February 19, 2025 • 47 mins
Presentation day is here, and it’s not going smoothly—slides are being read off, demos are falling flat, and you’re winging it after forgetting your notes. Stakeholders are disengaged, but the project continues, and more presentations are ahead.
Galen Low chats with presentation expert Renaud Taburiaux about how project managers can help their teams deliver clear, impactful presentations without wasting time preparing. Tune in to learn how to frame your work for executives and ace your next presentation!
Resources from this episode:
- Join DPM Membership
- Subscribe to the newsletter to get our latest articles and podcasts
- Connect with Renaud on LinkedIn
- Check out Presentation Sprint
- Presentation Sprint on Amazon
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Galen Low (00:00):
It's presentation day.
Things are underway, andeverything's going pretty well.
Well, it's going okay.
Okay, actually, it'sgoing about as well as a
car crash in slow motion.
Ravin is reading offthe slides again.
Florence looks like they'remurmuring to their toes more
than they're demoing thenew personalization feature.
And you — you forgot yournotes somewhere on the train,
and you've been winging it.
(00:20):
On the receiving end, thegeneral mood of the stakeholder
audience is... confused.
Impatient.
Disengaged.
The good news is that it willall be over soon, and we can
all forget it ever happened.
Except that's notthe case at all.
The project continues, thenext sprint review is in
two weeks, and even if youjump ship right now, there
are still many businesspresentations ahead of you.
(00:42):
If you've been throwing upyour hands and accepting
the fact that projectpresentations with your team
are fated to be painful andunavoidable blips between
project work, keep listening.
We're going to be talkingabout how to get your team's
acing project presentationswhile having less time
wasted in preparation.
Hey folks, thanks for tuning in.
My name is Galen Low withThe Digital Project Manager.
(01:04):
We are a community of digitalprofessionals on a mission
to help each other getskilled, get confident, and
get connected so that we canamplify the value of project
management in a digital world.
If you want to hear moreabout that, head on over
to thedpm.com/membership.
Okay, today we are talkingabout the dark art of presenting
project work, and how projectmanagers can support their
(01:27):
project teams to frame theirwork in a way that executive
stakeholders understand,all without wasting heaps of
time preparing in advance.
With me today is RenaudTaburiaux, a former agency
PM, an author, and a respectedpresentation coach for
professionals at all levels ofan organization — from technical
architects to the C-suite.
(01:47):
Renaud, thanks so muchfor being with me today.
Renaud Taburiaux (01:50):
Well, thank you for having me.
I'm looking forward to talkto your community, your
audience about this trickytopic that is making a
lot of us really stressed.
Galen Low (01:59):
And I'm glad you mentioned that because this
is an episode where you andI, we got together, we're
like, here are some hottopics around presentation.
And we took that to ourcommunity and we got some
of the questions from ourcommunity, things that they're
struggling with when it comesto presenting project work,
presentations in general,public speaking in general,
business and professionalcommunications in general.
So thank you for preppingwith me in advance to get
(02:21):
some of these in here.
And then we got like anocean of other questions
as well, which we willanswer within our community.
So I'm excited about that.
Renaud Taburiaux (02:29):
Yeah, they're really good question.
And we can see thata lot of people are
struggling with this topic.
So it's fine that peopleare not afraid to go and
ask for help, when theydon't know how to do that.
That's really encouraging.
Galen Low (02:41):
Absolutely.
The power of community.
All right.
I want to dive in withlike my big question.
So my big one hot questionthat kind of like encapsulates
all of this for me is this.
Why is presenting so importantin project management and
if it is so important,then why isn't it taught?
Renaud Taburiaux (02:57):
Okay, so why is it important?
I think for your community,project manager, but also
any type of manager, wea lot of time have to
lead without authority.
That's something thatwe've been doing for years.
We know about it.
And to lead without authority,you need to influence, you
need to convince people,especially nowadays.
It's more and moreparticipative.
(03:18):
You don't force people intodoing their job or, following
the backlog or things like that.
You have to convincethem to do that, to show
them the value behind it.
So it's more participative.
It's more at scale.
We often have huge team.
We might talk about safe, safemethodology where you have
hundreds of people workingon the same application.
So you have to convincenot one to one.
(03:40):
It has to be at scale.
And it's often remote.
It's not surprising now towork with people in India,
in Canada, in Brazil.
So convincing and influencingis really core to your job.
And presentation is oneof the key to do that.
Again, not one toone, but one to many.
So that's really why it'simportant to nail this
(04:01):
presentation, but it'snot always your only task.
You have other things to do.
So it's good to not wastetime to be as efficient as
possible when we preparethese presentations.
Galen Low (04:10):
I love that you took it there because in my
head, I was like, I thinkof a presentation, right?
Or presenting my I framedthe question as why is
presenting so important?
And in my head, I'm like, standand deliver in, in a boardroom.
You're talking to yourexecutive sponsor or a
group of stakeholders.
But it's not just that, right.
Presenting is actually theact of sharing an idea and
(04:31):
getting people on board with it.
And folks who are like, Oh yeah,I hate standing in front of a
room and presenting, actually asPMs, we're presenting every day.
We're presentingideas to our team.
We're getting, we're usingthat sort of managing through
influence and showing leadershipto collaborate, right?
Present ideas to one another.
I love that you took it there.
I was not even thinking that.
Renaud Taburiaux (04:49):
You have to get them closer to the goal,
what you're trying to achieve,but not everyone knows about it.
Not everyone has the sameknowledge overview as a project
manager or people manager,you have a real overview
of what everyone is doing.
They need to have theshared vision in order to
be efficient in their job.
So yeah, we arepresenting every day.
It doesn't have to be slide.
I didn't mention slide at allwhen I talk about presentation.
(05:10):
It's really sharing anidea, sharing messages,
telling a story.
It can take many forms,but we're doing every day
this type of presenting.
Galen Low (05:19):
I love that.
It also takes the edge off thelike, "formal" presentation.
Exactly.
It's just like all theother presenting you're
doing, every other dayit uses the same skills.
Renaud Taburiaux (05:27):
Yeah.
And at the end of the day,it's just a presentation.
Even if you have topresent to the C-suite,
it's just a presentation.
Your slide and how youpresent will not really
make or break what you'retrying to accomplish.
You can always get back on yourfeet through the discussion
with more, interaction,one to one and so on.
Don't overstressabout presentation.
(05:49):
As you say, we're makingit really official.
We often write buzzwordsin our script and so on.
It doesn't have to be like that.
It has to be human to human.
Slides don't convince people.
People convince people.
So keep perspective here.
It's just a presentation.
Galen Low (06:03):
I love that.
I want to come backto the skill even.
And this is a topic that wasa hot topic in our community.
Like it really struck a nerveand you and I in the green
room, we were talking about thetraining aspect of things and
I find at least in my journey,very few people sat me down
and trained me to present ideaswell, and yet I think all along
the way, it was an expectation.
(06:25):
I'm just like, whyis it that way?
Renaud Taburiaux (06:27):
There's many reasons, but it's
fair when you say that.
It's an expectation.
And, I often say it'slike writing an email.
We assume that people knowhow to write email, but no, we
know we can see it every daythat people don't know how to
write short and straight tothe point email, not a wall
of text with key messages lostsomewhere because they don't
even know what they want to ask.
So we assume, I would saythat it's taught in the
(06:51):
university, but It's not reallythey don't know much about
presentation for business.
So in university, you're taughthow to do academic presentation.
It's also taught in somecompany, but it's badly
thought I will not make alot of friends here, but you
know, when the teacher is acomedian, that's fine for the
delivery, for the confidence,for how to, have your voice,
(07:13):
what manage it well, the stressand everything that, that,
but it's not a presentationfor business, they will not
tell you how to structureyour message, the different
cognitive bias that you shouldavoid or leverage, but We are
taught about it in the bad way.
And one last thing Iwant to say is that it's
not always your fault.
There's also a lotof bad example.
(07:34):
When you look at what yourleadership, your C-suite is
presenting, their all handsand stuff like that, or what
the internet communicationor HR presenting, they're
supposed to know better.
And they don'tusually it's terrible.
They read what isalready on the slide.
They do some kind of karaoke.
They don't really knowwhat they want to say.
So, you know what I mean?
It's, we should look up tothem in terms of communication.
(07:57):
They shouldn't expect usproject manager or so on
to be better than them.
It is their job tocommunicate against, to
convince, to influence.
And yet, because they are alsonot trained or they assume
they know, we end up with this.
I would say it's notoften taught and when it's
taught, it's badly taught.
Galen Low (08:16):
I love that.
Renaud Taburiaux (08:18):
Again, I will not make a lot
of friends here, but.
Galen Low (08:21):
Well, no, what I love is like the
passion that's coming out.
I thought maybe we couldzoom out a bit because this
is clearly something thatyou have a lot of experience
with, that you have anopinion about, that you're
fiery about, that actually itdoesn't have to be this way.
But like, how did youget so interested in
presenting and communicatingin a business context?
What was that moment thatmade you realize that more
(08:42):
teams need to focus on thisskill and need more support?
Renaud Taburiaux (08:46):
It was quite based on an event
because I start my careerin agencies in 2010, I think
I was in a communicationagencies in New York or Paris.
And there, everythingwe're doing was perfect.
It was clever.
It was, funny.
It was clear.
We had designer.
Everyone knew what theywere supposed to say or do.
And then after five years,I think something like
that, I moved to corporate.
(09:07):
And that was a shock.
Because I realized that incorporate, communication
is almost a dirty word.
People don't like to doit, when they say, Oh, he's
handling communication.
Ah, okay.
We see this politic or,people who don't know how
to do, they will just dothe communication of it.
So I found that a lot ofpeople didn't even try
to do good communication.
(09:28):
They were avoiding it.
And I'm not talking only aboutpresentation here, I'm talking
communication in general.
But what was really botheringme is that some people retried
and they failed miserably.
They were spending countlessof hours preparing the
slide and the script.
And it was awful.
It was awful for them.
They were stressed.
They didn't know what to say.
It was awful for the audience.
(09:49):
It was really not a goodway of anyone's time.
So when I came to corporate,I took everything I knew
from agency, from projectmanagement, from, different
UX design, different areathat I've been working on.
And I tried to apply itto my own presentation.
And that's how I created myframework that I'm using now
that is called a "PresentationSprint" that allows me
(10:12):
to really prepare quicklyimpactful presentation.
If I get back to your question,why am I so, passionate about
it is because it's frustrating.
It's frustrating thatpeople waste time doing
presentations that arenot needed, are too long.
We have better things to do thanto spend hours on our slides.
To be honest, that'sjust a waste of time.
(10:33):
We would be way more happierif all the presentations
we're doing were short,clear, and quick to prepare.
So that's why it's reallybothering me every day I
see Presentation, becauseI'm doing coaching on
communication in general.
So not only presentation.
So I'm confronted on alot of projects, real
business projects.
And it's killing me to seethis type of waste, this
(10:56):
type of bad communication.
We can do better easily.
We don't have to waste that.
So that's why I'mpassionate about it.
I'm sorry if it's too much.
Galen Low (11:03):
Oh, no, no, that's great.
Like that use case isso insightful because,
we started with, yeah,some people don't care.
Communication is a dirty word,but when you're that person
who does care and you'retrying and you don't have the
guidance and you're sinkinghours into it and you're failing
and then other people arealso not enjoying themselves.
It is such a frustration.
And like I come fromagency world as well.
And I guess in a way.
(11:23):
I was spoiled, like I said,no one trained me, but I
did get a lot of guidancefrom mentors along the way
because we take storytellingreally seriously, right?
