Boardroom Tactics don't work in the Ballroom

Why are so many conference presentations as drab as brown socks? And what’s with all the wedding dad droning and hesitation?

Story by Ian Whitworth

It’s partly because many presenters don’t realise boardroom presentations and conference presentations are quite different. Most people are quite comfy making presentations in offices and boardrooms, with half a dozen people around a table. But you can’t just take the same presentation and do it in a ballroom in front of hundreds. There are different rules, and you need a different approach to get your message across clearly.

Here are some ways that your presenters need to change their game when they step up to the bigger leagues.

1. Rough edges are magnified
A boardroom presentation is like a one-sided meeting. It’s more interactive. Pauses feel more natural. Questions are asked and answered. Move it to a ballroom and any rough edges stand out. A pause to get your computer working feels like an hour when there’s an impassive audience staring at you. One presenter passing a lapel microphone to the next speaker on stage looks really clunky. A YouTube-grade video clip that looks fine on your laptop looks like blurred Lego blocks on a four-metre screen. The larger venue brings a greater responsibility to check every detail in advance.

2. You need to project more
Not project as in PowerPoint, but project your voice and mannerisms. There’s a much greater physical gap between you and your audience, and it’s a long way to the back rows. No matter how fascinating your facts, your believability comes from non-verbal, emotional cues, which can be swallowed up in a larger room. Even though you’re using a microphone, you need to kick up your vocal energy to the next level. Work on using eye contact right around the audience, rather than looking down at the lectern. Put more effort into gestures and facial expressions.

3. Working with a support team
In the ballroom, the success of your presentation depends on more than just you. You’re relying on the technical team to make you look good. If they’re controlling the show, they need to know each step of your presentation, printed out, in detail. If you arrive late, throw the crew a memory stick and a pile of DVDs with home-burned video files, and expect them to wing it, you’re asking for trouble. You can’t assume they know the presentation as well as you do, for obvious reasons. AV crews love a well-documented presenter, and it will pay off in the way they run your show.

4. Arrive early and get used to the stage
It’s a different physical environment on stage in a ballroom. In a boardroom there are people all around you. It’s a natural comfort zone. At a conference, it’s more like a theatrical performance. You’re all alone up there. There are lights in your face. There are stage edges you can fall off. There are areas you shouldn’t walk in because the mics will feed back. Get there early, and get used to the stage environment. Check that your computer links to the projector – the source of much last-minute stress. Check how you’re going to be introduced to the audience. You want to start your presentation confident that you’re looking and sounding good, because your performance in the first minute or so determines whether the audiences is going to bother listening to you.

5. Finish on time
In a boardroom, you can talk until they ask you to stop. At a conference, every minute you run over time is a minute stolen from the next presenter. Or even worse, from lunch or cocktails. Ask yourself: would people rather be listening to my speech, or chatting to their colleagues over a hard-earned beer or champagne? If you answered “why, my speech of course!”, then you’ve been listening to too much Anthony Robbins and need to get back in touch with the Australian way of life.

Ian Whitworth is principal of creative marketing consultancy A Lizard Drinking and director of audiovisual group Scene Change. He writes on presentations and communication at www.scenechange.com.au/blog.