The Triad of Effective Communications

If you are taking time to read this, you likely have a demand to present or speak publicly, and likely feel concerned about your ability to do so. Perhaps you’ve suffered sitting through a Prezzo that you found overlong and irrelevant. Perhaps you’ve sat and watched as a nervous presenter lost their place. Or perhaps you’ve watched great presenters and wanted to know their secrets.

The model I am about to present will help anyone develop a better understanding of what makes certain presentations stand out, how to craft well-developed presentations, and most importantly, feel confident when presenting.

To help you get there, I ask you to allow me to share the model I’ve developed.

It was crafted out my failing, badly, when presenting, and then, reading books, studying great speakers, and developing, testing, and refining the model below.

Using this model as a framework when developing your presentation, I believe, will help you connect with the audience and improve both your efficacy and your confidence.

The Model

Every great presentation provides 3 key elements: Inspiration, Aspiration, and Execution.

Interestingly, depending on who the target for the audience is, they may be reordered. If you go watch Steve Job’s Apple WDC keynotes, he was the master at making sure he hit each of these 3. In a 20 minute speech, he even goes so far as to break up the content into 3 segments (iPhone, MacBook, and iTunes as example segments), and then covers each of these 3 elements for each of the 3 topics!

Inspiration

This needs to be tied to the audience and their perspective(s). Take time when preparing your presentation to consider who the overall audience is,as well as, who the key recipients are (aka who you need to act on the information shared). Then, think about what would inspire them to pay attention to.

Metrics about big wins? Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt? Think about how you trigger their lizard brain to get them to pay attention -> “We receive 480,000 phishing and spear-phishing emails monthly on average”. This can also be in the form of “we saw this xxx situation [which hopefully audience realizes] and were inspired as a team to act”. -> “Working with IR, and researching events, we realized the #1 model for infection and account compromise starts with phishing / spear phishing, so we formed a tiger team to fight it”.

I’ve often witnessed presentations fail spectacularly because the entire tone of the presentation is about the presenters and not the audience, and the audience, lacking the inspiration to pay attention, turns away.

Aspiration

This is where you share a vision or goal. Speak about your vision for that future state. Interesting, this is often about more making an emotional connection with the audience, rather than boring facts. “We can see a point where, through a combination of technology, and training, no account at our firm is ever compromised through email based attacks”. This should help inform and motivate the next piece …

Execution

What you are looking to do, and what support / activity you want to audience to take on. The “asks” or the “next steps”. Be clear about your ask.

This is another place I’ve witnessed presentations fail. If you are asking for the audience’s time and attention, be ready with a concrete ask or follow up. If you can’t find one, you need to reconsider even presenting. “If you see this, send to us. If you aren’t getting emails because we are over filtering, let us know, or even, we are working hard, but without additional staff, or budget, we will not be able to sustain this”.

NOTE: If you go back up and read my first 3 paragraphs, I actually followed this 3 part model in the start of this post. Hopefully, by the time you got to “The Model” section, you were inspired to read more, we were aligned in aspiration for your future state, and understood the execution to help you get there.

Putting it into Practice: Presenting to an Audience

First rule, if you have a Powerpoint up, DO NOT just read the content to the audience. One of my favorite examples of a great way to leverage a deck while speaking is “The Word” segment from the Colbert Report. Note, the following contains political commentary to which I make to assertion about my alignment of support for or against.

Second, pauses are useful and can be effective, don’t be afraid of dead air. Steve Jobs was the master of making a pause (while he gathered his mind for his next point, but also, to let the message shared sink in).

Third, practice is important, but knowledge is better. Don’t worry so much about the exact statements or word, but rather, the information to convey. People often focus so much, when practicing, on the exact wording, that failing to recall it when presenting, causes them to panic. It’s better to know the key facts and then build the idea around it. And it’s easier to remember. and makes for a more natural presentation.

Fourth, and I apologize, but I can’t recall the specific term for this …. When presenting a key point, focus on one person, and speak as if you are telling that person it. Then, turn to a different audience member for the next. This technique is oddly effective at engaging, not just that one person, but the audience as a whole. Further, it’s easier to see how the people are responding when you focus on one person (as they tend to pay better attention to what you are saying, and they tend to respond to the content).

Fifth, and finally, feel free to respond with the audience. Some of the best speakers echo the audience … when the audience gasps, they break from Prezzo to add a sympathetic comment like “yeah, I know right, scary stuff” … or laugh. It makes you seem human and engaging.

Any way, thank you for giving this your attention. I hope it’s useful. I’ve shared with others and witnesses its application to be confident that it might be useful. Let me know if you try it, and see success.

About me:

Over the past 20+ years, I often found myself giving presentations to a range of audiences on a massive range of concepts. To become effective, I spent a lot of time reading other’s books, studying speakers recognized for being great (like Steve Jobs), and then formulating, exercising, and refining my own model. First, realize, no matter what, presentations are almost always selling something. It might be selling your teams success to help with budget, resources, or credibility.

Paul Vilevac, CISSP, CCSK, CISA, AWS-SAA