It's about sort of presentingthe value of your work
because you're getting paidby this client to do it.
So it was taken quite seriously,but that notion that most
communication in an organizationis actually bad, there's no
sort of good bar or standards.
(11:45):
And then even if you didwant to get better, it's hard
because you're basically justthe blind leading the blind,
or you're just left alone inthe woods to try and, make
your presentations betteror make your communication
better without any guidance.
Renaud Taburiaux (11:57):
Yeah.
And people, a lot ofpeople might not see the
effort you are doing.
So if you don't know exactly, ifyou're not equipped to do short
presentation clearly, quickly,you get demotivated quickly.
Oh, we're talking about theToastmaster in the green room.
Oh, I attend Toastmasterand yet my presentation
are still confusing.
And yes, it's still, awall of text on the slide.
(12:18):
I don't know how to do that.
So, the small step you do,don't bring much value if you
don't know which step to take,in which direction to go.
So it can be easily fixedif you are doing one step
after the other, but wedon't know how to do it.
As you said earlier, noone told us how to do it.
So yeah, there is areal frustration there.
It's really annoying.
Galen Low (12:38):
That was like an enlightening
thing in the green room.
So I want to bring it here too,because you mentioned about
Toastmasters, and I was saying,I'm like, a lot of people in my
community, they are interestedin Toastmasters and they're
becoming better presenters.
And you had mentioned that ideathat it's like, it teaches you
how to present yourself, butnot necessarily how to structure
your message, not necessarily,how to navigate bias in your
audience or your own bias.
(12:58):
It was just like onepiece of the puzzle.
It's great, butit's not everything.
Renaud Taburiau (13:02):
It's important.
It's really, it gives you, as Iwas saying, it gives you reps.
Because if you, in your job, youdon't have the opportunity to
present, officially on the stageor in front of people, you can
get rusty and you don't have theopportunity to fail and learn.
Fail safely, I would say.
So it's good, but it's only thelast part is the deliveries,
the how you present, it's notthe why, like the message, it's
(13:23):
not the what, like your slides,it's really just speaking
in front of the audienceabout anything that's really
important, but I doubt that'swhat most People, professional
needs right now to get better,at least in the beginning.
Galen Low (13:36):
Let's dive in.
You teased thepresentation sprint.
I'm intrigued.
Can you tell us a littlebit about your approach
to presentations,project presentations?
I don't know.
Maybe we could do aproject management example.
What is an example of a projectpresentation that might matter?
And like, how would youuse your framework, the
presentation sprint, likewhat steps would you take
to make these presentationsas impactful as possible?
Renaud Taburiaux (13:57):
Okay, sure.
Let's take a coupleof presentations as
a project manager.
It's all about the audience andyour impact, your objective,
how you want to impact them.
So there's a lot of presentationthat you do for approval.
You need to approve a budget,a roadmap, or a new project.
You might want to motivate.
And in that case, we weretalking about all hands VIP.
It's a bit different.
(14:18):
You go a bit less intodetails, more into,
aspirational vision andmission and things like that.
We can also want to reassureyour stakeholder by showing
what you did during thesprint or the business review.
So there's a lot of typeof presentation that we do.
And the way to doit for me is simple.
There's three steps andthree steps that we all know.
(14:39):
You think, you build,and you deliver.
You think it's the why.
Why are you presenting?
What are your message?
Who is your audience?
What are your message?
You need to thinkbefore you build.
That's important rulethat we all forget.
We tend to rush into PowerPointand, Google slide and start
drafting a slide withoutknowing what we want to say.
(15:00):
We're focusing on makingslide instead of making sense.
So you won't doing the thingto really focus on that 'why'.
Once you know why youhave a basic structure,
roughly the content thatyou would share, you build.
And the build is the scripts,the contents, the slides.
This is really the whatI'm going to present.
And finally, youhave the deliver.
(15:20):
We talked about itthrough, the Toastmaster.
This is how you will present,the public speaking, but
also the interaction, howto manage the stress, how to
manage the body, because it'sa physical activity to speak,
to, walk, to move around.
So all this, you need to learn.
And what is funny for me, goingback to, coming from agency
PM in agency to corporate.
(15:41):
We know how to do thistype of three step well,
we talk about agility.
We talk about, UX designwith their workflow,
and yet we prepare apresentation in waterfall.
We spend, hours on it.
And then at the end, onceeverything is perfect, we will
share it with somebody else.
That's not how it works.
You're supposed to do iterativeand incremental to, okay.
(16:04):
I think now I build, Iwould do the outline.
Then I would share it withmy customer or sponsor.
I will come again, I will dothe, the content and at the
end I will do the design.
So this is the frameworkI want people to do.
You think before you buildslowly and you ask for
feedback early and youprepare how do you deliver.
You prepare how you willinteract, you prepare
(16:25):
how you will manage yourstress, you prepare how you
will manage the question.
Lots of things like thatyou need to think about.
So, think, build,deliver, we all do it.
You just have to applywhat you already know
to Presentation Sprint.
Galen Low (16:39):
I like that.
Just to play the devil'sadvocate though, at the top,
we started talking about howto spend less time preparing.
And some folks listeningmight be like, yeah, that
makes sense right now.
But that sounds like moretime than I'm spending
right now, or as much time.
How does the sprintformat sort of save time?
Renaud Taburiaux (16:56):
That's a really fair point because
it can be scary to say,Oh, that's a lot of time.
No, it's not because you don'thave to spend a lot of time.
The think phase, if you knowyour message, if you know your
audience, you don't need threehours of workshop for that.
In a minute, you cananswer this question.
There's roughly eight tonine questions to answer
before opening PowerPoint.
It can take 10 minutesif but the problem is we
don't know, and yet werush to the build phase.
(17:19):
And that's where we waste alot of time because we don't
know what we want to say.
So if you do all thesesteps quickly, you have more
impact than if you don't.
Because the building will bereally easy once you already
know what you want to say.
If you have the structureof a presentation on a piece
of paper, on a clackstoneor, a mirror board or
something like that.
(17:40):
The building of the slidewill take an hour, maybe
two, if you want to be fancy.
But you will quickly havesome kind of, minimum
viable presentation.
Something that you canstart presenting and
getting feedback on.
So you will spend way less time.
You will avoid sunk costs.
If you spend time workingon a presentation to perfect
it, and then it endedup not fitting the whole
(18:01):
story or your, your managersay, no, this one is bad.
You spend two hours onit for what it can feel
like a lot of steps.
It's only three.
And you don't have to spenda lot of time for each of
them, but if you rush tothe build, that's it, you
will waste a lot of time.
If you don't prepare thedeliver, you will waste the
impact you can have becauseyou will not know what to say.
(18:24):
You will be stressed.
You will not know how tohandle some question that
might be difficult that youcould have prepared before.
So, yes, I understand.
It can be scary when I say itlike that, but it's only three
steps; think, build, deliver.
Just do all of them, evenfast, you will be better off.
Galen Low (18:40):
That's actually really relatable, because as
you were talking, I was thinkingabout I wonder if I had a nickel
for every slide that I createdand then got thrown away, I
would be so rich right now.
There's something to it though.
I mean, I think we likeslideware because it
feels like thinking insome cases, definitely
like agency folks, right?
Mostly punchy messages.
(19:01):
You see the corporate slide,like the PowerPoint, like my
wife's corporate PowerPointslides from some of her peers.
It's like a novel crushedinto one slide and it's, as
many words, eight point font.
And it took a longtime to put together.
And then at some pointsomeone's going to be like,
yeah, we don't need that slide.
And it goes to the appendixand then it gets thrown away.
Renaud Taburiaux (19:23):
What is worse that somebody say, we don't
need that slide, remove it.
Oh, that nobody sayanything and you end up
presenting that slide.
You know what I mean?
Galen Low (19:30):
Yeah.
And then you run out oftime for the important
stuff like ahead of it.
Renaud Taburiaux (19:33):
Exactly.
If you want to spend timeon your presentation,
spend time rehearsing.
To be honest, that's whereyou have the most impact,
but we don't do that.
As you say, we write everythingbecause maybe, people send a
template and say, Oh, you haveto present you this template.
There's a text field.
Okay.
I will writeeverything I will say.
And again, do a karaoke.
So it's reassuring, it feelslike real work, but it's
(19:55):
a way, I don't want to saylazy because I don't want
to be too judgy, but it's away to avoid doing the hard
work of slowing down andthinking what you want to say.
That's really hard, if you don'tknow, if you've never done it,
so it's easier to say, ah, let'sjust copy paste some slide from
different deck that I've seen,I've used, it will be fine.
Maybe, probably not.
(20:17):
You know what I mean?
Galen Low (20:18):
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
Renaud Taburiaux (20:21):
I've never seen, a presentation that was
not well prepared who went well.
Usually, it's always terrible.
Whether for the speakeror for the audience.
That shouldn't be a win losesituation, it should be a win.
Galen Low (20:33):
Yeah, absolutely.
I wonder if wecan dive in there.
That third step, deliver.
It's easy to focus on okay,then show up and do the thing,
but actually deliver for youmeans think about how you are
going to deliver this, practice,rehearse, I was wondering if
we could take that into a teamsituation, because some of the
presentations you mentioned,it's not a solo mission usually
there's a number of presenters,On a number of topics and
(20:56):
you need to prepare together.
And I think a lot of peopleprobably heard the word
rehearse and I love to rehearse.
I prioritize it.
But I know that Dannyand I, but you're right.
I was like, I don't thinkthat's a popular opinion.
Renaud Taburiaux (21:07):
No.
Galen Low (21:07):
It's painful.
It takes a lot of time.
And I think a lot of peoplelistening would say, OK, but
if I'm trying to spend lesstime preparing, that sounds
like I just added more timerehearsing with my team.
How do you approach thatdeliver step with your team to
feel prepared, but not spend36 hours locked in a room?
Renaud Taburi (21:24):
Yeah, definitely.
Okay.
So I will answer in two ways.
The first one aboutthe preparation of
the delivery itself.
And the second one is whenit's a team, how can we help
other prepare for the delivery?
Because it's really adifferent aspect of it.
If you spend a lot of timerehearsing, it's probably
because you don't do it right.
What I like to dois a full rehearsal.
(21:45):
You begin at the beginningand you go all the way to
the end without stopping.
Usually, as soon as youdon't know, oh, okay,
wait, let me start again.
And you end up never,rehearsing the second part.
So it's easier to say, okay,the script is not finished.
I have an idea ofwhat I want to say.
I go, I do everything.
I tie myself.
Usually in the presentationis like 20 minutes,
(22:06):
maybe 30 minutes maximum.
If it's above that, you'relosing your audience anyway.
So let's say 20 minutes.
20 minute presentation,you rehearse it once.
And at the end, you ask thequestion to yourself and also
to the contributor, peoplewho are here in the test
audience, what I did, right?
What can I improvefor the next time?
The next time being maybe thenext rehearsal, or maybe the
(22:27):
next time, the real presentationin front of the audience.
If you do that, you need 20minutes plus 10, 20 minutes
of feedback, discussionafter that, and that's it.
But the thing is, wedon't do rehearsal.
A lot of people, if they have toprepare how they deliver, they
do what I call a read through.
They go slide by slide andthey say, okay, on this one,
I will say that, on thisone, I will say that, but
(22:48):
they never say it out loud.
And when you say it outloud, it's bad, it's normal
because it's really, you don'tknow which word to say, you
don't know your transition.
You don't know on whichword to, put the emphasize,
when to put a pause.
To show that it's animportant message that
they should think about.
