Delivering Powerful Presentations: Sustain with Participation

Adapted from The Naked Presenter: Delivering Powerful Presentations With or Without Slides (Peachpit Press)

By Garr Reynolds

David Sibbet is the Zen master of visual thinking for groups. Sibbet’s theory of meetings is that they should be truly interactive, collaborative affairs that are focused on participation. In his latest book, Visual Meetings, (Wiley, 2010) Sibbet says that “engagement is all about participation…. Thus the art of engaging begins with listening and establishing a connection and rapport.” When we are trying to move people forward and effect a change, it is usually helpful to do things that get audiences involved. “People are much more apt to accept and implement ideas that come from within their group than ones imposed from outside — even by experts,” he said. Sibbet is a facilitator who gets people to flesh out their own ideas and achieve clarity through a process of visual thinking and the participant-driven visualization of ideas. By the end of one of his seminars or meetings, the walls of the room are plastered with large sheets of paper that include sketches, maps, and collages that the participants generated. These graphics visualize the discussions that took place and lead to further discussion and collaboration. The visualization process increases involvement in a big way.

You may be presenting for only 20 minutes or an hour — and not have the time or tools for a collaborative activity on such a large scale — but the principle of Sibbet’s approach to meeting facilitation can still be applied to the art of presentation. That is, as much as we can, we need to have the audience involved, participating, and doing something

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