- Dale Ludwig Presentations, The Orderly Conversation
If you’ve been presenting in corporate settings for a while, you already know the basics. You prepare, you organize, you deliver. But if you’re honest with yourself, you may also recognize a habit that’s hard to shake: you’re still thinking about your presentation more than you’re thinking about your audience. That shift, from delivery to dialogue, is what separates competent presenters from truly effective ones.
At Turpin Communication, we treat business presentations as Orderly Conversations®. Managing the tension between what makes them orderly and what makes them conversations is a presenter’s primary responsibility. In practice, as a participant in a recent workshop said, it feels like working hard to get the ball rolling and then, once you do, it’s like herding cats. That might be a wildly mixed metaphor, but it’s accurate just the same.
The tension between the rolling ball and the cat herding often results in a preference for one process over the other. Here’s what I mean.
All Presenters Have Preferences with Strong Gravitational Pulls
These preferences result in two separate camps. First, there are people who dread mid-presentation interruptions. They would choose, if they had the chance, to delay questions until they’re finished talking. This reflects their desire to be accurate and follow the plan that has been prepared. This group of people never really gets the ball rolling.
Second, there are people who thrive with interruptions. For them, it’s difficult to relax into a presentation until they have received a question or comment from an audience member. This attitude embraces the fact that business presentations are not one-way communication. They are conversations that require interaction. The challenge here is that while they are comfortable getting the ball rolling, the cats still need to be herded.
As we’ve all seen, some presenters let their preferences pull them too far — either by encouraging too much interaction or exercising too much control over it. The thing both groups need to remember is that a successful presentation happens because:
- Interaction is encouraged and the conversation that results is used to achieve the goal of the presentation, and
- The process is controlled; the structure of the presentation keeps everything, including the interaction, on track and focused.
To achieve both goals, you need to make in-the-moment decisions. These decisions help you bring structure and focus to a spontaneous process. This is where experienced presenters often hit a ceiling. The mechanics are there. What’s missing is the willingness to let go of the plan and trust the conversation.
Encouraging interaction: Think of this as making it easy for listeners to interact with you.
- Your job is to open the channel of communication between you and the individuals you’re presenting to. To do that, you need to appear open to the conversation. The word “appear” is an important one in that sentence. You may feel open to questions, but if your listeners don’t sense it, you’re not.
- Listeners need to feel safe in the environment. If they feel judged or disrespected, they will shut down.
- You need to feel safe as well. When you do, you communicate trust, interest, ease, and patience.
- You also need to be comfortable giving up some control. When a listener asks you a question, they determine where the conversation is going to go. This is a good thing because the give-and-take helps you shape the presentation to their needs and interests.
- Remember, the questions you’re asked help you move the conversation forward on listeners’ terms. Are you going too fast? Questions will help with that. Are listeners less informed about something than you thought? It’s good that they let you know. Every question and comment offers you a way to bring what you’re saying closer to your listeners.
Controlling interaction: Think of this as making your presentation easy to listen to and understand.
- Focus on efficiency, being concise, providing context, and connecting dots. This will help listeners feel their time is well spent.
- Respect the interests of the group when responding to an individual’s question. This will help you keep your response in the context of the presentation. It will also keep you from spending too much time on one person’s concern.
- That means you should be comfortable delivering shorter answers than you may want. Have you answered the question? If so, you don’t need to say more.
- Questions and comments should be placed in context. When you answer a question, it’s not a break from the presentation. It’s part of it. So, it’s your job to point out how questions fit into the overall conversation, whether they are relevant, or how they connect to other things you’ve said.
Finding the right balance between encouraging and controlling interaction also means adjusting your thinking about the content you’re delivering. For experienced presenters, this is often the hardest part — because the habits that got you here can quietly work against you. Here’s what I mean.
Rethinking your relationship with content
Many experienced presenters have built their confidence around being accurate and well-prepared. That’s a strength. But it can also become a trap. When accuracy becomes the primary goal, anxiety follows. You start worrying about saying the wrong thing, too much, or too little. And as we’ve seen on countless in-class video recordings, that worry is usually misplaced. Presenters are far clearer and more convincing when they focus on engaging listeners in the conversation. Clarity and persuasiveness are the result of that engagement, not the cause of it.
Here’s how to shift your thinking:
- A good plan is a starting point, not a script. The plan you take into a presentation is a starting point, not a fixed course. It will change in ways big and small, depending on the questions you’re asked and the needs of the group. Let it.
- Treat every question as a good thing. Questions offer a pulse-check, an opportunity to know how people are thinking and feeling during your presentation. They help you clear up confusion and connect dots between ideas. An audience that’s asking questions is an audience that’s engaged.
- Trust yourself to pause and think. When a question is asked, stop thinking about what you were planning to say and listen. This is not always easy or comfortable for presenters who are used to being in control.
- Be patient. Remember that sometimes it takes a while to understand the question. Questioners often take a long time to get to the point.
- Delivering concise answers requires thought. Have you ever heard a presenter ramble on only to finally arrive at, “So the answer to your question is no”? Pause long enough to deliver the short answer first.
- Sometimes it’s good to let them see you thinking. If you want to be perceived as careful and thoughtful, trust the pause. It communicates confidence.
The next time you walk into a presentation, resist the urge to measure success by how closely you followed your plan. Instead, measure it by how well you read the room, responded to your audience, and kept the conversation moving toward your goal. That balance between encouraging interaction and keeping it focused is not something you can script in advance. It’s a mindset you develop by paying attention, trusting yourself in the moment, and remembering that every question is an opportunity, not merely an interruption.
Want to learn more about how Turpin Communication can help you take the next step with your presentations? Visit https://www.turpincommunication.com/