We don't do that.
So you have to do arehearsal, fail in private,
(23:09):
so you can succeed infront of the audience.
So that's for my first,about the delivery part.
Do a full rehearsal,beginning to the end.
If you get lost, if youdon't know what to say,
that's your problem.
Improvise, like youwould on the day.
You will instantly see whatworks and what doesn't.
And then you will spend therest of the time adjusting it.
If you can do another rehearsal,maybe the next day, avoid
(23:31):
doing too many rehearsalsin the same, the same time,
because it's really tiring.
And you will see that itgets easier, the more you
rehearse and it gets better.
So you feel more confident.
You know exactly which wordto use, which one don't
feel right, or too, written.
We don't write like we speak.
So if you write yourscript, some sentence will
not, they will feel off.
(23:52):
So by rehearsal outloud, you will know.
Until you rehearse,everything is a hypothesis.
How long you will take,what you would say, how
it will, fit together.
You don't knowuntil you rehearse.
So it's better to rehearse inprivate or with contributor,
than in front of the audience.
Galen Low (24:08):
I really like the keep going end to end thing
because I've definitely beenin those prep sessions where
we never got past sectionone because we kept rewriting
and iterating and goingagain and then we didn't
know how it was all goingto go and the other bit that
I really like transitions.
In a pinch, my agency days, ifwe didn't have time to rehearse
for whatever reason, we wouldjust practice the transitions
(24:30):
because everyone has theirtime slot and transitions,
because that's really wherewe things got super awkward.
And now my colleague isgoing to come on stage and
present about something.
And you're like, I don'tknow how to handle the baton.
Renaud Taburiaux (24:42):
It's worse than that, because this is a
transition between two speaker,but a lot of people have problem
transition between two slides.
Or to message, and they do,instead of having one story
with 10 chapters, 10 slides.
They have 10 individualstories, so they show a slide,
they talk about it, thenthat's it, they think they
are done, they show the nextslide, and they talk about it.
(25:04):
Okay, so here I want tosay that's the best way
to lose your audience.
Galen Low (25:07):
Yes.
Renaud Taburiaux (25:08):
You should tease what's going on.
So you talk about this slide.
Okay.
And that's what leads us to,and you move to the next slide.
These small transitionsare really, they're simple
to do, but they change thewhole atmosphere, the whole
feeling of your presentation.
You feel like, Oh, it'sa cohesive, story that
you're trying to tell me.
I understand why you'retelling me that now and
(25:28):
not three slides before,because it has a logic to it.
Galen Low (25:31):
Even just circling back to what we started
with, like that notion ofbringing people along to
move something forward.
Like when you really distillit down that's the purpose.
Just not to Read a slide and tryand remember what words go with
it, but actually bringing peoplealong towards like a goal.
It's a motivated thing,not a read aloud.
Renaud Taburiaux (25:49):
Yeah, that's too often the case, but you
know, it's, I like to say thatthe presentation, the business
presentation is not here for,to inform that it's here to
transform, you don't want tojust, it's not a training.
Oh, this is all the, the backlogthat we have for next sprint.
No, tell me how it fit together.
Why are we doing that?
Why is it important?
What would be the impact forthe user or the customer?
(26:11):
You have to go from onepoint to the other with them.
Indeed, if it's just to say,Oh, this is the backlog.
This is my priority.
Send an email.
You don't need a presentation.
You're wasting your time.
You're wasting theaudience time, their
attention, their energy.
Everyone is drained after that.
They don't know what yousaid, just send an email.
That's way better.
Galen Low (26:30):
I like what you said though, that like the
time together is valuable,almost like sacred, right?
Like it's not, it might beseen as a chore and it might be
really awkward and intimidating,but you know, that time spent
together is, it's valuable,especially in a project context.
Renaud Taburiaux (26:43):
So it's, again, I'm passionate about it.
So calm me down or stop meif I go too long on this one.
We have to see presentationas something of value.
It's not a selfish act togo present it's a, I want
to say it's a servant,it's a selfless one.
You're there because you'retrying to solve one of
your audience problem.
(27:04):
Maybe you need an approvalfor your budget, fine.
But what do the people who needto approve would get from it?
Think it from this perspective,and then you will always
see that the presentationis here to bring value.
And once it brings value, youwill be less stressed to do it.
You probably will frame yourpresentation from their point
of view, the audience pointof view, instead of yours.
(27:24):
So it will resonate, itwill have more impact.
I like when you say thatit's valuable, the time.
A presentation is at the sametime priceless and really
expensive it's pricelessbecause, you take from the
audience, their time, theirattention, their energy thing
that you cannot give back inany way you can give back this.
So it's really, it's priceless.
(27:45):
And at the same time, if youhave 10 people for one hour in
your presentation, you didn'tlose one hour, you lost 10
hours, that's, that's expensivein our, in our company today.
Do shorter presentations, dofewer presentations if you can.
Again, not everythingneeds to be a presentation.
Go straight to the point,focus from the audience
perspective, and that'show you would bring value.
(28:07):
That's how you would feelmore confident doing it.
It will solve a lot of problems.
Galen Low (28:11):
I like that a lot.
Renaud Taburiaux (28:13):
I think I didn't answer your
question about how to help.
Do you want to go there or doyou want to do something else?
Galen Low (28:17):
Actually, you know what?
I thought maybe we could zero ina little bit on a team situation
where some folks don't havethe same level of comfort might
actually be very intimidatedto present because at the
end of the day, not everyonefeels comfortable presenting.
Not everyone has an agencybackground, like you and I were
storytelling was paramount, butI know a lot of project managers
(28:39):
in my community, they get putin the situation where they're
presenting as a team and someoneon their team just doesn't
feel comfortable presenting.
And the question we gotactually from the community
was like, what's the best wayto prep and coach team members
who just might not feel thatpresenting is their strength?
They might actually be a veryskilled technician, specialist,
analyst, developer, but theymight still be just finding
(29:00):
their voice as an expert.
And the question I guess is,how can a project manager or
a team leader help to maketheir co-presenters shine?
Renaud Tab (29:08):
That's a good point.
And it's right that, as aproject manager or again,
a product manager or peoplemanager, you often help other
people do their presentation.
What I would say here isthat first, you cannot help
if they don't want to help.
That's, that'sbasic in coaching.
Somebody doesn't care aboutit, doesn't want your opinion.
Don't give it.
You will notconvince them anyway.
So that's safetime for everyone.
(29:30):
Then if you have to helpsomeone, don't give feedback.
That would be my, my maincomment here, my main
advice, don't give feedback,ask questions, because
you're probably not seenas a presentation expert.
Maybe you're also bad at it.
However, your pointof view is crucial.
It's really important forthem not to tell them what
(29:50):
to do, but to help themfigure out what to do.
So you have to havethis coaching posture.
You ask questions, whensomebody says, Oh, I want to
share my presentation with you.
Ask them, okay, beforeyou show me the slide,
who is the audience?
What are you trying to dowith this presentation?
Oh, it's for theleadership to do this.
Okay, fine.
Let's go through it.
And then regularlytry to link back.
(30:11):
Okay.
You say that, but howdoes it support the
message that you gave me?
A minute ago, it's nota rhetorical question.
It's a real question.
Maybe there is a linkthere that you don't see.
Let them tell you this link.
Oftentimes they will say,Oh yeah, you're right.
That's not reallywhat I want to say.
Maybe it's too much.
Let me remove that.
You didn't say anything.
You just ask question.
It's the same if youwant to put them, in the
audience perspective,audience choose say, okay,
(30:34):
that's really interesting.
Do they know this acronym?
What do you wantthem to remember?
So that's alwaysasking questions,
helping them sometime.
What I like to do, I shouldn'tsay that now when something
is really messy, doesn'tmake any sense, a lot of
leverage, aI will will leverageAI to empower developer
do their job efficiently.
(30:54):
You just, okay, fine.
What are you trying to say?
And often they willsay something like, oh,
we're just using ChatGPTto correct our code.
Galen Low (31:01):
Right.
Renaud Taburiaux (31:02):
Say that.
That's what youshould be saying.
Again, you're talking to human.
You don't have to usefancy words that you don't
understand most of thetime, because the audience
doesn't understand also.
Say it simply.
Just say the way you would sayto a colleague or, a friend.
That's really helpful.
Just ask them, okay,what do you want to say?
Again, ask a question.
Galen Low (31:21):
I was going to say, I like the pendulum swing because,
like in this scenario, right,we're talking about a lot of
the teams that my folks workwith are quite technical people.
So their jargon is on one sideof the pendulum and they're
like, okay, I'm presentingto people who don't get this.
And then they swing all the waythe other way to be like, oh,
presentation and salesy speak,I'll use those, big adjectives
(31:42):
and then it will be good.
And yet they still sometimesthe linkage that you
mentioned, I thought wasreally important because.
Sometimes if you don'task, how is this connected
to the other thing?
It might be just obviousto that individual.
Cause it's their day to day.
They're like, of course thisis connected to the release.
Like it's the mechanism for it.
You're like, okay.
Yeah.
And then begs that like,Oh, you didn't know that?
(32:02):
I really like them gettinginto what their audience
like knows and doesn't know.
And where to sort of simplify.
Renaud Taburi (32:07):
It's really hard.
That's the curse of knowledge.
We know that you're somuch in the way that
for you, it's obvious.
Of course, everyone, I seeit often with CEO who, when
they present in all hands, ofcourse, it's obvious that we're
doing that for the shareholderprice and the strategy.
We talked about itfor three years.
It's so beautiful foryou because you spend
your day working on it.
A developer who is doingPython or a technical architect
(32:30):
who is doing, his model.
They don't know much about it,but we don't know until we have
this external point of view,this coaching role, somebody
who is asking this question.
And as you say, sometimesit's really obvious, the link.
They just have to explain itand explain it simply, but they
don't know until we ask them.
Galen Low (32:48):
I like that.
I also like thequestions up front.
All too often I find it's okay,yeah, present it to me and then
I'll provide feedback, right?
That's the kind of likethe common approach,
but I do like that.
Okay.
Before you start tellingme who's this for, what
are we trying to do?
Right.
Because it almost createsthe, like the brief
for everyone to go.
Okay.
Yeah.
Like it puts it all intocontext and then it gives a
framework to ask questionsand to build empathy.
Renaud Taburiaux (33:10):
When I coach, I'm doing coaching obviously.
When I coach peopleduring the rehearsal and
we invite test audience.
Usually, I want to have somebodywho knows the project, somebody
who doesn't know anything.
I try to get a test audienceas close as possible
as the final audience.
I want to do the rehearsalin front of the developer.
But I tell them atthe beginning, this
is a full rehearsal.
(33:30):
You don't interrupt.
We go from thebeginning to the end.
And I say, put yourself inthe shoes of the audience.
Today, you are notthe head of sourcing.
No, today you are thecustomer from this company.
Largely you have, you're busy.
You don't know much aboutthis project or you know a lot
about this technology and ithelps you frame your feedback.
Again, I'm talking aboutfeedback here before I
(33:53):
say ask question, but theask question is more for
the coaching aspect of it.
But sometimes they wantyou to give me feedback.
Okay, what worked, what canbe improved for next time?
And to answer thisquestion, you need to
know who the presentationis for, what it is for.
And we often skip that asyou say, okay, let me show
my slide, go through it.
Okay, fine.
That's not how it works.
Galen Low (34:14):
And fine is is the right word, right?
Yeah, it's fine.
Renaud Taburiaux (34:17):
It's good.
It's good.
It's good.
No, but okay.
Okay.
That's a good point.
