What happens to you when you are giving / watching a presentation? How does that differ from how you feel, think and act when you are part of a conversation?

Summary: Next time you are considering giving a presentation, why not look at facilitating a conversation instead?

More indepth:

A story/example:

I was invited to a "dialogue" - a facilitated generative conversation – at a large international organization. I was very excited – it was an opportunity to connect with interesting people and share my ideas on the topic (the change of this major world institution) and hear theirs…and come to some shared understanding. Yet when I got there I discovered that this ‘dialogue’ was actually 4 people talking at the 100 of those invited to participate, presenting a powerpoint and their views of the changes that needed to occur, and then asking us to raise our hands (and then counting us out, pre-school style) to respond. It was also held in the very space that the old view permeates. But I will leave a conversation about context and its power until later. I ended up leaving very disappointed – how had ‘dialogue’ been interpreted like this? Weren’t we all invited there to have a conversation with each other? How did it become a powerpoint and discussion with no flow? I felt like I was back in pre-school, without the fun!

Cut to last week: I was in being introduced to a project team with a wonderful client lask week – getting ready to  support the facilitation of a process/system change – and thus, work with the team to create the space for behaviour change and an appropriate technology application. As we begun to talk through the importance of the internal team sharing the same message before communicating wider, I spoke about conversations: and one of the leaders likened it to that everyone in the team delivering the same ‘presentation’. And then and there it clicked for me. Human behaviour change occurs and is sustained not through presentation but rather, conversation. And the technology we choose is a tool/media to help us share the story of the change and conversations, and sustain that change in the easiest possible way.

I am so thankful for this meeting (thank you team!) as it enabled me to be clear on a shift I had been wanting to explain about the differences in what we often do when we meet, and what we could. It also enabled me to be more clear one of my offerings: creating the environments and structures to facilitate / support "conversations". Presentations have their place. Yet conversations provide something different and valuable.

A shift from "presentation" –> to "conversation".

As simple and ‘small’ as this shift sounds, think of the implications. When we present there is a tendency for the presenter to come in with the answers, often leaving the people watching to simply gape, and be rendered silent until the presentation is over, when they are almost only able to react or at best, respond to the information they are being presented. There is not much space for them to interrupt throughout…in fact, in the context of a presentation, interruptions / tangents are often not welcomed.

Yet this sets up a very rigid/fixed place/structure to think within. 

A shift to a conversation offers something other: the opportunity to bring a blank slate, some opening questions that you have thought about / prepared before, allowing both parties to participate in a two-way feedback, opening up space for other opinions, new ideas and new ways of concieving the project, and also, assuming the conversation is shared, creating a far richer AND usable outcome! It also offers a space for listening (something most of us are craving in our day to day world!) and means that we could be positioned to, for instance, offer a supporting service for our clients/team, or whatever you are trying to deliver/learn more about. More over, in the context of a conversation, there is no need to sell anything! Because it becomes about partnering – working together to support the others’ success in their work. And a good conversation will flow more…leaving room for things we hadn’t anticipated to come up. It also allows for a deepening of relationship between those involved. And rather than being a scary thing, a conversation can be fun and energising too!

Thus, a conversation offers a more flowing, two way communication, and a more flexible structure within which new ideas and thoughts can be born. And it allows the space for us to be human – which last time I checked we are. If we are building or designing something for humans, perhaps it is better that we look at human ways/contexts to communicate them?

Action: Next time you are preparing a ‘presentation’ think of how instead it could become a conversation – what changes you could make in order to open up two-way dialogue, what questions would be valuable to ask, what more could you learn as well as teach and bring?

And of course if you have a story, do share it and let me know if it works for you!

PS Yes, you CAN have conversations with a lot of people at the same time, even in the context of a ‘presentation’…you may even find you don’t want to ‘present’ ever again! There are all sorts of tools and processes out there including ‘open space’ ‘appreciative inquiry’ ‘world cafe’ and more!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 25th, 2006 at 11:21 pm and is filed under action, change, conversation, dialogue, technology, think. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.