Presentation vs. Training 3

[zdas04]

I recently had an audition for a teaching position at a well known training company. My instructions were to prepare a 15 minute presentation on any subject of my choosing. Since it was a training gig, I pulled 15 min of information from my 2-day course. The course is intended to be instructional.

At the end of all the auditions, one of the senior instructors said "At [this company] we never do presentations, we transfer information". He said it like his words had some profound meaning. I would have just blown past it, but at my last class one of the course evaluations said that the class felt more like a "presentation than a class".

Does anyone have any ideas as to how a "presentation" becomes "training" and what the difference is?

David

 

[IRstuff]

Sure, we had that at our previous job. Someone from corporate communications came and critiqued our presentations and presentation styles.

As a result, we got better, and won our oral proposal presentation, 313 charts in 4 hours flat. Of course, the customer wasn't allowed to ask questions during the actual presentation; that was for the afternoon session.

TTFN

FAQ731-376
Chinese prisoner wins Nobel Peace Prize

 

[a2mfk]

Also, I would watch the Office, you can pick up many interesting, attention grabbing techniques from Michael.

 

[btrueblood]

Regarding presentation, I have always found it prudent to ask the customer what their objectives for the presentation are. Giving them what they want usually results in success for both parties.

<Anecdote alert>

I had a boss who insisted that I cut 100+ pages from a presentation I'd prepared, to our customer's rather detailed guidelines. He insisted I took them too literally, and wanted to give them "what they really wanted". Boss and I compromised on having two presentations ready, mine and his (at roughly 8 or 10 pages). At the meeting, he stood up and started with his presentation, was brusquely cut short by the customer team leader...and I stepped up to start the (yawn) presentation they'd asked for. We got thru with the data dump, got the box ticked for passing a milestone, and the check was cut for our contract payment a couple weeks later...because I wouldn't back down on not taking the requested number of copies of bulky presentation packages, and the requested backup documentation with us on our trip. Didn't help me keep my job, note this anecdote fails to abide the over-riding rule of "don't ever one-up your boss".

<anecdote warning cancelled>

 

[zdas04]

I made a career of one-upping a long series of bosses. One of them said "As long as you're right, you're golden, but with your mouth don't ever be wrong". I guess I got through a career without ever being wrong about something important, but there were some near misses. If you choose that path, be aware that you will NEVER be the boss, but you can have a lot of fun.

David

 

[IRstuff]

I had forgotten; the gist of what we were taught in presentation class is summarized here: faq731-1668


TTFN

FAQ731-376
Chinese prisoner wins Nobel Peace Prize

 

[SiliconeAurora]

With presenting, it's assumed at the beginning by both the presentor and the audience that the item being presented has inherent qualities that make it important. You present a sculpture. You present a painting. You present vital findings on a subject where the group you are addressing has been gathered for that very purpose because the results may have wide-reaching ramifications. It is very "ta-dah!" where the very reveal of the presentation is justification enough.

But a lot of life isn't like that. People aren't always convinced what they're listening to is valuable to them or even coming from a source that has any credibility. You can't just show someone a new procedure and expect them to dig into the details, because to them it's just another thing higher-ups are telling them to do. But you can train them on it by going through what is required at each step and make sure they understand it.

If I had to sum it up, you can train people against their will and they will eventually become familiar with the subject, but you can't present the same thing to someone and demand that they care.

 

[rmw]

David,

I had one boss say to another subordinate (who repeated it to me) "don't you just hate it when the little SOB is right?" I took it as a compliment and I think the other subordinate did too, or he wouldn't have repeated it.

rmw

 

[debodine]

I just completed a series of meetings with a training company and I learned their explanation for the difference between a presentation and training.

Training only takes place when there is at least one measurable objective, and at least one critierion by which to determine if that objective has been met.

Without those items present, it is a presentation whose purpose is simply information transfer, not training.

I am not a training expert so I can't say if they are right or wrong, just passing on what they showed us in the meetings.

 

[zdas04]

debodine,
After reading the whole thread above and thinking about it, I'm pretty much in agreement with the training company's definition. You have to have objectives and measure progress.

David

 

[IRstuff]

"Training only takes place when there is at least one measurable objective, and at least one critierion by which to determine if that objective has been met."

The same can be said of presentations. Why do a presentation if there's no defined goal? We don't do presentations just because we've nothing better to do.

sales> MO-> increased audience knowledge of products
design review> MO -> demonstrate compliance to exit criteria
Morgan Stanley dinner presentation> MO -> impart knowledge about financial instruments and company's benefits to the clients
etc.

At the end of the day, every legitimate business presentation has an exit criteria, however weak or nebulous.

TTFN

FAQ731-376
Chinese prisoner wins Nobel Peace Prize

 

[debodine]

IRstuff, i think you and the training comapany that spoke to us are saying similar things, and the difference is possibly only semantic.

I didn't mean to imply on their behalf that a presentation has no goal or intent...but I appear to have sent that message to you. They simply stated to us that information transfer that results in measurable results against a specific measurement critieron to verify an objective has been met is, to their definition, training. Otherwise, it is still information transfer for a specific purpose but they use the term presentation.

