The Golden Rule of Presenting

By Jon, on March 24th, 2011
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Golden Rule of PresentingI am very very very lucky. I grew up with two loving, caring parents and a fairly large extended family. They’ve even taught me a thing or two about presentation design. I wasn’t raised in an overly-religious household, but my parents instilled strong ideals in me. I try to treat everyone in my life with respect – as I’d like to be treated. I hold doors, support charities, help when help is needed, and always hold myself to high moral standards. I’m not perfect (not by a long shot), but I try to do the right thing.

There are a growing number of presentation blogs out there touting countless presentation tips. You can even find over 100 presentation tips on this very blog. But there’s one rule that trumps them all. It’s the Golden Rule of presenting, and I’m stunned at how many people break it every single day.

Treat your audience as you would want to be treated.

It’s no different than the Golden Rule we’re all used to. We all subscribe to the Golden Rule in our daily lives (I hope), and we all know what it feels like to be an audience member subjected to a horrible presentation. However, something happens when we launch PowerPoint and begin designing our presentations. It’s as if the templates have some mystical power over us, luring us into using bullet points or avoiding imagery. Something happens when we try to find the time to practice our presentations and master our content, but the sands of time slip by until it’s too late and we’re winging it up there.

It’s a strange phenomenon. We know we don’t want to be read to. We know we don’t want to stare at boring slides. It’s a horrible way to treat an audience member. Yet we fail to treat our audiences the way we want to be treated, and instead opt for the easy way out.

Next time you commit (or are assigned) to delivering a presentation, immediately put yourself in your audience’s shoes. What do they want to hear? What are their needs? What would they want your slides to look like? Do they want to look at bullet points or vibrant imagery that supports your ideas? Do they want you to read to them or have a conversation with them? Would they want you to be fully practiced and prepared, or just try to wing it?

Let’s start treating our audience members as we’d like to be treated when we’re sitting in their place.

Do you subscribe to this rule? Have you fallen into the trap? Has a presenter recently ignored this rule and treated you poorly?

Note: I used “we” instead of “you” throughout this post. While I’m not claiming you or I don’t follow the Golden Rule of presenting, using “you” would imply that you do. I figured I’d bunch us all into the same group instead of singling “you” out.

 

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