How to Give a Group Presentation

In this week’s episode of MasterTalk, I’m going to teach you how to give a group presentation. Follow me on Instagram: @masteryourtalk

In solo presentations, everything’s on you to deliver the best possible presentation, but in teams, it’s equally up to you to make sure everyone delivers. It’s either everyone wins or nobody does. If you think about the team’s success above your own personal success, you’ll always deliver in groups.

1. Pay attention through your non-verbal cues (1:08).

Most presentations in group go something like this, the 1st speaker starts while the other 2 are dazing off, looking everywhere besides their teammate that’s speaking. And then when that person is done speaking, and the next person, then the 1st person does the same. Remember everyone, obsession with your audience.

What will they think if you don’t look like you’re paying attention to their teammate (even if you are listening attentively)?

Well, if Brenden isn’t nodding his head or seems excited to hear what his teammate has to say on this topic, why should I care?

I mean Brenden spent months with this person working on the presentation, so if he’s not paying attention, no one really should to be frank.

This is the core of any group presentation, doesn’t matter what you say or do, just pay attention to show your genuine interest in that person. The more interested you are, the more you audience will want to connect with your ideas and share them out to the world.

This means two things:

1 - Nod on the occasion when your teammate says something interesting or to an important part of the presentation.

2 - Smile and look interested (through your face). If you look like you don’t want to be there, neither do I.

2. Leverage strengths & understand weaknesses to win (2:43).

Everyone’s good at something and terrible at other things. Some people, it’s baking, others is golf, for me it happens to be public speaking, and for others, it’s actually knowing what to say on a topic rather than my speciality, how to say it. Thinking back to my most successful group projects and presentations, they went something like this. The business would give us a problem, I wouldn’t have any clue how to solve it, but my teammates would so we’d craft the best possible solution, but then, for the end, I would teach everyone how to SELL the solution through storyboarding and storytelling. Also, fully knowing that I can pitch anything to anyone, since I have experts who know the subject inside and out on my team, I always pick my part last and give the parts that each teammate is the most comfortable with presenting since that maximizes our group’s chances of being awesome.

In that regard, the best leaders of group presentations aren’t people who take up space, it’s people who understand what everyone’s good and bad at and plays the leverage game to maximize everyone’s potential. I was never the sharpest tool in the shed, but I knew how to lead and choose teammates that would make us successful. But, it’s BECAUSE I know where my strengths and weaknesses lies that I set up my teams for success and always deliver.

3. Create a system that works for Q&A (4:08).

I see this all the time, teams deliver exceptionally in presentations and ruin it when people start asking them questions, it’s so frustrating to witness. They either stumble, talk over each other, or worse, contradict and disagree with each other. You NEVER disagree with your teammate in front of a crowd, this is absolutely wrong never do this. Your credibility goes in the hole when you do this because if, as an audience member, I see that you can’t agree on the same thing, I call into question your entire presentation, so don’t do it under ANY circumstance. If your teammate says something wrong, it’s YOUR fault, not theirs. It’s your job to set them up for success, so you should’ve given him the right feedback and disagreed with him then.

I’ll propose 1 cool way of handling Q&A that works pretty well, it's called the Q&A Master.

One person takes control of all questions & answers and redirects each question to the person who wants to answer it. All you do if you want to answer it is you put your hands in front like this and look directly at the Q&A Master. This way, depending on what the time constraints are, the Master can redirect the questions equally among those who want to answer, and in the off chance, no one can answer it, the Master MUST answer this. This is why the Master should always be the person who answers Q&A the best without losing face in front of the audience.

For business or one-on-one public speaking coaching inquiries, you can reach me at [email protected].

Special thanks to Maison Leporem for letting me use the space.
https://maisonleporem.com/