Are academic presentations significantly different from business presentations?

Are academic presentations significantly different from business presentations?

Many academics would argue that with a few exceptions, the challenge of giving academic presentations is far greater.

Having worked extensively with both business and academic presenters, it’s clear that many people believe there is a huge distinction. There is often a great deal of resistance in accepting that the challenges are similar.

There’s a common belief that academic presentations are:

– Far more formal than business presentations

– Designed to showcase knowledge alone

– Only credible if they are long, very detailed and complex

– Purely for information alone

Do they have anything in common?

At Mindful Presenter we hold the passionate belief that they have a great deal in common:

In both instances:

– The presenters job is to connect emotionally as well as intellectually with their audience

– It’s important that the content is rich, relevant and compelling. Capturing and keeping the audience’s attention, interest and curiosity throughout

– The congruence of our verbal and non-verbal expression is paramount

– Your audience do not want you to read to them

The message has to be crystal clear

– Death by PowerPoint is unacceptable and so are bullet points

– Your audience need examples and insights of how your data and message relates to them

– Energy is the jewel in the crown of every great presentation

– Your audience is clear on what you want them to do next

Let’s break that down

The presenters job is to connect emotionally as well as intellectually with their audience

Whether you are presenting in an academic or business capacity, your audience have feelings.

Information overload aligned to the intention of impressing them with how much you know on a topic doesn’t work. At Mindful Presenter we would argue that in either setting, it’s not enough. In business and academic presentations it’s important that we help our audience feel something about the data we are sharing.

Whether you are presenting at work, school or university, it’s highly likely that you want your audience to learn something. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, EdD, associate professor of education, psychology, and neuroscience shares her view on the importance emotions play in effective learning.

‘Scientific understanding of the influence of emotions on thinking and learning has undergone a major transformation in recent years. In particular, a revolution in neuroscience over the past two decades has overturned early notions that emotions interfere with learning, revealing instead that emotion and cognition are supported by interdependent neural processes. It is literally neurobiologically impossible to build memories, engage complex thoughts, or make meaningful decisions without emotion.’

It’s important that the content is rich, relevant and compelling. Capturing and keeping the audience’s attention, interest and curiosity throughout

Should academic presentations be any less rich, relevant and compelling than any other type of presentation? If you accept the premise that most presenters want their presentation to stand out and that everyone wants to respect their audiences time, the answer to this question will be; of course not.

Deciding exactly what information to include in a presentation and how to organize that information can be equally daunting for academic and business presenters.

If you’re presenting at University or in any academic setting you still need to communicate your research in an interesting and engaging way. In both academic presentations and business meetings your job is to capture and keep your audience’s attention, interest and curiosity.

In her article in TIME, author, Annie Murphy Paul presents 4 very helpful ideas:

– Stimulate curiosity

– Introduce change and surprise

– Stress relevance and concreteness

– Tell stories

Abandon the idea of simply presenting data, and focus instead on creating content which is rich, relevant and compelling.

The congruence of our verbal and non-verbal expression are paramount

Congruence is critical in both business and academic presentations. In other words, regardless of your knowledge and expertise, what you say and the way you say it matters a great deal.

If the words you use aren’t aligned to the way they are expressed non- verbally, your trust and credibility is compromised. For example, simply telling your audience how excited you are without showing them, won’t serve you well in either business or academic presentations.

Find someone you trust and respect to give you feedback on this issue or record yourself presenting and play it back to yourself.

In her article, ‘Key questions about your communication’, Sam Owen shares 4 questions you may want to ask yourself from time to time:

‘Do your verbal and non-verbal communication match or are they incongruent, i.e. giving two different messages?

Do you think you are being pleasant when you’re body language is conveying that you are not? Be honest.

Is your aggressive non-verbal communication, via your eyes, posture, arms, hands and feet, giving the other person reasons to argue with you?

How would you react if someone spoke to you in the way that you are speaking to them, verbally and nonverbally?’

If you’d like to learn more about non-verbal communication there are some helpful points in this article.

