Your presentations aren’t great. It’s not your fault. (The science says so.)
In his bestselling book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the 10,000-Hour Rule – the idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice.
Gladwell leaned on the work of academics who’ve shown that deliberate practice, typically with an expert teacher or coach, is the key to excellence in fields such as medicine, financial auditing, computer programming, physics, chess, dance, music, and sports of all kinds.
Each of these fields has well-established training regimens. But what happens in the many other domains where there is no instruction standard – including most knowledge work, such as people management or public speaking?
“If you just show up and work hard, you’ll soon hit a performance plateau beyond which you fail to get any better,” notes Cal Newport in So Good They Can’t Ignore You.
There are are two exciting implications of this analysis:
Many executives deliver mediocre results in areas like presentations not because they’re indifferent, but because they lack good training. In particular, they don’t get objective feedback on how to do things better. Employees certainly won’t offer it, because they don’t want to take the chance of insulting their CEO or senior executive with feedback on what they’re doing badly.
The lack of instruction in these areas represents personal opportunity for you. If you can figure out how to get good coaching in areas with no clear training philosophies, Newport observes, “you have the possibility of blowing past your peers in your value, as you’ll likely be alone in your dedication to systematically getting better…becoming so good they can’t ignore you.”
This is one of the benefits of presentation coaching: It’s a big competitive advantage. Just as a good attending physician does for interns, or a tennis pro does for junior players, a Clear Narratives coach gives you candid, constructive feedback on what you do well and what you don’t.
We’ll help you develop your storyline, build your slide deck, and improve your delivery through a series of rehearsals. Ultimately, we give you the confidence to deliver authentic, clear presentations. Ready for an unfair advantage? Contact us: bill@clearnarratives.com.