Have you ever been in an audience when this has happened? During a presentation, the speaker is talking about one thing, and then suddenly talking about something different and you’re wondering what you missed. But what if you didn’t miss anything? What if it was the speaker who missed something?
We work so hard to prepare our signature presentations… we craft the perfect intro, hone our message down to 2-4 points we know will resonate with our ideal audience, and of course, construct a conclusion that brings everything we’ve shared full circle. Sometimes though, we can get so caught up in perfecting the parts, we forget about making sure each part transitions seamlessly to the next.
Without transitions, a presentation really is nothing more than a collection of parts. In fact, there are times when the successful transitions we’ve built into our presentations create “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” magic. And now that you’re wondering about your own transitions, here are 4 transition strategies for keeping both your audience’s attention, and their interest, during your presentations.
Transitions can help you build one point to the next: Let your audience know how many points you’re going to share, and make sure each point seems to naturally transition to the next. If they don’t, your audience is going to feel like something is missing. Worse than that, if your points don’t transition one to the next when you’re explaining them, it’s going to be hard for your audience to have confidence in you as the person who has the problem-solving information they’re looking for.
Transitions can provide natural opportunities to summarize what you’ve just presented. Obviously, this doesn’t mean you should be stopping to summarize every time you make a point, but there might be places in your presentation when using a summary transition provides the perfect opportunity to ask your audience if they have any questions. If they do, great! Now you get another chance to reinforce what you want them to learn. If they don’t, you know they’re ready to transition to what’s next.
Transitions are a practical way of “changing the subject.” Very often, speakers like to play devil’s advocate, and/or share opposing points of view. Perspective transitions provide speakers with an opportunity to set the stage for their audience so they’re more likely to consider different thoughts and ideas. Without them, there’s a chance that an audience could completely turn on the speaker!
Smooth transitions provide audiences with reasons to trust you and your takeaways. They make it easier for your audience to pay attention, participate, and follow you from beginning to end. They also increase the odds of people taking action on your takeaways.
There’s a very nuts-and-bolts side to transitions too. Gratefully, there are some great articles that cover that part. I’ve included one of them below.
Now it’s time for me to transition out of this article, the same way I transition out of all of my articles….
‘Til we speak again….
~Beth
When Life Turns on a Dime, Who Will You Turn To?
