One Presentation, Multiple Audiences

June 3, 2009 by Jerry

one_pres_multi_audiences

“The presenter is the focus of the presentation, not the slides.” Over the past 20 years as a presentation coach, I have spoken that phrase so often—to the thousands of clients in my programs, to the readers of my three books, and to the readers of my many blogs—it has almost become a slogan.

I have also spoken that phrase in response to objections that usually begin with, “But you just don’t understand,” and then continue on with, “We need to have the slides to send ahead!” Or with, “We need to provide leave-behinds!” Or with, “My audience wants the details!” Or with, “My board member made me do it!” Or my all-time favorite, “The slides have to stand alone!”

I have tried to counter these objections by driving a wedge between the display functions (during the presentation) of slides and their document functions (before and after the presentation) to no avail. Despite all my efforts—and those of countless other coaches, critics, and authors—presenters continue to treat presentations as documents.

So let me try one other argument. To set the stage, let me take a moment to describe a pattern in my business. Over the past two decades, I have coached:

individual presenters to deliver one presentation to one audience, as in a keynote speech
individual presenters to deliver one presentation to multiple audiences, as in an IPO road show
individual presenters to deliver multiple presentations to multiple audiences, as in a tour to launch of a family of products
multiple presenters to deliver one presentation to one audience, as in presenting different levels of expertise at a conference or convention
multiple presenters to deliver multiple presentations to different audiences, as in offering a variety of schedule options at a conference or convention

But I had never coached multiple presenters to deliver one presentation to the multiple audiences—until I worked with a unique group of executives at Cisco Systems.

The company has been my client ever since I coached its IPO road show in 1990, and has given me the valuable opportunity to work with many different business units. One of them, the Eastern Europe region, is run by Kaan Terzioglu, a Cisco Vice President. Kaan invited me to Cisco’s London facility to coach a dozen of his managers from several countries, including Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey. Because of time, travel and cost considerations, we reconfigured our core program—which usually involves only four participants—to accommodate all twelve people within one week. The new format provided the identical set of techniques we give to the smaller groups, but condensed some of the individual coaching. As a result, rather than develop twelve different presentations, we worked with only one; and that one came from a set of slides that had originated in Cisco’s corporate headquarters in San Jose.

In the culminating session at the end of the program, I asked each participant to deliver a version of the slideshow to an intended audience in his or her country. Their selections were quite diverse: one manager targeted a corporate enterprise, another a government agency, another a service provider, and another a university. Yet, as each participant stood to present, each was able to customize his or her story to a specific audience—while using the same set of slides.

Multiple presenters were able to deliver one presentation to the multiple audiences because each presenter’s narrative added value beyond the content of the slides.

The presenter is the focus of the presentation.

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