See a photo of Patricia, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, and Part 2.
Q&A with Patricia Keener, Question 3:
Q: What are a few of the most important principles of effective presentations — especially as regards integrating stories — that you impart to your clients?
A: I work with a wide variety of different clients on improving their
presentation skills; many with a technical or clinical background where it is important to relay that type of information to an audience. One main point I stress is that creating a presentation is more than taking your research or notes and putting them into a PowerPoint presentation. Presentations are meant to be persuasive and motivating to an audience and sit between Report writing (all the facts and figures) and Story (communicating in an expressive and dramatic manner.) Nancy Duarte in her book, Resonate, has an excellent section that explores this idea in more detail. I attended an international medical conference in Germany, and one of the best presentations was given by an Italian doctor who not only shared the results of his study on using a new treatment for HIV, but then a before-and-after picture of a young patient whose story he shared, thus he was able to tie together the technical information with the emotions of the audience. Annette Simmons, author of The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion through the Art of Storytelling, said, “Story is your opportunity to create in your listeners’ imagination an experience that feels real.”
Using stories, case studies, examples, analogies and metaphors are all tools that can create a more memorable presentation. Unlike a typical story setting you might use for an interview where you are the hero of the story, in a presentation — the audience is the hero. It is important that your information is relevant to them and they can see themselves in the story. In essence you act as a mentor to the audience. Imagery makes the story/content come alive in the audience’s mind, so I encourage my clients to use word pictures. Just like a story, a good presentation needs to have a clear beginning, middle and end.
Stories we believe can be very powerful. I was working with someone who experienced incredible nerves while presenting but in one-to-one conversation was a confident young woman. Some questioning and listening later revealed that she had had some negative feedback from a boss of hers a few years ago about her ability to present that was underlying every subsequent presentation she was asked to give. She had created a story in which she believed that she was rubbish at presenting. By using some NLP re-framing techniques, we began to look at how we could better resource her and create a new story.