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"Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit...I will be brief."
-William Shakespeare, Hamlet
One of the most common phobias is the fear of speaking in front of an audience. This fear is compounded when someone is asked to give a technical briefing.
Resource managers often must give to decision makers technical briefings that summarize the results of a management study, manpower survey, or intricate budget information. Some believe that a technical briefing should be a just-the-- facts type of presentation.
I submit, however, that this is not the case. A technical presentation has to include all the necessary ingredients of a standard briefing: eye contact, proper voice and tone, appropriate gestures to drive home an important point, and other characteristics that are thoroughly addressed in the authoritative briefing guides (such as the Army Management Staff College's Sustaining Base Leadership Management Course).
Remember, the operative word in the word briefing is brief. The "soul of wit" in giving a technical briefing is to reduce complicated data to a concise, easily understandable format that enlightens the decision maker so that he or she can make an informed decision. Too often, presenters of technical information parade an endless stream of poorly prepared charts and graphs that distort the facts, offer voluminous statistical data and figures that boggle the mind, and employ meaningless jargon and acronyms that would make even the most jaded careerist cower in horror.
In this article, I discuss ways to make a technical briefing less intimidating and much friendlier to both the presenter and the audience. A good place to start our discussion is with the unspoken message that a presenter conveys to an audience before he or she starts to speak.
The Unspoken Message
A funny thing happens when you stand in front of a room full of people to give a presentation. Even before you sound out the first syllable, you have communicated a message to the audience. Imagine yourself sitting in the audience about to hear from a technical "expert" on a comptroller program. How would you respond if this "expert" apathetically dragged his feet to the podium, had a phony-looking smile painted across his face, and sweated heavily in a well-ventilated, air-conditioned room? So far, this person has yet...