How Leaders Speak. Jim Gray
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management team.
Ultimately, Peggy decides this conference won’t be the best setting for a team event, but she makes it clear that she wants you to organize and participate in such an initiative in the near future. She recognizes the potential of a multi-person opportunity, and, as you know, wants to showcase her group’s talent as part of a strategy to raise the company’s profile.
You’re not so enthusiastic about the “team” part. You know that while speaking on your own can be challenging, speaking as a member of a group can be downright daunting.
No argument there. However, you’d better get used to the idea of presenting with your colleagues. With the growing emphasis on teamwork in business, more and more employees are being called upon to speak alongside their co-workers, internally and externally.
Certainly, there are plenty of risks. Too often, team presentations succumb to the inherent difficulty of assimilating multiple personalities, styles, and priorities, and crumple into disjointed, ineffectual dog-and-pony shows.
However, when a team is clicking on all cylinders, there are few communication initiatives more forceful. Whether the collective goal is to share a vision, recommend a course of action, or win a piece of business, cohesion is the key to success.
Here’s how to make the principles of great teamwork successful at the lectern.
Pick a leader
There’s no way around it: someone needs to have overall responsibility for your group presentation.
When you’re deciding on a leader, aim high. The more elevated the chief organizer’s rank, the more profile and resources your project will be given.
For your first team event, I’d go for Peggy herself. Why not? The worst she can say is no, and she’ll be flattered that you asked. If she does agree to come on board, you know you’ll have the weight of the CEO behind you.
The leader doesn’t necessarily have to participate in the presentation, but ultimately makes the final decision on content, and on who speaks and in what order.
Ideally, though, the leader takes part in the production itself, kicking it off, introducing fellow speakers, setting the context, and then, once the others have completed their sections, wrapping up the collective story with a commanding summarization and call to action.
Keep it simple
Use the classic, tried-and-true Power of Three to organize your presentation under the sections Introduction, Body and Conclusion.
The most senior speaker almost always handles the introduction and conclusion, providing a nice sense of symmetry, organization, and authority.
Three presenters can participate in the delivery of the body, each covering a main point or category. That means a maximum of four speakers for your group presentation; there are precious few exceptions.
The more presenters, the less impact they deliver, and the greater the chances of foul-ups and misunderstandings.
Play to your strengths
Increase your team’s prospects of success by giving the more skilled, confident speakers additional presentation time, but not so much that lesser lights are marginalized.
Protect weaker presenters (and enhance listeners’ perception of their routine) by having them introduce an interesting clip, an attention-grabbing prop, or an especially well-crafted PowerPoint slide. Give them the outstanding stuff to refer to and you’ll raise their confidence and their game.
Of course individual egos must kneel in service to the greater good. That applies to even a team’s most senior speaker, who, as it may turn out, can’t make the oratorical grade. In such a case, the top dog’s time needs to be chopped, making for a shorter introduction and conclusion.
Sometimes, that’s not such a bad thing.
Look and act like a team
You may dislike a particular co-presenter, but in the image-based universe of team productions, you have to appear as though you vacation together.
That means relating as if you were trusted colleagues — with copious amounts of eye contact, frequent use of first names, and full-on listening techniques. Audiences can quickly perceive dissension, however slight, within a team in presentation mode. Nothing can undermine a group’s credibility faster than a harsh word, or even a cross look, from one colleague to another.
Your listeners will ask, “If they can’t even give a presentation together, how could they possibly work on our business together?”
It’s a reasonable question. You’re in it together, as a team. So look and act like it.
Rehearse your transitions
The final key to a successful team presentation lies in the transition, or “hand-off,” between speakers. Just as the baton in a relay race requires a smooth, sure transfer from one runner to another, so the story in a group narrative needs to be advanced.
Rehearsal takes on even greater significance in a group project. The effective linking of content involves a kind of verbal choreography that comes about only when each presenter has a thorough knowledge of the subject matter covered by the other speakers — especially his or her closing paragraphs — and then builds seamlessly on it.
This smooth transitioning takes co-operation and a great deal of practice.
All the presenters should consider themselves understudies and learn the script of at least one other speaker cold; it’s a coordinated strategy that, in effect, backs up the entire presentation. You need to be able to cover for each other, if something goes wrong.
It’s what teammates do.
Seven Steps to a Great Team Presentation
1. Pick a leader.
2. Keep it simple — the most senior speaker handles the introduction and conclusion, the three others a main body point each.
3. Give better speakers slightly more presentation time.
4. “Protect” weaker presenters with great content.
5. Look — and act — like trusted colleagues.
6. Learn at least one other script.
7. Rehearse your transitions.
THE DRILL ON PANELS
The organizers of “Industry 2020” have called.
Your presentation will take place on Monday, the first day of the three-day conference. They’ve also requested your presence on Wednesday, to participate in a panel discussion of prominent figures in your field.
Yikes! Are you supposed to vacuum after the conference as well?
Be cool. Panel discussions represent another forum in which to speak like a leader. You have to be careful, though. Panels can be tricky. They’ve earned their uneven reputation.
That’s because they’re often ponderous, unfocused affairs that drone self-consciously on as trapped, distressed audience members pray for an early wrap. It almost never happens. In fact, panels habitually run over their time due to poor planning and weak moderators.
The potential of panels
When they’re run right, however, panel discussions can dazzle and inform.
When a group of astute, motivated participants brings differing perspectives to a significant, well-defined issue while respecting each other (and the concept of time), listeners benefit from the rich discourse.
Like preparing and delivering a great speech, it takes a lot of work to get there. In fact, organizing and facilitating an outstanding panel can qualify as a more complex task than nailing a first-rate presentation, given the unpredictability of a conversation involving multiple players, and the inclination of some to amble off on self-indulgent musings and tangents.
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