Comfort Zones and Keeping Material Fresh

 

Sometimes speakers need to create entirely new material, or feel a need to create entirely new material.  In my experience, great speakers often work within one or more core sets of material, and tinker and add over time.  I like to focus on evolving my material over time to ensure it remains relevant and fresh for attendees in the audiences.  Such a slow evolution of material results in a deep expertise in the topic area.  My expertise is in speaking, communication in general, leadership and marketing and I continue to search for new ideas and approaches.

I’m inspired to write on this topic because this week I have quite a few speeches to deliver.  On Monday I speak to a university class, Wednesday to a multi-cultural group, Friday to some Toastmasters board of director candidates about board governance, and Saturday to an international group about leading in a virtual environment.

I don’t often feel much stress about presentations but when I looked at my upcoming calendar, I did feel a little stress at the volume of upcoming events and the varied topics and diverse audiences. That said my core material for each presentation relates to communication and leadership, and the governance session will be group discussion style on the book The Imperfect Board Member (If you’re interested in this book please see https://www.amazon.com/Imperfect-Board-Member-Discovering-Disciplines/dp/0787986100

I take comfort in knowing that my material and reusable PowerPoint slides address key premises of communication and leadership. These key premises haven’t changed much over time.  While our world is more online in 2022, concepts such as clear communication of team goals and team progress, recognition of helpful behaviors, and communicating effectively to audiences large and small remain relevant.

I do recognize it is critical to keep material fresh for the audience and for me as a presenter.  To that end I will perform some research on any news or articles related to communication, leadership and governance that is relevant to these audiences and some will make it into some new slides and speaking points.  (For example here is an article with some good perspectives https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/2022-public-speaking-online-challenges-self-tips-amalia-sterescu/

My point in writing this is to remind speakers to work from your core expertise.  But continue to make incremental changes to your knowledge and experience for the benefit of audiences and you as a presenter.