A critique of Malcolm Gladwell

Garr Reynolds from Presentation Zen has highlighted several presentations from Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Gladwell is a master storyteller in his books. He carries that through in his presentations. Watch the video – then read my analysis below for what you can learn from Malcolm Gladwell and his presentation style.

What Gladwell did well

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Six lessons in public speaking from Obama

America has elected the greatest political speaker for a generation.

You may think that there’s nothing for you to learn from Barack Obama’s speechmaking skills – that speaking to 200,000 people at Grant Park, Chicago is too far removed from the presentation you might give to your staff, to your management team or to potential clients. Here are six lessons you can learn from Obama’s acceptance speech at Grant Park.

1. Know your audience

It would have been easy for Obama to fall into the trap of talking to the 200,000 people before him in Grant Park. He didn’t. He spoke to Americans in their living rooms, he spoke to those who voted for McCain, he spoke to people watching him across the world – leaders and the poorest of the  poor. He knew who his audience was. [Read more]

Will Smith’s keys to a great presentation

Leo Babauta from the blog Zen Habits recently posted his Top 5 most inspirational videos on YouTube. I hadn’t come across this remix of a speech by Will Smith (the remix is by TeamJonny5 – I’ve edited it slightly). It’s only 1 min 19 sec so take the time to watch it because in this short snippet Will Smith showcases the elements of great speech design :

OK, it’s not a corporate or business presentation. But I bet if I asked you in 6 months time “What are Will Smith’s keys to life?” – you could tell me.  That’s because it’s got great design for stickability. What makes this speech so memorable that you can use when you plan your next business presentation? [Read more]

What can you learn about presenting from Seth Godin?

To read a Seth Godin book is to have ideas sparked in your head on every page. Can he do the same in a presentation?

I’m going to look at a presentation he delivered at TED. Have a watch and then read my analysis for what you can learn about presenting from Seth.

My emphasis is on the content of his presentation (Garr Reynolds has commented on Seth’s great visuals on his blog). My starting point in analyzing a presentation is the key message. Seth’s key message was clear and memorable: “Ideas that spread, win.”

He tells us his key message a minute and a half into his presentation. I like that. You don’t want to wait till half-way through to find out what the point is. He supports his key message with 10 (yes,10) slides of different famous people with call-outs repeating the key message. Here are two:

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Al Gore uses evidence to make his point

Al Gore’s TED talk is chock-full of evidence to make his point. I’m using the word evidence here loosely to include all the techniques he uses. There’s stories, examples, analogies, quotes, metaphors, and statistics.

I did an analysis of how much of the body of his talk was composed of evidence. Here are the results:

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Answer your audience’s questions

Effective presentations have a structure and flow. An effective way of building the structure of your presentation is to imagine yourself answering the audience’s questions. This is what Al Gore did in his latest TED talk.

First you need to craft your Key Message. Then consider what the audience’s questions might be once you’ve stated your Key Message. Let’s do this exercise for Gore’s talk. To paraphrase, Gore’s Key Message was “We must  take action”. Here are the thoughts audience members might have on hearing this message:

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A Simple and Concrete Key Message

An effective way to plan a presentation is to start by crafting the Key Message. The Key Message is the one thing you most want your audience to remember.

You could also think of it as the five second version of your presentation.

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