“Daddy,” my son said to me the other day, “what have you been working on?”
I had been putting in some extra hours in my home office getting together two presentations that I need to finish.
“I am going to do a presentation for some other people,” I told him. “What’s it about?,” he asked me.
So I told him.
For the next 20 minutes, I started giving my presentation.
He asked me questions. Good questions. Questions I hadn’t thought to ask myself.
I explained some additional details that I hadn’t thought of providing, and kept his attention for 20 minutes straight.
When I was finished, I realized something magical had happened.
In the hours and hours it had taken me to put together this presentation, it was the best 20 minutes I had spent.
Why?
I had to speak in plain language.
I wasn’t worried about what I said or concerned about following my notes to a “t.”
Or missing missing part of the story.
I made complex points into simpler, bite-size pieces so that he could understand.
I used simple language. No industry jargon that we all get wrapped up in. I didn’t assume that he knew what I was talking about.
And the questions that he brought up weren’t just questions that an eight-year-old would have had; they were questions that other people would have had too.
For those 20 minutes, I was just plain old story-telling. To an eight year old. And I came to realize that it had made more of an impact on my presentation than anything else I had done.
So from now on, when you need to make an awesome presentation, tell it to an eight-year old.
You might be amazed what you will learn.
If you are interested in hearing more about the presentation, you can join me for a webinar, Background Investigations – Beyond the Basics on May 30th, or live at the 24th Annual ACFE Conference for a presentation on How to Utilize Open Sources/Public Records for Investigation in the United States on June 26th.