Your ability make effective, powerful presentation is seen as a benchmark for your ability as an executive. It also drives your ability to influence and persuade customers, peers and partners. Yet the persuasive quality of presentations varies widely as do your results. There are some superstars in organizations that have the reputation of making extremely effective presentations. But is this a natural talent? Or are they methods that can be replicated by everyone to give us the results we expect.

We believe that the art of presentations is a method and a process that can be learnt and applied by everyone. We call this method Presentation Maho. Presentation Maho is a method that is based on the science of how audiences perceive, process and remember sensory inputs. By understanding this method, you can dramatically improve your results, persuade others and become a Presentation Wizard.

In this post, we will explore the 3 basic neuro-scientific facts regarding brain’s functioning and 3 simple tactics you can immediately apply in your work.

The Neuro-Science of Presentations

The success of your presentations is largely function of 3 questions

  • How well has the audience understood your message?
  • How does your audience react emotionally to your message?
  • How well does your audience remember your message once you have left the room?

If the response to the above questions is positive, then the audience will be inspired to take the action you want them to take. Whether this is doing business with you, changing incumbent suppliers, donating to a worthy cause, the ultimate objective of a presentation is make the audience take the action you want them to take.

Today lets understand the 3 basic facts of the brains functioning.

  1. Understand the working memory:

The human mind has a near infinite capacity. But its ability to absorb sensory stimulus at a particular point in time is extremely limited. This is an evolutionary response that helps the brain to ignore the countless stimuli in the surrounding environment. This limitation is the ‘Working Memory’. The working memory is like the keyhole through which all information must pass to the long-term memory.

However, most presentations in the corporate world seem to ignore this fact and try to pour information in to the audience as though the brain was a large infinite vessel.

In reality, the working memories capacity is restricted to 7 pieces of information at a time. But in the presentation format, where attention spans are lower, this is restricted to 3. This is called the Rule of 3. This may be extended to 4, but add a fifth and the entire message is lost.

However, as we see on a daily basis, in our eagerness to impress audiences, we tend to communicate all that we know. We believe that the more we show, the more our credibility is. In reality, the more information we share, the less is understood and retained

Any communication effort is successful only if the mechanics of the working memory is respected and the message is compliant to the Rule of

2. Understand the role of emotion in decision making:

Our own self-identities drive us to believe that if our message is logically structured, then the audience will automatically accept it. However, this is not the way we make decisions. This is driven by the anatomy of the brain.

According to Triune Brain Theory, developed by doctor Paul D. Maclean, The brain is made up of 3 parts:

  • The primitive Reptilian brain is a small prehistoric stub that drives all survival instincts including fight, flight, feed and mate. This part of the brain also drives territorial instincts that were critical for our tree dwelling ancestors. If your colleagues are aggressively defending their turf, you now know from where this decision is being made
  • The Limbic brain evolved from the reptilian brain out of the need for humans to work together in groups, that we now call communities. This regulates and manages emotions like fear, love, empathy, respect, guilt, shame, jealousy etc. Without the limbic brain, early men would have never been able to come together in communities, defending one and another in dangerous environments. Our need to form relationships and have friends is driven by the limbic brain. Mark Zuckerberg owes it big time!
  • The Neocortex (Neo = New)is the largest and most evolved part of the brain. It makes up nearly 85% of the brain. It manages all complex reasoning and skill development. When you solve a crossword or learn a new language, you are using your Neocortex.

Now, our first reaction on understanding the above is to say that the Neocortex drives all decision-making. It is not so. The reptilian and limbic systems operate much faster than the neocortex. The limbic system is in fact 5 times faster than the neocortex. Also the neocortex receives 10 times the information from the limbic system that it sends.

What this means for you is that, long before your audience makes a logical decision using his neocortex, he has made significant emotional decisions using his limbic system. In other words, long before the logical decision is made, the emotional and instinctual decisions have already been made. It is probably why they say “Marry in haste, regret at leisure”.

What this means for you as a presenter is that if you lose your audience emotionally, you don’t have a chance in hell to win them over logically.

3. Understanding the power of images:

There is another interesting aspect to the understanding of the brain structure. The neocortex divided into halves. The left half of the brain thinks in words and the right half of the brain thinks in images. However, it is only the right half of the brain that communicates with the limbic brain (emotional, social brain). This means that images are the only way in which the neocortex and the limbic brain communicate with each other. So all sensory impulses that are words, have to be converted to images by the right brain and only then transmitted to the limbic systems. Conversely, all emotional and social impulses in the limbic brain are transmitted to the neocortex in the form of pictures.

What does this mean for you? It means that the use of appropriate images and visual messages vastly improves message understanding and retention. This is called the Picture Superiority Effect. Research consistently shows that messages communicated with both visual and oral cues have over 5 times retention capability. But do we apply this? The standard ‘corporate’ presentation has more bullets than Rambo. We believe this is the “formal” or “professional” way to present. But remember, there is nothing “formal” about boring audiences. There is certainly nothing “professional” about not getting the audience to take the action you want them to take.

So the above 3 points should have made it clear that the traditional methods of presentation are designed to make you fail. They are designed to make your presentation ineffective. They are based on uncritical past practices and not the science of the brain. Your ability to apply these concepts can greatly increase your visibility in your organizations and lead to significantly higher results for you.

In the next post, I will share 3 tactics you can implement immediately to improve the quality of your presentations.

Till then, Happy Presenting!