Let me stop on that becausewe need to remember that it's
progress over perfection.
You cannot say to somebodywho's terrible, who is stressed.
It's a lot of text, tellthem, Oh, that's terrible,
redo it from scratch.
That's demotivating.
That doesn't help themknow what to improve.
Give them something small.
(34:38):
We do plenty of presentation,way too much, if you ask me.
So they will have opportunityto, to improve in the next one.
Just start now with one thing.
Oh, this one, a lot of texts.
Do they need all of these texts?
No.
Okay.
Okay.
And let them think,okay, I will remove that.
Okay.
That's good.
That's good enoughfor this presentation.
You will not, save humanitywith one presentation at the
(34:59):
time, but you can get betterwith one presentation at a time.
And at the end, thesmall steps, the small,
1 percent will add up.
To being comfortable,being, confident, being
impactful, not wasting time.
But that's reallyimportant to that's fine.
Sometimes fine is good.
Sometimes fine is good.
You don't need toperfect slides sometimes.
(35:21):
Amateurish slides feelbetter because they're more
authentic to the speaker.
That doesn't make sense here.
Galen Low (35:27):
Yeah, no, absolutely.
And actually I was going tosay what I really like about
it is that, we were talkingabout if you have a team
member who doesn't really feelcomfortable and you're like,
well, like perfection or throwit out and make it perfect is
actually the most demotivatingthing, but actually the essence
of presenting well is notperfection is what are we trying
to do here when you boil itback down to the message and
(35:48):
the audience, then even if youget all the words wrong, that
you were in the script, butyou still get the idea across.
It's moving the ball forwardfor the project and to your
point, like it's incrementalimprovement for the presenter
too, who won't overnight becomethe best orator, of all time.
They won't.
That's for sure.
But it's like gettingbetter and better.
Renaud Taburiaux (36:06):
Yeah.
On the, on this part, for thethink phase, the first phase,
remember think, build, deliver.
For the think, I createda canvas with 10 questions
basically to answerbefore you open on it.
And one of the few questionsat the beginning, of
course, who is the audience?
What is the objective?
What are the message that youwant to say by just doing this?
Even if the projector, the, wedon't use projector anymore,
(36:28):
but the, the TV stopped working.
You can still deliveryour message because you
know what you want to say.
The same three messages youcan say in the elevator pitch.
You can say, at lunch,you can say in a half
an hour presentation.
But if you don't know, Atthe beginning, what you want
to say, the key messages,the story you're trying
to tell, if something goeswrong, you'll be lost.
(36:50):
Oh, I don't rememberthis part of the script.
In theory, you shouldhave them already,
memorized or internalized.
Okay, so this doesn't work.
What I want to say here is,That's really important.
And we don't do it becausewe don't think before
we start building it.
It's going back to thissimple step, always
think before you build.
Galen Low (37:08):
I like that word, not memorize, internalize.
Yes.
And I'm someone who like,there are songs that I've been
listening to since I was a kid.
I still don't knowany of the lyrics.
Renaud Taburiaux (37:18):
Yeah.
Which one?
Let's put you on the spot.
Galen Low (37:20):
Oh my gosh.
Okay.
The Weezer (Blue Album).
I've listened to that sincelike whenever it was released,
I was in high school, I'velistened to it regularly.
For however many decades,I won't date myself too
much, but you asked meto memorize something.
I shut down.
I don't memorize,but I do internalize.
So when I actually present,I will usually write a script
(37:40):
and then I'll boil it backdown into bullet points.
And then I'll try andinternalize those bullet points.
So I know what they mean, notall the words of what they say.
And you and I, even in thegreen room, we were talking
about, yeah, like backup plansfor when technology fails.
And actually when I was workingat a consultancy and they were
giving the managing directorsthere some training on no
slide presentations, right?
(38:01):
Getting back to the ideathat, do you need slideware?
What if you could presentwithout slideware?
Does that make it better?
It was an interestingconcept to me.
Because as an agencyguy, I dream in slides.
You know what I mean?
Renaud Taburia (38:12):
Yeah, of course.
But you know, to behonest, a slide is always
often, not always, oftenuseful to visualize.
When you see numbers, ifyou're presenting the result
of, a sprint or a financialquarter or something like
that, you need slide becauseit's really hard to follow.
Okay.
3000, 3000. Okay.
If you have, okay,I have three points.
(38:33):
You put the three points onone slide, the title of it.
That's enough, becauseit's visual, it creates
redundancy in the mind.
You have to both remember whatyou hear and what you see.
So slide is important,but that's not what the
presentation is about.
As you say, you need tointernalize the message.
And then with or withoutslides, you will be able
to deliver these messages.
Galen Low (38:52):
I like it's as a reference for the
audience, not as a referencefor you as a presenter.
Renaud Taburi (38:55):
Yeah, definitely.
You shouldn't need thatto know what to say.
To be fair, if it helps youto know what you will have to
say, to not forget, to be morecomfortable because you're not
stressed that you will Miss halfyour point for me, that's fine.
Again, it's just abusiness presentation.
I don't want it to show itas a final exam where you
need to know everythingto answer all questions.
(39:17):
It's just a businesspresentation.
You can get back tothe audience later.
You can come later todeeper in some topics.
It's fine if youuse it for yourself.
Galen Low (39:26):
I like that.
It's not Broadway.
It's not a Senate hearing.
Renaud Taburiaux (39:29):
No, exactly.
Galen Low (39:31):
It's your business presentation and yeah,
it moves things forward.
Renaud Taburiaux (39:35):
Let's answer your second
part of your question.
If somebody is not comfortable,just remind them that
it's just a presentation.
Lower the, I don't know howto say that, the expectation.
If you can do that, talkto a human, share your
message, that's fine.
It's fine.
If you forget some points,remember that you know
what you want to say,the audience doesn't know
what you want to say.
So if skip a point, that's fine.
(39:57):
That's no big deal.
If you have this mindsetand the, you keep in mind
that you're here to helpthe audience, usually the
stress goes dramatically low.
And if on top of that,you rehearse once or twice
out loud fully, that's it.
I've coached, a lot of technicalpeople in it, especially they
are terrible at presenting, butafter the normal presentation
(40:19):
sprints, they are fine.
They're thriving.
They're really happy.
They're excited to be here.
It's not, stress anymore.
It's all, I'm looking forwardto share that because.
Usually they have good feedbackand because, I will be able to
have a purpose to bring valueto help the people I'm trying
to help here who I'm talking to.
Galen Low (40:36):
I literally like that.
Actually, even just circlingback to the beginning, right?
What you said is, I asked youwhy is presenting so important
and why isn't it taught?
You actually took it to a spotwhere we're presenting all the
time when you're interactingwith your colleagues, you're
presenting ideas and actuallythe one where you have to stand
up in front of the room withthe, slides on the wall is
just another version of thatconversation and kind of just
(40:57):
like bringing depressurizing it.
I think we over, overpressurize the presentation.
I wondered, like for folkslistening, nodding their
heads, they're like, yeah,okay, my team, we need
to be better at businesscommunications at presentations.
Some folks, are incommunications at their
organization or their teamleads, what's the best first
step that they can take to justlike level up their culture
of business communications?
Renaud Tabur (41:17):
I'm highly biased.
Of course, I would say applythe three step of the framework.
You don't have to buy anything.
Just think before you build.
Build slowly and ask forfeedback early and prepare
how you will deliver.
If you do that for all yourcommunication, even email,
video that you have to shoot.
If you always thinkbefore you build slowly
and you get feedback.
You don't wait, the lastminute to get feedback.
(41:38):
And you prepare how you willdeliver, how you would send
it, how you, no matter what.
If you just do that,you're way ahead.
You would save countless ofhours designing, refining
what is not useful.
So I would say thatapply these three rules,
follow the three steps.
Remember that you haveto show the example.
Don't ask your team to do itif you don't do it on your own.
(42:00):
And start small.
Again, progress over perfection.
Try once, maybe the nextpresentation, just try to
write down, it's important towrite down, make it concrete.
Write down the, the threemessages that you want the
audience to remember and torepeat after your presentation.
What did he say?
Well, he said that no.
Okay, if you just do that,the rest of your preparation
(42:21):
would be so much easier.
And then the next time,you will check how to,
you can do better slides.
Maybe less words, maybe, more,less visual clutter, anything.
Just start small, but start now.
Galen Low (42:34):
I like that.
It's iterative.
Renaud Taburiaux (42:36):
Definitely.
I think it is somethingthat we do in our projects.
We do sprints,it's one at a time.
We get feedback, we getuser review, we get.
We test, we do discovery, and wedon't do that for presentation.
So just apply what you alreadydo well to your presentation.
Galen Low (42:51):
I was going to say, now it clicks, right?
Presentation Sprint,name of your book.
Renaud Ta (42:55):
Yeah, it is actually.
It is because at the endof the sprint, I say sprint
because it has to be,really short and, focused.
We don't want to waste time.
It's a couple of hoursmaximum present preparation.
You are mindful aboutwhich step you take.
You do one step at a time.
So that's why it's a sprint,but it's also a sprint
because it's start again.
(43:15):
At the end, I don't talkabout it a lot because people
are a bit triggered by that.
At the end of your presentation,after the delivery,
actually, you go back tothe think and you debrief.
What can I do betterfor next time?
You write it down.
And the next time you have apresentation, check that again.
What did I say Iwould do better?
We don't do that becausedebrief, retrospective, we
(43:36):
don't really see the point.
But it's important totake, a couple of minutes
after you present with yourteam, relax, de stress.
Okay.
How was it?
How did you feel?
Do we have any metrics toassess how good it was or so on?
What can we do better next time?
If we had to do itagain, the preparation
and the presentation.
What should we do differently?
So that's why it'sa sprint again.
(43:57):
You come back to it and itgoes back to the sprint of
agility, where at the end of,your session, your sprint,
your iteration, you just, okay,what do we do next sprints?
Galen Low (44:06):
Love that.
Renaud Taburiaux (44:07):
And you keep, yes, let's stop now.
Galen Low (44:10):
No.
I have a whole bunch ofquestions from my community.
We're going to answer them inthe community because I don't
think we have time today.
But folks who are listeningwho aren't in our community
where can they learn moreabout the book and what you do?
Renaud Taburiaux (44:21):
Yes.
Okay.
So the book, I don't knowfor those who have the
camera, so the book is here.
It's available on Amazon.
You can find it onpresentation-sprint.com.
The tools that are inside,the canvas, the workflow, the
checklist, you can download themon presentation-sprint.com.
Everything is free.
You don't have to buythe book to start.
(44:42):
Please try to improveyour presentation.
Eventually you say, okay,I want to go a bit deeper
about structure, how tostructure my presentation.
I talk about it, some tips,how to manage stress, and
you will get more in details.
But at the beginning,just download the tools,
the checklist, you candownload the first chapter
on presentation-sprint.com.
(45:02):
Contact me if you want me to,maybe I can come to do a short
presentation to your team.
I will be happy.
I want to really spreadthe word about this this
methodology, this framework.
So contact me, you willhave my LinkedIn and my
email on the website.
And just again, startsmall, start now.
Galen Low (45:20):
Love that.
I'll include all the linksin the show notes below.
Renaud, thank you so muchfor joining me today.
This was a lot of fun.
Renaud Taburiaux (45:25):
Thank you very much for having me.
I think we are reallyaligned because of our
background on Project Manager.
I think we're sharing a lot offrustration, bad habit here.
So I'm really glad we can helpyour audience doing better here.
Galen Low (45:38):
Yeah, it's been cathartic.
