Address board members' issues with your idea, before they do
08 August 2012 7:28am
When HR professionals want to pitch ideas to a boardroom, "framing out" their audience's potential issues is often the most important step in the process, says presentation expert Phil Preston.
"Natural barriers" tend to exist between a presenter and his or her audience, so it's crucial to "frame out what we call the elephants in the room", he tells a webcast for HRD Plus subscribers.
Preston, who is one of the co-founders of Presentability, says: "Many of us feel a bit exposed to our audience, especially if it's a peer group or people who have expertise similar to ours. We might think, 'There's some people out there who know more about this subject than I do', or 'What if they throw a really hard question at me? How am I going to handle that?'"
Stepping into a boardroom, other thoughts likely to cross HR practitioners' minds can include: "They don't see me as an equal", "They think what I do is 'fluffy'", or "They're very tuned in to numbers and not intrigued by complex social interactions", he notes.
"By framing what you're going to tell them, you're going to help them get through those barriers and have more influence in that situation.
"The difference between a really good presentation and one that doesn't hit the spot is one that defuses these elephants in the room - one that frames out any issues that the audience may have."
The issues that need framing, Preston says, can involve:
you, the presenter - including your role, your background, or even what you're wearing on the day;
your topic - it might not be interesting to them, or they might think they know more about it than you do; and
the audience members themselves - perhaps they are very pragmatic and don't want to tune in to conversations about soft skills, for example.
Preston recommends learning from TED talks (such as this one) and other presentations how expert speakers address this.
As an example, he says an HR professional might want to make a case to the board for more focus on people-led innovation.
"The board might resist your authority on the topic of innovation because you're not an innovation person. You might be seen as 'an HR person'. So they might have a problem with you and your topic.
"A good technique would be to help that break down by giving an anecdote of an innovative thing that you've been involved in, and then follow up by saying 'While I haven't designed innovation processes per se, I know that team diversity and empowered people are the common threads running through our best innovations.
"You can set it up to say, 'I'm not an innovation person but I've been involved in it and I know what works and I can tell you something valuable'."
HR professionals should think of framing as "trying to own up to something you've done before everyone finds out about it... So you don't need to feel exposed and you can help defuse some of that attitude in the room".
The 22-minute presentation includes more detail on these points and explains how to "sell" your idea once you've created an engaging opening and framed out the issues. Click here to watch (HRD Plus gold subscribers), or here to upgrade your subscription for access.