Your audience do not want you to read to them

I haven’t yet come across an audience or any individual for that matter who likes being read to. As a storytelling activity reserved for children it’s absolutely fine but not adults.

Have you ever sat through a business or academic presentation where the speaker has simply either:

– Read the notes out loud to you

– Presented visuals fraught with text which they have read out to you

If you have you may remember how annoying it feels.

There are a number of reasons why a presenter may do this to you, for example:

– They haven’t owned and internalised their message

– It’s their script and they can’t function without it

– That’s what everyone else in the organisation does

– It could be they haven’t given any thought to the negative impact it could have

– They really don’t want to miss anything out

– They’re just being lazy

The truth is, reading to your audience makes you sound unprofessional and unprepared.

There is only one thing worse than reading your notes to your audience. It’s reading text out on a slide which they can easily read for them.

There’s some good advice in this article, ‘Please Stop Reading Off Your PowerPoint Slides. Here’s What to Do Instead.

The message has to be crystal clear

Whether you are presenting in a business meeting or delivering academic presentations, you need to be clear on your message.

The following questions will lead you to the clarity you need to be successful:

– Why are you giving the presentation?

– What is your objective; what do you want your audience to do with the information?

– Are you clear on your intention; what you want your audience to feel?

– If you had to share your message in the form of a tweet, what would that be?

– How will this make your audience’s lives better, easier, happier or positively different?

Many business and academic presenters lose sight of their message and can’t see that it’s buried in a tsunami of data.

A clear message allows you to filter the content of your presentation. In short, everything you say and show should support your message.

A clear and concise main message will increase the likelihood that your audience will remember your presentation.

Death by PowerPoint is unacceptable and so are bullet points

The biggest mistake anyone can make in any kind of presentation, business, academic or otherwise is inflicting, ‘Death by PowerPoint’.

Here’s a simple but meaningful definition; ‘Death by PowerPoint is a phenomenon caused by the poor use of presentation software. Key contributors to death by PowerPoint include confusing graphics, slides with too much text and presenters whose idea of a good presentation is to read 40 slides out loud.

Whether you are presenting in a business setting or academically the following guidelines will serve you extremely well when using visuals:

– One idea per slide

– Avoid bullet points at all cost

– Use powerful images and avoid text

Following this simple advice in the BBC article ‘ How to avoid ‘death by PowerPoint’ will serve you well:

‘Think about your slides last:

Create a consistent look and feel

Avoid slides with lots of text

Use simple photos that enhance meaning

Use storytelling

Have a focused message that you want your audience to retain’

Everything you need to know about using visuals mindfully when presenting is included in a previous article I wrote, ’21 Powerful PowerPoint Tips you really need to know.’

Your audience need examples and insights of how your data and message relates to them

Please don’t assume that just because you know what you’re talking about, your audience will.

Even in academic presentations where you are presenting to people who are familiar with your topic, they don’t know what is going through your mind. You have to be clear, real and explicit.

Brief examples can help your audience to understand the point you are trying to make.

The example could include:

– A short relevant, story

– Specific situations or problems experienced

– Something that explains what could appear as complicated or not immediately obvious to your audience

– A hypothetical example where appropriate

For example, in our presentation skills training workshops I am often asked ‘how to read the audience’. My response is often not to try to read your audience. I offer a perspective that many of us live in our personal world of assumptions and judgements and how easy it is to mis-read people.

This is followed with a very real and personal example of how I once made this mistake working with a group of teenagers and how my reading of the situation went horribly wrong. I share the full story which I then open up for discussion.

When helping people to connect emotionally with their audience I may give examples of the use and impact of eye contact, smiling, humour and interaction.

Energy is the jewel in the crown of every presentation

At Mindful Presenter we’ve probably trained people from just about all industries, sectors and sizes over the last decade. In all of that time, despite popular belief, we have never come across a boring topic, product or service. We do however, on occasion, meet boring presenters.

I share that respectfully, in the belief that no one is inherently boring but some people can present in a very tedious and tiresome manner.

