I had thought through, many times, all of the points I wanted and needed to make. It was good material. Moreover, the PowerPoint slides were top-notch. Minimal text and attention-getting graphics, well-matched to the key points in my presentation. And I had timed it almost perfectly. I wrapped up my talk within a few minutes of when I had planned.

All in all, it was a good package. And yet, while my delivery was (objectively speaking) probably a little better than average, I knew from watching the eyes in my audience that something just wasn’t right.

It wasn’t the presentation I SHOULD have made…

The first and most important mistake I made was in “packaging.” I failed to apply one of the fundamental lessons that I have taught other instructors over and over and over again: to identify the key learning points that I wanted to convey and then package each one within a narrative, a story!

I needed to humanize the learning points and abstract principles — that formed the heart of my presentation — by illustrating them through the successes and failures of actual characters, real or imagined. To paraphrase the Streisand song, people need people. It’s SO much easier for folks to grasp a point if they can “see” that point (with their mind’s eye) being acted out in someone’s life experience, or depicted as a flesh-and-blood character.

This is a truth that great preachers know and practice wonderfully. If a point is really worth passing along and being remembered, it deserves to be illustrated through a well-told tale. We are a story-loving people!

The second foolish mistake I made was also one that I have warned other instructors about, many times. So much for walking my talk! This second error involved “bundling.” I simply bundled too much information at several points in my presentation, when I SHOULD have broken those sections apart into “chewable bites” and helped my audience process each one without distraction or confusion.

My summary, in particular, involved about four or five thoughts that were wrapped together in one messy bundle! They could have been so much more effective and memorable if I had isolated each one, picked a vivid way (a story, example, or analogy) to drive it home and pause to let it digest before moving on to the next!

So there you have it …true confessions. But I take consolation in the fact that I’m probably not the ONLY instructor to have fallen short of my own expectations!