Thank you.
All right folks,there you have it.
As always, if you'd like tojoin the conversation with
over a thousand like-mindedproject management champions,
come join our collective!Head on over to
theDPM.com/membershipto learn more.
And if you liked what youheard today, please subscribe
and stay in touch onthedigitalprojectmanager.com.
(46:01):
Until next time,thanks for listening.
It's presentation day.
Things are underway, andeverything's going pretty well.
Well, it's going okay.
Okay, actually, it'sgoing about as well as a
car crash in slow motion.
Ravin is reading offthe slides again.
Florence looks like they'remurmuring to their toes more
than they're demoing thenew personalization feature.
And you — you forgot yournotes somewhere on the train,
and you've been winging it.
(00:20):
On the receiving end, thegeneral mood of the stakeholder
audience is... confused.
Impatient.
Disengaged.
The good news is that it willall be over soon, and we can
all forget it ever happened.
Except that's notthe case at all.
The project continues, thenext sprint review is in
two weeks, and even if youjump ship right now, there
are still many businesspresentations ahead of you.
(00:42):
If you've been throwing upyour hands and accepting
the fact that projectpresentations with your team
are fated to be painful andunavoidable blips between
project work, keep listening.
We're going to be talkingabout how to get your team's
acing project presentationswhile having less time
wasted in preparation.
Hey folks, thanks for tuning in.
My name is Galen Low withThe Digital Project Manager.
(01:04):
We are a community of digitalprofessionals on a mission
to help each other getskilled, get confident, and
get connected so that we canamplify the value of project
management in a digital world.
If you want to hear moreabout that, head on over
to thedpm.com/membership.
Okay, today we are talkingabout the dark art of presenting
project work, and how projectmanagers can support their
(01:27):
project teams to frame theirwork in a way that executive
stakeholders understand,all without wasting heaps of
time preparing in advance.
With me today is RenaudTaburiaux, a former agency
PM, an author, and a respectedpresentation coach for
professionals at all levels ofan organization — from technical
architects to the C-suite.
(01:47):
Renaud, thanks so muchfor being with me today.
Renaud Taburiaux (01:50):
Well, thank you for having me.
I'm looking forward to talkto your community, your
audience about this trickytopic that is making a
lot of us really stressed.
Galen Low (01:59):
And I'm glad you mentioned that because this
is an episode where you andI, we got together, we're
like, here are some hottopics around presentation.
And we took that to ourcommunity and we got some
of the questions from ourcommunity, things that they're
struggling with when it comesto presenting project work,
presentations in general,public speaking in general,
business and professionalcommunications in general.
So thank you for preppingwith me in advance to get
(02:21):
some of these in here.
And then we got like anocean of other questions
as well, which we willanswer within our community.
So I'm excited about that.
Renaud Taburiaux (02:29):
Yeah, they're really good question.
And we can see thata lot of people are
struggling with this topic.
So it's fine that peopleare not afraid to go and
ask for help, when theydon't know how to do that.
That's really encouraging.
Galen Low (02:41):
Absolutely.
The power of community.
All right.
I want to dive in withlike my big question.
So my big one hot questionthat kind of like encapsulates
all of this for me is this.
Why is presenting so importantin project management and
if it is so important,then why isn't it taught?
Renaud Taburiaux (02:57):
Okay, so why is it important?
I think for your community,project manager, but also
any type of manager, wea lot of time have to
lead without authority.
That's something thatwe've been doing for years.
We know about it.
And to lead without authority,you need to influence, you
need to convince people,especially nowadays.
It's more and moreparticipative.
(03:18):
You don't force people intodoing their job or, following
the backlog or things like that.
You have to convincethem to do that, to show
them the value behind it.
So it's more participative.
It's more at scale.
We often have huge team.
We might talk about safe, safemethodology where you have
hundreds of people workingon the same application.
So you have to convincenot one to one.
(03:40):
It has to be at scale.
And it's often remote.
It's not surprising now towork with people in India,
in Canada, in Brazil.
So convincing and influencingis really core to your job.
And presentation is oneof the key to do that.
Again, not one toone, but one to many.
So that's really why it'simportant to nail this
(04:01):
presentation, but it'snot always your only task.
You have other things to do.
So it's good to not wastetime to be as efficient as
possible when we preparethese presentations.
Galen Low (04:10):
I love that you took it there because in my
head, I was like, I thinkof a presentation, right?
Or presenting my I framedthe question as why is
presenting so important?
And in my head, I'm like, standand deliver in, in a boardroom.
You're talking to yourexecutive sponsor or a
group of stakeholders.
But it's not just that, right.
Presenting is actually theact of sharing an idea and
(04:31):
getting people on board with it.
And folks who are like, Oh yeah,I hate standing in front of a
room and presenting, actually asPMs, we're presenting every day.
We're presentingideas to our team.
We're getting, we're usingthat sort of managing through
influence and showing leadershipto collaborate, right?
Present ideas to one another.
I love that you took it there.
I was not even thinking that.
Renaud Taburiaux (04:49):
You have to get them closer to the goal,
what you're trying to achieve,but not everyone knows about it.
Not everyone has the sameknowledge overview as a project
manager or people manager,you have a real overview
of what everyone is doing.
They need to have theshared vision in order to
be efficient in their job.
So yeah, we arepresenting every day.
It doesn't have to be slide.
I didn't mention slide at allwhen I talk about presentation.
(05:10):
It's really sharing anidea, sharing messages,
telling a story.
It can take many forms,but we're doing every day
this type of presenting.
Galen Low (05:19):
I love that.
It also takes the edge off thelike, "formal" presentation.
Exactly.
It's just like all theother presenting you're
doing, every other dayit uses the same skills.
Renaud Taburiaux (05:27):
Yeah.
And at the end of the day,it's just a presentation.
Even if you have topresent to the C-suite,
it's just a presentation.
Your slide and how youpresent will not really
make or break what you'retrying to accomplish.
You can always get back on yourfeet through the discussion
with more, interaction,one to one and so on.
Don't overstressabout presentation.
(05:49):
As you say, we're makingit really official.
We often write buzzwordsin our script and so on.
It doesn't have to be like that.
It has to be human to human.
Slides don't convince people.
People convince people.
So keep perspective here.
It's just a presentation.
Galen Low (06:03):
I love that.
I want to come backto the skill even.
And this is a topic that wasa hot topic in our community.
Like it really struck a nerveand you and I in the green
room, we were talking about thetraining aspect of things and
I find at least in my journey,very few people sat me down
and trained me to present ideaswell, and yet I think all along
the way, it was an expectation.
(06:25):
I'm just like, whyis it that way?
Renaud Taburiaux (06:27):
There's many reasons, but it's
fair when you say that.
It's an expectation.
And, I often say it'slike writing an email.
We assume that people knowhow to write email, but no, we
know we can see it every daythat people don't know how to
write short and straight tothe point email, not a wall
of text with key messages lostsomewhere because they don't
even know what they want to ask.
So we assume, I would saythat it's taught in the
(06:51):
university, but It's not reallythey don't know much about
presentation for business.
So in university, you're taughthow to do academic presentation.
It's also taught in somecompany, but it's badly
thought I will not make alot of friends here, but you
know, when the teacher is acomedian, that's fine for the
delivery, for the confidence,for how to, have your voice,
(07:13):
what manage it well, the stressand everything that, that,
but it's not a presentationfor business, they will not
tell you how to structureyour message, the different
cognitive bias that you shouldavoid or leverage, but We are
taught about it in the bad way.
And one last thing Iwant to say is that it's
not always your fault.
There's also a lotof bad example.
(07:34):
When you look at what yourleadership, your C-suite is
presenting, their all handsand stuff like that, or what
the internet communicationor HR presenting, they're
supposed to know better.
And they don'tusually it's terrible.
They read what isalready on the slide.
They do some kind of karaoke.
They don't really knowwhat they want to say.
So, you know what I mean?
It's, we should look up tothem in terms of communication.
(07:57):
They shouldn't expect usproject manager or so on
to be better than them.
It is their job tocommunicate against, to
convince, to influence.
And yet, because they are alsonot trained or they assume
they know, we end up with this.
I would say it's notoften taught and when it's
taught, it's badly taught.
Galen Low (08:16):
I love that.
Renaud Taburiaux (08:18):
Again, I will not make a lot
of friends here, but.
Galen Low (08:21):
Well, no, what I love is like the
passion that's coming out.
I thought maybe we couldzoom out a bit because this
is clearly something thatyou have a lot of experience
with, that you have anopinion about, that you're
fiery about, that actually itdoesn't have to be this way.
But like, how did youget so interested in
presenting and communicatingin a business context?
What was that moment thatmade you realize that more
(08:42):
teams need to focus on thisskill and need more support?
Renaud Taburiaux (08:46):
It was quite based on an event
because I start my careerin agencies in 2010, I think
I was in a communicationagencies in New York or Paris.
And there, everythingwe're doing was perfect.
It was clever.
It was, funny.
It was clear.
We had designer.
Everyone knew what theywere supposed to say or do.
And then after five years,I think something like
that, I moved to corporate.
(09:07):
And that was a shock.
Because I realized that incorporate, communication
is almost a dirty word.
People don't like to doit, when they say, Oh, he's
handling communication.
Ah, okay.
We see this politic or,people who don't know how
to do, they will just dothe communication of it.
So I found that a lot ofpeople didn't even try
to do good communication.
(09:28):
They were avoiding it.
And I'm not talking only aboutpresentation here, I'm talking
communication in general.
But what was really botheringme is that some people retried
and they failed miserably.
They were spending countlessof hours preparing the
slide and the script.
And it was awful.
It was awful for them.
They were stressed.
They didn't know what to say.
It was awful for the audience.
(09:49):
It was really not a goodway of anyone's time.
So when I came to corporate,I took everything I knew
from agency, from projectmanagement, from, different
UX design, different areathat I've been working on.
And I tried to apply itto my own presentation.
And that's how I created myframework that I'm using now
that is called a "PresentationSprint" that allows me
(10:12):
to really prepare quicklyimpactful presentation.
If I get back to your question,why am I so, passionate about
it is because it's frustrating.
It's frustrating thatpeople waste time doing
presentations that arenot needed, are too long.
We have better things to do thanto spend hours on our slides.
To be honest, that'sjust a waste of time.
(10:33):
We would be way more happierif all the presentations
we're doing were short,clear, and quick to prepare.
So that's why it's reallybothering me every day I
see Presentation, becauseI'm doing coaching on
communication in general.
So not only presentation.
So I'm confronted on alot of projects, real
business projects.
And it's killing me to seethis type of waste, this
(10:56):
type of bad communication.
We can do better easily.
We don't have to waste that.
So that's why I'mpassionate about it.
I'm sorry if it's too much.
Galen Low (11:03):
Oh, no, no, that's great.
Like that use case isso insightful because,
we started with, yeah,some people don't care.
Communication is a dirty word,but when you're that person
who does care and you'retrying and you don't have the
guidance and you're sinkinghours into it and you're failing
and then other people arealso not enjoying themselves.
It is such a frustration.
And like I come fromagency world as well.
And I guess in a way.
(11:23):
I was spoiled, like I said,no one trained me, but I
did get a lot of guidancefrom mentors along the way
because we take storytellingreally seriously, right?
It's about sort of presentingthe value of your work
because you're getting paidby this client to do it.
So it was taken quite seriously,but that notion that most
communication in an organizationis actually bad, there's no
sort of good bar or standards.
(11:45):
And then even if you didwant to get better, it's hard
because you're basically justthe blind leading the blind,
or you're just left alone inthe woods to try and, make
your presentations betteror make your communication
better without any guidance.
