Attention getter Main message Presentation plan (preview of key points)	Three to five key points Each key point backed up by evidence and examples	Restatement of main message and key points Call to action or other memorable concluding thought

This simple formula strengthens presentations. Why? Because every audience has severe limitations, and this structure works with or around those limitations. What are the limitations, and what requirements do they impose on presenters?

Audiences Need Simple, Linear Order

Audience members get confused easily by any structural complexity, primarily because they can’t go back over what you said. They have to understand everything the first time they hear it. To overcome this limitation, lay out your points simply and clearly. The universal presentation structure follows this rule: preview a few key points and then discuss them in the same order.

Unfortunately, it’s easy to underestimate the complexity of your own presentation. Many times, after developing and rehearsing your material, everything is clear and obvious to you — because you have become so familiar with it. Remember, your audience will not benefit from the same familiarity, so keep your structure simple.

Audiences Need Well Spaced Repetition

Second, the audience is apt to miss or mishear parts of what you say, for a number of reasons: the air conditioning may be too loud or people may be distracted by other audience members or outside events, for example. In fact, a well known rule of thumb says that audience members take in only one third of what presenters say. In light of that rule of thumb, if you present your important points three times, most listeners will hear you at least once. The universal structure encourages you to do just that: preview your message and key points in the introduction; repeat and expand them in the body; and restate them in the summary.

Adapt to Your Audience’s Natural Attention Curve

The third and most distressing limitation you need to consider is that your listeners will tend to nap or daydream during your presentation. More precisely, you have to consider people’s natural attention curve (see Figure 1).

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Figure 1. The audience’s natural attention curve — a major limitation and challenge for any presenter

They start out quite awake and alert, wondering whether what you’re about to say is going to be interesting to them. Then their bodies take over and drag them down. (Don’t be fooled by appearances: many people learn to nap with their eyes open!) They wake up as you say “In summary...” and try to hear what they missed while they were dozing.

The point is this: by the middle of your talk, you will be struggling to keep your listeners conscious. Chances are, they may miss some of the things you say. But in the beginning and end, you have their natural attention. You would be foolish to waste these high points of attention on trivialities; use them instead for the most important parts of your talk. Again, the universal structure encourages you to do that.

A Common Problem: Getting Things Upside Down

Think of presentations you have given or witnessed. Did they take into account the audience’s natural attention curve? Did they have:

• A main message preview in the introduction?
• A body with a change of pace and approach to keep the audience engaged?
• A strong summary, to leave listeners with the main message?

If not, what view of natural audience attention did these presentations imply? Chances are, they were based on an “upside-down” version of the ordinary attention curve (see Figure 2).

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Figure 2. The “upside-down” version of the audience’s natural attention curve that underlies many poorly organized presentations

Presenters who adhere to the upside-down philosophy waste time on boring preliminaries or general background, then develop details monotonously, and finally work toward some main message. Having run out of material and time, they may skip the summary and just fizzle out with a lame remark such as, “I guess that’s all.”

Future articles will focus on the three elements of the universal structure — introduction, body and summary — and the proper way to develop each element.

Cheryl and Peter Reimold have taught communication skills to engineers, scientists, and businesspeople for 18 years. Visit their new educational web site at www.allaboutcommunication.com.

This article was excerpted from The Short Road to Great Presentations, by Peter and Cheryl Reimold. It is available from Wiley-IEEE Press (2003); price: $33.95 members, $39.95 non-members. To order, click here or visit the IEEE Online Catalog & Store and search for ISBN 0-4712-8136-0.