Ultimately, I don't have any vested interest in their definition being consdered "right" so I only present it as information for the discussion.

I always enjoy reading your responses as you are a very active contributor here. I suspect with your experience in our industry (I am also in aviation though not in aerospace per se), your idea of what constitutes training versus a presentation is at least as good as this training company's definition.

 

[IRstuff]

No worries... I'm just in the position of having seen too much. What's old is often new again, not unlike women's fashions. Even bell bottoms make an occasional appearance.

I think that what distinguishes training presentations from other presentations, is the expectation that the audience will, or can, actually digest and use the presented material to perform the function as described in the presentation. And, it's not just about the learning, since I can watch "Naked Science" and "learn" lots about Pluto and other dwarf planets and planet-like objects, but there's no expectation that upon conclusion of the program that I can do planetary science. I might be inspired to do planetary science, but I'll need way more than one TV show. Ditto, unfortunately, for many presentations students often get in school.

Training, then, is more than just learning, and more than just finding out that the contractor has met his contractual obligations for preliminary design review. It's specifically showing by example and repetition how to actually do something, be it running Matlab, designing a Kalman filter, or even how to do a hockey shot.

So, the defined goal for a training presentation is a bit narrower, specifically that the audience will gain sufficient knowledge or skill to accomplish a task work which the training was intended. And ultimately, the measureable objective would be that each audience member can complete a task with minimal help or supervision.

Beyond that, training and other presentations are structurally and content-wise the same. You start out with a goal, and you construct a set of slides that achieve that goal.

TTFN

FAQ731-376
Chinese prisoner wins Nobel Peace Prize

 

[HgTX]

- tell them what you will say,
- tell them,
- tell them what you said,

I *hate* being presented with "here's what I will say in this presentation". It is a waste of my time. I will find out what you will say at the time you say it.

Hg

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[MikeHalloran]

>>>I *hate* being presented with "here's what I will say in this presentation". It is a waste of my time. I will find out what you will say at the time you say it.<<<

I don't mind getting an outline up front.
It affords me the chance to politely excuse myself and skip the bulk of the presentation if it's of no interest to me.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[IRstuff]

"- tell them what you will say,- tell them,- tell them what you said,"

I'm not sure what the big deal is, since that's the structure of just about every technical paper written, i.e., you start with the abstract, followed by the body, followed by a conclusion. Likewise, every trial proceeding is the same way, opening statement, followed by the body of the presentation of evidence, followed by final arguments.

TTFN

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[KENAT]

"- tell them what you will say,- tell them,- tell them what you said,"

I've had that basic principle drilled into me for a long, long, time.

To some extent it probably goes with 3 part repetition which is one of the tricks of public speaking to get people to remember what you say.

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(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[HgTX]

Typically I know what the talk is about before I show up.

There are probably good well-flowing ways to give an "abstract" at the beginning of a talk. But more often than not you get people who just read somewhere (like a discussion forum) that they're supposed to say what they're going to say, and so they put up the complete talk outline including bullets for "introduction" and "conclusion" (and all the completely predictable and thus non-informative sections in between) on a slide, and the first thing they say after giving their name and company affiliation is, "First I will give an introduction, then I will..."

In a 20-minute talk, I can afford the suspense. I don't need a warning.

I haven't seen really good speakers do this (or even a less clumsy version thereof). Maybe they're so good that I can't tell they're doing it.

Hg

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[MikeHalloran]

Best presentation I ever gave went like this:

"First I'll tell you what we screwed up, and how we screwed up.
Then I'll tell you how we intend to fix it.
Then I'll ask you to approve our approach by signing the revision documents."

Then I went ahead and did what I said I'd do.

Then the customer signed off, with no questions, and remarked that it was the best presentation they'd ever seen. It was all over in 20 minutes.

Unfortunately, they also took the trouble to call my boss and tell him how much they enjoyed the presentation, so I got nominated to present even more of our screwups to the customer.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[mshimko]

Back to the original posting from ZDAST04;

The original posting reminded of two past experiences; both occured right before I retired from the military as was open to "ALL" opportunities:

(1) An "AMWAY" rep mentioned a business opportunity he thought I would be interested in. Turned out it was selling AMWAY.

(2) I went to an information session, lead-in for me was "educational and teaching opportunity". It was ----- selling life insurance.

To me, the statement "At [this company] we never do presentations, we transfer information" ..........appears to has the same level of BS as my two examples above.

 

[zdas04]

You know, the company really has a proud history and has trained a significant portion of my generation of facilities engineers. Having sat through a bunch of their train-the-trainer stuff, they may be eroding that reputation with a rush-to-market attitude (which is manifested in too many pat statements like the one you quoted).

It turns out that they weren't as interested in me as they had indicated and I'm not going to be teaching classes for them (their choice, not mine). The experience was worthwhile though. Based on what I learned from them and this thread, I've rewritten my 2-day "presentation" into a 5-day "course" with exercises and tests. Now I just have to find a venue to teach it.

David