– The monotone voice

– No audience involvement

– A lack of expression facially and vocally

– Irrelevant content

– A lack of presence

– Reading off slides or loading them with text/bullet points

– Focusing exclusively on data at the exclusion of connecting emotionally

– Repeating the same points over and over again

– A lacklustre opening and close

These are just a few examples. The one I want to focus on for the purpose of this article is energy. Whether you’re giving business or academic presentations the vital ingredient is energy. Regardless of your product, service, topic or research, energy and enthusiasm are infectious. Every audience wants and needs to feel your energy and passion.

Nothing influences or connects with an audience more than a speaker who believes whole heartedly in what they are saying. That belief is felt through a speakers passion.

Your audience is clear on what you want them to do next

Have you ever attended a business presentation and returned to you car, desk or the airport wondering what you’re now supposed to do with that information?

If you haven’t, consider yourself lucky but rest assured it’s only a matter of time before you do.

Most business presentations are designed to drive some form of action. It could be to:

– Think in a new way or adopt a new idea

– Lead change

– Stop doing something that doesn’t work

– Buy a product or service

– Support or fund a project

– Agree to help the presenter

– Make a decision

– Ask for resources

– Contribute creatively on the idea presented

– Understand perspectives

– Act as ambassadors or champions

– Remove or clarify uncertainty

– Simply something complex

– Quell unrest or dissatisfaction

– Challenge the status quo

– Instil confidence

– Empower people

– Motivate or inspire

The list of possibilities are endless.

Whatever the purpose of the presentation is, it’s highly likely that you will want your audience to do something when you’ve finished speaking. Have you noticed that in my list of examples for possible actions I haven’t included the verb ‘inform’.

Most people would agree that it’s a prerequisite of any presentation. Whatever else happens, your audience are expecting you to inform them on some level. Why else would you call them together if you didn’t have information they needed to have.

The truth is, we already live in a world where people are overloaded with information. That doesn’t of course mean that they don’t want or need more information. The fact is, there are often much easier and more effective ways of acquiring information than sitting through a presentation. Most audiences can read and many could probably read for themselves what you have to share in an email or document in a fraction of the time.

Many of the possible actions outlined above may not apply to academic presentations.

Let’s take a closer look at these

A common approach to academic presentations may revolve around communicating a theoretical question or research framework. The detail will often include a summary of the methodology used, case selection, literature review, etc. After presenting the analysis and results, come the conclusion.

Whether you use this or any other approach, most of the key elements shared in this article will serve academic presentations extremely well.

That includes having a clear call to action. Just because it’s not a sales, marketing or commercial presentation it doesn’t mean we should leave our audience wondering what we want from them.

Even if you don’t want them to do anything, we still owe them the courtesy of making that explicit.

Here’s an example

In closing, I’m mindful of the fact that many of the best presentations end with the presenter making it explicitly clear what they want their audience to do next.

Here’s what I’d like to ask of you.

If you have any thoughts, concerns, ideas, questions or contributions to make on any of the ideas I’ve shared with you today, please don’t keep them to yourself when we leave each other today.

I would be delighted and excited to hear from you on any point. Here’s my email address.

Are academic presentations significantly different from business presentations?

Everyone will have their own view on this based on personal experience and beliefs.

I believe that all high impact presentations are a challenge to craft and deliver. There will always be distinctions and exceptions in every field and it’s important to acknowledge and respect these. At Mindful Presenter we have a different approach to presenting. With the passionate belief that it’s never purely about the data, we believe that every presentation offers us the opportunity to connect emotionally as well as intellectually with an audience.

The best way to do that is to explore some of the principles shared in this article with an open and creative mind. In doing so, this question becomes less important. A better one to ask is:

‘How do I present with impact?’

If you need help with your public speaking success:

– Book yourself onto a powerful public speaking course.

– Invest in some really good one to one public speaking coaching.

– Get yourself some excellent presentation training

Photo by Suad Kamardeen on Unsplash