How to Make Presentations that Teach and Transform by Robert J. Garmston and Bruce M. Wellman Table of Contents Chapter 1. How to Design for Learning This may be the most important chapter in this book because, as we shall see, all presentations are made twice—first in the presenter's mind, during the design stage, and second, during the actual presentation. Eighty-five percent of the quality of the second presentation is a product of the first. The remaining 15 percent comes from personal energy, charisma, and our openness to serendipitous relationships with our audience. In planning presentations we must remember the carpenter's adage, “Measure twice and cut once.” What You Must Know About Yourself The most important design questions are about you. A presentation is a point in time within a relationship between a speaker and an audience. Who you are, not what you know, is the dominant message in any presentation. Who you are, in relation to what you know, is critically important self-knowledge that helps you make decisions about what's important to communicate and how to communicate it. This self-knowledge gives your message congruence and credibility. Of the four cornerstone questions of presentation design, three are generic and applicable to all settings for which you may be planning a presentation: Who are you? About what do you care? How much do you dare? The fourth question is more audience-specific: What are your intended outcomes? Who Are You? Whenever you step before a group of people to persuade, provide information, or develop new learnings, you unconsciously choose to bring certain parts of yourself into the relationship. Which parts will you invite to the event in order to be multidimensionally present with the audience, and more interesting and credible? Are you a parent, spouse, daughter, sports fan, potter, skier, photographer, or poet? Are you a gardener, only child, gourmet cook, speaker of several languages? Your goal in selecting an answer to this question is to reduce the psychological distance between yourself and the audience. Therefore, the question “Who are you?” can also be thought of as “Who do you want to be with this particular audience?” In Speak Like a Pro, Margaret Bedrosian (1987) suggests five stances from which presenters might choose to speak. Each has a distinct base of power and a distinct approach. Speakers may use more than one of these stances during a single presentation. 1. Boss. This stance is based on positional authority. When speaking from this stance, you support your ideas with the organization's history, mission, policies, goals, and procedures.The downside of this stance is that many audience members will listen to the position morethan the presentation. Because of this, your words and demeanor can have far more impact than you intend. Page 1 of 12Chapter10/29/2006http://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/template.chapter/menuitem.b71d101a2f7c208cdeb3f...2. Expert. From this stance you share information and correct misinformation. In order to present as an expert, you must stay current in all the latest developments in your field. Your power in this stance comes from being able to synthesize enormous amounts of information from your area of expertise and present it in tight, coherent forms. The downside of this stance is that the expert role is the one most vulnerable to attack. 3. Colleague. In this stance you reduce perceived distance between yourself and the members of your audience by being one of them. As a colleague, you present information while being open to discovering new information from others. You refer to work experiences of your own that are similar to the audience's. Your speech includes the collegial “we” and “us.” You elicit data from the group and then extend the data. Many presenters find that this is the most effective stance when presenting to their own faculties. 4. Sister/Brother. In this stance you communicate concern and warmth. You appeal to the family spirit of a healthy working team. You share the ups and downs of your own learning journey. This is often an effective stance for coaching individuals or groups to better performance. You are more approachable than the boss or expert, and let the audience members know you have a caring investment in their success. A possible downside in this stance is that certain audience members may feel encouraged to share highly personal learning problems with the hope that you can help resolve them. 5. Novice. This stance is based on enthusiasm. You share recent discoveries and their meaning with the audience. While you admit to lacking a comprehensive background, you must be well-informed about recent discoveries and have immersed yourself in the topic at hand. The freshness of your approach and your vitality can renew or awaken the interest ofyour audience. About What Do You Care? Who you are is predominantly related to your personal values. To answer the question “What do I care about?” you must identify what is important to you, not as a laundry list of personal values, but in a search for the core of what motivates and concerns you. For example, if you value classrooms as learning communities in which students are interactive learners invested in each other's success, these values will permeate your presentation design and processes. Elegant presenters have conscious access to such personal values and deliver presentations that are unusually powerful because of the congruence of both their message and metamessages. How Much Do You Dare? If you value risk-taking, what will you risk in the presentation—a song, a silly energizer, a new design? If you value certain psychological principles of learning, will you speak your mind if your view is contrary to a newly adopted curriculum? To know your own values, and act on them, you must engage in a feedback loop of continuous growth and self-improvement, trust your own capacity for self-management, and work to enhance your self-esteem. If you can trust you, so can audiences and others. You will generate a sense of personal efficacy. How much should you dare? When your personal risk quotient in any area is less than you like, here is one way of checking to see if this is a common sense posture of personal security from which to operate. Examine what rewards or punishments exist in the environment should you speak up for principles dear to you. Then ask yourself about the degree of