Do you think, everything is facts, facts, facts and hard business?
Then, you’re just like me some years ago. I was focusing on content all the time and missing lots of opportunities to better connect with people.
However, connecting with people and building relationships will help you a lot mid and long-term to help shape your organization, lead your cross-functional teams through difficult discussions and manage conflict well.
Being analytical folks, we statistician far too often neglect the personal aspect of work.
Whereas it’s much easier to build relationships in smaller group discussions or even in 1:1 settings, you can also leverage presentations to larger audiences to build relationships.
The key to success relies here on adding a personal touch to your presentations. That will help you to appear more relatable and being easier remembered. Also, this might encourage the audience to follow up with you after the presentation and provide you with further opportunities to have an impact as well as build your network.
You may add a personal touch to your presentation via various ways.
Include a story related to the topic about yourself. Where have you been in this situation? How has it felt? Showing vulnerability here helps your audience to become emotionally involved and emotions determine how much your audience remembers what you have said.
You don’t need to make them cry necessarily but maybe you can at least make them laugh. Taking yourself less serious offers a variety of opportunities for a nice laugh.
People want to work together with people, they know, like and trust. Help them to like you and work will not only be much smoother but also much more fun.
Ciao and be an effective statistician.
Alexander
PS – listen to this great discussion with Julia Carter about how to avoid common presentation mistakes, where we expand on this topic and other presentation tips.