Renaud Taburiaux (11:57):
Yeah.
And people, a lot ofpeople might not see the
effort you are doing.
So if you don't know exactly, ifyou're not equipped to do short
presentation clearly, quickly,you get demotivated quickly.
Oh, we're talking about theToastmaster in the green room.
Oh, I attend Toastmasterand yet my presentation
are still confusing.
And yes, it's still, awall of text on the slide.
(12:18):
I don't know how to do that.
So, the small step you do,don't bring much value if you
don't know which step to take,in which direction to go.
So it can be easily fixedif you are doing one step
after the other, but wedon't know how to do it.
As you said earlier, noone told us how to do it.
So yeah, there is areal frustration there.
It's really annoying.
Galen Low (12:38):
That was like an enlightening
thing in the green room.
So I want to bring it here too,because you mentioned about
Toastmasters, and I was saying,I'm like, a lot of people in my
community, they are interestedin Toastmasters and they're
becoming better presenters.
And you had mentioned that ideathat it's like, it teaches you
how to present yourself, butnot necessarily how to structure
your message, not necessarily,how to navigate bias in your
audience or your own bias.
(12:58):
It was just like onepiece of the puzzle.
It's great, butit's not everything.
Renaud Taburiau (13:02):
It's important.
It's really, it gives you, as Iwas saying, it gives you reps.
Because if you, in your job, youdon't have the opportunity to
present, officially on the stageor in front of people, you can
get rusty and you don't have theopportunity to fail and learn.
Fail safely, I would say.
So it's good, but it's only thelast part is the deliveries,
the how you present, it's notthe why, like the message, it's
(13:23):
not the what, like your slides,it's really just speaking
in front of the audienceabout anything that's really
important, but I doubt that'swhat most People, professional
needs right now to get better,at least in the beginning.
Galen Low (13:36):
Let's dive in.
You teased thepresentation sprint.
I'm intrigued.
Can you tell us a littlebit about your approach
to presentations,project presentations?
I don't know.
Maybe we could do aproject management example.
What is an example of a projectpresentation that might matter?
And like, how would youuse your framework, the
presentation sprint, likewhat steps would you take
to make these presentationsas impactful as possible?
Renaud Taburiaux (13:57):
Okay, sure.
Let's take a coupleof presentations as
a project manager.
It's all about the audience andyour impact, your objective,
how you want to impact them.
So there's a lot of presentationthat you do for approval.
You need to approve a budget,a roadmap, or a new project.
You might want to motivate.
And in that case, we weretalking about all hands VIP.
It's a bit different.
(14:18):
You go a bit less intodetails, more into,
aspirational vision andmission and things like that.
We can also want to reassureyour stakeholder by showing
what you did during thesprint or the business review.
So there's a lot of typeof presentation that we do.
And the way to doit for me is simple.
There's three steps andthree steps that we all know.
(14:39):
You think, you build,and you deliver.
You think it's the why.
Why are you presenting?
What are your message?
Who is your audience?
What are your message?
You need to thinkbefore you build.
That's important rulethat we all forget.
We tend to rush into PowerPointand, Google slide and start
drafting a slide withoutknowing what we want to say.
(15:00):
We're focusing on makingslide instead of making sense.
So you won't doing the thingto really focus on that 'why'.
Once you know why youhave a basic structure,
roughly the content thatyou would share, you build.
And the build is the scripts,the contents, the slides.
This is really the whatI'm going to present.
And finally, youhave the deliver.
(15:20):
We talked about itthrough, the Toastmaster.
This is how you will present,the public speaking, but
also the interaction, howto manage the stress, how to
manage the body, because it'sa physical activity to speak,
to, walk, to move around.
So all this, you need to learn.
And what is funny for me, goingback to, coming from agency
PM in agency to corporate.
(15:41):
We know how to do thistype of three step well,
we talk about agility.
We talk about, UX designwith their workflow,
and yet we prepare apresentation in waterfall.
We spend, hours on it.
And then at the end, onceeverything is perfect, we will
share it with somebody else.
That's not how it works.
You're supposed to do iterativeand incremental to, okay.
(16:04):
I think now I build, Iwould do the outline.
Then I would share it withmy customer or sponsor.
I will come again, I will dothe, the content and at the
end I will do the design.
So this is the frameworkI want people to do.
You think before you buildslowly and you ask for
feedback early and youprepare how do you deliver.
You prepare how you willinteract, you prepare
(16:25):
how you will manage yourstress, you prepare how you
will manage the question.
Lots of things like thatyou need to think about.
So, think, build,deliver, we all do it.
You just have to applywhat you already know
to Presentation Sprint.
Galen Low (16:39):
I like that.
Just to play the devil'sadvocate though, at the top,
we started talking about howto spend less time preparing.
And some folks listeningmight be like, yeah, that
makes sense right now.
But that sounds like moretime than I'm spending
right now, or as much time.
How does the sprintformat sort of save time?
Renaud Taburiaux (16:56):
That's a really fair point because
it can be scary to say,Oh, that's a lot of time.
No, it's not because you don'thave to spend a lot of time.
The think phase, if you knowyour message, if you know your
audience, you don't need threehours of workshop for that.
In a minute, you cananswer this question.
There's roughly eight tonine questions to answer
before opening PowerPoint.
It can take 10 minutesif but the problem is we
don't know, and yet werush to the build phase.
(17:19):
And that's where we waste alot of time because we don't
know what we want to say.
So if you do all thesesteps quickly, you have more
impact than if you don't.
Because the building will bereally easy once you already
know what you want to say.
If you have the structureof a presentation on a piece
of paper, on a clackstoneor, a mirror board or
something like that.
(17:40):
The building of the slidewill take an hour, maybe
two, if you want to be fancy.
But you will quickly havesome kind of, minimum
viable presentation.
Something that you canstart presenting and
getting feedback on.
So you will spend way less time.
You will avoid sunk costs.
If you spend time workingon a presentation to perfect
it, and then it endedup not fitting the whole
(18:01):
story or your, your managersay, no, this one is bad.
You spend two hours onit for what it can feel
like a lot of steps.
It's only three.
And you don't have to spenda lot of time for each of
them, but if you rush tothe build, that's it, you
will waste a lot of time.
If you don't prepare thedeliver, you will waste the
impact you can have becauseyou will not know what to say.
(18:24):
You will be stressed.
You will not know how tohandle some question that
might be difficult that youcould have prepared before.
So, yes, I understand.
It can be scary when I say itlike that, but it's only three
steps; think, build, deliver.
Just do all of them, evenfast, you will be better off.
Galen Low (18:40):
That's actually really relatable, because as
you were talking, I was thinkingabout I wonder if I had a nickel
for every slide that I createdand then got thrown away, I
would be so rich right now.
There's something to it though.
I mean, I think we likeslideware because it
feels like thinking insome cases, definitely
like agency folks, right?
Mostly punchy messages.
(19:01):
You see the corporate slide,like the PowerPoint, like my
wife's corporate PowerPointslides from some of her peers.
It's like a novel crushedinto one slide and it's, as
many words, eight point font.
And it took a longtime to put together.
And then at some pointsomeone's going to be like,
yeah, we don't need that slide.
And it goes to the appendixand then it gets thrown away.
Renaud Taburiaux (19:23):
What is worse that somebody say, we don't
need that slide, remove it.
Oh, that nobody sayanything and you end up
presenting that slide.
You know what I mean?
Galen Low (19:30):
Yeah.
And then you run out oftime for the important
stuff like ahead of it.
Renaud Taburiaux (19:33):
Exactly.
If you want to spend timeon your presentation,
spend time rehearsing.
To be honest, that's whereyou have the most impact,
but we don't do that.
As you say, we write everythingbecause maybe, people send a
template and say, Oh, you haveto present you this template.
There's a text field.
Okay.
I will writeeverything I will say.
And again, do a karaoke.
So it's reassuring, it feelslike real work, but it's
(19:55):
a way, I don't want to saylazy because I don't want
to be too judgy, but it's away to avoid doing the hard
work of slowing down andthinking what you want to say.
That's really hard, if you don'tknow, if you've never done it,
so it's easier to say, ah, let'sjust copy paste some slide from
different deck that I've seen,I've used, it will be fine.
Maybe, probably not.
(20:17):
You know what I mean?
Galen Low (20:18):
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
Renaud Taburiaux (20:21):
I've never seen, a presentation that was
not well prepared who went well.
Usually, it's always terrible.
Whether for the speakeror for the audience.
That shouldn't be a win losesituation, it should be a win.
Galen Low (20:33):
Yeah, absolutely.
I wonder if wecan dive in there.
That third step, deliver.
It's easy to focus on okay,then show up and do the thing,
but actually deliver for youmeans think about how you are
going to deliver this, practice,rehearse, I was wondering if
we could take that into a teamsituation, because some of the
presentations you mentioned,it's not a solo mission usually
there's a number of presenters,On a number of topics and
(20:56):
you need to prepare together.
And I think a lot of peopleprobably heard the word
rehearse and I love to rehearse.
I prioritize it.
But I know that Dannyand I, but you're right.
I was like, I don't thinkthat's a popular opinion.
Renaud Taburiaux (21:07):
No.
Galen Low (21:07):
It's painful.
It takes a lot of time.
And I think a lot of peoplelistening would say, OK, but
if I'm trying to spend lesstime preparing, that sounds
like I just added more timerehearsing with my team.
How do you approach thatdeliver step with your team to
feel prepared, but not spend36 hours locked in a room?
Renaud Taburi (21:24):
Yeah, definitely.
Okay.
So I will answer in two ways.
The first one aboutthe preparation of
the delivery itself.
And the second one is whenit's a team, how can we help
other prepare for the delivery?
Because it's really adifferent aspect of it.
If you spend a lot of timerehearsing, it's probably
because you don't do it right.
What I like to dois a full rehearsal.
(21:45):
You begin at the beginningand you go all the way to
the end without stopping.
Usually, as soon as youdon't know, oh, okay,
wait, let me start again.
And you end up never,rehearsing the second part.
So it's easier to say, okay,the script is not finished.
I have an idea ofwhat I want to say.
I go, I do everything.
I tie myself.
Usually in the presentationis like 20 minutes,
(22:06):
maybe 30 minutes maximum.
If it's above that, you'relosing your audience anyway.
So let's say 20 minutes.
20 minute presentation,you rehearse it once.
And at the end, you ask thequestion to yourself and also
to the contributor, peoplewho are here in the test
audience, what I did, right?
What can I improvefor the next time?
The next time being maybe thenext rehearsal, or maybe the
(22:27):
next time, the real presentationin front of the audience.
If you do that, you need 20minutes plus 10, 20 minutes
of feedback, discussionafter that, and that's it.
But the thing is, wedon't do rehearsal.
A lot of people, if they have toprepare how they deliver, they
do what I call a read through.
They go slide by slide andthey say, okay, on this one,
I will say that, on thisone, I will say that, but
(22:48):
they never say it out loud.
And when you say it outloud, it's bad, it's normal
because it's really, you don'tknow which word to say, you
don't know your transition.
You don't know on whichword to, put the emphasize,
when to put a pause.
To show that it's animportant message that
they should think about.
We don't do that.
So you have to do arehearsal, fail in private,
(23:09):
so you can succeed infront of the audience.
So that's for my first,about the delivery part.
Do a full rehearsal,beginning to the end.
If you get lost, if youdon't know what to say,
that's your problem.
Improvise, like youwould on the day.
You will instantly see whatworks and what doesn't.
