Conversational Presentations

I think one of the most important pieces when you're presenting your story is to make that story conversational. And it's really difficult to do in a case-solving situation because you've really got a monologue. And you're trying to turn this into a little bit more meaningful dialogue. But the rules prevent that because in most cases, unless it's a Texas style where judges can ask you questions during the presentation,

In a traditional case-solving presentation, what happens is you present and then the judges ask questions later. So with those traditional presentations, you have one-way information delivery. You get a passive audience experience. You get limited feedback opportunities. And often the presentations become forgettable and ineffective. And this is really important because that's the problem.

If the judges can't remember what you talked about, it really becomes difficult for them when they get into the deliberations at the end to really defend that, this was the best presentation. So I'm going to look a little bit at what conversational presentations look like and how we can overcome some of these problems as you go into a case-solving situation where, yeah, it's a one-sided conversation.

And you want to make it into that one-sided conversation with some ability to have some active participation by the audience in some form or another. So conversational presentations have higher engagement. Audience retains more information when they actively participate. Get better knowledge transfer when there's two-way communication because it clarifies con.

concepts. You create better connections, more authentic connections, and build better rapport and trust with that audience. You create a memorable experience. People remember how you made them feel, not just what you said. So how can we take some of these pieces and incorporate them into what traditionally is this one-sided conversation with the judges when you get into a case-solving situation?

So the elements of a conversational presentation become audience awareness, so understanding who you're speaking with. So again, you can look at the characters in the case. Who are the judges representing? And talk to them as if they are role-playing. Or if you're lucky enough, being a live presentation with actual company representatives, are those people in the case actually sitting?

As members of the judging panel, that becomes a little bit easier. Using an authentic voice, using a natural, approachable language, stop using those big words. Get it down to here's that everyday conversation, those everyday words that I want to talk to you about, and it makes it a little bit easier for everybody in the room to understand. And often, it takes it down from a technical level to a more let's really hit them in the face type of.

A conversation where they can understand it better, and it talks to all of the levels of knowledge about whatever the problem is in the room. Using things like strategic questions and using strategic pauses with those. So asking questions and then encouraging

in a two-way conversation encourages that act of participation. But you can start asking those questions, and then giving a little bit of time to think about it, and then offering your opinions in terms of what those answers to those questions might be. Also,o becoming a little bit more flexible in the structure.

And so in a two-way conversation, this really is adapting to the audience's needs and responses. You can do this in a traditional case presentation by not always following the same template, right? Depending upon what the case needs, what the case is telling you, and what your solution looks like.

Be free, feel free to adapt that structure, adapt how your story is told, adapt where the different pieces of the story are told, because it may make it a lot easier for the audience to better understand what you're delivering to them in terms of a solution. And then this whole idea of active listening. So, responding to the feedback. Watch the audience, watch those judges. Are there signs of confusion?

Are they nodding? Are they shaking their head? Are they giving you smiles? What's their body language? What's their response to you as you're talking? Can you make adjustments along the way or recognise, you know what, looks like I confused everybody. So how can I go back and revisit that point? And again, these are not.

What we truly consider active participation, when it allows the audience to influence what you're talking about. And this also becomes really important in the Q&A in terms of as you're answering stuff, looking at and looking at the audience, looking at your judges and seeing how they're responding to you.

listening to the next question. Is it building on the last question, or is it a new thing? Gives you a bit of an idea in terms of how clear and the clarity that those people in the audience, those people that are judges, are getting from you in terms of the story that you're telling.

A couple of things that you might be able to use. And so these are different things. And I asked Claude AI to tell me a little bit about some of these types of things in terms of what you can do to create conversational dialogue. And these quite often are used in the classroom with opening up with a question rather than a statement. That's fairly easy to do in a traditional case. You can start off with here are these questions we're answering. Here's the problem we're addressing, rather than a statement.

Polling, typically, this isn't allowed in these types of competitions, but again, you can sort of get a bit of an idea in terms of actually looking at your audience, looking at the judges, seeing their body language, what are they telling you? The easiest one is the one in the middle here in terms of incorporating storytelling and relatable characters, and situation. Telling a story, incorporating pieces of the story throughout and bringing that

solution back to stories that the audience can understand. And then the latter two, I think, they're a little bit more difficult. So the built-in discussion. But again, you can do this a little bit in terms of asking questions or putting in a discussion prompt. Maybe it's more of a thinking prompt, and giving that idea of here's a thinking prompt. Give them a little bit of silence.

Let them think about it a little bit. You don't want too much silence, but you know what? Silence is golden sometimes. And again, what happens is we try to fit everything we want, and we know we're trying to impress them with the amount of stuff that we know. But step back from that. Think about how you get them to start thinking about your solution and start thinking about the questions they're going to ask.

during the presentation rather than sort of putting them on the spot in Q&A. And again, this goes to the next one, where as you create deliberate pauses for reflection. And again, the response is going to be more of a body language type of thing, typically in most presentations, unless it's a text style, where you can get questions. But the idea is pausing every once in a while to let people think, what's going on here? How can I do this?

And then designing your slides for conversation. Think about your slide design. So less text, more visual clues if you can. The idea of asking questions in your slides or if there are questions asked in the case, present those, and present your answers to them. So what you're doing is giving them a little bit of an idea to think about the questions they asked, how you're answering those.

two-way conversation, you'd actually ask the question and ask them for that input, but are there ways you can get around that? That flexible navigation, this truly happens in Texas-style presentations, where teams will flip between different slides. We'll show you a slide near the end, we'll show you a slide near the beginning because of the question you asked. But think about how I'm gonna present this, do I present this in that traditional way?

As you know, we've got a video on our videos on the different parts, but those parts can be interchanged to some extent, moved around and make it so that you know what, you can tell a better story around what your solution is. Allow the use of images to evoke thought and discussion with those images. So there is an opportunity for that visual thinking.

And then white space, room for sort of the audience contribution. Not everything is crowded. There are spaces, and those spaces may represent places where, you know what? I'm going to get you as the audience, to think about it. It could be a cue to you also in terms of, here's a point where I pause to get the audience to think about what I've just been talking about. So this whole idea of going from, I'm going to just talk to you.

And drive the solution down, I'm going to allow you to participate in different ways. It may not be truly active participation, but I'm going to give you the opportunity to think about what's going on here, giving you some time to reflect as I'm talking about this. And then in the Q&A, you have that actual conversation when they start asking questions.

Hopefully, that helps give you a bit of a better idea in terms of how we go about making this what seems like a really strict one-way conversation into more of a true conversation.