The One Minute Presenter

Frame It

When facing an executive audience, such as a board of directors, you need to help them understand the scope of your presentation for two reasons.

Firstly, busy executives have so many issues swirling around their heads that you cannot assume that they know the scope of your topic.

Secondly, senior executives do not want to know all the details. That is why they hire you. You are the subject matter expert. So what this means is that at the start of your presentation, you must signal the depth of your content. By indicating to your audience that you will not dive straight into detailed charts and statistics you are showing that you understand their expectations. Later on while you are presenting you may be asked for extra details, but don’t assume that an executive audience wants to know every single statistic.

Example of framing 1: “Today, in the next 15 minutes I will cover the three main updates for Project X. I will not go into the data charts which I have provided as handouts. I will take a Q&A after each update. Shall we start?”

Example of framing 2: “The main purpose for this presentation is to highlight the options available to us following the discovery of Problem Y. Although this could take us into several related areas, we have decided to stay focused only on the short term solutions. This will take 30 minutes and I welcome comments throughout. If this works for everybody, I will start.”