And then you will spend therest of the time adjusting it.
If you can do another rehearsal,maybe the next day, avoid
(23:31):
doing too many rehearsalsin the same, the same time,
because it's really tiring.
And you will see that itgets easier, the more you
rehearse and it gets better.
So you feel more confident.
You know exactly which wordto use, which one don't
feel right, or too, written.
We don't write like we speak.
So if you write yourscript, some sentence will
not, they will feel off.
(23:52):
So by rehearsal outloud, you will know.
Until you rehearse,everything is a hypothesis.
How long you will take,what you would say, how
it will, fit together.
You don't knowuntil you rehearse.
So it's better to rehearse inprivate or with contributor,
than in front of the audience.
Galen Low (24:08):
I really like the keep going end to end thing
because I've definitely beenin those prep sessions where
we never got past sectionone because we kept rewriting
and iterating and goingagain and then we didn't
know how it was all goingto go and the other bit that
I really like transitions.
In a pinch, my agency days, ifwe didn't have time to rehearse
for whatever reason, we wouldjust practice the transitions
(24:30):
because everyone has theirtime slot and transitions,
because that's really wherewe things got super awkward.
And now my colleague isgoing to come on stage and
present about something.
And you're like, I don'tknow how to handle the baton.
Renaud Taburiaux (24:42):
It's worse than that, because this is a
transition between two speaker,but a lot of people have problem
transition between two slides.
Or to message, and they do,instead of having one story
with 10 chapters, 10 slides.
They have 10 individualstories, so they show a slide,
they talk about it, thenthat's it, they think they
are done, they show the nextslide, and they talk about it.
(25:04):
Okay, so here I want tosay that's the best way
to lose your audience.
Galen Low (25:07):
Yes.
Renaud Taburiaux (25:08):
You should tease what's going on.
So you talk about this slide.
Okay.
And that's what leads us to,and you move to the next slide.
These small transitionsare really, they're simple
to do, but they change thewhole atmosphere, the whole
feeling of your presentation.
You feel like, Oh, it'sa cohesive, story that
you're trying to tell me.
I understand why you'retelling me that now and
(25:28):
not three slides before,because it has a logic to it.
Galen Low (25:31):
Even just circling back to what we started
with, like that notion ofbringing people along to
move something forward.
Like when you really distillit down that's the purpose.
Just not to Read a slide and tryand remember what words go with
it, but actually bringing peoplealong towards like a goal.
It's a motivated thing,not a read aloud.
Renaud Taburiaux (25:49):
Yeah, that's too often the case, but you
know, it's, I like to say thatthe presentation, the business
presentation is not here for,to inform that it's here to
transform, you don't want tojust, it's not a training.
Oh, this is all the, the backlogthat we have for next sprint.
No, tell me how it fit together.
Why are we doing that?
Why is it important?
What would be the impact forthe user or the customer?
(26:11):
You have to go from onepoint to the other with them.
Indeed, if it's just to say,Oh, this is the backlog.
This is my priority.
Send an email.
You don't need a presentation.
You're wasting your time.
You're wasting theaudience time, their
attention, their energy.
Everyone is drained after that.
They don't know what yousaid, just send an email.
That's way better.
Galen Low (26:30):
I like what you said though, that like the
time together is valuable,almost like sacred, right?
Like it's not, it might beseen as a chore and it might be
really awkward and intimidating,but you know, that time spent
together is, it's valuable,especially in a project context.
Renaud Taburiaux (26:43):
So it's, again, I'm passionate about it.
So calm me down or stop meif I go too long on this one.
We have to see presentationas something of value.
It's not a selfish act togo present it's a, I want
to say it's a servant,it's a selfless one.
You're there because you'retrying to solve one of
your audience problem.
(27:04):
Maybe you need an approvalfor your budget, fine.
But what do the people who needto approve would get from it?
Think it from this perspective,and then you will always
see that the presentationis here to bring value.
And once it brings value, youwill be less stressed to do it.
You probably will frame yourpresentation from their point
of view, the audience pointof view, instead of yours.
(27:24):
So it will resonate, itwill have more impact.
I like when you say thatit's valuable, the time.
A presentation is at the sametime priceless and really
expensive it's pricelessbecause, you take from the
audience, their time, theirattention, their energy thing
that you cannot give back inany way you can give back this.
So it's really, it's priceless.
(27:45):
And at the same time, if youhave 10 people for one hour in
your presentation, you didn'tlose one hour, you lost 10
hours, that's, that's expensivein our, in our company today.
Do shorter presentations, dofewer presentations if you can.
Again, not everythingneeds to be a presentation.
Go straight to the point,focus from the audience
perspective, and that'show you would bring value.
(28:07):
That's how you would feelmore confident doing it.
It will solve a lot of problems.
Galen Low (28:11):
I like that a lot.
Renaud Taburiaux (28:13):
I think I didn't answer your
question about how to help.
Do you want to go there or doyou want to do something else?
Galen Low (28:17):
Actually, you know what?
I thought maybe we could zero ina little bit on a team situation
where some folks don't havethe same level of comfort might
actually be very intimidatedto present because at the
end of the day, not everyonefeels comfortable presenting.
Not everyone has an agencybackground, like you and I were
storytelling was paramount, butI know a lot of project managers
(28:39):
in my community, they get putin the situation where they're
presenting as a team and someoneon their team just doesn't
feel comfortable presenting.
And the question we gotactually from the community
was like, what's the best wayto prep and coach team members
who just might not feel thatpresenting is their strength?
They might actually be a veryskilled technician, specialist,
analyst, developer, but theymight still be just finding
(29:00):
their voice as an expert.
And the question I guess is,how can a project manager or
a team leader help to maketheir co-presenters shine?
Renaud Tab (29:08):
That's a good point.
And it's right that, as aproject manager or again,
a product manager or peoplemanager, you often help other
people do their presentation.
What I would say here isthat first, you cannot help
if they don't want to help.
That's, that'sbasic in coaching.
Somebody doesn't care aboutit, doesn't want your opinion.
Don't give it.
You will notconvince them anyway.
So that's safetime for everyone.
(29:30):
Then if you have to helpsomeone, don't give feedback.
That would be my, my maincomment here, my main
advice, don't give feedback,ask questions, because
you're probably not seenas a presentation expert.
Maybe you're also bad at it.
However, your pointof view is crucial.
It's really important forthem not to tell them what
(29:50):
to do, but to help themfigure out what to do.
So you have to havethis coaching posture.
You ask questions, whensomebody says, Oh, I want to
share my presentation with you.
Ask them, okay, beforeyou show me the slide,
who is the audience?
What are you trying to dowith this presentation?
Oh, it's for theleadership to do this.
Okay, fine.
Let's go through it.
And then regularlytry to link back.
(30:11):
Okay.
You say that, but howdoes it support the
message that you gave me?
A minute ago, it's nota rhetorical question.
It's a real question.
Maybe there is a linkthere that you don't see.
Let them tell you this link.
Oftentimes they will say,Oh yeah, you're right.
That's not reallywhat I want to say.
Maybe it's too much.
Let me remove that.
You didn't say anything.
You just ask question.
It's the same if youwant to put them, in the
audience perspective,audience choose say, okay,
(30:34):
that's really interesting.
Do they know this acronym?
What do you wantthem to remember?
So that's alwaysasking questions,
helping them sometime.
What I like to do, I shouldn'tsay that now when something
is really messy, doesn'tmake any sense, a lot of
leverage, aI will will leverageAI to empower developer
do their job efficiently.
(30:54):
You just, okay, fine.
What are you trying to say?
And often they willsay something like, oh,
we're just using ChatGPTto correct our code.
Galen Low (31:01):
Right.
Renaud Taburiaux (31:02):
Say that.
That's what youshould be saying.
Again, you're talking to human.
You don't have to usefancy words that you don't
understand most of thetime, because the audience
doesn't understand also.
Say it simply.
Just say the way you would sayto a colleague or, a friend.
That's really helpful.
Just ask them, okay,what do you want to say?
Again, ask a question.
Galen Low (31:21):
I was going to say, I like the pendulum swing because,
like in this scenario, right,we're talking about a lot of
the teams that my folks workwith are quite technical people.
So their jargon is on one sideof the pendulum and they're
like, okay, I'm presentingto people who don't get this.
And then they swing all the waythe other way to be like, oh,
presentation and salesy speak,I'll use those, big adjectives
(31:42):
and then it will be good.
And yet they still sometimesthe linkage that you
mentioned, I thought wasreally important because.
Sometimes if you don'task, how is this connected
to the other thing?
It might be just obviousto that individual.
Cause it's their day to day.
They're like, of course thisis connected to the release.
Like it's the mechanism for it.
You're like, okay.
Yeah.
And then begs that like,Oh, you didn't know that?
(32:02):
I really like them gettinginto what their audience
like knows and doesn't know.
And where to sort of simplify.
Renaud Taburi (32:07):
It's really hard.
That's the curse of knowledge.
We know that you're somuch in the way that
for you, it's obvious.
Of course, everyone, I seeit often with CEO who, when
they present in all hands, ofcourse, it's obvious that we're
doing that for the shareholderprice and the strategy.
We talked about itfor three years.
It's so beautiful foryou because you spend
your day working on it.
A developer who is doingPython or a technical architect
(32:30):
who is doing, his model.
They don't know much about it,but we don't know until we have
this external point of view,this coaching role, somebody
who is asking this question.
And as you say, sometimesit's really obvious, the link.
They just have to explain itand explain it simply, but they
don't know until we ask them.
Galen Low (32:48):
I like that.
I also like thequestions up front.
All too often I find it's okay,yeah, present it to me and then
I'll provide feedback, right?
That's the kind of likethe common approach,
but I do like that.
Okay.
Before you start tellingme who's this for, what
are we trying to do?
Right.
Because it almost createsthe, like the brief
for everyone to go.
Okay.
Yeah.
Like it puts it all intocontext and then it gives a
framework to ask questionsand to build empathy.
Renaud Taburiaux (33:10):
When I coach, I'm doing coaching obviously.
When I coach peopleduring the rehearsal and
we invite test audience.
Usually, I want to have somebodywho knows the project, somebody
who doesn't know anything.
I try to get a test audienceas close as possible
as the final audience.
I want to do the rehearsalin front of the developer.
But I tell them atthe beginning, this
is a full rehearsal.
(33:30):
You don't interrupt.
We go from thebeginning to the end.
And I say, put yourself inthe shoes of the audience.
Today, you are notthe head of sourcing.
No, today you are thecustomer from this company.
Largely you have, you're busy.
You don't know much aboutthis project or you know a lot
about this technology and ithelps you frame your feedback.
Again, I'm talking aboutfeedback here before I
(33:53):
say ask question, but theask question is more for
the coaching aspect of it.
But sometimes they wantyou to give me feedback.
Okay, what worked, what canbe improved for next time?
And to answer thisquestion, you need to
know who the presentationis for, what it is for.
And we often skip that asyou say, okay, let me show
my slide, go through it.
Okay, fine.
That's not how it works.
Galen Low (34:14):
And fine is is the right word, right?
Yeah, it's fine.
Renaud Taburiaux (34:17):
It's good.
It's good.
It's good.
No, but okay.
Okay.
That's a good point.
Let me stop on that becausewe need to remember that it's
progress over perfection.
You cannot say to somebodywho's terrible, who is stressed.
It's a lot of text, tellthem, Oh, that's terrible,
redo it from scratch.
That's demotivating.
That doesn't help themknow what to improve.
Give them something small.
(34:38):
We do plenty of presentation,way too much, if you ask me.
