Today, I want to talk about that “oh so elusive” skill of presenting.

When was the last time you saw a great presentation?  I can tell you when it was for me… In September of this year, I went to the Inbound conference in Boston, hosted by Hubspot.  I saw so many great presentations, I can’t name them all.  Although the event featured amazing keynote speakers (Simon Sinek, Martha Stewart, Shiza Shahid, Malcolm Gladwell, Guy Kawasaki), the highlight for me was in the Bold Talks track which were delivered via 12-minute presentations from 3 speakers per session.  Check these folks out… Dan Pallotta, Johnny Earle, Phil Black, Gerard Vroomen, Marc Ensign, Tamsen Webster, Mark Shaefer.  They know how to engage an audience.

In the workplace, the desire for information seems to have trumped the desire for good presentations.  Bullet-laden, micro-font slides have become the norm as workers jam as much on each slide as they can.  PowerPoint has become little more than vehicle for documenting, rather than presenting.

Often times, the main constraint placed on a presenter is … number of slides.  Ridiculous, yes, but that’s reality… I’ve been there many times.  “You’re presenting to the CFO on Friday… he doesn’t have an attention span for more than 5 slides so keep it under that.”

And that’s exactly what you do.

Let me let you in on a little secret… the CFO’s attention span has nothing to do with the number of slides… it has to do with (A) many competing topics in his mind space, (B) the interest in the topics being presented and (C) the strength of the presenter.  Hint: you can only control (C).  I say “presenter” and not “presentation” because a great presentation does not a great presenter make.  As the New Radicals said “You Get What You Give”.

So, how do you reverse this trend in your shop?  A big thing is for leaders to set the example and the expectation.  Don’t limit a presenter on the number of slides… limit them on time.  “You have 30 minutes… which is really only 15, so keep it to that.”  And encourage your team members to practice.  And leaders, please, become better a presenting yourselves.

Years ago, I was part of a consulting group in a large tech firm.  Every week, we held a “brown bag” session during which an individual (or team) presented something they were working on… sometimes it was an idea, other times it was a dry-run of a presentation they were going to deliver to a client.  The rest of the group provided feedback… very constructive, brutally honest feedback.  We were often presenting the results of analysis and consulting recommendations so a big part of the process was learning how to present data in an interesting and concise way.  It was a great, if not humbling, experience — and we all became better presenters. The only real limitation… was time.

And what can you do, as a worker, do become a better presenter yourself?  Definitely seek out great presenters and learn from them – it can be people you know, or people you find via TED Talks.  But the key is practice.

It won’t make you “perfect” but it will absolutely make you better.  And the next time you’re told you have 15 minutes with an executive, you’ll be ready to knock it out of the park, rather than hit a single… or worse … strike out.