Turn your presentation into a learning experience

Peter Srivastava

adults learn from experience

Kolb’s learning cycle

Kolb’s Learning Cycle

• If you’ve had a positive training or learning experience, chances are you progressed through this cycle:

• You had a new experience;

• You reflected on that experience;

• You learned from that experience; and

• You applied what you learned to create new experiences.

Presentations are all about learning

•  Every presentation is an opportunity to help your audience learn something.

• That “something” could be anything from why they should buy your product to why they should embrace a change initiative.

• Once you see your presentation as a learning opportunity, you can organise it around the four stages of the experiential learning cycle.

Four stages of experiential learning cycle

• Experience• Reflection• Learning• Application

Experience

•Talk about a past experience.•Tell a story•Do a demonstration, if appropriate or resources are no constraints.

•Be creative

Reflection

•Reflect on that experience.•Ask questions to encourage reflection•Do not fear silence, give people time to quietly process your question.

Learning

• Presenters make the mistake of jumping right into the cold hard facts.

• Would you as a trainer jump right into instruction without any regard for learners’ existing knowledge or experience?

• If you’ve done the hard work of giving your audience an experience and allowing them to genuinely reflect, they’ll be more receptive to hearing your message.

Application

•Call to action. You want your audience to adopt your viewpoint, idea, or take some other action.

•Give feedback.•Make the consequences of inaction clear.•Help audience to visualize the outcome

Now look at the example – theory in action

• You’re the managing director of a company that has watched 30% of its customers evaporate over the last year.

• You have a plan to turn things around by improving customer service, but you need staff buy-in.

• You will address all 50 employees at a general staff meeting.

• Start by giving your employees a concrete experience. Ask 15 of them to stand up and walk out of the room.

• Tell the rest: That’s what it looks like when 30% of our customers walk out the door.

Now look at the example – theory in action

• When everyone is seated again, encourage reflection.

• How did it feel to watch all those “customers” leave?

• What impact does this have on you and your work?

• What might have led us to this situation?

• Take questions and facilitate discussion as much as possible given the size of the audience.

• You want to gently bring staff around to considering better customer service as a potential solution to the problem.

• You have a plan of action to discuss, but be open to modifying it based on their experiences and ideas..

Now look at the example – theory in action

• Lastly, make your call to action.

• Ask them to commit by following a new process

• or signing up for a task force.

• By the end of the presentation, your 50 staff should have had a visceral reaction to the problem (experience),

• processed their thoughts about it (reflection),

• learned about a solution they helped shape (learning),

• and committed to a course of action (application).

What now?

• Next time when you give your presentation• I encourage you to consider how it can be mapped

to the experiential learning cycle.