One way to make sure that your team makes a coherent and winning presentation is to rehearse them using what is sometimes called a wall walk.
Team presentations are tricky things, with advantages and disadvantages.
In the plus column, team presentations can draw on the expertise of different individuals, each person speaking about what he or she knows best.
In the minus column, team presentations can be disjointed.
To make the best use of a rehearsal, of course, you need to pull your presentation together — to develop your overall strategy, your message, and your PowerPoint slides.
Check out How To Plan a Technical Presentation.
Once you’ve created, edited, and revised your team presentation, you’re ready to go.
To Rehearse a Team Presentation
- Print out the slides, one to a page.
- Tape them to the wall in order, section by section.
- Give the team time to look over the slides from beginning to end.
- Ask the team to answer these questions as briefly as possible:
- What do you want the audience to do at the end of this presentation?
- What does the audience need to know and feel in order to do that?
- How does this presentation as a whole achieve that goal?
- Then go section by section through the presentation as a whole, asking the person briefing each section to answer these questions as briefly as possible:
- What is the purpose of this section?
- How does it advance the overall goal of the presentation?
- What do you want the audience to know and feel by the time you’re finished presenting the slides in this section?
- Once the team understands the purpose and flow of the presentation at a high level, walk slide by slide through the entire presentation. Ask the person presenting the slide to answer these questions:
- What is the one central idea — the point — of this slide?
- What concern, problem, or goal of the audience does it address?
- How does this slide lead to the next slide?
- How does the final slide in your section lead to the next section?
That last two questions, concerning the transition from one slide to the next and from one section to the next, are crucial. They are the connective tissue of a presentation, holding it together, giving it shape, and allowing it to function.
Conducting a team rehearsal using a wall walk allows each presenter to understand the presentation as a whole, not just their part in it. It allows the team to spot and resolve any inconsistencies, gaps, or minor mistakes. And it builds team cohesiveness.