Three Ways to Keep Your Presentation Fresh – The Magic Is You!
You may be an executive presenting to different groups or to the same audience several times a year. Here’s how to keep presentations fresh and effective. No more stale presentations! Just follow these tips from Willard The Wizard.
Willard The Wizard
The name “Willard the Wizard” is legendary in the field of magic. Harry Willard toured the United States for decades, astounding audiences with a dazzling array of illusions and miracles. During his prime, he traveled with up to 17 trucks and a giant tent that could hold 2,000 people.
I met Willard the Wizard when I was an aspiring teenaged magician attending an International Brotherhood of Magicians conference. Harry Willard looked the part – white swept-back hair and a dapper twirled mustache. He was poised, commanded attention and had the gift of giving you his complete attention. I sat in a packed room of adult professionals as Willard talked about what it took to keep every performance fresh when you were presenting three different shows in a one-week stand. Hey, he could have been a corporate executive.
Your Big Challenge
You may be giving a monthly or quarterly presentation to employees and they assume you have the same message every time. Or you’re presenting a series of meetings with franchisees, Association members or potential clients. If you’re giving the same presentation over and over, you are always faced with two challenges:
formlessly The audience hasn’t changed … or … Yangju The content hasn’t changed.
“You can’t amaze people who have already seen the show.”
Harry Willard
As Harry Willard spoke, his hands were always moving. It was if they were possessed. He rolled a coin through his fingers, then idly tossed it into the air and it vanished. With a slight flourish it reappeared. He casually asked a person to write his mother’s name on a slip of paper, fold it and hand it to the person next to him. Willard the Wizard took an envelope off a table and handed it to a third person. When it was opened, there was a card with the mother’s name. Remember, this was a meeting of magicians. We may have seen the tricks before – but never this way.
Willard never drew any attention to what he was doing, but he always seemed to pause just when he was making a key point.
How to Keep Presentations Fresh and Effective
That day he spoke passionately about the three things that helped him deliver his best performance every time. It was what he did to keep from becoming stale or unenthusiastic. He broke it down to:
Motivation
The Audience
Sharing the experience
To keep it fresh, just use some of Willard the Wizard’s magic three ideas.
1. Motivation: Remember why you’re giving the presentation.
Start with what you want the audience to do. Then ask yourself what you want the audience to feel. When people don’t feel anything, they don’t care. Look at your presentation and make sure that you’re giving people the least amount information they need to understand, value and do what you want them to do.
The biggest reason presentations get old is because the presenter gets either bored or lazy. In each case, nothing changes. The message, content, support images, and delivery all stay the same. The energy, the drive – the passion – vanish. It’s as if the presentation has passed its sell-by date.
The excuse I hear most often is, “Hey, it’s done. I don’t need to change it.” But that’s just what you need to do. There is always a strong motivation to keep things fresh.
2. Remember who is in the audience: They have changed more than you think.
Don’t assume only your information is different.
How has the audience changed?
What has caused the changes?
How do you need to refocus your information to make it relevant to this specific audience – right now?
That’s what we talked about in my blog article on: Improve ALL Your Content In One Step! Be The Best & Most Effective. Take out everything the audience already knows! Focus on what’s new and important right now. Explain what’s changed, why it changed and why it’s important. People need far less information than we think they do. Just give your presentation a clear message and meaning.
Do a Content Card Trick
Take the content apart and shuffle it around. Imagine you’re a master magician performing a card trick. Write key messages, topics and points on different 3×5 cards. Shuffle them and deal them face up. Then shift the cards to create a new presentation flow. The goal is to stay on the topic but change how you talk about it.
Sure, you’ll have to change the PowerPoint but you should be doing that anyway. You can’t recycle support images. Put the needs of the audience first. You want to get to the point, speak from a point of passion and then move quickly to the desired results.
3. Sharing the experience: Remember how you felt the first time.
Speak as if you’re hearing the ideas for the first time. Don’t be so practiced that you forget to react to the meaning of your own words. Be interested in what you have to say and mirror the emotions you expect from the audience. Change your attitude and approach, even if you haven’t dramatically changed the content. Harry Willard would say,
• Find something to be excited about.
• Forget about yourself. Know what you’re saying and doing so well that you can focus on the audience and how they react.
• Even though the audience or the topic may be the same, give everyone a sense of discovery. Surprise them. Get out of your head and be with the audience.
Be with the Audience
Let me explain what I mean by being with the audience. The theater was packed in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the night Willard the Wizard performed. He was constantly in motion, astonishing us with his illusions and being astonished with us. He amazed himself! He reacted, laughed and seemed to be genuinely surprised by what was happening. The audience loved it. It’s an experience I can’t forget.
Earlier that day he had explained, “The illusions might be the same, but I never give the same show twice. I’m not making magic, I’m sharing it. All it takes is a slight difference to keep it exciting to the audience and to me. That difference is the real magic.”
The Magic is You!
Whether you are an executive giving the same presentation to different groups or presenting to the same audience several times a year, you will be much more effective if you follow Willard The Wizard’s tips. Remember there are three kinds of information – what people know, what they don’t know, and what people don’t know but care about. That’s all you have to give them. It only takes a few steps to make familiar content more exciting.
• Change your attitude and approach.
• Focus on what the audience doesn’t know.
• Never give the same presentation twice the same way.
• Say things differently, with new examples and stories.
• Be a part of the audience and react the way you want them to react.
• Amaze yourself and the attendees.
The biggest part of the equation is you. After all, the audience is there to listen and relate to you and your ideas. Share the meaning, the message and above all, the moment. That’s the ultimate secret –