So they will have opportunityto, to improve in the next one.
Just start now with one thing.
Oh, this one, a lot of texts.
Do they need all of these texts?
No.
Okay.
Okay.
And let them think,okay, I will remove that.
Okay.
That's good.
That's good enoughfor this presentation.
You will not, save humanitywith one presentation at the
(34:59):
time, but you can get betterwith one presentation at a time.
And at the end, thesmall steps, the small,
1 percent will add up.
To being comfortable,being, confident, being
impactful, not wasting time.
But that's reallyimportant to that's fine.
Sometimes fine is good.
Sometimes fine is good.
You don't need toperfect slides sometimes.
(35:21):
Amateurish slides feelbetter because they're more
authentic to the speaker.
That doesn't make sense here.
Galen Low (35:27):
Yeah, no, absolutely.
And actually I was going tosay what I really like about
it is that, we were talkingabout if you have a team
member who doesn't really feelcomfortable and you're like,
well, like perfection or throwit out and make it perfect is
actually the most demotivatingthing, but actually the essence
of presenting well is notperfection is what are we trying
to do here when you boil itback down to the message and
(35:48):
the audience, then even if youget all the words wrong, that
you were in the script, butyou still get the idea across.
It's moving the ball forwardfor the project and to your
point, like it's incrementalimprovement for the presenter
too, who won't overnight becomethe best orator, of all time.
They won't.
That's for sure.
But it's like gettingbetter and better.
Renaud Taburiaux (36:06):
Yeah.
On the, on this part, for thethink phase, the first phase,
remember think, build, deliver.
For the think, I createda canvas with 10 questions
basically to answerbefore you open on it.
And one of the few questionsat the beginning, of
course, who is the audience?
What is the objective?
What are the message that youwant to say by just doing this?
Even if the projector, the, wedon't use projector anymore,
(36:28):
but the, the TV stopped working.
You can still deliveryour message because you
know what you want to say.
The same three messages youcan say in the elevator pitch.
You can say, at lunch,you can say in a half
an hour presentation.
But if you don't know, Atthe beginning, what you want
to say, the key messages,the story you're trying
to tell, if something goeswrong, you'll be lost.
(36:50):
Oh, I don't rememberthis part of the script.
In theory, you shouldhave them already,
memorized or internalized.
Okay, so this doesn't work.
What I want to say here is,That's really important.
And we don't do it becausewe don't think before
we start building it.
It's going back to thissimple step, always
think before you build.
Galen Low (37:08):
I like that word, not memorize, internalize.
Yes.
And I'm someone who like,there are songs that I've been
listening to since I was a kid.
I still don't knowany of the lyrics.
Renaud Taburiaux (37:18):
Yeah.
Which one?
Let's put you on the spot.
Galen Low (37:20):
Oh my gosh.
Okay.
The Weezer (Blue Album).
I've listened to that sincelike whenever it was released,
I was in high school, I'velistened to it regularly.
For however many decades,I won't date myself too
much, but you asked meto memorize something.
I shut down.
I don't memorize,but I do internalize.
So when I actually present,I will usually write a script
(37:40):
and then I'll boil it backdown into bullet points.
And then I'll try andinternalize those bullet points.
So I know what they mean, notall the words of what they say.
And you and I, even in thegreen room, we were talking
about, yeah, like backup plansfor when technology fails.
And actually when I was workingat a consultancy and they were
giving the managing directorsthere some training on no
slide presentations, right?
(38:01):
Getting back to the ideathat, do you need slideware?
What if you could presentwithout slideware?
Does that make it better?
It was an interestingconcept to me.
Because as an agencyguy, I dream in slides.
You know what I mean?
Renaud Taburia (38:12):
Yeah, of course.
But you know, to behonest, a slide is always
often, not always, oftenuseful to visualize.
When you see numbers, ifyou're presenting the result
of, a sprint or a financialquarter or something like
that, you need slide becauseit's really hard to follow.
Okay.
3000, 3000. Okay.
If you have, okay,I have three points.
(38:33):
You put the three points onone slide, the title of it.
That's enough, becauseit's visual, it creates
redundancy in the mind.
You have to both remember whatyou hear and what you see.
So slide is important,but that's not what the
presentation is about.
As you say, you need tointernalize the message.
And then with or withoutslides, you will be able
to deliver these messages.
Galen Low (38:52):
I like it's as a reference for the
audience, not as a referencefor you as a presenter.
Renaud Taburi (38:55):
Yeah, definitely.
You shouldn't need thatto know what to say.
To be fair, if it helps youto know what you will have to
say, to not forget, to be morecomfortable because you're not
stressed that you will Miss halfyour point for me, that's fine.
Again, it's just abusiness presentation.
I don't want it to show itas a final exam where you
need to know everythingto answer all questions.
(39:17):
It's just a businesspresentation.
You can get back tothe audience later.
You can come later todeeper in some topics.
It's fine if youuse it for yourself.
Galen Low (39:26):
I like that.
It's not Broadway.
It's not a Senate hearing.
Renaud Taburiaux (39:29):
No, exactly.
Galen Low (39:31):
It's your business presentation and yeah,
it moves things forward.
Renaud Taburiaux (39:35):
Let's answer your second
part of your question.
If somebody is not comfortable,just remind them that
it's just a presentation.
Lower the, I don't know howto say that, the expectation.
If you can do that, talkto a human, share your
message, that's fine.
It's fine.
If you forget some points,remember that you know
what you want to say,the audience doesn't know
what you want to say.
So if skip a point, that's fine.
(39:57):
That's no big deal.
If you have this mindsetand the, you keep in mind
that you're here to helpthe audience, usually the
stress goes dramatically low.
And if on top of that,you rehearse once or twice
out loud fully, that's it.
I've coached, a lot of technicalpeople in it, especially they
are terrible at presenting, butafter the normal presentation
(40:19):
sprints, they are fine.
They're thriving.
They're really happy.
They're excited to be here.
It's not, stress anymore.
It's all, I'm looking forwardto share that because.
Usually they have good feedbackand because, I will be able to
have a purpose to bring valueto help the people I'm trying
to help here who I'm talking to.
Galen Low (40:36):
I literally like that.
Actually, even just circlingback to the beginning, right?
What you said is, I asked youwhy is presenting so important
and why isn't it taught?
You actually took it to a spotwhere we're presenting all the
time when you're interactingwith your colleagues, you're
presenting ideas and actuallythe one where you have to stand
up in front of the room withthe, slides on the wall is
just another version of thatconversation and kind of just
(40:57):
like bringing depressurizing it.
I think we over, overpressurize the presentation.
I wondered, like for folkslistening, nodding their
heads, they're like, yeah,okay, my team, we need
to be better at businesscommunications at presentations.
Some folks, are incommunications at their
organization or their teamleads, what's the best first
step that they can take to justlike level up their culture
of business communications?
Renaud Tabur (41:17):
I'm highly biased.
Of course, I would say applythe three step of the framework.
You don't have to buy anything.
Just think before you build.
Build slowly and ask forfeedback early and prepare
how you will deliver.
If you do that for all yourcommunication, even email,
video that you have to shoot.
If you always thinkbefore you build slowly
and you get feedback.
You don't wait, the lastminute to get feedback.
(41:38):
And you prepare how you willdeliver, how you would send
it, how you, no matter what.
If you just do that,you're way ahead.
You would save countless ofhours designing, refining
what is not useful.
So I would say thatapply these three rules,
follow the three steps.
Remember that you haveto show the example.
Don't ask your team to do itif you don't do it on your own.
(42:00):
And start small.
Again, progress over perfection.
Try once, maybe the nextpresentation, just try to
write down, it's important towrite down, make it concrete.
Write down the, the threemessages that you want the
audience to remember and torepeat after your presentation.
What did he say?
Well, he said that no.
Okay, if you just do that,the rest of your preparation
(42:21):
would be so much easier.
And then the next time,you will check how to,
you can do better slides.
Maybe less words, maybe, more,less visual clutter, anything.
Just start small, but start now.
Galen Low (42:34):
I like that.
It's iterative.
Renaud Taburiaux (42:36):
Definitely.
I think it is somethingthat we do in our projects.
We do sprints,it's one at a time.
We get feedback, we getuser review, we get.
We test, we do discovery, and wedon't do that for presentation.
So just apply what you alreadydo well to your presentation.
Galen Low (42:51):
I was going to say, now it clicks, right?
Presentation Sprint,name of your book.
Renaud Ta (42:55):
Yeah, it is actually.
It is because at the endof the sprint, I say sprint
because it has to be,really short and, focused.
We don't want to waste time.
It's a couple of hoursmaximum present preparation.
You are mindful aboutwhich step you take.
You do one step at a time.
So that's why it's a sprint,but it's also a sprint
because it's start again.
(43:15):
At the end, I don't talkabout it a lot because people
are a bit triggered by that.
At the end of your presentation,after the delivery,
actually, you go back tothe think and you debrief.
What can I do betterfor next time?
You write it down.
And the next time you have apresentation, check that again.
What did I say Iwould do better?
We don't do that becausedebrief, retrospective, we
(43:36):
don't really see the point.
But it's important totake, a couple of minutes
after you present with yourteam, relax, de stress.
Okay.
How was it?
How did you feel?
Do we have any metrics toassess how good it was or so on?
What can we do better next time?
If we had to do itagain, the preparation
and the presentation.
What should we do differently?
So that's why it'sa sprint again.
(43:57):
You come back to it and itgoes back to the sprint of
agility, where at the end of,your session, your sprint,
your iteration, you just, okay,what do we do next sprints?
Galen Low (44:06):
Love that.
Renaud Taburiaux (44:07):
And you keep, yes, let's stop now.
Galen Low (44:10):
No.
I have a whole bunch ofquestions from my community.
We're going to answer them inthe community because I don't
think we have time today.
But folks who are listeningwho aren't in our community
where can they learn moreabout the book and what you do?
Renaud Taburiaux (44:21):
Yes.
Okay.
So the book, I don't knowfor those who have the
camera, so the book is here.
It's available on Amazon.
You can find it onpresentation-sprint.com.
The tools that are inside,the canvas, the workflow, the
checklist, you can download themon presentation-sprint.com.
Everything is free.
You don't have to buythe book to start.
(44:42):
Please try to improveyour presentation.
Eventually you say, okay,I want to go a bit deeper
about structure, how tostructure my presentation.
I talk about it, some tips,how to manage stress, and
you will get more in details.
But at the beginning,just download the tools,
the checklist, you candownload the first chapter
on presentation-sprint.com.
(45:02):
Contact me if you want me to,maybe I can come to do a short
presentation to your team.
I will be happy.
I want to really spreadthe word about this this
methodology, this framework.
So contact me, you willhave my LinkedIn and my
email on the website.
And just again, startsmall, start now.
Galen Low (45:20):
Love that.
I'll include all the linksin the show notes below.
Renaud, thank you so muchfor joining me today.
This was a lot of fun.
Renaud Taburiaux (45:25):
Thank you very much for having me.
I think we are reallyaligned because of our
background on Project Manager.
I think we're sharing a lot offrustration, bad habit here.
So I'm really glad we can helpyour audience doing better here.
Galen Low (45:38):
Yeah, it's been cathartic.
Thank you.
All right folks,there you have it.
As always, if you'd like tojoin the conversation with
over a thousand like-mindedproject management champions,
come join our collective!Head on over to
theDPM.com/membershipto learn more.
And if you liked what youheard today, please subscribe
and stay in touch onthedigitalprojectmanager.com.
(46:01):
Until next time,thanks for listening.
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