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I cannot tell you how many times I have endured an expert - a genuine expert in their field - giving a presentation.
And I say "endured" but it is not just me - I look around and the audience are all glassy eyed and vacant: they are sitting in the chairs, but hardly anyone is there. The Expert lost them almost as soon as he started. It is not that they are not interested in the subject - after all, professional presentations are attended at least in part because people are wanting information and ideas. And most of the time the listeners do not actually want the speaker to fail. Who wants to sit through a boring presentation?
But even more than that, often times the expert also endures the presentation, knowing full well that the expanse of knowledge that he has on his subject hasn't even gotten through the microphone, let alone to the audience.
The problem is not with the knowledge, the understanding, or the information, but simply with the presentation.
It just seems as though people expect that because you know your information, you should be able to tell others about it automatically.
But if you think about it for half a minute you realise that everything you can do in life has been learned - there is absolutely nothing that a person is able to do that did not involve an education of some sort, either in the school of hard knocks, or a more formal education. Of course some people are naturally better at certain things, and some people should simply accept that presentations are not their thing.
However, the idea that just because someone knows a lot a about their subject, and is a good manager, or even a good writer of technical material, does not mean that they can do a good presentation. They have to be taught this skill just as they had to learn everything.
It is even worse when you have an expert who genuinely believes that he is good at presentations, but in fact is not.
Folks, presentation giving, public speaking, technical speaking, whatever name you want to give it, is a skill that has to be learned, practised, and polished.
Of course some people are naturally better at it than others, but everyone can learn to do it better.
