My colleague, Liz, finished her presentation and when she finished asked a couple of people for feedback. The first response was, “It was great!”. The second was an in-the-weeds analysis of every slide that completely ignored the context of the presentation.
Karen left both conversations disappointed.
The First Response to “Can You Give Me Feedback?”
When asked for feedback on a presentation, the first question to ask the requester is “what kind of feedback would you like?” If your response is about the way the slides look and the presenter was looking for feedback on how they spoke, your feedback will fall on deaf ears.
If the presenter doesn’t ask for anything specific, there are 3 places you can focus your feedback to help someone take their presentation to the next level
Start with the Big Idea
It doesn’t matter whether you are speaking to the board of directors or a group of new hires, your presentation has to convey a message or idea. Saying: “I thought your big idea was X” will help the presenter know whether or not they conveyed the central message as intended.
Charts, graphs, photographs, and data don’t tell a story by themselves. The presentation needs to help the audience interpret the information they’re being shown. If it doesn’t do that, then the presenter needs to know that for next time.
Next talk about what was memorable
Big picture comments about how the presentation “landed” with the audience help the presenter understand the “take away”. This will focus them on making big picture adjustments that will affect the outcome rather than “in the weeds” issues that will have them obsess over small details that don’t really affect the message.
Finally, share places where you “tuned out”
In most presentations, we drift off. Keeping someone’s attention for an entire presentation is rare and the sign of an outstanding presenter. Focusing on the places where you zoned out will help focus attention on connecting with the audience – the most important part of the presentation experience.
Your friends and co-workers will thank you for providing feedback that is specific without invalidating the hard work that they’ve done and at the same time help them to become better presenters.