Client Question: “I received feedback that I need to be more succinct when I present information to people. I feel like this is something that could hold me back from moving forward in the company. How can I change this?”
This is a challenge as you move up in an organization. You are used to dealing with a lot of details and continue to try to share them with others. As you progress though, you need to find ways to summarize information for your group and especially for senior management discussions. Here are some suggestions that may help you:
- Think in Threes
- Plan out what you are going to say so you can limit the information to what is most important
- People can usually remember three things, so you want to prepare three points, examples or suggestions
- You can use this rule for meetings, interviews and one on ones as well.
- Presentation Slides
- Use the think in threes rule here too. Only show 3 bullets and limit the words for each bullet.
- Decide if it should be changed into multiple slides or just describe it more verbally during the presentation.
- Use pictures wherever possible instead of words so you won’t be dependent on reading the slide and they will focus on listening to you.
- Know Your Audience
- Would they want information at an summary level or can they tolerate a little more detail?
- Do they prefer pictures or charts and graphs?
- What can you share with them that they care the most about?
- Plan what you want to share
- Some people use an outline to capture the presentation before they build the slides
- How can you present information in the shortest number of slides to tell the story? Can you put extra slides in an appendix in case you are asked for more detail?
- What is the outcome that you want them to get out of the discussion?
- What are you asking them to do? Make a decision? Inform them?Asking them to help you?
You can always share more information later if they want it, but it will be a better conversation if you don’t overwhelm them with detail. Thinking about these things prior to the presentation or discussion will help ensure that you are intentional about what you want to say and doing it in the most succinct way.