Presentations: a challenge for specialists

We live in a time of specialists. All areas of knowledge are subdivided into topics about which someone is deeply knowledgeable. Medicine is a great example. There are specialists for all parts of the body and for almost all diseases.

The corporate world follows the same logic. There are experts for all areas: sales, marketing, finance, IT, HR, compliance, etc. And companies hire employees based on their skill sets. All perfectly normal and acceptable. We do the same here at Conté: we seek out the best designers, illustrators, script writers, animators and editors. And when we cannot find them, we train them in-house.

The challenge for any specialist, whether a doctor or a manager at a large company, is sharing their knowledge. It is necessary to know how to communicate. And, oftentimes, specialists must communicate through the much-feared presentation. Whether the presentation is for a team working in the same area or for specialists of other areas, giving the presentation is the moment when a specialist’s knowledge, acquired through long hours of study and hard work, can be harmful. To explain: by attempting to put all their knowledge in a presentation, specialists forget that their audience may not have the same background references and knowledge as they do.

How many times have you heard a doctor reading exam results and explaining a series of technical terms when all you wanted to know was the diagnosis and what to do to treat it? In a corporate presentation, the audience acts in the same way. It is difficult to have to admit, but it is much less important to the listener how much the presenter has studied and worked in an area. What is more important is the benefit that the listener and the company will get from the content being presented.

It is exhausting to watch presentations that could be brilliant fall flat because excess information that is not important to the audience is included. The specialist’s argument is almost always the same: “If I don’t present the details, no one will understand anything.” That is a common error of those who are, justly, attached to all the work that went into developing the content for that presentation. Fortunately for the audience, we do not need more than twenty minutes to present a topic, even one that results from significant work and study. TED Talks, successful throughout the world, prove this point.

Just as doctors all treat human beings, specialists in the corporate world all work in favor of the same organism, the company. Just as what is important to the patient is to be cured, for the company what is important is that specialists’ knowledge be put into practice. And corporate presentations have this function. To know how to present is absolutely necessary. And to know how to include only content that works for the audience is a challenge. Without this skill, a specialist’s knowledge may be lost. And careers that could and should be taking off instead become stagnant because of excess content..