Fit

Our Fit, Focus & Flair model gives us and our clients a shortcut for developing some of the best presentations you’ve ever seen. Fit is all about making sure the things which you’re going to say are relevant, appropriate and tailored for your audience.

The benefits of Fit

A guy called Josh came to me to improve his presentation delivery. He’d been giving presentations for well over ten years, and wanted some ideas for getting his audiences more involved and interested. I went along to one of his presentations to see him at work, and immediately spotted the problem. After the workshop, we went for a drink and I asked him, “how many times have you given that presentation?”

He had given the same presentation over fifty times, to audiences around Europe, and hadn’t changed it once. And it showed. People think that relying on a well worked presentation is a good thing – it means you know the information inside out. But for your audience, it feels like you’re reciting words you don’t even understand; it makes your delivery wooden; ultimately, it tends to produce an unremarkable session.

I went through Josh’s material with him, and we found opportunities for breakaways which let the participants of any given session lead the discussion. We identified general remarks which we could replace with specifics relating to individual sessions he was running.

We didn’t change the material or the facts he was presenting – we just found opportunities to improve the fit of the session each time it was delivered. Immediately, participants in Josh’s workshops paid more attention; discussions and Q&A sessions became more fruitful; and Josh’s enjoyment of the old material increased too.

Developing your Fit

All you need to do is ask the right questions:

  1. What do the audience want/need to know?
  2. What don’t they want/need to know?
  3. How can you find out before you start to prepare?
We speak and write about the FFF model a lot – delve into our archives (below) and stay tuned for updates and you’ll soon be presenting with all three. If you’re really keen to get them right, give us a call to find out about our training sessions.

Where to go from here

We talk about the Fit, Focus & Flair model a lot on the blog – you can take a look at the most recent posts here. But here are a few of the best places to start:

 

To Top