Even if you have a “canned” presentation, you will want to tailor it for each audience, to better connect and engage the participants, and to specifically address topics related to your presentation that the meeting planner deems important.
Through a discovery process of asking questions of the meeting planner and of conducting short, informational interviews over the phone with a few participants, you can find areas to tweak your presentation to make it a “home run.”
To illustrate a few ideas, I’ll use a recent presentation I gave to the Timberwolves Executive Leadership team, a small group of about 30 people. My “canned” presentation was “The 4 Es of an Excellent Leader,” one in which the audience learns the why and how of using expectations, encouragement, empathy and empowerment to lead with excellence.
During the discovery process, a couple of important areas that I don’t address directly in my “canned” presentation were brought out: having clear expectations and having a fun, engaging style of leadership.
I already had one audience activity that makes the experience a custom one for any audience–an appreciation exercise in which the audience members each think of one or two people they can thank in the next 24 hours. They then have a couple of minutes to write a “thank you,” following my instructions on what constitutes a significant expression of appreciation. After that, they partner to share their “thank yous.” Following the partner activity, I call on a few volunteers to share their “thank yous.” This activity is a favorite activity of audiences, and also one that is customized to each person’s own response to it. As an aside, I have found that having people share their thoughts with another person, or with their tables, makes getting people to volunteer to speak much easier–they have had a chance to articulate their thoughts once already, which makes them more likely to share with the group. Still, I usually have to prod a few volunteers, by asking “who at this table has a thank you to share?”
But, to at least touch on “engagement” and “clear expectations,” I modified the presentation in two main ways.
1. I added a part near the beginning in which I addressed their corporate values and tied that in with engagement of the staff. I found this information on their website. For the first slide, I did it as a quiz. The slide appeared with only the graphics. I had the audience name each value before I showed the text next to the value.
Then, the next slide focused on only one value, “Play together,” which grew in size as the other values faded.
For the 3 slides after that, I was making the point that they had created great engagement and value with fans and can do the same with their entire organization, using excellent leadership.
This last slide, of a recent staff meeting, I found on the Twitter feed on their website:
2. Added a “Clear Expectations” section. Later in the presentation, I added a brief section on “clear expectations.” In my standard presentation, I only talk about having positive expectations, but because having clear expectations was something they wanted me to address, I added a short activity followed by a brief “how-to.”
The first slide asks them to name an animal. I don’t give any direction as to what kind of animal (except not a Lynx or a Timber wolf, their two branded teams). I got a cacophony of answers.
So, then I transitioned to the next slide, saying. “Hmmm . . . I didn’t get the animal I wanted. Let’s try that again.”
With the second slide, after the final bullet point appears and I count to 3, everyone shouts “elephant!”
Then I show the picture of the elephant, saying. “Now, that’s what I had in mind. I guess it helped to be clear on what I wanted.
After that, I talk about how to have clear expectations. This slide starts with an animation of the “eye” growing and the word “focus” appearing in the eye
For your next presentation using a “canned” presentation, consider how you can tweak it to make it even more meaningful to your audience.